Grace,
Brian
Author Brian Aaby
Late Assignments
Do you remember the feeling of turning in a late assignment?
Unfortunately, it DID in fact happen to me from time to time in grade school, jr. high, sr. high and college… Though I can’t remember it ever happening to me while getting my Master’s degree! Whew, finally got it right!
Well, post-post-grad it has happened a few times.
It just did.
Fortunately for me my letter-grade doesn’t drop… my income might, but at least my letter grade didn’t!
However, I don’t think ANYONE is upset about this one (well, maybe my family… no, not really)… I just finished sending off our initial invoices for the 2010 YMV’s! They were supposed to be out around the first of January (oops).
Who ever got upset about getting billed late? I’m banking on the hope that nobody will (pun intended).
In all seriousness, it does feel great to have that task accomplished. I have been so busy with other tasks it just kept getting pushed back, however, the invoices from everyone who wants money from us have, for some reason, come in EXACTLY on time, therefore, if we want to pay them I decided that it may be wise to complete my assignment!
Now to start work on some other overdue assignments!
Grace,
Brian
Top Five Tuesday: Margin Fillers
I am consistently examining my schedule these days. I get so tired of hearing, “I’m so busy.” I get so tired of saying, “I’m so busy.” The reality, most of us are busy, but it is a choice. I have no problem being busy, in fact, being busy is often life-giving. However, I want to keep the first thing first in my life. I prioritize my time with the Lord, my time with my family and my time to get my job done. However, all three of those top priorities are not always put into a nice little box with black & white boundaries.
Today’s Top 5 examines the things I am prioritizing outside the top three… Whether or not I like these things doesn’t matter, the criteria being, these are the things I am doing outside of my top three priorities. These are the things I fill in my margins with.
Without further ado, the list.
Five: TV. Down time in the evening is nice and doubles often as “at home date” time with Elisabeth. 24, Idol, Survivor and Amazing Race are our Margin-Filling TV shows of choice.
Four: Blog. Yep, this very thing is a margin-filler. As you can see, I’ve been a little less consistent with it, which means less margin in this season of my life.
Three: Young Life. Every Monday I have the honor of coming alongside teens in a ministry setting where the Gospel is proclaimed. Many of these teens (most) do not know Jesus.
Two: Networking Projects. This borders on “work.” However, I am a networker and I enjoy relationships and I enjoy helping others. I have a few people in my life who are extremely generous with their finances. I love watching how they steward well and bless others. I may not be in the position with my finances to do that, however I desire to be wise with my time, talent and treasures. Right now, I have been able to be generous with some talents. It is a joy to come alongside other Youth Leaders and help them discover areas of ministry or speak into specific areas of their ministry. Facebook, email, texting and coffee chats seem to be the practical margin-filler in this category.
One: Biking. I don’t always enjoy the exercise side of my life, however, I know I need it and ultimately I don’t feel good without it. My goal is to get three or four solid (30 minutes or more) rides in per week. Interesting enough, if I am just biking and not changing my eating habits I still put on weight… What happened to the metabolism of my youth?
Time to get back to the real priorities in my life, margin-time closed. What are your margin fillers?
Grace,
Brian
Today
Catch-up
Administrative catch-up day.
I prefer mustard, but did catch-up quite a bit.
Yes, I am a Dad and was a Pastor, therefore the cheese does flow.
I did do well… not caught up yet, but after a couple weeks of travel, I feel good about how much was accomplished today.
Grace,
Brian
LA LA Return
I’ve spent the last few days, once again, in SoCal. Last week I explained in this blog-post that I had spent some time with the National Network of Youth Ministries… the day after I had met with them they called and asked if they could fly me back down for another couple days of collaborating on a pretty special project.
Here’s the brief report on the few days down south…
Wednesday: Grabbed some time catching up with a friend, Mindi, who was also participating in the Wednesday NNYM meeting. We were able to catch up before heading into the meeting. Our 3.5 hour collaboration on Wednesday afternoon/evening wasn’t the most exciting, but laid the framework for the next day. On Wednesday evening I had a blast hanging out with Jeramy once again. We went out to an awesome Indoor/Outdoor Restaurant (Stone Brewery) before heading to the movie The Book of Eli. Very interesting film.
Thursday: Jeramy and I went out for an early morning brisk walk (traveling really messes with the ol’ exercise schedule). After a great breakfast (thanks Jerusha) I was off to the all-day meeting with NNYM. Fantastic work/progress was done on this project. Fun to hang out with Kevin, Alon, Daryl and Joel.
I left at 3:15 and started the long-trek up to Simi Valley. Without any traffic the drive would take probably an hour and 45 minutes. I arrived in Simi three and a half hours after my departure. So strange that I could have flown home faster than I drove just 90 or so miles. Gotta love LA traffic! Anyway, I had a meeting with my friend Mike and my brother-in-law Scott. We’re talking about a couple opportunities as well. It’s fun to partner with my brother-in-law on something and it has been a blessing as well to help Mike on the ministry side of things (he’s a former NBA player who is now doing quite-a-bit of speaking).
On Thursday night I spent a little bit of time with my in-laws before crashing for the night at their place.
Friday: The morning provided a much-needed slower pace; breakfast with my Father-in-law, then off to the Spire offices (and catching up on some admin stuff for Youthmark). For lunch I was over in Valencia and started my series of meetings:
Lisa: a friend from Alaska/The Master’s College… She’ll be an asset in setting up some of our AK towns this summer.
Joe: another friend from college and currently the Dean of students at TMC. Great to catch-up and talk thru some future possibilities.
Matt: a meeting my friend Mike had set up. He is in the film-industry and I wanted to pick his brain about video-production for future possibilities as Youthmark does prom0-pieces and such.
Tim, a Youth Pastor in Valencia who is considering/leaning toward doing a Youthmark Mission Venture.
A very full afternoon in Santa Clarita, but an exciting time with these four.
My evening was very exciting back over in Camarillo as I got to go out to dinner with my in-laws and then head over to Anthony and Stephanie’s and catch up with them!
As this post goes live, I will be on my way home to my family that I miss so much! Excited to hug, kiss and love on them!
Praising God for a few busy/productive/inspiring days in LA-LA land!
Grace,
Brian
I’m a Big Boy
I can eat a sandwich on my own… thank you.
Grace,
Brian
Top Five Tuesday: The Last 36 Hours
We just returned from a quick vacation to Leavenworth with a couple other families! What a fantastic time we had with the Champers and Bauers! Though this top 5 will be a quick one, and full of pictures, it wasn’t all fun and games! My “bottom one” is the lack of sleep. Will just did not want to let us sleep last night, thus the quick post tonight, to allow for the needed rest to catch up!
The criteria, the top 5 things we did while on our mini-vacation to Leavenworth, complete with some great pics!
Without further ado, the list.
Five: Ice Cream and Fun in Leavenworth!
Four: Fun in the car! Good talks, laughter, great scenery and the kids watching a movie or two… oh and naps.
Three: Late night talk with the three couples! How nice it was to have fun and deep discussion around the wood stove.
Two: Playing in the Snow as a Family!
One: Sledding!
Thank you Jesus for a great family to share great times with!
Grace,
Brian
CONTEST: Valentine’s Day WAIT
Here we go again… in light of it being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d get into the spirit of the Hallmarkian Holiday and post up a little festive fun. Here are TWO contest photos for you to choose between or post a comment for both! Just start your comment by indicating 1 or 2 so we know which one you’re commenting on.
Best “Thoughts” (captions) go Into The Running for the win and then I pick the winner. Here’s the twist, I think I am only going to pick the best ONE overall (slow economy, can’t give away two prizes). I have a nice prize, valued at about $25 for this contest winner! After you comment, it may not post right away, be patient, I’ll get to it and approve you as a commenter (that is, if it is clean).
WAIT: What Am I Thinking? You post the best thoughts for any/all of the participants seen below.
WAIT #1
WAIT #2
Have fun… don’t be inappropriate, this is a PG (okay, PG-13) site.
Grace,
Brian
**********In the Running**********
#1 The precise moment Katherine decided, once and for all, to kiss dating goodbye ~ the wifey
#1 i love sportscenter too– i mean you. i love you too. ~ Richard Judd
And though he didn’t mean for this to be in contention, but made me laugh…
Just an observation: In all of your caption contest, your wife always seems like the clear winner. ~Stephen Heath
#2 I think that’s pretty much what every groom looks like to every father-of-the-bride. ~the wifey
******************The Winner********************
Great work Stephen, you called the winner… the wifey wins with her quip about Kissing dating goodbye!
This must have been a tough one, less entries even though we had two pics!
Good job “wifey” going to switch up the prize and take you on a date instead!
If Teens (and church leaders) could see their Youth Pastors
Every week I get to spend time in gatherings of Youth Leaders. The two main networks that I am part of are the Burien (weekly) and Kent/Renton (monthy) networks.
This last week at the Kent/Renton network I was moved to take a quick iPhone pic as I thought of the unity represented in this prayer time. Though not all are pictured, the picture below represented:
- American Baptist
- Converge
- United Methodist
- Non-Denom/IFCA
- Young Life (Parachurch)
- Nazarene
- Evangelical Lutheran
- Youthmark (Parachurch)
- Calvary Chapel
Multi-Denominational-Prayer
Though theological i dotting and t crossing may happen in some circles, I can say that the folks I get to hang out with at these networks have one thing in mind… stand (kneel) united and rely upon the Lord to open up pathways for us to reach the students in our community for Christ!
Amen?
Amen!
Grace,
Brian
LA LA Land
Several months ago Alaska Airlines was running a sale on tickets from Seattle to LAX; prices so low that they were lower than the cheapest rate I had ever flown. Close to 20 years ago (holy smokes, seriously, I started college 19 years ago… wow) the cheapest rate I ever flew was $139 round-trip.
Knowing that I have potential YMV teams in SoCal and my Publisher (Spire) is down in Camarillo, I figured I would have several reasons to be down in SoCal and could take advantage of this airfare. So I booked it.
About a month ago, I got serious about setting up my calendar for those three days. I’d fly in on Sunday and out on Wednesday evening, giving me three solid days to conduct business… Then it hit me, Sunday, February 7 was Superbowl Sunday. When did the Superbowl start (3:15ish), and yep, that’s right when my flight was scheduled. Great move Brian.
Fortunately for me, there were some open seats on an earlier flight (6 AM…woo, early). The fun part, I got to watch the Superbowl with my best friend (besides Jesus, Elisabeth and YOU of course) Jeramy and his family. Good times.
Here’s a quick recap of my three busy days:
Monday: Met with a prominent ministry which sends teams on short term trips to Mexico. Great times. I then had the opportunity to grab a coffee with Josh, the High School Pastor at Emmanuel Faith, they did a YMV last year and will be the host site for our SoCal Spring Retreat. After some fun times with Josh I got to connect with one of my great friends from College, Scott (aka “Action”). Lunch with Scott was a blessing. After lunch I was off to a meeting with the National Network of Youth Ministries. I introduced/reintroduced an idea I have for them. A wonderful discussion and the conversation will continue as this idea gains traction. My evening concluded with a fun meeting with two more college-friends, Mike and Steve. They are both great basketball minds (Mike a former Laker and Steve a high school/college coach) and have some good ideas on how to use their skills/knowledge to go beyond hoops and use it for the Gospel.
Mike's Rookie Card
Tuesday: I drove up to Valencia late on Monday and had a late-night In-N-Out Burger for dinner (yes, another highlight of the trip), but the main reason was to crash at Jeramy’s hotel (he was speaking both Monday and Wednesday chapels). Tuesday started with breakfast and a great walk/chat with Jer. I spent most of the day over in Camarillo at the Publishing office and time with Mike Penberthy developing some ideas for the basketball side of things. Tuesday night, as I said in my previous post, I got to have dinner with two of my best friends from College.
Wednesday: Breakfast again with Jeramy, then we were off to the college for Chapel. Fun to see Jer speak. I had lunch with Jeramy, Mike and Joe (he is in leadership at the Master’s College). We were able to laugh at memories gone by, but also speak into the vision for the future of that college. It was a blessing to have spent time with these three friends.
I got to the airport a couple hours early, which was very nice to catch up on a few things that needed to get done (I feel so behind on administrative tasks). On the way home, I discovered I was sitting next to Sean McDowell (some may know Josh, his Dad). Fun to meet Sean and get acquainted.
So, there’s my LA-LA-Land experience! Good times and great potential for some future projects.
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