Well, this is going to be fun. Just managed to land this sweet new racquet on eBay for a stunning $98. It’s not too often I get a new toy – I’ve been trying to get it for under $100 for the past 2 months, keeping my small amount of funboy savings ready for such a moment as this. The retail is $199 and I’ve seen it going for as low as $125.

In short, this is a moment I’ve been waiting for since Father’s Day. Sweet!

JG

Rob sent me this link to a new Star Wars stage production I seriously want to see this summer. How fun is this? Here’s a clip from the AP:

U.S. director George Lucas has given permission for the “Star Wars” saga, which lasted for over 13 hours, to be shortened to a production of just 20 minutes, officials from Britain’s Reduced Shakespeare Company said Tuesday.

The company is famous for staging the Bard’s 37 plays in just 97 minutes and has also staged “The complete history of America” and “The Bible: the complete word of od,” among other abbreviated productions.

“This is my boyhood dream, in the space of 20 minutes I’m going to be Jabba the Hutt, Jar Jar Binks, Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker,” said the company’s Adam Long, who will write and direct the piece and star in it, with two other performers. “Everyone loves ‘Star Wars’ but I love it more than anyone on the planet.”

JG

Sounds like a pretty exciting mission trip – don’t forget to bring along your bulletproof vest on your next mission! According to Charlotte.com:

The Shady Brook Baptist Church youth group set out on a trip last Saturday to Gulfport, Miss., to help with continued relief for Katrina victims, but the group never made it to their final destination.

“There were two car loads of young people and they just opened fire…about 15 or 16 shots fired at us,” said George Sherman, Pastor of Shady Brook Baptist Church. The group had stopped in Shorter, Ala., so the bus driver, the group’s youth pastor, could rest.

All seven teenagers aboard were sleeping. It was around 5:30 a.m. when Sherman and two other adults exited the bus to stretch. Sherman said that is when two cars slowly passed them and began firing at their church van.

I just tried to call the church to talk about it and encourage them – I think they’re gone for the day. Wild!

JG

Just finished up a lunch meeting building out the PDYM ’07 conference. Islands. Yum.

Many of the discussions were about wanting to give people more time to discuss and dialogue as a team, planning out a new praise and worship night, encouraging lead youth workers to bring their team out here to Saddleback, and focusing more on being a local church conference and not pretend to be something that we’re not.

I’m most excited about the last part of our conversation, in that I think that YS and now Group do great parachurch ministry, but we want to focus on opening up our church doors, letting people see the guts of this thing right in the trenches, show failures, talk about the current year/learnings, let people just hang out with Doug and the team and learn a biblical foundational philosophy to build everything else on.

I’m excited because another year we’ll get to host close to 2,000 youth workers and their teams on a biblical approach to ministry, many of them just starting out. I’m excited about funny bits, great videos and awesome time with God speaking to my heart. I love the community that links people together. I love being personally renewed to go back for another year ready to take on the world.

Man, I love my job.

JG

Here’s a great article from the Post Standard that Chris Hood turned me on to today – Star Wars actor Hayden Christensen and a tow truck driver had an interesting evening, with conversations about the Lord thrown in as well. Check it out:

The pair spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to load the Ferrari onto the truck. It was stuck in second gear, Burdick said, and wouldn’t start. Finally, Burdick ran to a convenience store, bought a bottle of Wesson cooking oil and lubed the tires so they’d slide onto the flat bed.

“I’ve never hooked up a Ferrari before,” he said. “It took some fancy maneuvering to hook it up to the truck.” The tow to Toronto was going to cost $1,000: $3.95 per mile plus a $75 hook-up, Burdick said. Christensen agreed and they began the roughly 240-mile journey into Canada. Burdick still didn’t know his companion
was the young Darth Vader.

Burdick told Christensen that he was a born again Christian and asked him if he had given his life to the Lord, he said. Hayden told Burdick that he believed “people came from monkeys,” Burdick said. The conversation got a bit deep and heated at times, Burdick said.

Find out how it ends if you click the link.

JG

Have you ever been listening to a radio station and heard a great song – but then the DJ doesn’t tell you who it was that sang it? Well, Josh Garrett just came over and told me to check out Adam’s blog, where he’s got a great link up to yes.com. Basically it’s a website where you can track any radio station’s “almost live” playlist, complete with the time and links to iTunes. So crazy!

JG

Here’s an idea to rip off if you’re interested: during this HSM summer series on Moses, they’ve set up a Moses MySpace account, where students can send in questions and deepen the weekend experience of the teaching. Its run by one of the staffers, who regularly goes in and approves friends and answers questions people submit.

There’s some great stuff in there, and if students add Moses to their Top 8, their other non-Christian friends can easily link in and check it out, too. Good times!

JG

A new tradition we’re starting in our family is to interview our kids on their birthday. We’ll then have a “birthday DVD” – showing them growing up year by year one right after the other. How fun will it be to embarrass them in front of a date and play 15 2-minute interviews from age 3 to 18? I can’t wait, this is going to be a great tradition.

JG