Category: personal

i’ll tell more later but for all those who were worried about our venezuelan guest’s first time experience with fishing i thought i would give you a quick report. well, it turned out that sergio had not only never been fishing before but he had also never canoed before. so the first 15 minutes we a little excited. i am glad to report that we did not flip the canoe. i do however need to say that i seriously thought we would flip it. we took on a little water before his body adjusted to the idea of a canoe. after that it was time for fishing. it was a bit of an off day actually. we were out on the river for 1 hour and 45 minutes. serg only caught 9 smallmouth bass and 1 walleye. we had plenty of other misses. in fact, sergio’s very first cast resulted in a fish that he fought all the way to the boat but unfortunately it shook itself free before we were able to get him in the boat. it’s was a pretty good way to introduce someone to fishing.

of course, sergio wants to go back out tomorrow.

the photo on the left was sergio’s first fish (i laughed the whole time he reeled it in and he didn’t understand why – he thought this was a decent fish – by the end of the day he no longer wanted to count the small ones). the fish on the right was sergio’s largest fish (15” – not bad for a nubie).

a former youth ministry student, sergio, has come up to stevens point for the weekend. it’s great, i get to introduce him to the wonders of point and to fishing. yep, you see sergio is 21 years old and he has never been fishing. when adam and noah heard this they stared at sergio in stunned disbelief. how can someone go through 20 years of life and never have fished? it doesn’t make sense. surely this lack of fishing has effected sergio’s development. he’s probably spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically stunted because of this lack of fishing within his life. after we go fishing tomorrow sergio will probably experience miraculous growth. he’ll probably be 8 feet tall tomorrow after we’ve gone fishing.

recently penza has turned me on to disc golf and it turns out that it is another great connection with many of the people i have been meeting in point. the problem with disc golf is that i find myself wanting to improve and thus getting frustrated when i don’t improve. i’m therefore going to start recording my score on the blog so that i will have a place to remember them and therefore be able to look back and see how bad i originally was. basically this is the same reason that i record my runs on the blog.

today’s disc
course – mead
holes – 18
score – +8

last thursday’s disc
course – mead
holes – 18
score – +7

let me be honest … at one time i enjoyed spending church money. i’m not talking about wasting money or doing anything unethical with it. no what i mean is that when i had to buy something big for the church and/or youth ministry i enjoyed it. it was fun. doing the research, trying to get the best deal, and ultimately making the purchase without it being my own money. all the pressure was off. if the purchased bombed (because the product was a lemon or was accidentally destroyed by a teen) things could be corrected in the next year’s budget. no pressure.

that’s not true anymore.

any purchase i make for tapestry causes my stomach to go into knots. there is no assurance that things will be corrected next year. there’s no assurance that there will be a budget next year. if a purchase bombs then i have wasted a valuable tapestry resource. each purchase is a choice between money for one thing or money for another. thanks to some very generous donors we at least have a budget to buy the the initial stuff we need. of course, ever time i buy something large it drives me nuts. i write this because i just spent a grand on a rear projection screen, a projector table, and an asus 901 back up computer. i also still have more sound equipment to buy.

MAJOR SIDE NOTE – as i was typing this post arnold austin popped up on facebook for a quick but important chat. for those who know and love the austins they have a pray request for you to jump on. this summer there were 60 summer missionaries in peru. these are students who give up there summer to be a part of GOD’s work in peru. one of those summer missionaries who had gone down to peru was greg gomez. this past week he was involved in a van accident and died in peru of a head injury. he was 19 hours away from lima and even further away from his family in st. louis. they are now in the process of getting his body back to lima to be taken to the states. please pray for the gomez family as well as the austins and remaining summer missionaries as they deal with this.

woohoo! i’m no longer the oldest terrell on facebook … my dad has joined. now, no matter how many comments my kids make about me being the oldest person on facebook i can always remind them of their poppa. 🙂

the past week i’ve been preaching at the bay lakes associational camp for the past week. this was the first time i’ve been at a youth camp without a youth ministry that i was leading. it left me with a decent amount of free time. i used most of it hanging out with teens at the camp but i used the rest of it enjoying bird lake, which camp bird is located on. it was great week first because i thoroughly enjoyed being involved in youth ministry again and secondly because i caught a ton of fish. 🙂

seriously, it was a blast getting to be involved in youth ministry again. i really enjoyed connecting with the youth and getting to be a part of a couple of volunteers mapping out how they are going to start an active youth ministry within their churches.

SIDE NOTE – i promise i’m going to eventually stop posting as much about fishing. it’s just been popping up a good bit because in the past 9 months in wisconsin i have fished more than i did in 7 years in baton rouge. baton rouge has some great fishing but its mainly motorboat based fishing which is not my personal favorite. i like being close/in the water via wading and canoes. this is a great combination for wisconsin but it wasn’t as great for louisiana because of alligators and water moccasins.

SIDE SIDE NOTE – i want to send out a big “thanks” to all the members of the ring community church. they regularly pray for us and tapestry. apparently they were praying again on thursday because i received several texts throughout the day saying that people had just prayed for us. thanks ringers. you’re the greatest.

SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – happy 4th!

SIDE SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE – i’m watching tv for the first time in a week and “blazing saddles” is on. woohoo!

there is a group of ra’s in thorndale, texas that is praying for us and tapestry. they’ve asked for a photo of the terrell family that they could use within their church for encouraging others to pray for what is happening within tapestry and the point area. of course, we’re all over the idea of people joining us in prayer so we went out to the wisconsin river this afternoon to get a family photo for them. because of some already established plans we had to do this when the sun was still pretty bright and in our eyes but i love this spot so much that we’ll be going back out and taking a real family photo once adam and i get back from the camps we are going to. we live in an amazingly gorgeous place.

this other photo is just an odd one from our excursion. there was a fun one of adam but he has asked me not to put it up.

thanks to a surprise from my mom & dad i’ll be buying a canoe sooner than i had thought. the model above is the one i’m looking at. it’s an old town guide 147. the current models are only in green and red but dunham sports has a model from last year that’s yellow. oh yeah, i like the yellow. since i’m going to preach at a youth camp next week (RANDOM PERSONAL ADVERTISMENT – if there are any other camps or retreats that need a preacher/teacher i would gladly do them, more for the opportunity to be involved in youth ministry again than any money i would get paid – especially since next week’s camp pays nothing) so i’ll look into buying it the week after. this of course, means that i will now have the ability to take people to the small mouth spot that andy showed me. woohoo!

thanks again mom & dad.

SIDE NOTE – i ran into ben (associate pastor of good shepherd luteran church in plover) and he introduced me to cha cha. i love it. basically it’s a service that you can call and leave your question on. they will then find the answer on the internet and text it to your phone. it’s great. i’ve already used it several times today to get the answers to questions that i was merely curious about. it’s up there with jott & googlesms/goog411 on my short list of numbers all people most have on their cell phones. thanks ben.

my run for the day
distance – 5.0 miles
time – 51:45
pace – 10:21/mile
weather – 72°

noah and i went to play disc golf with penza this afternoon. we went to yulga which is not a smart place to take a kid for his first time playing disc golf.

man, that’s a hard course.

for those who have never played disc golf i’ll tell you the reason that yulga is so hard … trees. as you can tell from the photo above someone thought it would be fun to set up a disc golf course in the middle of a pine forest. all i know is that it’s frustrating because trees and flying discs don’t mix very well.

SIDE NOTE – while i’m not sure who i will be voting for in our upcoming presidential race (neither candidate sees things exactly as i do – for example, obama supports abortion, mccain supports the death penalty, i am pro-life and thus opposed to both) i would like to say that james dobson does not speak for me. i don’t think dobson treated obama’s statements fairly at all.

i love public radio. i listen to it all the time. saturday while driving back from a camp planning meeting i was able to listen to a couple of interesting interviews, 1) richard dawkins talking about how he believes religion is useless, and 2) alistar mcgrath (who is one of my favorite writers) talking about how faith is the greatest. this post is not about how i think dawkins is wrong (which i do) but rather concerning one statement that dawkins made. when asked about sin dawkins said that he felt like the only “sins” CHRISTians every talked about where private sins, which he believes do not effect society. he said that churches never discussed societal or public evil that effects everyone. this is what i would like to talk about, is dawkins right? do we only talk about private sins and never public sins? what sins do churches confront and what sins do churches usually ignore?

ok, i know it’s not much of a list but i have camp stuff that i am working on right now. all i really wanted to do was get this down somewhere. so what do you think? what evils are confronted and what evils are ignored within the modern evangelical church? what about within the modern liberal church? within the fundamentalist church?