Category: personal

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window shopping

right now i feel like i’m in a peculiar situation with the birth of tapestry. the issue is that i have been dreaming about this for quite some time, where as the people i have been meeting with are just now beginning to consider it as an option. so i’m at the point of slowly moving from the dream of tapestry to the reality of it. yet i can’t really start moving too fast until others are on board with the church. so what i get to continue doing is dreaming and hoping for other people to join in on the dream.

so today just for the fun of it i went to view some leasing property in downtown stevens point. i have mixed feelings concerning leasing property. on one side i would prefer to be rather nomadic. i think it sends a powerful message when a church decides to place it’s resources towards priorities other than a building. on the other side of the coin i think store front churches send a powerful message also. for me it connects very strongly with the original concept of the “ecclesia” being a body of those called out from within the city. there is something amazing symbolic in a church building that is completely physically connected with the other buildings of the city around it, rather than a church building that is a separate little fortress from the other buildings within it’s community. i also think it is just plain cool that anyone walking by a store front church building can look in and see what the people of GOD are doing in the room (hopefully they will be able to see the people of GOD doing many other things all around the community). it’s open and inviting. i’m ready for some other people to start joining the dream of tapestry so we can start deciding what messages are most important to us.

so without any real agenda, other than curiosity, i went downtown today to look at a few of the buildings currently available for lease. after looking at three buildings (one of which had a large side room that could be separated off from it and would work perfectly for what who i believe we will be in a year and a half). it was so cool to walk into a room and imagine a group of people dreaming about and living out the life GOD wants for them. of course, we’re a long ways from being in any type of building. still it was nice.

SIDE NOTE – i presently have a huge scab on my forehead from hitting the exhaust pipe of pam’s minivan saturday. from a distance it looks like a large “mole” on my forehead. because of this “mole” i battled in my mind over whether or not i should get my wisconsin driver’s license today. i finally came down on the side of getting it today because i thought it would be funny to see an chasier’s, security agent’s, or officer’s response (hopefully it will never be an officer’s) when he/she looks at my license and sees a huge “mole” on my photo forehead but not on my present head. it made me laugh continually while i was in the dmv waiting for my photo. i’ll post the photo when i receive my license in the mail.

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sunday night ramblings

GO PACKERS!first, it’s really fun being a packers fan this year for two reasons 1) even though i have been a packers fan since 1978, until this year i had never been a packers fan in packers’ country – oh it’s fun, and 2) the packers are kicking butt! (of course, we just lost to the bears.)

second, i have an inch long burn on my forehead now. i went under pam’s minivan to check out something and bumped my head on the exhaust pipe. it instantly burned the first layer of skin off of my forehead. i feel pretty stupid.

third, the nekoosa giant pumpkin festival was a blast. they hollowed out 1000 pound pumpkins and used them for a pumpkin/boat race up the wisconsin river. not something that i ever thought i would see in my life but it was a lot of fun.

fourth, i spent monday through wesdnesday at a pastors’ conference at green lake conference center (which was gorgeous). during the conference i was involved in a couple of conversations concerning what type of marketing i would do to start tapestry and what type of marketing had been done to start various other churches. while i’m not the biggest fan of marketing in general (we have taught our kids to shout “that’s a lie” when certain television commercials come on), i do realize that there is a need for a little. still, i have no interest in “marketing” tapestry. JESUS said “and I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me.” that’s how i would like to draw people into the community of tapestry – lift JESUS up. i would like us to be involved in doing some things where only JESUS can get the glory and then let HIM decide if he wants to get any of these people involved in tapestry or not. i picture this being something like the commercial where the guy says he found the internet in a swamp. i like to think of a guy or girl seeing what we are doing one day and thinking “well there’s where JESUS is.” i guess this means i need to find out who the “lepers” and “sinners” are within our community and do something JESUS would do with them.

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parents

my parents will be up here in wisconsin tomorrow. they are staying with us for a week and we have all types of fun planned for them:

  • their going to help me replace a couple of swag lights with more modern light fixtures.
  • their going to help move a piano
  • we’re taking them to the stevens point polish festival – where there will be polka bands and chainsaw artists – oh yeah.
    we’re taking them to nekoosa giant pumpkin festival

we’re most excited pretty excited about lambeau field and the pumpkin festival. lambeau field is … well … lambeau field and that’s just plain cool. the giant pumpkin festival is cool because it involves cleaning out 1,000 pound pumpkins and using them as boats for a race.

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rollie thurston

baton rouge friends – i don’t have all the details yet but apprently an old firned of some of our passed away. some of the older “viewers” will remember rollie thurston who was a part of us and drummed at “the view.” jessica lawrence sent me an email today saying that rollie had been killed in a motorcycle accident in virginia. some of you met rollie a few months before i left baton rouge when he came to “the view” for a few weeks before going to the navy. rollie is a good guy and i love him very much.

i don’t have the thurston’s address yet (i’m at a conference right now) but if you want to contact the thurstons and express anything to them you should be able to find their address in the denham springs directory or you can email me and i should be able to send it to you tomorrow or the next day. please be in prayer for his family.

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oh i'm sore

a while back i was a running machine and in pretty good shape. then i tore my calf muscle and my marathon training stopped for a good long time. after a couple of months rest i started running again but it was very much off and on.

and then we moved to wisconsin.

since moving to plover my excercise has jumped up a notch or two. here was today’s cardio-vascular activity.

  • 1 mile walk with the dogs
  • 5 mile bike ride to pick up some supplies
  • 1 hour of pick up cross court basketball
  • 1 mile run with adam
  • 1 mile walk with the dogs again – this is what you must do when you don’t have a fence

now i haven’t started my long distance runs yet but that is coming up soon.

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cheap & local

the family and i were thrilled sunday when we tried the plover express drive thru. the whole family was fed with good but cheap food for less than $13. that’s hard to beat. even better than being cheap was the fact that it is local. eating at a burger king or heaven forbid a mcdonald’s is okay when you’re traveling but otherwise the terrell family goal is to eat at local fast food joints whenever the fast food craving hits us. we’ve always been able to find local places that were amazing. it’s nice to know that we’ve already found a good local place for filling up on our grease levels.

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cheese head

cheese head

conveniently enough i have been a green bay packers fan since i was in eighth grade and james lofton started playing for them. yet somehow it’s even more fun to watch them play when you’re only an hour a way from lambeau field. GO PACK!

btw, sharron walters made the above cheese head for our gnome (clive) before we left baton rouge for wisconsin.

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psuedo-cajun cooking

thanks to jess, josh, meg (alphabetical order here) and parkview i was able to treat the professors within the communicative disorders department of uwsp to a ton of jambalaya. if you remember meg, josh, jess (reverse alphabetical order) and parkview gave me a jambalaya kit as a going away gift. today was my first attempt at making jambalaya by myself (josh showed me how but i’ve never done it by myself). i have to say that though it was a little mild for my taste it still went pretty well. i learned a lot and the jambalaya didn’t turn out half bad. one of the first things i learned was to plan for more time. many of the short cuts that were available in baton rouge are not found in wisconsin. i had to produce my own trinity rather than just buying it. i’m also going to have to look around for a better source of pork sausage and chicken thighs. i think i can figure that out.

for anyone who is interested (and for purposes of arching this information) here’s is the recipe that josh hooked me up with:

ingredients

  • oil
  • sausage (manda or savioe’s mild pork sausage… hot is too hot, garlic is nasty)
  • chicken (boneless skinless thighs work best)
  • vegetables (onion, bell pepper, celery… the pre-cut mix works great)
  • rice (1 pound for every six people… use long grain rice)
  • seasoning (red pepper, black pepper, salt, garlic salt, etc… or Tony’s)
  • kitchen bouquet (to make sure it is the right color)
  • optional: sometimes I throw in a pound of breakfast sausage and a pound of andouille)

ratios

  • 2# meat
  • 1# rice
  • 1# vegetables

instructions

  • heat oil (just enough to cover the bottom of the pot)
  • brown meat
  • brown sausage first, then take it out
  • brown chicken in the sausage drippings, then take it out
  • sauté vegetables until they are wilted and liquidy
  • add water to sautéed vegetables
  • add seasoning to taste (it needs to be too salty, everything else is up to your preference)
  • add kitchen bouquet to darken
  • add browned meat
  • let it simmer for an hour if possible
  • crank the heat up and bring it to a rolling boil
  • add rice and let it boil for 5 minutes (stir just enough to keep it from sticking)
  • lower heat, put lid on, let it sit for 12 minutes (don’t take the lid off)
  • remove lid, pull rice from the sides and let the water run down the inside of the pot… put lid back on and let it sit for 12 minutes
  • remove lid, turn the jambalaya over and let it steam (lid off) for 5 minutes
  • (the 5, 12, 12, 5 timing is key)

of course, the most important part of making jambalaya is having a good “feel” for things and therefore having josh’s recipe is not the same thing as having josh’s skill.