We're at the airport right now...

As I am typing this to you, I am sitting at Gate 8 over at Tampa International Airport. Loads of carry-on luggage are packed up next to me. I'm playing guard dog to everyone's carry-ons as they go do whatever. I don't mind, though. They have free internet here at the airport.

We're leaving today to go to Vienna, Austria over in Europe. This trip is basically our missions trip and yet it's almost like a vacation to me because we're going outside of the country, which is a place I've never been, and we're gonna go help out another Masters Commission over there. It'll be both fun and rewarding to catch some of the sites of a foreign land.

Anyways, I might try to do my best to update while I'm over there....maybe I'll post some pics too, I dunno. We'll have to see what unfolds. Pray for all of us and pray for the staff back at the church that is now understaffed 12 people.

-Jon

By the way...

"I will do my best to dedicate myself to continually posting every Tuesday and Friday."

That was my first post and I thought that I said Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's why the last few posts have been on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Don't know if I'll correct myself and go to Tuesdays and Fridays. As long as I'm continually updating, I'm happy.

Wanting Solitude

It hasn’t been easy for me the past few weeks or so to grab some solitude. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve gone up on the roof of our house and just sat there and watched the sunset while listening to my iPod. Both of my housemates have both been having car troubles and me being the only one with a working car has been playing chauffer the past couple of weeks or so. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the guys, but me being somewhat of an introverted person I want to be able to be by myself and drive alone and sing as loud as I want to songs on the radio and stuff like that. Now I have to be responsible for my two housemates and I have to be considerate and let them go places they want to go and when they’re tired and want to go home, I submit to them and go when they’re ready.

At first, it’s totally not fair at all. It’s not my responsibility to take care of them, it’s their responsibility to take care of their cars. Why should I carry their burdens and not get paid for gas?

I think about that and then I think about what it’ll be like to be married and how I’ll probably never have the chance to sing as loud as I want to songs in the car and how it won’t be about me and what I want anymore. It’ll be about us, and that kind of scares me. Kind of.

G.H.A.

Guitar Heroes Anonymous. If there were a group of people that suffer from devoting a small portion of themselves to the Guitar Hero franchise, I’d be the second or third in command. The game has always been a dream of mine ever since I started to get interested in the guitar back when I was 16. That was 5 years, almost 6, ago and having played it since it’s release in 2005. I remember walking into Best Buy about 2 years ago and seeing the black, plastic guitar hanging on the hook and the art of the game and the fact that I could actually hold something in the shape of a guitar and nearly pretend that I’m playing way better than I actually can peaked my interest. I picked up the shiny black SG controller and felt something I’ve never felt before in a video game. I looked through the songs and picked the one that I knew from all of them and at the time I was into classic rock a lot so I picked Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” on medium. I was hooked. I didn’t own a PS2 and I didn’t have the time or money, but I bought it. I went ahead and bought it because it was a dream to have and a dream to play.

2 years later I own 3 controllers, 2 wired-1 wireless, both games, and no have ordered online the Xbox 360 version and again I don’t have the appropriate system in order to play it. I know about the next one coming out and the video game titled “Rock Band” which will fully fulfill my dream of being able to make music and play video games at the same time.

“Hello, my name is Jon and I am a Guitar Hero addict.”

Action

I’ve been thinking about the time that I’ve spent with my youth pastor back in Mulberry. One time, we went to Taco Bell and had lunch over the summer of my senior year. We talked about what was going on at the youth group and what was going on in our lives. He asked me about how close to God I was and my habits. At the time I had a lot of posters in my room of TV shows, movies, and bands that I liked. I said something along of the line of “I just don’t think I could give up those posters. They’re who I am.” I guess that’s the line that pretty much said a lot about what I was holding onto. I was putting more value in the posters than I was God.


Of course, now the posters are long gone, but here’s the point I wanna get to. Everyone knows how to get saved. It’s the point of living that we all have trouble with. It’s why we have thousands of “how-to-live” Christian books out there. Cause people are unsure how to live for God and maintain some sort of an identity. As I continue to get older, I am finding truth in many things when it comes to living for God. One thing that is necessary is action. Not action like a movement, but action as in something you do to solidify your faith in God and your spiritual maturity. In Romans 6:6, it says

For we know that our old self was
crucified with him so that the body
of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves
to sin-


When we give up our old lives and pray that God would come into our lives, it requires more than just a prayer. It’s an action. We follow through by leading our lives differently before than when we were living them. We daily take up our cross and bear it so we may fully be in God’s will and grace.

Movies

This is an old post that I've been waiting to put up. I went and saw Blades of Glory recently, so I can't say that I haven't been to the movies in close to a year. But I will.

I haven’t been to the movie theater in close to a year. I don’t think it’s a sad thing or anything like that, it’s just been a while and I’ve been strung out on Masters Commission and if I ever did go, it would probably be by myself cause no one else round here would go. So, having said all that, I’ve missed a few movies that I really wanted to see and now I must wait for them to come out on DVD. Again, not a sad thing or anything. In fact, over spring break that’s exactly what I did. When I went back home to Mulberry, me and my mom stopped at the Movie Gallery in town and we got around 6 movies and every night the whole family would sit down around 9 o’clock or so and watch a movie. Good times.

-Casino Royale
Probably THE best James Bond movie to date.

-The Prestige
Weird movie with good twists. It’s interesting to note that the director, Christian Bale, and Michael Cain are all in cahoots with each other for the new Batman films. To see all three of them working together for this movie was a bit intriguing to try to figure out how they were there together. Plus, David Bowie’s in it.

-The Illusionist
It was interesting and I thought that seeing both The Prestige and The Illusionist would kind of ruin the flavor of seeing two movies about magicians, but I don’t think that it did really. The Illusionist had a different flavor than the Prestige. It tasted good.

-The Science of Sleep
A Michael Gondry movie. Enough said. If you know who the man is, then you know that this movie was visually mesmerizing and awkwardly weird at the same time. Other than the foul language and almost naked people, it was a good movie. Definitely not one your mom should be watching with you…maybe your sibling or something like that.

-Stranger Than Fiction
A really good indie film with Will Ferrell, who is a really good actor both inside and outside of comedy. In this film, he’s able to show the outside of his comedic acting along with a few other familiar faces. It’s thoughtful and amusing. That and the other big actors in it (Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gylenhall) did a good job as well.

What I am Listening to

I’ve been listening to a lot of different things recently. I’ve been listening to the new Maylene & the Sons of Disaster album titled “II”. It’s interesting to hear this album and think, “Is this a compromise between hardcore and country?” It’s quite humorous. I’ve been listening to a little of the Imago Dei podcasts. It’s sobering to just listen to someone more profound than you sometimes. I’ve also been listening to a little bit of radio. Man, I remember when I listened to alt. rock radio like it was good. Sometime between listening to 102.5 The Bone and listening to CDs and my iPod, alt. rock radio got sucky and repetitive. I listened to it this morning and I turn it on this afternoon and the same song I heard in the morning is on in the afternoon. Sucky.

Future

I've been contemplating about the future and what it’s going to hold for me. Especially at home and later on in Marietta. It’s almost scary trying to figure out how well I’m going to stick to this plan that I’ve set in my head for almost a year now. I keep on having these thoughts of failing and going back home and starting off where I was 2 years ago, with no plan and no escape. I hope I don’t go about this whole thing half-heartedly and just let failure find me. I need to continue to work hard, and I mean supremely hard, and keep focused on what I want to see come out of this thing. Success.

My Excuse

So...we've moved into our new church and things have been pretty crazy here. I've been put to the proverbial grindstone (whatever that means) and have been helping out moving stuff back and forth between the new and old church. Lots of heavy, bulky, hard-to-maneuver stuff. It's been tiring and rewarding at the same time to finally get into the new building and to get things rolling here.

Saturday and Sunday we're doing the Easter cantata. I'm playing yours truly. You should come.