I have been asked on occasion about what goes on in the sound booth. If you have never had any experience in sound, video or lighting then let me explain.

The sound booth is the nerve center of everything that happens on Sunday. Could you imagine Pastor Mike trying to speak to a crowd of 400 people with no support from the A/V team? The A/V team is responsible for supporting the various ministries at Calvary Chapel Port St. Lucie (not just Sundays mornings although this one is important).

The main responsibilities for the Audio Engineer is to act as the other member of the band. The worship team can play the greatest song however if the Audio Engineer does not mix them properly then overall impact is nil. The Audio Engineer is an important cog in the wheel of the worship team as this person is responsible for mixing the overall sound of each song…from ramping the electric guitar up during an instrumental to providing a little more low end for the bass the Audio Engineer has their hands full. The above picture is an idea of the type of notes we typically take…it’s a cheat sheet really. It will give you an idea of what we are writing down and what we use to execute each song to give it a dynamic feel.

Next week I will tackle the Video Engineer.

I did some research because I was curious to now how much rainfall fell at my house. If you have a few minutes check out the South Florida Water Management Districts site. You will first need to find the local ’station’ that is close to where you live (click here to identify that station…this is a pdf file).

Next you will need to ping ‘DBHYDRO’ (the Districts online data management core). You can click here to access ‘DBHYDRO’. To do so you simply just input the station name and pull up the station that you want. Some stations have rainfall data and others do not. For giggles us statoin ‘BLUEGOOS’. When you pull up the records you will see that we had 1.96″ and then another 7.67″ rainfall event giving us a total of 9.63″ of rainfall for the Rosser/Gatlin area. Of course your particular area may be slightly different since rainfall does not fall in a homogenous pattern.

If you really want to geek it out check out the Florida Department of Transportations website or click here. You will find Intensity Duration Frequency Curves (or IDF curves)…what is this you say? Well if you take a look at the intensity of the rainfall (inches/time) you can determine what year storm your area experienced. Based on my calculations we were (on average) between a 25 year and 50 year storm. Roads are designed for a 10 year-24 hour storm (as a frame of reference).

Ahh…the we are open 24 hours a day to better serve our customers theory.

Well if your super Wal-mart is like ours, then you will note that there are usually two entrances. One is for the ‘food’ side and the second is for the ‘everything else’ side. I cruised into Wal-mart one morning at the ripe time of 6:00 am. I know that’s not too early but listen to what happened to me. I parked on the ‘everything else side’ because I needed some duct tape and some extension cords. I walked up to the door expecting it to open and just about ran into the door. It did not open. I looked at the hours of operation sign and noted that they were suppose to be open. I knocked on the door and an employee directed me to the ‘food’ side door. Now this seems a bit strange because if you are suppose to be open wouldn’t you have both sides open? I digress…

I walked the 1/4 mile to the other door (as you know the doors are a sizable distance away from each other). I walked in on the ‘food’ side and proceeded to the hardware section to gather the items. The time is now about 6:15 am. I proceeded to check out. I walked to the food side since that was the side I came in on and quickly noticed that there was no one at a register (we do not have self check out yet). I looked for an open register and discovered that register number 1 (located on the ‘everything else’ side) was open. In my mind I was a little frustrated…but I chalked it up to them just opening for regular business and opening up the ‘everything else door’. I walked another 1/4 mile to the first register and got paid up. I proceeded to walk out the ‘everything else side’ door and noticed that it did not open. IT WAS STILL CLOSED! I said to the employee why isn’t this door open? They said they didn’t know…

I scratched my head and walked another 1/2 mile to my vehicle. Open 24 hours….well not exactly.

Let me first begin by saying that since you are visiting/feeding this blog, this post is exclusively my personal opinion. I have finally decided to launch into an anti-Wal-mart series.

Saving money is great. In fact I encourage saving money so that you can become a better steward of what God has given you. Wal-mart started right. They focused on bulk and passed the savings onto the customers. What they forgot about was customer relations. Today capped a wave of frustration that I have had with Wal-mart for the past few months.

Let’s start with their employees. I’m from the school that if you hate/dislike your job get a new one. Life is too short to work at a place that you don’t like. Perhaps this attitude has kept me away from that stellar human resources position at a fortune 500 company…but none the less it’s not rocket science to consider your happiness when considering a potential job. I witnessed the most startling scene the other day. I was back in the cooler section where the milk, egg’s and frozen dinners are sold. I saw a Wal-mart employee (let’s call him Stan). Stan was carrying a small “Wal-mart” brand pizza. Now I am no memory whiz but even I know that if you want a “Wal-mart” pizza you have to go to the deli (where they are made fresh). Stan, was visible frustrated after spending some time looking for the precise location of the aforementioned pizza. I sense that it was the same type of frustration that you and I may have experienced in Kindergarten when we discovered that the square did not fit in the circle hole. Well since Stan could not match the box to another like box he simply shoved the pizza box in the cooler. I strolled by (I just had to see where it went…since I witnessed this struggle) and noted that he shoved the “Wal-mart” pizza into the California Pizza Kitchen area. This was clearly not the correct location.

I stewed on this for some time for you see Stan was no spring chicken. He wasn’t your 18 year old high school student that new it all. He was a middle aged and in management. When you see your boss creating more work for you it kind of gets to you. You see. Stan decided that this problem was beneath him and he passed it down the line to the poor swab who has to take care of the frozen pizza’s after the afternoon rush has passed.

This screams incompetent. I mean should I expect someone in management to know the general layout of the store? Should I expect someone in management to go the extra mile to make sure the job is done…and done correctly?

I digress…

To say the least this is one of many disgruntled employee stories I have from Wal-mart. Comparing Wal-mart to Disney is tough but let’s take Walt Disney World. Their employees will play twister if you ask them too. They are courteous and above all they know that the customer is always watching.

The next post will deal with their 20 items or less lane…c’mon you know where I am going with this.

The church is built…my office and student ministry space will soon follow. My goal is to have the Mullet up and running by the 17th of August. We are calling the student ministry space the Mullet because the staff offices are up front…you know business up front party in the back

This week we begin moving into our Church building (see the great flood for more details). In addition to putting the Church building back together (from sound to coffee cups) we are also moving our Church office. It will be a crazy….but fun. I will posting over at ConnectServeGrow as well as the week progresses.

It’s been an emotionally charged past few weeks… to say the least!

It all started with the excitement of having my mom fly into town to stay with us (again) at the end of June, then sad to say goodbye to Billy while he was at camp for a week. When mom discovered the fact that Colty’s soft spot was VERY tiny (while giving him his first haircut), my first reaction was feeling fear. The subsequent exam and Dr. ordered X-rays fed that fear even more. The pediatrician was concerned that Colty *might* be experiencing an early case of craniosynostosis. Researching this problem made my stomach turn flips. The remedy for this condition is a very invasive surgery that entails removing part of the skull, re-shaping it, and then putting it back in place with screws. When they called us back to tell us that the X-rays seemed to show that the sutures in his skull were NOT fused, I was elated. However, they said they still wanted to see him in the ped. office again to follow-up. At that time they told me that while the sutures weren’t fused, they were extremely close together. That, coupled with the very small soft spot, gave them cause to order a CT scan of his head. They still hadn’t ruled out craniosynostosis. Ugh. The fear started to well up in me again. As believers, we know the way to combat fear is to focus on our God and His provision. We know that “perfect love casts out fear”. So as I prayed about it, I sensed God’s peace. Billy had that same feeling. The enemy used this situation, however, and continued to borage me with subtle and destructive thoughts –trying to prevent me from resting completely in God’s hand. We did the only thing we could — prayed steadily and invited others to pray too!

Amidst all this, my mom had to leave and head back to MN. I was sad to see her go. We miss her so much after she leaves! However, a couple of days later, Billy and my sister surprised me by arranging to have her (with her baby Gracie) fly in to stay with us for a week! I was definitely and shocked and certainly thrilled that they came to see us!!

So, with my sister here we prepared for Colty’s CT scan. I was thankful that it went so well. He really did great. Then it was time to wait again. Waiting is like torture! Thankfully, my sister and Gracie made the time go by quickly. We had so much fun every day just enjoying each other’s company. We’ve posted LOTS of pictures on our website of our happy time together.

Then, on Wednesday morning as we prepared to take Em and Grace back to the airport, we got the call we’d been waiting for. Our ped. let us know that the CT scan showed Colty’s head to be completely normal! So once again we were elated and relieved, knowing that God answers prayer! Then it was off to the airport to see off Em and Grace. It was so sad to see them go - since we’ll miss them SOOO much.

Through all the ups and downs we just learn how to better trust our God with the biggest or smallest of things. We always become better people and know that we will be even better prepared for the next thing that life throws at us!

I am not certain if reading your Bible will help you grow facial hair but what it did for me today was put into perspective the importance of spending time with my family. In this episode of “Daddy Comes Home From Work”, I entertained my young princesses joining them in a face painting session. Although it was tempting to go with other popular looks like “butterfly man” or “Darth Maul”, I decided to go with a little 5 o’clock shadow. Kelli says I look like one of the village people. I digress…

I had a blast today at work. The church is looking fantastic…the Lord is really blessing us! Moving back in will be bitter sweet to me. I love having us all under one roof at the same time…however I like the fact that we are coming back home.

For weeks we have been planning this.

I told Kelli that I had to pick up a missionary at the airport last night at mid night. The missionary family ended up being her sister and niece. We rolled in about 2:30 am (for reasons that will require another post…I dislike in the strongest sense the construction occurring on I-95). This video captures the next few moments. I called Kelli about 15 minutes before we arrived and told her that the missionary family did not have a hotel so they would be staying with us… enjoy!

Ahh…it’s been forever since I have written. I have been swamped with student ministry (www.612students.com) and with life.

Kelli and I have been running a zone defense for over three months now and a legs are a bit tired :).
The kids are awesome though…I couldn’t think of a better gift from the Lord (well besides my wife but that’s to be inferred since she was needed to make the kids…anywhoo).

I have just wrapped up most of my summer events with the students. We had summer tour with Calvary Chapel Jupiter and just finished up camp with Chris Tomlin and Louie Giglio. Now that we are back I am preparing for my fall activities and planning for move into our church facility.

A bit of random news is that I got personal (via skype) instructions from a certified Starbucks coffee master on not only which type of coffee would best suite me but also how to make it. I have given it a whirl and plan to do a short video on it soon so that the masses can be educated.

Well, as an update to my previous post regarding baby weight loss, I’ve made some progress. Now with 5 more pounds down, my goal of losing 17 lbs. has now dropped to 12 lbs! I look forward to updating you again next month with similar, or even more significant, progress. I’m going to “keep on, keeping on.”

It’s definitely harder to make time to exercise with 3 little people. When I had one, or even two, I could load them into the stroller and run or walk with ease. Now, since I obviously can’t take all of them with me, my schedule is dictated by when Billy is home - and how hot it is outside! I hope to figure out a consistent time SOON for me to start my running/training for the 1/2 marathon. For now, I run when I can and try to do “home” exercises every day. Training requires consistency though, so I need to get a schedule down in the very near future!

Yeah…thanks Todd for giving the State of Florida another black eye. I truly don’t understand this type of hype and garbage that this man is spewing out. If you are into the charismatic thing please consider reading this resource by Church Smith.

Since our church is in a temporary facility (for another month or so), we have had the luxury of going back to one service. I enjoy this because it gives me Sunday morning as another time to get a run in. Notice I said ‘get’…with three kids and the responsibilities of being a husband and father my running schedule has had to flex. But Sunday mornings…yeah Sunday mornings are mine (as long as I hit the road by 6 am and am back by 7 am.