i havnt had time to blog - but that doesnt mean there is noting to write about, just that I havnt prioritized writing.

God is good - and totally faithful despite the chaos.

My grandmother passed away just a half an hour ago. My mom just called me - and I came online to email marc and julie, so I thought I would blog about it a little bit. My thoughts and feelings.

My grandmother was a wonderful lady - she was 91 years old, and lived a great and long life... and mostly healthy until the last couple of weeks. Reflecting the past several days and visiting her, being around family cousins, uncles, aunts... I can still picture their house in Elverson... every room. The guestroom with the mirror/dresser and the bed we would sleep in when we stayed over night with the white popcorn stitch bedspread. Grandpa's study with all the books and interesting things in it (he was a pastor) The big garden out back. I even remember certain trees and where they would be in the yard. Plenty of Easter egg hunts makes one familiar with the place. The last years of that easter egg hunt always ended up with us cousins in a big battle whipping these hardboiled eggs at each other...

Grandma was always kind and gentle - like my mom is. A humble and Godly woman - supportive of family and friends, and caring. She was so giving even just a couple weeks ago, still supporting the ministry I am involved with at ACTV.

It was nice to see family just rally around in this difficult time. We knew her body was starting to give out, so the past several days, she had so many visitors. Neighbors, Grandchildren, Greatgrandchildren, and her 7 children who were by her bed constantly keeping watch, and caring for her even in this dark hour. It was good to see caring and supportive family - again carrying each other through the difficult times.

Familys should never burn bridges with each other. Love each other even if it is only one sided... it is still beautiful.

To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. the scriptures say. i guess she slipped on up out of this insane world.

I'm sure I could think of tons more profound things to say - these past weeks have been a little chaotic. But through it all God be praised - and God be blessed.

on another topic - sort of related, sort of not. i'm really getting totally mad at the enemy. He is trying to steal everyones joy... he is roaming around like a lion seeking who he can devour - and he's out and about really stiring up trouble for people... I need to remember my armour - and to put that on every day so I am ready for the fight... its getting ugly, but I think its about time to kick some enemy butt. Stay tuned.

i don't have time to blog, but I answered an email from a friend I havnt seen in a while, so I replied to him with this generic little summary on whats going on in my life right now. It's funny that i thought of saving time by posting this on my blog. Hope thats ok with you Davo. Thats me - always looking for a way to be more efficient in my life.
-------------------------------------------------
yeah... hey, things are going great... but very busy. work, church, youth ministry, club worship, fathering, home maintenance... life is insane sometimes... but i keep reminding myself that i hate lazyness, and boredom. So - life is great :)

we did this awesome thing at club worship this past saturday night... we will be posting pictures on the web later this week... it was a reflective meditative interactive art thing called "The Journey of Christs Redemption." based loosely on the catholic stations of the cross concept.

anyway, it was tons of work, but really meaningful, and it was awesome to see people go through and experience it.

Club Worship is going great in some aspects. And challenging in others. The actual events are going really well - we have a great team of volunteers who get together to get the work done. The worship team, the prayer team, everything is cool. BUT the day to day stuff regarding promotions, we could do so much better with promotions than we are doing. We freakin work at a TV station but can't find time to make a video - and some on our team design web pages for a living, but can't find time to keep ours up to date... so anyway, no biggy. Overall, I could always find ways to improve, but its going pretty good.

wow... life is insane right now... no time to blog sorry... except to say that life is good but busy. I've bit off a little more than I can chew this week.

everyone needs to be at club worship this month... we have a special art/interactive gallery following Jesus through His journey to the cross... it will be really cool, but it is taking every second I have to get ready for it... Also organizing everything else in my life.

Maria and I spent the day shopping... we visited Ikea (near philly) to pick up lights and stuff for the display... before I knew it I had $300 spent. Dag... and its mostly small stuff.

Then we went to Home Depot and got more stuff... little extension chords, light bulbs, supplies and stuff... it all added up to $100 whats up with that?

anyway, most of it I will be able to use somewhere when we are done. So I guess you could call it an investment. I just updated the quizzing site, and its 2:30 in the morning. and I got to get up early in the morning to get to the store to buy more supplies (black cloth material etc.) pray for me :)

Just got home... Maria was so funny when we first saw her... just the biggest grin from ear to ear and she wouldnt stop smiling... you could tell she was very excited to see us. And we were excited to see her.

After we got home, Maria was so giddy - just wanted to run all over the house and play with all of her toys that she hasnt seen...

she took her first steps tonight... just stood up, and started walking... no help from me (i was on the other side of the room)

The last day of our trip… I’m about ready to come home which is good timing. I’m actually writing this in the airport terminal awaiting our flight.

Today we intended to drive through a certain part of the mountains, but a combination of circumstances led to a change of plans.(getting up a little bit late, getting pictures developed, getting someone else’s pictures instead of our own, late breakfast at Denny’s, and a 15 car pile up where several of the cars burst into flame)

I passed up purchasing a portable dvd player at Wal-Mart for $75 – a decision I am regretting now, but I suppose it was for the best.

I would have had to purchase the DVD player, and then the challenge of finding a way to charge the battery for 14 hours when I only had 12 hours till we had to get to the airport. Besides that, I would have had to purchase dvds that I might never want to watch again. I considered looking into purchasing an inverter to run in the car to charge the battery, I also considered a trip to Radio Shack to purchase the necessary accessories to build a battery pack.

If I had attempted any of these options, (trust me I wanted to) it would have been a bit inconsiderate of Candace who was in a hurry to get to Denny’s

Now I am sitting at the airport with 3 hours to kill, and nothing to do but type in this stupid blog.

OK so anyway, it was cloudy for most of the day today, and it rained for about 30 minutes.

The only scheduled thing we did was tour Sony owned Columbia Pictures lot. The tour was ok, but they were freaky weird about protecting their films, and so we couldn’t really go behind the scenes too much.

The highlights for me would have been seeing the screening rooms where they do audio post. They were empty when we went through, but you could tell they were working rooms. The one guy who showed us around that area when asked who was the most difficult to work with replied instead with who he really liked to work with – and he mentioned Mel Gibson who posted “the passion” audio in that same room we were in.

The room was huge, with amazing paintings on the ceilings (like a cathedral or something.)

We saw a sound stage for a tv show they are shooting called joan of arcadia… it sounds lame.

Mostly these two tour guides tried to be funny, and they threw around names of films, tv shows, actors, directors, and expected us to know (and care) Mostly I realized I am pretty out of touch with the whole racket. So the tour was ok, but not really that great.

We had hoped to eat our lunch as a picnic in the mountains somewhere, but it didn’t work out, so we just pulled off the side of the road and made our sandwiches there. We have enough left over for our return flight, so it worked out perfect.

After driving for what seemed a millennium. We finally got to Chinatown for a last tourist stop, got a small gift for a friend, and headed to the car rental place.

That’s the whole day. And the end of our trip.

I am looking forward to getting home for tons of reasons. Probably the biggest is to see Maria again. Also to sleep in my own bed. I guess I felt that as long as we were traveling here, we needed the make the most of our trip, and see whatever we could see. One guy on our boat to Catalina island had read almost an entire book while he was there. He didn’t see any of the island, he just relaxed. On one hand, I respected him for knowing how to relax on vacation… on the other hand, I thought he was ridiculous because he spent all that money, and time on the boat, and everything, just to read a freakin book.

I like adventures, a whole lot… but when it comes to life, I’m a bit more like a hobbit. I value friends, family, home cooked (inexpensive) food. And smoking pipe weed (just kidding on the last one)

http://www.actvonline.com/LA At this link you will find some video clips of some of our wanderings... these were all taken over last weekend before Jon left on sunday. Thanks for posting them so soon jon!

Catalina Island. WOW.

It’s good we left early this morning (I think we got up at 6am??) the traffic on the north side of San Diego was so bad I was afraid that we would be late for the boat… no refunds… no daytrip… that would stink… But we pulled through, and once we were up to speed, we made great time.

This Concord we are driving handles great, and could really cruise… I was hitting 85 without any problem – and with the rest of traffic, it didn’t even seem that fast. Everyone was trying to make up for lost time.

We finished our leftovers for breakfast, and got on the boat with everyone else. It was a decent size boat, that probably seated 150 people or so on two decks. We sat up front so we would have a good view. We also spent a good bit of time on the front deck – which was not such a great idea for me.

Yeah, I admit it, I have a bit of a week stomach. I’ve heard that people who get motion sickness – its genetic. Well, I sometimes have trouble, but not too often. In any case, the front of the boat moves a whole lot – up and down, and that feeling of weightlessness when we would go over a sizeable wave. Well, after the halfway point, I started to be sick, so I just went back to the seat and tried to get my mind off of it.

Before I knew it, I could begin to see the island off in the hazy distance… What a beautiful place. Santa Catalina Island is 21 miles long, and is 22 miles off of the mainland. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from Dana Point.

A couple of things to note about the island: There are 4000 people, on the island and a 15 year waiting list to bring a car onto the island. So everyone drives little golf carts and other various electric vehicles around the place… it’s pretty cool, but overrun with tourists. Especially today because there was this huge – I mean huge Cruise ship in the harbor.

We had planned to rent a golf cart for the day, but when we got off the boat, all the carts were already rented. Besides that, they were $30 an hour. So because of our limited time on the island, we decided to go for the “scenic tour” for $13.

It was a fun tour because our lady guide was hysterical. She drove around yelling at the “women drivers” who randomly drove their golf carts in her way. Anyway, she acted like she owned the island. She told interesting and funny stories, It was great. And the views were spectacular.

After lunch, we walked around for a while, there is a building called the Casino – which means “meeting place” in Italian or something like that. There is no gambling in this place, it is just a huge ballroom – but an amazing building that just makes you go wow when you see it. After walking around for a while, we decided to spend our last hour renting a cart (most of the carts had been returned by then) so we carted around the island for a while and saw a bunch of places our tour did not go. Did I mention that the views were incredible? I know I keep mentioning that, but you can’t really describe something like that. A camera can’t capture it that well. Especially not the lame throw away camera that I have.

I’m so upset that I accidentally left my camera at home in the basement. It really stinks because I have no idea how bad these pictures will turn out.

One interesting thing I noted is that the locals seem really connected, that they are a really tight knit community that basically survives and thrives on the tourism industry. The tour guide bragged on their high school who graduated 50 last year, and lamented a couple of people who passed away last week. I noticed several people in the streets just connecting up with people like they were best friends… It is sort of like if everyone who lives in Bowmansville, couldn’t ever leave Bowmansville, You have one grocery store, and one post office, and one fire hall, and one mayor, and you always hang out together. It is pretty cool little community – sort of like what it would have been like ages ago in the small fishing communities.

Anyway, the ride back to the mainland was so much easier on my stomach, and beautiful as the sun went down.

We decided to take the scenic route to our hotel – over and through the mountains. The sun was going down, so we couldn’t really see that well, but the drive was amazing nonetheless. Hopefully we will see more when the sun comes out tomorrow.

Our hotel is nice and clean and cheap tonight – but included a Jacuzzi in the room. I’m feeling totally relaxed now… the most I’ve relaxed since we’ve been here. I love Jacuzzis, and this is the first we’ve had the chance to enjoy one in a long time. That’s where the details end in this public forum.