Men

Wow. Powerful. Inspiring.

This is exactly what we're about in Dover.

Watch Live

Trying to always keep you updated on stuff you can watch for free.

Tonight starts the Echo Conference. Watch it here live. http://www.echoconference.com/live

Also the Nines is coming up in September.

Artic Boots

Up until this point in my life the greatest loss I had experienced was when my dog died when I was in 6th grade. She was a miniature dachshund. She got ran over by a car on May 2nd 1993.

I find myself very fortunate to have spent so much of my life with those closest to me. I work with teenagers who have experienced so much loss. Death of grandparents, friends, parents. I could never quite relate to what they might be feeling. I do now.

I'm not depressed or sad really. I just miss him. Knowing that you'll never see such a huge part of your life again, it's weird. You won't have the opportunity to make him laugh. You probably won't get Avon cologne for Christmas. No more jokes about his comb-over. No more of those big hugs.

I wonder what happens going forward. How is Memere going to be? How will I be able to help her? What will Easter be like? Who will sit in Pepere's spot? What hilarious clothes will I find in his closet?

Will I start wearing a driving cap as a memorial? Will we eat blood sausage at holidays?

Things will sure be different.

The wake and funeral will be in Nashua. The wake is Sunday from 2-4. The funeral is Monday at 10 am.

Little Lucien

So my grandfather is pretty sick. It looks like they are going to be moving him to hospice care. When you get moved to hospice, it means you are dying, soon. It's been surprisingly difficult for me. I really love my grandfather. He's the only grandfather I had growing up (my dad's father passed away when I was 2). He's the only grandfather my wife has ever really had (her grandfather was only involved in her life for 2 years before he passed away), and he is the only blood grandfather involved in my sons lives. I've looked up to him immensely. Without probably realizing it, he has been one of the primary shapers of who I am today.

A few things that Pepere has taught me.

1. Generosity

Christmas was an event. I can't believe how he bought everyone of his kids and everyone of his grandkids and everyone of his great-grandkids presents every Christmas. He was buying gifts for over 40 people!

Whenever I would visit while I was in college Pepere and Memere would almost always give me some cash to help me on my way. They would give me anything in their house if I needed it. When I was a kid, they would often let me take home toys from their house.

2. Family

Pepere loves his family. When we visited him in the hospital Saturday, all he wanted to do was hold the grandbabies. He kept asking about his grandkids.

3. Consistency

When we saw Pepere this weekend, he wasn't trying to make up for lost time. He wasn't suddenly realizing how important his family was. We were always important and he always valued us. He was married to the same woman his entire life, he lived in the same area for over half the century, told the same stories, drove the same car. He had a quick temper and even that was consistent. He was consistent but never boring. Always laughing and a lot of fun.

Pepere isn't gone yet and I hate to act like he is. I'm still praying for him to be healed and recover and spend some more time with us. I want my boys to be able to remember him. I want him to be able to laugh at the goofiness of my boys.

Love you Pepere. Praying for you.

This Too Shall Pass

Stuff like this helps inspire me in ministry. Creativity in any form pushes me past doing things like i've always done them.

I think the biggest "take home" I get from this video is that creativity takes a lot of hard work but it's always worth it.

Protecting your Kids

The following was posted by Tim Stevens on his blog.

Our kids are growing up in a different world. Here are a few things we do (or have done) to keep our kids safe…

• Internet filtering – Curiosity killed the cat and can do great harm to kids as well. We have used different products to filter and monitor our kids internet activities. Monitoring tells us where they are going. Filtering keeps bad stuff away that could hurt them. Currently we are using Family Safety which is a free add-on product that we have loaded on every computer they access. Not only can we restrict sites based on ourvalues–we can also monitor what sites are capturing their attention. And we can change (ease) these restrictions as they get older.
• Computer game time — on a school day, they get 30 minutes of electronic game time (whether computer, Wii, Xbox, iPod, whatever). On non-school days, they get an hour. This limit forces them (mostly the boys) to find other things to do. They all love reading, and I think that is partially because we haven’t allowed their time to be monopolized by staring at a screen.
• Cell Phone privileges - we didn’t get cell phones for our teens until they were in 9th grade. Why then? Because that is when it became inconvenient to us that they didn’t have one. It was never really a safety issue–in middle school there was always a friend nearby who had a phone they could borrow.
• Cell Phone Limits – this is about helping them stay in the present and not always being pulled away into other conversations. Our cell phones have unlimited text messaging, but we actually pay an additional fee (called “Smart Limits” by AT&T) to limit the number of text messages and the time of day it works for phone calls (other than to us, of course).
• iPod Touch restrictions – our 7th grade son saved his money for a long time until he was able to buy an iPod Touch. The first thing I did was took it, enabled the “restrictions” feature, locked it out from Safari (internet surfing) and YouTube, set a password, and gave it back to him. I don’t need my adolescent son walking around with a pocket full of temptation.
• Email monitoring - when they first got email privileges, I restricted their incoming messages to an approved list to protect them from child predators. After awhile, I lifted that restriction but continued to monitor all their incoming and outgoing email. As the teens are getting older and more responsible, I’ve gone from 1) Monitor everything, to 2) Monitor occasionally, to 3) “You know I can monitor it if I want,” to 4) I trust you.
• Facebook monitoring – similar to email, we monitored all of their Facebook activity when they first began using it (around 8th grade). Then it was “as needed.”
• TV time — the biggest blessing to parents has been the invention of the DVR (or TIVO). Our kids don’t channel surf. There is no reason. We just keep the DVR stacked with shows that won’t hurt their hearts (which, of course, changes as they age). They get a limited time to watch, and when they do they can skip commercials (which saves time AND limits the consumer mentality from taking over). Parents: Think of a DVR as a parenting tool, not a tech gadget.

I haven’t even talked about the content of movies or shows, but the bottom line: You are the parent. If you don’t protect them from the digital world, who will? At the same time, if you don’t prepare them to live in a digital world without your oversight, who will? I am constantly doing the countdown: I know I have 17 months left to prepare Heather to totally stand on her own in the world. So we are constantly reevaluating our limits and lifting them as she is ready. It’s fun to go to the kids and say, “You’ve been doing great, making good choices. I’m going to ease the restriction in this area because I think you can handle it now.”

Parenting isn’t an exact science, so what would you add or change?

Focker

Here's a poster I made to announce some missionaries who are going to be with us in April.