Never judge a blog by its title.

Belief can.

2011-11-30T22:54:00.004-06:00

To live in a world where guns and the designated hitter are banned, a world where we apologize and mean it, where I'm not scared of what might happen and am instead excited about what could happen, where I can close my eyes and go to sleep at night without having to think about what worlds I could have changed and haven't yet, where we aren't afraid to be ourselves because we might get picked on or made fun of, where we trust one another, where love reigns with no room for hate or fear, where I know that my children will have a better life than mine, where I'm inspired by music and art and other people.

A world that doesn't put labels on people, where gay and straight and black and white and Christian and Muslim are afterthoughts, not first impressions, where I'm not afraid to fall in love, where no one gets left behind, no one, and everyone is cared for, where AIDS and SARS and cancer are things we read about in history books instead of the morning paper, where we're free to express ourselves and our opinions and still be respected.

A world that doesn't tell us who we're supposed to be from the time we come home from the hospital, world that lets children grow into their own skin and become who they want to be instead of who we decided they should be all while telling them to reach for their dreams, where failure isn't scary and success isn't either, where we're not afraid of ourselves but instead afraid of what might happen if we aren't ourselves.

A world I can write too much and erase it too many times, where a passionate personality isn't scary, where the things we have don't mean as much to us as they do, where we aren't afraid to speak up for someone who is scared to speak, a world that praises educators and coaches and mentors more than we do athletes and movie stars, where our motivation isn't money, where all are open to the same opportunities, where we support one another in times of need, where our enemies no longer exist, where we can wait to grow up and then keep waiting some more.

These are the things I want. These are the things I hope for. These are the things I need.

Let us all be leaders.

2011-11-16T15:47:00.003-06:00

I woke up this morning and, as I do almost every morning, looked at the previous few hours worth of tweets from the long list of people I follow on Twitter. I scroll them fairly quickly on my phone, knowing that I have to be at my desk sooner rather than later, often scanning through them so quickly I miss the text of many of them.

But this morning, one tweet caught my eye that normally wouldn't have. It was retweeted by someone, someone I didn't even think to check who it was, about the United States Congress proving themselves inept once again. In my opinion, I don't think Congress is inept or incapable, I think they're misguided and using their emotions instead of their minds to play the political game.

The tweet caught my eye because it was almost too ridiculous to be true. It said that the United States Congress, one of our three governing branches, had declared pizza to be a vegetable. Upon reading further into the linked article, I came to find out that this was not a ridiculous article by The Onion, but something that had actually happened yesterday. Congress, in reviewing a school lunch bill put forth by President Obama, declared that the sauce on frozen pizza that is served to students would count as a serving of vegetables.

I've had my fair share of school pizza in my day, having eaten lunch in the cafeteria almost every day from 6th grade to 12th grade, and certainly throughout elementary school on pizza day and other select days. A normal school lunch for me during high school would consist of a slice of pizza, french fries, perhaps a bowl of pineapple that had been canned in a surgery syrup, some kind of dessert, and a glass of Dr. Pepper or Coke.

At the time, eating healthy wasn't too close to the front of my mind and I thought nothing of it (while I still eat pretty terribly, I at least know that things I'm filling myself with are bad, so give me a little credit here...). I had no idea that school lunches were government mandating on the amount of certain things that had to be served each day. But I think I would have known that the sauce on my flimsy piece of pizza was not and should not be considered a serving of vegetables.

While this measure passed through Congress after much urging by frozen pizza companies, potato growers, and the salt industry (three organizations that exude the thoughts of healthy eating...), President Obama's jobs billed remains on the table. A bill that would put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and help our country dramatically.

While the jobs bill is held up, Congress also took the time to reaffirm that "In God We Trust" is still our national motto after President Obama mistakenly said it was "E Pluribus Unum" several weeks ago. So, not only are they taking the time to pass measures that will, in the long term, harm our youth, they're also taking the time to be jerks by making sure our President, our leader, is set straight on something that most people probably don't know.

Its only been in the last three or four years that I've come to enjoy politics and really become interested in who I was represented by and what their opinions were. In that time, I've also come to absolutely adore The West Wing and the idealist view of the federal government it often projects.

In the last four years, my political views have shifted dramatically. My learning about the political system and the hot-button issues, along with growing in my own faith and love, have helped me come to my current views and opinions on the world. While those views most-times side with the Democratic party, the two-party political system in this country infuriates me.

Along with our elected Republicans and Democrats not being willing to compromise on most issues, we have also allowed corporations to control legislation with way too much power. Money has always, always been where power stems from in the political arena, but now we're too the point where a group of frozen pizza companies and potato farmers can get processed tomato paste to be declared a serving of vegetables.

"Government, no matter what its failures in the past and in times to come, for that matter, government can be a place where people come together and where no one gets left behind. No one...gets left behind. An instrument of good."

The Occupy Wall Street movement started for this very reason. A group of people got fed up with corporations securing legislation and finding loop holes to continue to do business the way they wanted to instead of the way that was best for all people and the legal way to proceed in a fair market economy. As the protests have grown and more Occupy movements have begun around the country, their message has become scattered and misconstrued, but the fact that dollars can not be votes is the core of their message.

"If our job teaches us anything, it's that we don't know what the next President's going to face. If we choose someone to inspire us, then we'll be able to face what comes our way. Instead of telling people who's the most qualified, instead of telling people who's got the better ideas, let's make it obvious."

In determining who our next President will be, who our next Governor will be, our Mayor, City Council, and who every elected official we'll vote for will be, we have to look at who is best for us, the people that will be represented. We have to find the representative who inspires us and who has the better ideas so that she or he can lead our cities and counties and states and nations into the years to come. We have to leave our emotions and our party affiliations at the door, and vote for who is better for we the people.

My favorite teacher from all my years in school is beginning his political career next week by announcing his run for the Indiana House of Representatives. I was so excited to vote for President Obama in 2008, so excited and so proud, but being able to vote for Mr. Mann would make me just as proud.

These are the kinds of leaders we need; the kind that make us excited to get to the polls and cast our votes so that they can represent us and lead us; the kind that inspire us and have the better ideas.

We can do better, we must do better, and we will do better...

(that's from The West Wing, too!)

Who I am loves who I've been.

2011-11-13T00:26:00.002-06:00

An old friend and I were reminiscing about our childhood on Facebook today. I had posted that I was starting to get excited for Christmas and she brought up a futuristic Christmas musical we did at church when we were 8-9-10 years old. I don't remember how far into the future this musical was supposed to have taken place, but our view of that random year was terribly skewed. All of us made hats out of tinfoil and we used Game Boys to make electronic sounds. My guess is the future in our minds was the year 1999 and 2011 wasn't even a glint in our eyes.

Looking back on that musical was great, both because of how much I enjoyed my childhood and because of how funny the situation we put ourselves in was, looking back on it at least. As I look back at the last 20 years of my life, almost nothing has turned out as I thought it would. I might not have been as far off as thinking we'd be wearing foil hats and robot noises would dominate our ears, but very little of what I thought my life would be has come to be.

As a child, our family was huge. Four grandparents, two parents, an aunt and uncle, us three kids, and several great aunts and great uncles and cousins coming in and out of town over different holidays. There would be some Christmas mornings that we would spent two or three hours opening presents, taking the time to let each person open one gift at a time, one by one, no matter how many gifts there were or how many people were in our perfect circle.

As the years have gone by, our family has changed dramatically. My aunt and uncle, who I consider some of my largest influences, are now divorced. Three of my grandparents have passed away. And none of the three children in the family live in our hometown.

The thoughts I had about what my future was going to look like were idealistic to say the least. I still have my idealistic personality, but what I want isn't as picture-perfect as what I used to think I deserved. I used to think I would be married and have kids by the time I was 25. I used to hope to be a millionaire by the time I was 30.

As I've grown, I've realized you can't just put a certain age on goals like this. If you do, you're only setting yourself up for failure. I still have goals and I will always have dreams, but they aren't nearly as selfish as my dreams used to be. I still want a wife and kids and a house and to have enough money to not have to worry about it, but most of all, I want to be happy. I want peace and equality for all persons. These are my new ideals.

I've now been in Nashville for more than four years. I love it here. I have friends whom I adore, a church that fills me completely, a job that I'm still learning, but am very good at, and a life to call my own. I've learned that I like to cook. I've heard my call for youth ministry. I've started to take risks I didn't used to take. And I'm so happy.

Though the person I am today is in some ways completely different from the person I was five years ago, I am still the Midwestern guy I was raised as at heart. I am growing more and more like my parents every day. The future may have changed from what I thought it would be, but that's not as scary as it used to be.

Honduras - Day X

2011-08-14T18:45:00.003-05:00

As I was writing my daily recaps, I was surprised at the amount of detail I could remember from each day. Our trip to Honduras had a huge impact on my life. I worked harder than I ever have, I was given responsibilities that I've never dealt with before, and I was forced to be more caring than I have ever been.

Though my writings were long-winded and detailed, I also forgot a few things that, at the time, seemed note-worthy. On our first night at the ranch, all of the girls screamed in unison after finding a huge moth outside their room. I heard them scream, but could tell it was not a fearful, "we need help" scream, so I stayed in bed. They then proceeded to lock themselves out of their room and had to wake us up to unlock their door. After our long day of travel, this was a minor blip in my memories of the day that was.

On Wednesday morning at the ranch, we all gathered around the cross for a quick devotional with the ranch staff. Then, on Wednesday night, after we had practiced singing "Light the Fire," I picked up my guitar bag without having zipped it securely. My guitar fell out and made the worst sound a guitar can make as it hit the solid concrete porch. My heart raced for five minutes afterwards, both in fear after the initial drop and in relief that, somehow, it wasn't damaged. With a long workday and a long night up taking care of Emily, neither of these moments stood out in my memory.

The moments like these were fun and scary and important at the time, but as the impact of our trip absorbed itself into my heart and soul, these inconsequential moments faded away. Yes, I still remembered numerous other details that probably didn't matter much either, but this is the nature of the human memory.

Since I've been home, I've had some kind of dream almost every night that I was back in Honduras. I might not have been in a familiar setting from our trip, but I knew I was in Honduras and I was always with at least one of our group. After these dreams, I wake up and it takes me several seconds to figure out where I am. My bedroom looks foreign as I wake up thinking I should be in my bed at the ranch.

I take these dreams as a sign that I'm holding onto our experience, that my body and mind refuses to let go of our eight day trip to a new land. I also see these dreams as a sign that I can not allow myself to revert to the life I lived before I made the trip. That's not to say I led a terrible life three weeks ago, but I now am able to see what is truly important in this world and what isn't.

Most of our group shared part of our stories in church today. I started the presentation by introducing the youth and adults and telling the congregation a brief summary of our trip. Several times, I emphasized how proud I was of the youth for the work they had done and the way they represented Second.

My heart has been heavy since we arrived back in Nashville. I miss spending my evenings sitting in a hammock and joking with my friends and my youth. I miss going to bed at the end of the day knowing that the work I did that day made a difference in the life of many people. I wonder what is my place in the field. I hope that I'm serving God to the best of my ability.

I'm not sure where my journey will go from here, but I do know that I will never again take the luxuries that this country offers for granted. I know that I will never again complain about having to work hard. And I know that youth ministry is my calling; it makes me go.

Honduras - Day 8 - I miss my friends.

2011-08-13T19:50:00.003-05:00

Saturday morning began around 8am for me. I had enjoyed seven hours sleep in our wonderful hotel room. The floor of our room was covered in pillows and luggage. David was still asleep when I got up for the first time on our trip. I got up and took a shower and then got dressed.

Once I was packed and ready to leave for the airport, I went around and made sure all of the kids on our floor were awake. To my surprise, they were all awake and ready to go to breakfast. I went back to the room to see if David was ready yet, which he almost was, and then went to breakfast while he finished packing.

A few of the youth were still in the restaurant eating when I arrived. The long buffet tables had large dishes of pancakes, plantains, rice & beans, and fresh fruit. A chef was standing behind part of the table and would make omelets to order. After a week of limited food options, being able to choose what we ate was great. Knowing today would be a long day in airports, I decided to leave my granola bars in the room and have a bigger breakfast of pancakes and fruit.

As 9am, the time we had to meet Ali and our drivers in the lobby to leave for the airport, grew closer, we all went back to our rooms to gather our luggage. I double-checked with all the youth to make sure they were packed and had them start making the trip down the elevator to the lobby.

When we all arrived in the lobby, the same bell hop that had taken our bags the evening before grabbed our bags and set them in a corner. We weren't sure he knew where we were all going, but Ali told us we could trust him to make sure they were put in the proper van. After we turned in our room keys, we said goodbye to the group from Georgia who was staying another day to see more of the city.

We piled into the vans for one last drive together. The drive from the hotel to the airport was fine, with traffic thinner than it had been the morning before and the streets wider than they were in the downtown area. The morning air was cool, but we could still feel the thick pollution that covered the city.

We drove by a Chili's, a Burger King, a Wendy's, a Dunkin' Donuts, a Church's Chicken, and a Domino's Pizza on our way to the airport. As we approached the airport, I felt a sense of sadness that I would have to leave this country that I had just grown to love. I was still broken hearted after not being able to say goodbye to the village two days earlier.

We got to the airport, unloaded all of our luggage, avoided the men who tried to help us with our luggage who were in search of American dollars, and started to head into the airport. I shook Ubaldo's hand and thanked him several times for all of his help throughout the week. He smiled at me and thanked me back. This was the first time I had seen him smile all week.

We got in line to check-in with our airline and had to say goodbye to Ali. As one of the airline employees checked our passports, we would enter the check-in line. Ali stood by the back of the line and gave us each a big hug as we left her care.

I can't not say enough about how big Ali's heart is and how much she cares about her job. Her passion is infectious. Her joy overflows. God pours through her.

I was last in line to make sure that all of our youth got through the line safely. After all of the youth had told Ali goodbye, it was my turn to do the same. Standing more than a foot taller than her, I bent down and hugged her for several seconds. I thanked her for everything she had done through the week, for helping us in the village and especially helping us when Emily was sick, and told her how awesome she was. She smiled at me and said goodbye. She walked away, ready to welcome the next group she would host that would land in a couple hours.

We went through the line fairly quickly and David made sure that he and I secured exit row seats on our first flight. This meant we would be separated from the rest of our group, but we would have more leg room, so I was fine with the change.

We gathered in a small group while David went through the line to pay our exit fees. In order to leave Honduras, you have to pay about $38 per person. I had never heard of an exit fee before this trip, but I thought it was a small price to pay to get back to my home. While David was in line, we let the kids have 20 minutes to go get breakfast and do some last-minute souvenir shopping.

I stayed with their backpacks and talked with the two or three youth that had decided to stay as well. We watched the people come and go, some of them Honduran and many of them American. Within 20 minutes, everyone was back and we went upstairs to go through security.

The security check in Tegucigalpa was much more thorough than anything we experienced in Nashville. Nashville had run us through the full-body scanners, but this morning they checked our bags by hand twice before we boarded the planes. They took my aloe vera gel that I had forgotten to put in my checked luggage.

Once we had all made it through security, some of us taking longer than others, we made our way to our gate. In order to get to the gate, you had to walk through a large store that sold perfumes, wine, top-shelf liquor, and many other expensive items that I hadn't seen anywhere in this country until now. Thankfully, we made it through the store without any of the youth stopping to look at the expensive goods around us.

We found the gate and sat down to wait for boarding to begin. A little girl who was maybe six years old was brought to our gate by an airline employee and seated next to some of our female youth. She had dark skin so our group started to speak to her in Spanish, hoping to comfort her since she would be flying alone. She sat silently for a minute looking at them and then said, "I speak English." This brought a huge round of laughter to our group and helped ease any nerves for the flight that waited for us.

We soon boarded, with our 12 youth and Tara in the back of the plane and David and I in the middle exit rows. I was seated between a college-aged girl that looked just like a girl I used to date and a former Methodist minister named Scott. The girl had been in Honduras doing mission work for the last month and was ready to go home. Scott had been on a pastor's retreat for his new church, some kind of monk-like organization I was unfamiliar with.

We all talked for the first thirty minutes we were on the plane. I talked with the girl, whose name I never got, about the work she had been doing and the work I had been doing. I talked to Scott about the work both of our groups had been doing and about the Methodist church, since we both have ties to the church.

One we took off, our row grew silent and we all threw put in earbuds to drown out the noise of the plane. I was in a a very somber mood this morning, not wanting to leave this great country and still heavy-hearted over not having been able to say goodbye to Carlos and Alex.

As our flight continued, I got out my journal which had gone untouched for five days now. I started to write whatever came to mind. I wrote a quote from a John Mayer song. I wrote a quote from a Tony Campolo sermon. I wrote about my anger. I wrote about how selfish I was for being so angry and sad. I wrote.

I realized how crazy I must have seemed if either of my seatmates had been reading what I was writing and quickly turned the page of my journal. I had been listening to the saddest music I had on my iPod. I was torturing myself.

And then I realized how selfish I was being. I had wrote about possibly being selfish five minutes earlier, but they were nothing more than ramblings. Finally, my words had hit me. I was focusing so much on what I had missed that I ignored all of the things I had done.

I spent three days in El Rodeo. I met Carlos, Alex, and their families. I worked alongside them for two days. I threw my frisbee with their children. I laughed and prayed with them. How could I forget all of this and focus on my own sadness?

In this moment of realization, I was filled with joy. In this moment, I became a better person. I realized that the sacrifice I had made in staying at the ranch on Thursday was my responsibility, not my downfall. I realized that the things I had done that day made me a better man. I was caring, compassionate, loving, and forgiving on that day. I had never had to take care of someone like I did with Emily that day; I'm better for having not gone to the village that day.

If David had not suggested to me to ask for an exit row on this flight, these thoughts might have never crossed my mind. I might have never pulled out my journal and started writing the random things that were in my head. It's funny how life works sometimes.

Once we landed, David and I exited the plane and waited for the youth. We were back in America. With the time changes from Honduras to Miami, it was just past 5:00 in the evening. Once everyone had deboarded from the plane, we stopped at the bathroom, and began the long walk to customs.

The Miami airport goes on forever. We walked for 10 minutes, took a two minute ride on a train, and walked another 10 minutes before we finally reached the customs desks. We filled out the appropriate forms and took our places in line. Once we got through the lines, we had to collect our luggage, wait in another line, and then hand our baggage to the airline employees to be scanned through the customs scanners. This process seemed to be more confusing than functional. All we did was pull our bags from the baggage claims and drag them about 75 feet to be placed in a large pile of luggage that would be heading to Nashville.

We headed towards security for the last time. We had to wait about 15 minutes in line, but it was no big deal. None of us were stopped for a random check and all our carry-on luggage made it through the scanners with no problems. One of our girls aunt and uncle lived in Miami, so David went with her to meet them so they could take her out to dinner during our four hour layover. The rest of us headed to our gate to meet David when he caught up with us.

The walk from security to our gate was almost as long as our walk from our plane to customs had just been. We walked for ten minutes, took another ride on the raised, electric train, and then walked for five minutes before finding our gate. Some of the youth started complaining about having to walk to our gate before we let them go to have dinner, but I knew it was better that they know where they needed to be before we let them go. It's good to be in charge sometimes.

Once we had found our gate, the very last one in our terminal, I started to tell the youth their instructions for our stay in Miami. We had a little over three hours left before we our plane would start boarding, so I told them they had two and a half hours to do whatever they wanted in the airport. As I spoke, everyone within two of three rows of where I stood got quiet and was watching me. I didn't think I was yelling, but there must have been some sense of authority in my voice as I spoke. These moments crack me up.

The youth left the gate quickly in two groups and Tara and I sat to wait on David. He found us two minutes later and we started to look for a place to eat dinner. Having watched the cooking show the night before, David was in search of a hamburger for dinner. Tara and I just wanted somewhere that we could sit down and relax for a few minutes.

We decided on a restaurant that had a cheeseburger on the menu and featured an island theme, appropriate for Miami. It felt odd, once again, to not have any youth around us, but it also felt great. We ordered our food and talked about the week that had been. We talked about how proud we were of the group. We talked about what they did that made us laugh. And we talked about life.

I had a chicken sandwich and fries for dinner this night. It was overpriced and on any other occasion would have been average at best, but tonight it was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. After dinner, I ordered a piece of key-lime pie to-go that I would eat at the gate later. It wasn't great pie, but it was good and I ate it quickly a couple hours later.

Once we had finished dinner and enjoyed a few more minutes without our twelve teenagers, we headed back to the gate to charge our phones and relax for the last hour before our flight would board. About a third of the group was already back at the gate, huddled in a tight group reading a magazine that one of the girls had bought. The rest of the group wandered back within a few minutes and we all waited for our flight to board.

Knowing we only had two more hours in the air before we would be back home, we were all anxious to board our flight and head home. We all used the restroom one last time and started to gather our things as our boarding time grew closer. They finally called for our flight to board and we headed to the door of our gate.

This was a regional flight, so we would be boarding the flight via stairs after walking onto the tarmac. The walk from the gate to our plane took about three minutes and it was a fairly warm night in Miami. Everyone who was going to Nashville stood in a long line while we waited to board our flight. All of the youth were fairly wound-up at this point, so they were singing songs and making everyone laugh.

After we stood on the tarmac for about 10 minutes, we started to wonder what was going on. An airline employee was standing with us, but he didn't know what was going on either. After ten more minutes, they told us to go back inside. We made the long walk back to our gate and were all seated close to the counter so we could hear what was going on.

It turns out that the captain for the flight had gotten sick and was not able to fly. We all let out a good humored boo as we heard this news and settled in for what we hoped was a short delay. As every flight came in or left from our gate, we asked anyone who resembled a pilot if they could captain our flight. They must have known what was going on because they all apologized and said no with big smiles on their faces.

After about an hour of waiting, our captain had arrived. Re-energized by this news, we anxiously boarded our plane and were more than ready to take off. Almost all of us were seated together on the small plane, so we talked as we prepared for our departure. I had a window seat for the first time in our travels.

As we took off, I watched the lights of Miami engulf my view. You could see the beach and ocean in the distance and everything else was covered in lights. Everyone who could see out of a window watched the bright lights in awe as we rose higher into the sky.

Once we were outside of Miami, the flight grew very quiet and almost all of us fell asleep one by one. I had not been tired when I boarded the flight, but the dark night sky out my window and the dim lights in the cabin lulled me to sleep.

I woke up about 90 minutes later as we were flying over the southern suburbs of Nashville. My eyes were tired and dry, so dry that the view through my contacts was blurry. I tried to take them out and put some water on them, but my eyes were so tired that it didn't matter. We were close enough to home and my brother, Jeff, would be at the airport to drive us so I didn't need to see the worldly clearly at the point.

We finally landed and made a long trek across the runways at the airport to find our gate. We got our things and got off the plane. I waited for one of the employees to get my guitar from underneath the plane while the rest of the youth headed towards the gate. Once I had emerged from the doorway, the youth took off quickly towards the baggage claim area to meet their parents.

As we walked up past security, we could see the parents of our twelve youth standing and anxiously waiting for us. One of them was taking pictures of us as we walked and another held his arms out with gifts for David, Tara, and I. The gifts were very much appreciated, but certainly not needed.

Within five minutes, all of the youth had found their parents, collected their bags, and left the airport. It was well passed 1am by this point, so we were all too tired for proper goodbyes and thank yous.

Jeff led Tara and I to the parking garage to load our bags into the car and make one last journey home. We dropped Tara off, made sure she was safely inside, and started out for home. I got home, took my contacts out, and was in bed within two minutes. It had been a long day, but a good one. I was glad to be home, but I missed Honduras so much.

Honduras - Day 7 - The long road back.

2011-08-13T08:38:00.004-05:00

Friday morning came fairly early for all of us after we had all stayed up later than normal the night before. My alarm went off at 5:45, but I had been awake for a few minutes prior. We all woke up nervous today knowing that our day would begin with a six hour drive back to Tegucigalpa on those same bumpy roads we remembered from five days earlier.

I changed my clothes for the day, not bothering to take a shower knowing that I would just need another one after six cramped hours in the vans, and finished packing all of my stuff. About five 'til six, I woke all of the kids up so they could put their bags on the porch to be loaded into the back of the Land Cruiser.

To my surprise, everyone woke up immediately and carried their own bag outside. I woke up Emily to see how she was doing and to give her another antibiotic. She took the pill with a few swigs of water from the bottle that sat next to her bed and immediately put her head back on her pillow.

We had 30 minutes before breakfast and an hour before we had to be in front of the other dorms for the ranch's Friday morning devotional before we left. Not knowing how long or how rough the ride would be, and knowing that one of our group felt terrible and another four or five were battling stomach issues, I was extremely nervous this morning. I felt like there was no way of avoiding me getting sick since other people had started feeling ill one by one.

Thankfully, my nerves were the only thing making me feel sick this morning. I forced myself to eat one of my last granola bars while the rest of the group walked over to the dining hall for a big breakfast of pancakes, fresh fruit, and ham. The group looked tired this morning, mostly because of the long week of work we had just finished and partly because we were all dreading the ride to Tegucigalpa.

Once breakfast was finished, we grabbed the last of our bags and left our dorms for the last time. I did not say goodbye to the frogs in the bathroom.

Our group, the group from Georgia, the group of vets, and most of the ranch staff all gathered around the large cross on the ranch. We all stood in a large circle and the ranch chaplain led us in singing two songs. They had passed out song sheets, but the words were all in Spanish so they weren't much help for most of us. I knew the second song we sang, so I was able to hum along with the music.

After we sang, the ranch director thanked us all for coming and passed out missionary certificates to each of our groups. The chaplain then thanked us and apologized for not being able to pay us for our work. I appreciated the sentiment, but I felt bad that he thought he needed to say that.

After we all prayed together, the director and chaplain did their best to shake every one's hand who would be leaving the ranch this morning. The group of vets was staying for a second week, so it was our group and the group from Georgia that would be going to Tegucigalpa together.

After we all used the bathroom one last time, our group gathered around the cross with Ali for a group picture. We started to hand different people all of our cameras, but finally decided we could use one person's camera and share the picture. Once the photo had been snapped, we started to head to the vans.

Our van held me, eleven of our youth, Ali, our security guard, and Ubaldo behind the wheel. We were slightly cramped, but it wasn't too bad. As we drove on the dirt roads of Olancho, we had the windows up and the weak air conditioning from the van did its best to keep us cool. If we tried to open our windows, Ubaldo would give us one of his stern looks and the window would quickly close.

After about 45 minutes driving slowly through the small villages near the ranch, we started to get into the mountains and the roads, thankfully, turned from dirt to pavement. We were able to roll our windows down and the cool air felt amazing.

On our drive six days before, I didn't remember more than a mile of paved roads, but not having to drive through Juticalpa we were on paved roads for 80% of today's trip. After about an hour and a half of driving, we stopped at a nice gas station in a larger town. We all went to the restroom and sat down in a corner of the gas station that had several leather chairs and a television. An armed guard with a revolver in his holster walked past our group several times as we sat in the chairs. I didn't feel like we were in any danger, but the man with the gun still made me nervous.

After our 20 minute break, the vans were refueled and we were back on the road. Thankfully, everyone who had felt sick earlier in the morning or the night before was feeling fine. Emily still felt tired and weak after not having eaten much for the previous day, but she was okay in the front seat of the van.

We piled back into the vans knowing that lunch was coming at our next stop from the Mennonite bakery we had stopped at on our way to Juticalpa earlier in the week. I was seated on a fold-down metal seat on the right side of the van directly behind the security guard. As the ride continued, he slouched down further in his chair and his belt began to twist around slightly, bringing the butt of his gun between my legs. I knew the gun was secure in his holster, but this still made me nervous, especially when I would make a movement and accidentally bumped the weapon, which happened nine or ten times in our short trip.

As we drove, the youth had put on another Harry Potter book and played it loudly on their iPod dock. Having enjoyed the calming voice the day before, I didn't mind and tried to listen to the words as we drove on the winding roads, but with the windows down it was impossible to hear anything he was saying.

The person who was enthralled with the book on tape was our security guard. He would stare at the iPod dock, looking like he was in amazement at the sounds coming from it and also wondering what the words were saying. Anytime Carolyn or Jesse would turn the volume up or down or shift the position of where the sound dock was placed, the security guard would stare at it like a child.

The second portion of our journey seemed to go quicker than the first and we were soon at the bakery for lunch. We had the option of fried chicken, fried tilapia, and tamales wrapped in banana leaves, along with several side dishes. Keeping with the theme of the week, I had chicken, rice, and a Coke.

After we ate, we all sat outside around picnic tables talking about how the trip was going and discussing what trinkets looked appealing from the many vendors selling things outside the bakery. Most of the guys wanted to buy machetes, but thankfully thought better, and all of us eyed the hammocks that filled the back of one man's truck. If I hadn't already been carrying a guitar with me, I probably would have bought one.

We got back in the vans, anxious for the last 90 minutes of our trip be over so we could relax at our hotel in the city. One of the girls switched seats with me for the last leg of our trip so I could have some relief from the small, uncomfortable seat I had been sitting in for the last four hours. I was gracious that Anna was willing to do this for me.

As we drove, I talked with our three seniors who would be leading the devotion that night. It was great to hear how excited they were to lead their group for one last time before they went off to college.

After about 75 minutes of driving, we started to see familiar sights from the week before. Certain restaurants and homes along the side of the road that stood out among the others helped us know we were getting close to the city.

We pulled off the main road we had been on and were greeted with a majestic view of the city. We were high atop a mountain and were literally looking down on the city. Small buildings covered most of our view with a few large churches and high buildings scattered across the city.

As we got into the city, the roads became very narrow and cramped. Cars were parked on either side of the road, people filled the sidewalks, and our van passed by them all with just inches on either side to spare. Driving in the country had made me nervous enough, but this was chaos.

We passed several used clothing stores that had huge signs in English in their front windows. We passed bakery's that smelled amazing. We passed through several intersections that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to who had the right of way. Ali pointed out the capital building, which was beautiful.

After we made several turns down smaller and smaller streets, the road finally widen and we pulled up to our hotel for the night. It was a huge building that looked like any American hotel. Bell hops were waiting on us and immediately had all of our luggage unloaded and stacked on carts. Ali checked us all in and within minutes we were ready to head to our rooms.

Once we got inside, we noticed that most of our faces were dirty from the dust and exhaust that had come in the windows of the van as we drove. This was funny at first, watching people take off their sunglasses and look like raccoons, but shocking when we realized how dirty the air we had been breathing was.

Our rooms were spread out across the 7th and 8th floors of the hotel. David and I were rooming together again. We got to our room and immediately were back in American mode: the television was on, we were checking our email and Facebook, and the air conditioning was on high to cool off our room.

We relaxed for about 45 minutes and unpacked the few items we would need for the night and gave everyone else time to do the same. I went and found most of the kids and we decided to explore a little of Tegucigalpa. We knew there was a shop across the street that HOI missionaries received a discount at, so we headed there.

The shop was full of souvenirs. There were tshirts, machetes, toys, artwork, jewelry, and all kinds of random Honduran goodies. I bought a keychain for Jeff and I to add to our ever-growing keychain collection we keep with the key to our mailbox. The rest of the group bought some gifts and mementos from our trip.

Next door to the gift shop was a very small store that sold snacks and drinks. Since we were still not able to use to the water at the hotel to brush our teeth, most of us bought bottles of water. Other than the cake on Thursday, this was my first opportunity to eat anything sweet during the week. The kitchen at the ranch sold ice cream bars, but always having been full right after our meals, I never bought any.

I got some Skittles and a chocolate bar and we all headed back to the hotel. We could have explored the city more, but in the 75 feet walk from our hotel to the two shops we had already been asked for money and offered goods for sale enough times for one day. We decided it was safest if the whole group stayed at the hotel for the remainder of our stay.

We had about an hour an a half until dinner, so we all headed back to our rooms. David and I watched a cooking show where a lady was making huge hamburgers. I think both of us were drooling as we watched. Dinner couldn't come soon enough.

After we had both showered and ironed our polo shirts for our nice dinner, we made sure all the kids were dressed and ready for dinner. We headed downstairs to meet Ali in the lobby and head to the restaurant in the hotel.

After a week with everyone dressed in either work clothes or shorts and tshirts to relax in in the evenings, it was kind of odd to see the guys in khakis and polo shirts and the girls in dresses. Once we were all there, Ali led us downstairs where dinner was waiting for us.

We were seated at a long table outside, with the group from Georgia at a slightly smaller table inside. A woman came around with a cart and served us Cokes or whatever drink everyone wanted. The dinner buffet had chicken, fish, rice, roasted vegetables, cold cuts, cheese, salad, soup, and dessert spread across two long tables.

We all filled our plates and then filled our bellies. As we ate, the youth were all seated towards one end of the table with me, David, and Tara between them and the ranch staff that had made the trip with us. I was seated across from Ali and next to our security guard, with our two drivers next to him.

We talked about the week that had been during dinner. Ali emphasized, for the second of third time, how great our group had been and how much work we had done. She even went as far as to say that we were the best youth group she had worked with in her four years at the ranch. Hearing her say this made me, once again, extremely proud of my 12 youth.

Once we had finished our meals, we moved on to our seemingly simple dessert of strawberries covered in whipped cream. This was so delicious that David interrupted our conversation as he took his first bite. Strawberries and vanilla whipped cream have never been so good.

With dinner finished, the youth were anxious to enjoy their free evenings playing games, exploring the hotel, and taking advantage of the hotel's two swimming pools and hot tub. I went up to our room to get the last group of letters for the kids and our devotion would start as soon as I got back.

When I got to the pool area, the youth had gathered in a large circle to start our devotion. I sat down and our three seniors, Anna, Carolyn, and Bryan, began leading the group. Instead of giving our highs and lows for the day, they asked us to share only our favorite moment from the trip.

These next ten minutes were perfect. We went around the group and one by one shared our favorite moment from the past six days. Everyone was quiet while anyone else was talking and we smiled and laughed with one another as we shared. During my time to share, I spoke about how much I had enjoyed working with Carlos and Alex and the bond that we had formed. As I spoke, every person in our circle had a smile on their face. To see them find joy in my joy felt amazing. This moment now rivals my work with Carlos and Alex as my favorite moment from the trip.

After our time of sharing was over, the seniors began to speak to the youth about the impact youth group had on them in their time at Second. They spoke of the importance of supporting one another and striving to do more. They thanked David, Tara, and me for chaperoning the trip and for being their friends. They spoke from their hearts.

The group then discussed what youth group meant to them and how they could continue to serve one another as the new school year started. The talked about their favorite events and which events needed more support. They showed that they care about youth group.

We finished the evening by holding hands and praying together. After the prayer, the youth scattered quickly and left me and my two friends sitting by ourselves. Other than our time in our room at the ranch, these were the first minutes we had shared without the youth there for the six days of our trip.

We talked for awhile and watched as the youth went to and from their rooms and the pool area, all of them in pairs as we had asked them to stay for safety. A few of the youth came over and sat with us and we talked for awhile before going to explore the hotel ourselves. We all went up the ninth floor of the hotel to the concierge lounge that overlooked the city.

The view from the lounge was amazing. The lights from the houses in the city seemed to go on forever across the mountains that the city sits upon. On the mountain to our right stood a large statue of Jesus, which was a one-quarter scale replica of the huge statue in Rio de Janerio. After several minutes of looking out the window, Tara and I returned to the poolside to enjoy the cool evening weather.

After our long week of work, it felt odd to have nothing to do, but it was great. We sat by the pool for awhile, with our youth coming and going from our table, making sure to take a drink from our water bottles or steal some of our snacks as they walked by. After awhile, the girls retired to their rooms for the night and most of the guys stayed by the pool to play cards.

We played hearts for about an hour before we all went to bed ourselves. David and I headed back up to our room and laid in our beds for awhile. Our project for the evening was to write thank you letters to Ali for all of the work she had done for us that week. The television was on and turned to whatever movie we could in English, but there were no other sounds in the room. We both wrote for several minutes before bed.

Knowing the next day would be long and tedious, as would once again be confined to airports with our twelve youth, we settled in to bed hoping the next morning would take oh too long to arrive so our trip wouldn't end. We had fallen in love with Honduras.

Honduras - Day 6 - Today was the longest day.

2011-08-12T14:26:00.003-05:00

I slept until 6:30 on Thursday after having been up half the night. I knew today was going to be a long day. Before we had gone to bed, David and I had been talking in the bathroom, with a frog attached to the door and another on the wall above us, about which one of us would have to stay at the ranch with our sick child. I knew it was my place and I said so, but it tore me apart having to say those words.

Realizing we were already late for breakfast, I got out of bed and brushed my teeth, not bothering to change my clothes. I went to the girls bedroom, knocked on the door, and went inside to check on how everyone was doing. They were all still asleep and I went over to check on Emily (I was trying to protect her name, but there should be no shame in what happened, and it makes writing a whole lot easier).

She was hungry, but knew she shouldn't eat much. I sat on her bed and let her wake up for a minute. And then I told her she wasn't going to be able to go to the village today. I told her I would stay with her and take care of her. I'm thankful that she felt so tired and weak that the news didn't hit her as hard as it could have.

Having to tell her the bad news, knowing that it was bad news for me too, was terrible. I'm still not sure how I told her so calmly and firmly. I don't know what I would have done if she would have started to cry.

I gave her some antibiotics, made her drink a little water, and put her back to bed. After we asked the doctor if it was okay for her to eat, one of the girls had gotten her a couple pieces of watermelon and a couple dinner rolls to try. By the time her plate of food arrived, she was already back to sleep.

The next 45 minutes were grueling for me. Watching everyone else change their clothes and pack their backpacks to get ready for the last day of work and the fiesta that followed was like torture. I asked one of our guys, Max, if he would play guitar for the song we were going to sing and he agreed.

As the morning went on, I learned that one of our other guys, Mackenzie, wasn't feeling so well either, so he was going to stay at the ranch as well. Merritt, one of our female youth would be staying along to take care of Emily in case she needed something that I (a man) couldn't take care of.

This act of friendship can not be overstated. Merritt's care for Emily both the night before and throughout the day on Thursday was amazing. If Emily needed anything, Merritt had it for her before anyone else could even think about where it was, no matter what it happened to be. Words can not express how thankful I was to have Merritt by my side on this day.

As everyone boarded the vans, I stood on the porch and watched them get inside. Since there would only be 11 people from our group traveling to the ranch, everyone piled inside of our cozy blue van. Seeing Ubaldo, Ali, and David smashed together in the front seat was funny. Before they left, I leaned my head in the door and told them to work hard.

My heart broke as they drove away.

After they were gone, I made sure everyone was okay. All three of them were asleep, so I went to the porch and attempted to sleep in my favorite hammock. Staring at the bright morning sky, I couldn't help but be filled with sadness and anger that I wouldn't be there to say goodbye to my new friends, especially Carlos and Alex. We had only worked together for two days, but the bond I felt with them can not be put into words. I miss them.

After an hour of overthinking my current situation, I went into my bedroom and hoped the cool breeze created by the strong ceiling fan over my bed would put me to sleep. Thankfully, it did. I slept for more than an hour and felt refreshed when I woke up. I checked on my youth again and they were all still asleep, so I took my shower for the day and returned the porch.

Tara had been thoughtful enough to leave me a book and a magazine to read throughout the day. The book was about Honduras and the magazine was about cooking and clothes. I read through most of the magazine, noticing the small note that sleeping in hammocks is 20% better for you than sleeping in beds and a small paragraph about a new ice cream chain that had recently come to Nashville.

By the time I was done flipping through the final pages of my magazine, it was almost 11:45. Lunch would be in 15 minutes and I wanted to make sure anyone who wanted food had a chance to eat. Mackenzie was not in his bed, so I assumed he was okay (yeah, I'm a man), and the girls were still asleep.

I woke Merritt up to see if she wanted lunch, which she did. I woke Emily up just to check on her and see if she wanted anything. The kitchen had offered to make her soup, but she didn't want any. She ate a little of the rolls that were left from breakfast and drank some Sprite. The rest of us had fried chicken, rice, and tortillas. It was nice to sit on our porch and eat lunch for a change.

After lunch, I offered to take a mattress onto the porch for Emily to lay on, hoping some fresh(er) air would do her good. She came outside and laid behind my hammock; Merritt and Mackenzie sat in rocking chairs above us. We all sat on the porch and enjoyed the afternoon together.

Merritt and Mackenzie were both listening to their own iPods and Emily had brought out the girls iPod dock and was listening to one of the Harry Potter books. Having never read any of the books and having been forced to watch a couple of the movies, I still don't get the fascination with Harry Potter, but on this day in Honduras, the man who read from the pages of that book had my full attention. Well, my full attention for the 15 minutes before I fell asleep.

Ron was having his first practice with the quiditch (spelling? I refuse to look it up.) team and his robe was from someone with broad shoulders, but it fit him well enough. And then Harry saw a face in the fire. And then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, Emily had gone back inside to her bed and I could no longer hear the British voice that had been reading to me before my eyes closed.

It was almost 2pm by now, so the rest of the group would be back within a couple hours. I sat in my hammock until they arrived. To get to our drop off location, you have to drive by the back porch where the hammocks were to the front porch. Seeing that van drive up was both great and terrible. I either wanted to hear every detail of their day or hear nothing at all, hoping that meant I hadn't missed anything.

I met the vans before they had a chance to open the doors. The youth piled out like any other day and walked to their rooms. One of them stopped for a moment and gave me my gift from the villagers, a small clay pot with a house on the outside. This made my day.

The people of El Rodeo had thrown a true fiesta for the people of Nashville, Tennessee. They had cake and Coke and sang songs and gave us gifts. David quickly got out his camera and showed me videos of the children singing and the Honduran youth who had dressed up in masks and women's clothing. There was a video of our group singing "Light the Fire" and another of some of the families thanking us for our work.

Tara told me how hard it was reading the letters that Emily, Merritt, and I had written for her to read to the village. They asked me how my day was and the only thing I knew to tell them was, "It was long."

I went back to the porch and sat with the few youth who were there. I asked them to tell me about their day, but they were all excited about the ranch store being open and were anxious to get there quickly.

After David and Tara had showered and changed, the three of us walked over to see what we could find at the store. The store sells handmade crafts from the neighboring villages. As we walked, they told me about the day and the work they had done. One group had constructed another mud wall for a home and another had dug a ditch to bring water into a home. They said the work was exhausting this day. I felt bad that I couldn't have been there to help.

Once we arrived at the tiny store, we all started to pick out trinkets for ourselves and gifts for our families. We made sure to get a few things for Emily since she was still in bed. I bought a hand-carved Christmas ornament for my brother, a bracelet made with hand-made wooden beads for my sister, and a woven bracelet for myself.

As we started to leave the store, it started to rain, so we stood on the porch with several people who lived on the ranch. One of the men from the other group staying with us was on the porch painting the faces of the children. Earlier in the day, this man had probably been carrying 75 lb. buckets of concrete and this afternoon, he was carefully painting a ladybug on a little girls cheek.

The rain eased and we began to walk back to our dorm. We were surprised to see Emily awake and sitting on the porch when we returned. One of the other girls in the group, Annie, had taken Emily's camera to the village to take pictures for her and they were looking at them together. It was so nice to see these two girls looking at pictures together, with one explaining all of them to the other, knowing how badly it hurt for her not to have been there to take the pictures herself.

With Emily feeling slightly better and wanting to eat, the entire group headed to dinner. We were once again greeted with a fantastic meal of chicken, rice, beans, and tortillas. Since we had not been able to be at the fiesta, the group and everyone in El Rodeo had been careful to not cut one of the cakes so it could be sent back for us. So after dinner, I got the first piece and we ate cake.

David, Tara, and I were in charge of leading the devotion this evening and they had asked me to plan it since I had a day to myself. I had spent most of the day flipping through my bible hoping to find the perfect passage. And somehow, I had.

As our devotion started, we went around and had the group share our highs and lows for the day. My low was not being able to say goodbye to my friends and my high was seeing Merritt's friendship towards Emily. It was great to hear the entire group echo my sentiments. Once we had all shared, I started to read from the bible.

As I read, the entire group was quiet. After I finished reading, the entire group was quiet. I asked for comments and after a few more seconds of silence, Max just said, "That's pretty much perfect."

I'm not normally a biblical scholar, but it made me feel so good to have found the passage that fit our week perfectly. I wanted to be so angry and sad. I wanted to be jealous, but this group and this bible wouldn't let me. They pointed me to this passage in Matthew that helped show me what was important. I'm very thankful that I had this day to find this passage; it made all the difference.

After a few other comments were made, Tara read a prayer that one of her friends had given her before the trip. I passed out letters from our pastor and youth leader, Jeannie, and our evening continued.

Emily was feeling better and the group was excited after their fun day at the village. We all stayed up until about 11pm this night talking and laughing together. We had to be up at 6am the next morning so our bags could be loading into the vans for our return trip to Tegucigalpa. We made sure everyone was 95% packed before we headed to bed.

We also prepared a sign for the ranch's sign post tonight. The ranch has three posts along one of the walkways between the dorms and the dining hall that holds an arrow for different groups that have visited over the years. There was only one other Presbyterian church on the sign post, so we were excited to put Second Presbyterian's name up for all to see.

Figuring out how many miles we were from Nashville was more difficult than it seemed though. We had a wireless internet connection at the ranch offices next to our dorms, but no GPS or Google Maps service could locate our position. This was a nice reminder of how far we had traveled and how far away from home we were, even if we did have access to local election results and sports scores.

After we had finally figured out that we were 1540 miles from Nashville, Carolyn, one of our seniors and a fantastic artist, wrote our church name on the sign along with the PCUSA logo. We all signed the back to commemorate our experience. In the morning, one of the men who worked at the ranch nailed our sign to the post.

Once we had finished our sign and finished packing our bags, we all headed to bed. We were nervous for our six hour journey in the morning, not knowing what vehicles we would be in or how bumpy the roads would be. All we could be at this moment was glad to be in our beds and thankful to have been able to make such a magnificent trip.

In four days working in El Rodeo, we put concrete floors in three homes, roofs on four houses, walls on one house, brought water to two houses, built latrines at two houses, and installed chimneys at two houses. And that is only the physical labor that we did: we also spent endless hours playing with children, laughing with everyone, praying with one another, and thanking each other.

These four days changed our lives, all 15 of us from Nashville and, I hope, all 75 people from El Rodeo. We became friends and we became family.

"Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith? Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Matthew 6:25-34 (Common English Bible)

Honduras - Day 5 - Today was a long day...

2011-08-12T08:40:00.003-05:00

Wednesday morning started just as the previous two had. I woke up too early, David woke up early to milk cows with three more of the youth, and Tara was probably awake but was quiet enough that I couldn't tell. Having been up later than we had wanted to the previous night making sure our one sick youth was okay, we had all hoped to sleep in a little longer, but unfortunately this did not happen.

While milking the cows this morning, David got pooped on. While helping out the previous two mornings, he had stepped in poop and been almost hit, but this morning he walked back into our room with poop on his back. He went immediately into the shower and I followed him to brush my teeth, both of us laughing at how gross this situation was.

Side note for my grandma and mom: I shaved clean this morning for the first time since Easter. I hadn't brought a razor or trimmer with me thinking I would just grow a mission trip beard, but I quickly realized that it would be too hot in the Honduran sun. David let me borrow his razor and I was clean for the first time in months. You're welcome.

After we all changed into our work clothes, most of us wearing the same pants we had worn the previous two days, we headed over to eat breakfast. On our way, we stopped in the girls dorm to make sure everyone was okay after the previous night's happenings. Thankfully, everyone felt fine and we were back to 100% health in our group of 15 Americans in Central America.

After breakfast, we loaded into our vans and, for a change, headed to the nearby schools for a quick visit before our workday began. We first stopped at the elementary school and got a brief introduction and welcome from the principle. The other two groups that were at the ranch with us joined us on these visits.

We were then taken on a tour of the school, which consisted of nothing more than two bathrooms with showers, the principles office, an open-air classroom for each grade (1st-6th), and a large courtyard that the classrooms surrounded. As we walked pass each room, the children waved t at us and smiled. They see groups of American mission works walk by their doors once a week, but they acted like we were the first group they had seen in months. This was a great way to start the morning.

After we were finished at the elementary school, we crossed the street onto the campus of the junior high and high school. The school was set up in very much the same fashion, with the classrooms held in a C-shaped building that surrounded a courtyard. In the middle of the courtyard was a large pavilion with benches inside. We all sat on the benches and the principle of this school spoke to us.

He spoke English very well, with almost no accent on most of the words he slowly spoke. He thanked us for coming and told us about the school. This particular school year, they were forced to cancel their 10th grade class due to a lack of funding. The 10th graders were split up between 9th and 11th grade, which resulted in one classroom having 52 students.

After he told us about this problem, he went on to tell us about how much it costs for each student to attend school for a year. For students that live in nearby villages and can commute daily for the five hour school day (7am-12pm), the cost is only $300. For students who live further away or have no method of transportation, the cost for schooling and room and board is just $600.

My first thought was how much the private schools in Nashville cost. I mean no disrespect, but my entire college education (minus housing and food) cost less than one year at some private schools in Nashville. My books for one semester in college could have paid for an entire year for one of these students to live on campus and study. These numbers baffled me, but this is the world we live in.

Note: students at these schools can be sponsored. Check the HOI website for more information.

After we walked around to see the classrooms, the computer lab, and the art room, we were taken to a the new library. It was a magnificent building with windows covering almost every wall. Bookshelves surrounded the room and were full of books. Other than the hotels we stayed in on our trip, this was the nicest building we saw in all of Honduras.

The library was built in honor of three American HOI missionaries who were killed during their trip. They had rented a car and were tragically killed when the roads of Honduras overwhelmed them. After two long days on the roads in our bus, I was already nervous about the thought of being a driver here, but now I was extremely nervous. Thank you to all of our drivers for keeping us safe.

We left the library and walked back to our vans, ready to head to El Rodeo for another day of work. After the 45 minute drive, which had started flying by once we knew the route and had started getting used to the bumpy road, we started to pile out of the vans next to the soccer field just like the days prior.

As I got out of the van, my new friend Alex was standing with the group that surrounded us. He extended his hand and I gave him a firm handshake. He said, "Hola, Brian," and patted me on the shoulder. I said, "Buenos dias, Alex," with a huge grin on my face and we stood next to one another as the rest of the group unloaded.

Ali told us what projects we would be working on this morning and we divided into our groups. I was in a group with two of our girls and I was thrilled that we would be working alongside Alex and Carlos again. We were headed to a home that sat on top of a high hill near the back of the village to help them finish their new latrine.

The huge hole had already been dug and the cement blocks had been placed perfectly around the edges of the hole. Our first job for the morning would be to fill the seam between the ground and the bricks with dirt.

We grabbed our shovels and started working, thinking that this two inch gap would be filled quickly. After working for non-stop for 15 minutes, we took a break to look in the hole and see how much further we had to go. To our surprise, we couldn't see the bottom. I had thrown hundreds of shovels of dirt into this crack and they didn't seem to make the least bit of progress.

We kept shoveling, figuring out small ways to make the work more efficient as we worked, while Alex, Carlos, and David, our security guard and fellow worker, found boards to cover the latrine. I should have been more nervous working next to a huge hole, but I wasn't. The past two days had taught me to trust myself and the work I was capable of. If I fell in, I fell in (how tough do I sound?).

Our deep seams finally filled with dirt and we packed the soil with the end of our shovels. The men were still finding boards that would cover the top of the latrine, most of them being pulled from the chicken coop that stood behind the house. If a board was too long, they would carefully cut it to size using a machete. If a board had nails in it from its previous application, they would either ignore them or bend them back into the wood.

Once they had found enough boards and were happy with the way the latrine would be covered, we had to retrieve the make-shift scaffolding from inside the deep latrine that had been used as they were laying the cement blocks. The men spoke quickly to one another and I suddenly started to hear my name several times; they all laughed every time my name was said and they looked at me.

Though I didn't know the words they were saying, I knew what they were talking about. They were joking about lowering me into the latrine to fetch the boards and trees that had been clumsily nailed together as they worked. They realized I knew what they were saying and we all laughed for a minute, but thankfully they knew it was against HOI rules for our group to climb on roofs or climb into latrines.

They lowered one of the teenage girls into the hole and she tied a rope around a few of the boards. They pulled her back out and I went back over to the latrine to help them pull the boards and logs from the hole. Once they were out, they put the boards they had cut on top of the latrine.

With a few gaps in the boards, we search for a solution to fill them so the cement we would later pour on top did not fall into the latrine. Carlos began taking the old cement bags and soaking them in water, making a paper-mache type material to be used as filler. David and Carlos worked quickly to fill in the gaps with two or three bags.

Once this was finished, they realized they did not have any cement mix on site. Alex hopped in the red truck that sat behind the house and drove down the hill to fetch some supplies. We also needed a hacksaw since the small hacksaw blade we had was not working to cut the rebar that would support the cement.

While Alex was gone, we all sat down for a welcomed break and enjoyed the shade under the trees and the magnificent view from our home for the morning. Alex returned shortly with concrete mix, more rebar, a hacksaw, and a 3-liter bottle of Coke.

The same girl who had been lowered into the latrine went into the house and came back with several wet glasses. She poured the cold Coke into each glass and started passing them out to everyone. Even though I knew the Coke was safe, I wouldn't let my girls drink any since I wasn't sure what the glasses were washed in. We all said no thank you and were pleased when they weren't offended after we had turned down their generous offer.

Now that we had the proper tools to proceed in the job, Carlos and I began cutting rebar together while the girls sat patiently waiting for another project. Carlos had measured the first piece several times, making sure it would the proper size, and when he was convinced it was okay, he started cutting.

I grabbed onto the rebar on one end and held it from wobbling under the pressure of the saw's strokes. He held the other side, but the bar still shook a little too much. He grabbed a large rock from behind him and put it under the saw to use as a work bench. He started to cut the bar again, moving the saw slowly so he would not fall out of the grove he had made with the first two cuts. As the saw moved, so did the rock.

I put my hand closer to the saw, close enough that I could hold onto the bar and steady the rock at the same time. As I did this, Carlos looked at me and I looked back, giving him a trusting nod that my hand, which sat less than two inches from the saw, would be fine. This is one of the moments in our trip which I'll never forget.

As we were cutting rebar, the girls had begun cutting smaller wire that would be used to tie the criss-crossed pieces of rebar together. They were working with the teenage girl and seemed to be having fun.

Carlos and I grabbed another long piece of rebar and got back to work. As we were working, I saw Alex come and get the girls to start working on something else. They walked to the side of the house and began making a dirt pile for cement.

I turned back to keep working with Carlos and before I knew it, Alex was standing behind me with two shovels in his hand. He stuck them in the ground and motioned that one of them was for me. I smiled at him, hoping he knew that this meant my back was tired and I was fine to continue my easy task of holding rebar for Carlos. Alex spoke something in Spanish, but I wasn't sure what he said.

Ali had walked up to our house at this point and was visiting with the family. From her chair 10 feet away from us, Ali told me that Alex had said he wanted to work with me and he liked the way I worked. I was blown away by this compliment. I stood up, took the shovel, and we walked over to where the girls were standing next to the large pile of dirt.

We started mixing the cement as we had the previous two days, but this time the work went a little slower. This was the first time I saw the men of El Rodeo slow down as they worked. I was relieved to see that they were as tired as I was.

Alex and I took a few breaks as we mixed the heavy pile of cement. I'm thankful that we had Emily and Merritt there to help the work continue. With each break Alex took, he would say my name and grab his back, implying that his back was sore from the work. I agreed and laughed with him.

He then asked me how old I was in Spanish. Thankfully, this was one of the few phrases I understood and could respond to. I answered, "veinti-ocho," as proudly as I could and he said that he was 28 as well. He then guessed on the girls ages, missing them both by a couple years. Those two minutes of standing around our half-finished pile of cement and talking to one another were amazing.

We soon got back to work and finished mixing the cement. Carlos and David were still working to prepare the rebar for the latrine, so we started to prepare the base for the toilet basin instead. This was just a small 3' x 3' square, so it only took four or five buckets of cement to fill.

Once this work was done, lunch time had arrived. Along with Ali, we walked back down the hill to the house where lunch would be waiting on us. Ali is so funny and full of joy. Knowing we were all tired from the long morning of work, she joked that we should race up the large hill we were climbing. Her infectious laugh made us all smile.

We enjoyed a great lunch of well-seasoned beef, which was incredibly tough, but so good, rice, raw veggies, and tortillas. You could see how tired everyone was today. We had an hour for lunch and on this day, we used the second half of our break to rest. We chatted with one another, but most people sat on the floor or in their chairs quietly knowing that the afternoon's work would be tough.

Once we had refilled our water bottles, used the bathroom, and been told what our projects for the afternoon would be, we began to split ourselves into groups. One group would continue building chimneys in a few of the homes, one large group would build a mud wall at one of the houses, two groups would help put roofs on homes, and one group was going to visit shut-ins with the village chaplain.

I was assigned to work on the roof at the house we ate lunch in with one of the youth. The rest of the groups went on their way and we sat on the porch to wait for instructions. After we had sat for 20 minutes, we still had no word on what our task would be. Finally, the man who lived in the home came and told us we were fine to wait and that he was trying to find someone to help him climb on the roof.

We laid down on the porch using our backpacks as pillows and watched the huge white clouds pass by. The sky in Honduras is bigger than anywhere I've ever seen. I've been to the western United States, to Montana, North Dakota, and Colorado, and I can firmly say that the Honduran sky humbles any American sky.

After an hour of relaxing on the porch, we were finally summoned to the back of the house to help lift large tin panels to the men for the roof. They climbed up onto the supports and began to prepare the beams to be covered. Unfortunately though, they weren't as prepared as they needed to be. Line had to be strung from one end to the other to ensure that the tin panels would all create an even ledge on the low end of the structure.

As they started to stretch the fishing line from one nail to another, they realized that it as about three feet short. One of the men called to his daughter, who was maybe nine or ten, and had her run to the house I had been working at in the morning. During the 30 minutes she was gone, David and I had nothing to do but sit and relax.

While I didn't mind the rest, I did mind that I wasn't being useful. There were a few times where I almost got up and left without telling the men we were leaving. But my better judgement knew that I would soon be needed here and should stay where I was.

After the little girl got back with a new spool of line, they ran it across the base of the roof and began to discuss where the first sheet of tin should go. Soon enough, they motioned towards me to grab a sheet a tin. David and I jumped up, put our gloves on, and were glad to finally be doing something. Unfortunately though, this was one third of the work we would do on that afternoon.

It took the men about ten minutes to nail down the panel, so all we could do was continue to sit in the chairs they had brought us and watch them work. Before they called for another panel, we saw Tara and the two youth who had gone on home visits with her approaching our house.

They came around back and sat with us and we all watched the men work. They told us about the people they had met with, the prayers they had shared together, and the funny things that had happened during their afternoon.

One woman who was not religious asked Tara if her prayers for her husband would work even if the husband was not in the house. Another wasn't sure if the prayers would work if they prayed on the porch instead of the living room. It's questions like this that we laugh at, but those women took so seriously.

After a few minutes discussing music, and one of the youth being shocked to find out I listen to a vast array of hip-hop, we were summoned to hand another piece of tin to the men. It only took us 30 seconds to grab a sheet from the pile that leaned against the fence and hand it up to the men who were perched eight or nine feet off the ground. We repeated this process one more time and it was time for us to leave for the afternoon.

As we walked back to the shade trees by the soccer field, the group who was working on the mud wall were already seated on the ground waiting for us. They looked exhausted. Their work had not been terribly hard, but they were standing in an open field with no shade cover. Thankfully, we had designated six youth to work on this process so they could take shifts between packing rocks and mud into a hand-woven stick lattice wall and sitting on the shaded porch behind the house.

Making sure they were all okay and had enough water, we got in our vans and drove back to the ranch. This afternoon's ride was great. The bumps in the road had disappeared after three days getting used to them, but the scenary had not lost any of its majesty.

There was a stretch of road during our drive where you could see for endless miles on either side of the road. Nearest the road were open fields of low-cut grass where cattle had grazed. Beyond the fields were scattered trees and beyond the trees were magnificent mountains. Above the mountains was the open, blue sky of Honduras, filled with clouds of all shapes and sizes. The rides back to the ranch were some of my favorite parts of our trip.

Knowing we only had a couple days left at the ranch, I asked a few of the youth to throw the frisbee with me on the soccer field after we got back. Three of them obliged and we threw the disc for about 45 minutes. Some of the children who live on the ranch had been playing soccer on the field before we arrived, so we threw over and around them, being careful not to bother their game. But as soon as we started playing, they were more attracted to the frisbee than they were the futbol they knew so well.

A few of them started asking for the disc and began playing with us. Several of them left once half of their soccer team had been broken up, but the ones who stayed were having a ball. We threw back and forth for about minutes with them. Some of them would try to imitate the things we did, first in what seemed like slow motion and then at a more normal pace when they figured out what to do. It was amazing to see how quickly these kids picked up something they might have never done before, just as the kids in the village had two days before.

It was almost dinner time, so I asked for the frisbee back, which they threw to me regretably, and I went back for a shower. I showered, changed my clothes, and headed to the dining hall where most of our group was playing games. For dinner, we had spaghetti with chicken marinara and rolls.

I don't like pasta. I think it's bland and has an odd texture. The youth had already been getting on me about not liking beans because of their texture, but they were even more shocked to find out that I didn't like pasta. I'll eat lasagna or spaghetti when I know there are no other options, but I would never choose to eat anything with pasta.

Knowing this would be my only chance for a meal, I got a plate of spaghetti and made sure to get an extra roll to fill me up. As I started to eat, I cut the spaghetti into small pieces and tried to pick it up with my fork. This didn't work. I tried sticking my fork into the pasta and raising it to my mouth, hoping the pasta would come up neatly.

Laughing to myself and having not eaten more than a few bites of spaghetti for at least 20 years, I had to ask the group how to eat spaghetti. They told me how to twirl it on my fork, which is something I should have thought of but didn't, and don't worry about getting messy. After fumbling with a few mouthfuls while everyone watched, I gave up and ate the chicken from my sauce and the two rolls. I hope I don't see spaghetti again for 20 years.

After dinner, one of the youth had told us she wasn't feel very good, which we attributed to a long day in the sun and her not eating much for dinner. We told her to keep drinking water and relax for the evening.

We all headed back to our dorm to have an early devotion. We were all so tired from the work day that we wanted to get to bed early.

Three of the boys in the group led the devotion this evening. They had us, once again, go around the circle and list our highs and lows for the day. My high today was being able to work with Carlos and Alex again and my low was not feeling useful in the afternoon.

During the devotional this night, a large bettle flew into the bill of my hat and jarred it sideways on my head. I had tollerated the bugs and frogs until now, but if something is big enough to knock my hat sideways, I'm done. The same bettle then flew into the side of my head, flew around me, and landed on my leg. I gently brushed him off, but I was done with the bugs. I almost emptied a can of bug spray on my legs in the next two minutes.

We then passed out more letters from members of the Session and began discussing what we were going to do for the people of El Rodeo at tomorrow's fiesta. The group would work our final projects in the morning, eat lunch, and then celebrate with the people of the village all afternoon. We decided that anyone in the group who wanted to could speak to the village and Tara would translate. We also decided we would sing something for them.

I had brought a guitar with me, so I went to get it and the group started to discuss what they should sing. "Light the Fire" was quickly decided upon, which I was glad about because it is an easy song to play and the one song that my youth group seems to enjoy singing.

We fumbled through figuring out who would start the singing and how many times we would sing each verse and chorus, but we quickly figured it out. We ran through the song twice and it sounded pretty good. I was glad the kids had been so willing to step out of their comfort zone. I was looking forward to the fiesta very much.

After we sang, I joked to one of the girls in the group that she should play a concert for us. She has recently become very passionate about music, specifically playing guitar and singing, but she is still very shy about it. To everyone's surprise, she took the guitar and began playing and singing for us. It was a very cool moment for all of us to hear her perform. When she was done, we all appluaded and yelled for her.

We all continued to sit on the porch for awhile, chatting and playing Bananagrams. One by one, the kids started to go to bed. David, Tara, and I were some of the last ones to go to our rooms tonight.

After we had all brushed our teeth and gotten in to bed, there was a knock on our door. The girl who hadn't felt good at dinner had gotten sick. We all three jumped up to make sure she was okay. It was about 10:30 by this time, so we were all fairly tired.

We sat outside of her bedroom with her and four girls who had gotten up to comfort her, hoping that some Gatorade and cool air would help her feel better. By about 11:30, she hadn't gotten sick anymore so we all went to bed.

Half an hour later, David was waking me up to tell me she was sick again. Knowing Tara very well, I knew that she startled when she was woken up in the night. As David walked over to wake her up, I knew she would wake up immediately and yell, which she did. It scared David. I couldn't help but laugh.

We went back to the girls room where the same four girls sat still. Our sick girl was in the bathroom. David decided we needed to get the nurse, so him and Tara took a couple flashlights and headed across the ranch to the staff houses.

While they were gone, the girls were discussing scary movies for some reason. They talked about Paranormal Activity and several other movies I had not seen. But then someone brought up The Blair Witch Project, which I had seen. We all agreed that the movie wasn't scary until the very last scene when you see the kid standing in the corner as the camera drops. Being in the middle of rural Honduras on a ranch we didn't know very well at night, this put us all on edge. Thankfully, our conversation soon shifted to other things like Helen Keller and Anne Frank.

Soon, David and Tara's lights approached our view. They were with a security guard who had a handgun on his belt and his dog by his side. They had woken the nurse and she was on her way with Ali. Before they arrived, a second security walked up with two AK-47s. The two men then circled our dorms for the entire time we were up that night, which turned out to be until about 3am. I wasn't sure whether I should feel secure or scared of what could happen. Thankfully, nothing happened.

Ali and the nurse walked up a few minutes later. They checked on our sick girl and told her to start taking antibiotics and to keep drinking as much as possible. They stayed with us for about half an hour until everything had calmed down. She continued to be sick, but there was nothing more we could do for the night. By about 2:45am, she had calmed herself enough to try to get some rest. We all headed back to our beds knowing that tomorrow would be a very long day on such short rest.

Honduras - Day 4 - We kept working.

2011-08-11T13:14:00.002-05:00

As Tuesday morning began, I once again woke up much earlier than both me and my alarm wanted me to. David was once again getting up early to take four more youth to milk cows. Part of me felt bad each morning watching him get out of bed an hour before I did to walk up the hill to the barn and stand in manure for half an hour, but he was enthusiastic about it and I had milked cows before, so most of me didn't mind.

We all repeated our routine from Monday morning, eating breakfast, changing clothes, putting on bug spray, filling our water bottles, and, thankfully, applying layers of sun screen. I didn't notice the sun during our seven hours of work on Monday, but the 20 minutes playing frisbee in an open field lit my neck on fire.

Going into our work day, we knew we had a huge project to work on during the morning hours. The second porch at the two homes I had worked at the first day needed to be completely filled with concrete. Since it took five of us working for three and a half hours to complete the slightly smaller porch the morning before, we gathered a team of five of our strongest guys to work on the job.

After we arrived at the village to another heartfelt welcome, we divided into our groups and went to our work sites. I hate that I can't speak for all of the groups since I was only at mine, but all of the work we did was tough and meaningful.

As my group approached our homes, we were greeted by a new group of men from the village, none of whom I had worked with the day before. This was slightly disappointing to me since I had begun to work very well with Carlos and Alex the previous day, but it was the nature of the job, so I continued to work hard no matter who was next to me.

We soon found out that we would have to complete an interior room in the house before we started working on the porch. The floor was very deep in this room, so before we could start mixing concrete, we first had to carry buckets of dirt to help even the floor and also to help save concrete mix. After half an hour of spreading dirt across the floor in a semi-even layer, we began mixing concrete in double and triple batches for the remainder of the morning.

Within an hour and a half or so, we had finished the interior room and started working to fill the large porch. I knew we wouldn't be finished by lunch time, but we all worked as quickly as we could hoping that we would somehow manage to finish before our meal arrived. Between the five Americans and the five or six men from the village that we worked with, we finished about two-thirds of the porch before lunch.

As our work progressed, we found out that the house we were working on was Daisy's, the leader of the village. It struck me that the leader of the village lived in a mud-brick home without concrete floors, but I was quick to realize that it's the people that make the home, not the homes that make the people. We worked that morning with Daisy's 20 year old son, her 16 year old brother, and a few other men that may or may not have been family.

As we started to break for lunch, we thought we should help them finish before we left, but we were shooed away by the men. They told us it was better for us to take our break than to keep working, that they would keep working while we ate. While I appreciated their kindness and willingness to work around the schedule HOI had set for us, I wanted to see this porch completed.

After a lunch of seasoned beef (BEEF!), rice, tortillas, and more refreshing, glass-bottles of Coke, we decided to change some of our work groups. I traded with one of the girls who had not yet mixed concrete and a few of the guys traded to take some pressure off of our tired backs from a day and a half of nothing but concrete work.

Being able to work at a new house that afternoon was exciting for me. It was a further walk from the soccer field than the houses I had been working at, but I didn't mind seeing more of El Rodeo. As we approached the house, I saw a raised chicken coop with a large pig and several piglets laying in the dirt below.

We walked behind the house and there were two men working on a latrine. One of the men was Julio, the craftsman I had worked with the day before. They were trying to find boards to cover the hole of the latrine that we would later cover with concrete. As they worked on this, I sat on the back porch with the two youth I would be working with for the afternoon.

The daughter of the woman who lived at this home came out and sat between us. She had a plastic Barbie-type doll in her hand and a bowl of water. After taking a drink from the water, she went over to the family's outdoor bath tub and grabbed a bar of soap. She then proceeded to thoroughly wash her doll's hair with more than enough soap. And then she broke her doll in half.

Seeing a tiny Honduran girl snap a plastic doll, whom she had just shown love for by washing her hair, was hilarious to the three of us sitting there with no work for us to be done at the moment.

One of the girls I was with spoke a little more Spanish than I did by this point, so every few minutes she would say one or two words asking if there was something we could do. The man I didn't know was very kind and told us we could keep our seats.

After several minutes sitting and watching them work, they asked us to help them put posts up around where their new latrine would sit. They had a huge chainsaw to cut the posts with, after measuring things closely of course. Once they had the correct posts cut, they would level the posts and fill in the holes around them with dirt. They first handed one of the youth a long poll to stamp the dirt around the post, but after a few hard pats with the poll, Julio called my name and flexed his muscles towards me. He wanted me to take over since I was stronger.

When Julio flexed, his bicep literally bulged from his arm like it was trying to jump high into the air. Me and Carolyn, one of the youth I was working with, glanced at each other in amazement when he did this. He was asking for me because I was strong and he was this built? I'm still baffled by the people of El Rodeo.

After getting the posts secured in the ground, it was time to mix concrete to cover the large hole that had been dug for the latrine. We counted out 80 shovels of dirt, I carried over a bag of concrete mix, and we started working.

By this point on day two of working in the village, almost all of us had mixed concrete more times than we cared to think about. The three of us started working flawlessly together and had a batch of concrete ready in no time.

Pouring the concrete onto the top of the latrine was much quicker than it was pouring it in the rooms and porches I had worked on previously. Since this concrete did not need to be flat or level, we dumped our buckets quickly and went back to refill them. It wasn't five minutes after the concrete had been finished mixing that we had carried the entire batch over to the latrine.

As we finished this batch, three of the members of our group who had gone back to work on finishing the porch from the morning arrived at our house. They had finished the porch and came to see what they could do to help us. The six of us quickly mixed another batch of concrete and carried it over to finish covering the latrine.

Right as we finished, one of the men selected me, David, and one of our stronger youth to go work on another project. We had never been selected so directly until now, so we were all nervous that we would be working on a very difficult project.

After we had been picked, Daisy led us away from house and down the path. She stopped before we got back to the main road and ducked through the barb-wire fence on our right, as if she were stepping through the ropes of a wrestling ring. We all laughed at the thought of the three of us following her through the wire even though we knew we all had to get through somehow.

David tried to go between the middle two wires with his backpack on and in the process caught both his backpack and the crotch of his scrubs in the fence. After seeing this, me and Isaac, the youth we were with, decided to crawl under the bottom wire. Thankfully, all three of us made it through without a scratch.

After Daisy led us back to the two houses with the larges porches, we put our backpacks down and our work gloves on, thinking there was more work to be done at this house. But then she told us to follow one of the men who we had been working with on the latrine project. With every step we took, we wondered what job was in store for us. We saw a pile of logs in the distance and hoped we wouldn't be carrying them in the hot sun.

The man who led us had a hammer and a small, black plastic bag in his hand. He led us away from the home and down the road we drove in on every day. We joked about how scary this situation was, being let into the woods by a man with a hammer, but our jokes were made to cover up our wondering minds about what job was waiting on us.

As the man led us away from the village, we started up the side of a hill. We weaved in and out of bushes and weren't sure where we were going. Finally, we saw the frame of a house standing on top of the hill.

Two other men soon met us at the house and we started holding boards for the men while they nailed wall planks to the frame. This was the easiest job we had done yet, but also the hottest. We were on top of a hill with nothing to shade us from the hot Honduran sun. And we had left our backpacks far away at Daisy's house not knowing we would be going to another home to work.

As I held up tall planks from the inside of the soon-to-be house, the man who we had followed looked through one of the large gaps and said, "Brian?" This brought a smile to my face and I said, "Si." By this point, I had started to remember my basic Spanish and asked his name. This was Johnny.

After taking turns with David and Isaac holding boards for the two men with hammers, we were beginning to feel the effects of the hot sun. The work day was almost over, so we decided to call it quits and head back for a drink of water and a spot under a tree.

After we had gathered our bags and headed back with the rest of the group, we saw that the group of veterinarian students who were staying at the ranch had come to our village to spay and neuter animals. They mostly operated on dogs, but they had just finished castrating a horse.

I wasn't there to see it, but apparently one of the female vets had just thrown a horse testicle at one of our youth and hit him in the chest with it. I was more disgusted than angry, but reactions around the group were varied. Thankfully, the youth who was hit took the situation in stride and reacted very maturely.

After we had calmed down from this incident, we refilled our water bottles and boarded the vans to head back to the ranch. On Monday afternoon, we were still filled with excitement and had the energy to play frisbee and soccer, but after our second day of work, we were all exhausted and ready to head back home for the night.

We all showered and got ready for dinner and a few of the youth going to play soccer with the ranch staff before dinner. We went to dinner a little early this evening to get in a few games of Bananagrams before it was time to eat. I don't normally like Scrabble or Words With Friends, but Bananagrams has the competitiveness to make it fun for me, even if I only win occasionally.

After having beef for lunch, we were back to chicken, beans, rice, and tortillas for dinner, but it was still delicious after our long days of work in the sun. After dinner, we played a few more games of Bananagrams and then headed back to our dorms for our devotion.

Two of our girls led the devotion this night. They had us go around and talk about our highs and lows from the day that was. I can't remember what else we discussed, but I know it was a good discussion. These are the times when I wish I had kept writing in my journal.

After our devotion, we had a few quick announcements and then the youth opened letters from the children of the church and another one of our youth advisors.

We spent this evening on the porch again, swinging in hammocks and joking with one another. Around 9pm, Tara had gone into our room to start getting ready for bed. She quickly walked out of our door and in a frantic voice said, "Brian. There is a frog in our room." I laughed, but jumped up promptly to help her, with several youth in tow wanting to see how big and where this frog had found itself.

The frog was under one of the spare beds in our room. It was a pretty big frog and had gotten itself in a corner and couldn't figure out how to find the door. After a few minutes moving beds and waving a towel at it, the frog hopped out the door and our first crisis of the week was averted.

We all went back onto the porch for awhile, still giggling at Tara's plea for help, but were soon all headed to bed. Within minutes of everyone leaving the porch, there was a knock on our door. One of our girls had gotten sick.

We all put our shoes back on and went on to the porch as quickly as we could to see what was going on. Thankfully, we think it was a bit of dehydration mixed with not eating enough throughout our tiresome days in the village. After an hour or so sitting with her to make sure she was okay, and a very kind visit from the ranch doctor, we sent her to bed and she was fine by the morning.

We were four days into our trip and we had only dealt with one tiny moment of sickness. We were all very thankful for this, especially after hearing doctors tell us about bouts with travelers diarrhea and other stomach issues. The group that had been at the ranch the week before us had 13 or their 16 members get sick, so I was hoping our fate wouldn't turn out similarly.

Though we were up a couple hours longer than we wanted to be making sure everyone was taken care of, we were glad that things were okay and we would still be able to get a decent night's sleep.

Honduras - Day 3 - We worked...

2011-08-11T08:36:00.001-05:00

I woke up around 4:50am on Monday morning. The air was heavy with humidity, but the ceiling fan over my bed sent a chill over my body. David was getting up in less than half an hour to take four of the youth to milk cows on the ranch. Part of me thought about getting up and going with him, but all of me wanted to sleep until my alarm would be going at 6:15am.

Unfortunately, my mind never shut itself off and I found myself staring at the ceiling or my eyelids for the next hour and a half. I got out of bed around 6:20am with David changing out of his cow milking clothes and into his work clothes. Tara was already out of the room either at breakfast or getting ready for the day.

Breakfast was at 6:30 and we left for the village at 7:30. I put my work clothes on, grabbed a granola bar, and headed to the dining hall to eat with the rest of the group. The four youth who had milked cows were wide awake and laughing as they discussed how much poop there was in the cattle barn. The other youth dragged in one by one and started to eat their breakfast. After most of them had finished and headed back to the dorms, I walked back to finish getting ready for our first day of work.

Before we left, we all made sure to put on bug spray and fill our water bottles, but sun screen hadn't crossed our minds yet. It was warm on the ranch, but we had yet to see the sun. The back of my neck wouldn't be too thrilled with this decision come Tuesday afternoon.

Our transportation for the week, a blue Mitsubishi van and an off-white Toyota Land Cruiser, pulled up outside our dorms around 7:20. Ali had not arrived yet, so we all hung back waiting for our leader. Once she arrived, we piled in the two vehicles. Nine of us were in the van along with Ali and our driver Ubaldo and the remaining six went in the Land Cruiser with David, our security guard, and the driver (who's name I never got).

The running joke in Honduras is that it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere. Ali had told us it would be 20 minutes to the village, which we thought was actually correct knowing that the village was only 15km away. The drive turned out to be about 45 minutes over the rocky road, but it passed quickly since we were all excited for our first day working in El Rodeo.

We drove through the "larger" town of San Esteban and soon started to turn off the main road onto a small dirt road. We were instantly hit with the site of trash everywhere. Having no sanitary system, the village had dumped all of their trash in a low spot outside of their village. The only days I noticed the trash were on the first and last days that I went to the village.

After driving about half a mile up and down the hilly road, we finally saw our village of El Rodeo. We first saw a house that stood next to the village's soccer field. And then we saw the people.

There are only 75 residents of El Rodeo. On this Monday morning, they were all gathered to welcome us. They stood in three rows, the children in front with the women behind them, and the men scattered across the back row, all smiling as our vans drove up next to them. They had made a sign that said "Bienvenidos Second Presbyterian, Nashville, TN!" We couldn't believe the welcome we were receiving.

As we all excited the bus, not quite sure what was going to happen next, several women from the village shook our hands and greeted us with huge smiles. They had gathered 15 lawn chairs and desks from their homes for us to sit in. We took our seats in their semi-circle and Daisy, the elected leader of the village, began to speak to us, with Ali translating.

She welcomed us so graciously and openly. She told us how excited they were to have us with them for the next four days. We prayed together. And she told us that they had pulled the children out of school for the week so they could spend time in "bible school" with us.

This was something we had not been informed of. We knew that the children only went to school in the morning, so they would be around in the afternoon and we could play with them if we had time, but we had no idea they would be pulled out of school and left in our hands. Tara and I quickly exchanged nervous comments about what we would do with them for the next four days.

After Daisy had finished speaking to us, Tara, our only Spanish speaker, returned the welcome words to the village and thanked them for having us. We then introduced ourselves to the group, with the entire village repeating our names after we said them. Most of our names translated easily to Spanish (They had a Brayan, pronounced just like my name, in the village!), but some of the names had to be slightly changed so the villagers could remember them.

Once we all knew one another, or at least they knew us, the children from the village sang two songs they had learned. We danced along with their hand motions and tried our best to mouth the words with them. After they sang, Ali took a role of the families in the village that we would be working with. She told us the work that we would be doing with each family for the day and asked us to split into our work groups.

We had previously split the youth and adults into three groups, hoping to keep one adult in each group with four youth. But not knowing that we would need a separate group to watch the children, we had to do some quick changing before we went our separate ways. Tara and one of the girls went with the kids, leaving the remaining 13 English speakers to go and work with our new friends.

I took my three youth and we were lead to our work site for the day. There were two homes sitting parallel to one another with unfinished porches waiting on us. The two men we had followed to the homes carried five shovels. They took our backpacks and they began working.

Only knowing very basic Spanish, we were unable to ask them what we could do or volunteer to help. The two men began shoveling dirt out of pile and into a new pile on the ground about 12 feet away. They shoveled in a perfect rhythm, one heavy scoop would be thrown right after the other. We had no idea what they were doing or what we would be doing.

One of the men looked at me at some point and said something in Spanish. Having no idea what he said, I replied with the first thing that came to my mind: "No habla Espanol." A large grin grew on both their faces and the man who spoke to me said, "That's funny," in his strong Honduran accent and continued worked. This was the last time either of these men made any joke about me.

After they had shoveled dirt for some time, one of the men went into the home furthest from us and came back with a bag of concrete mix. They placed the bag on top of the dirt and began to mix them together. They first scooped the dirt from the bottom of the pile to the top. And then they began to turn the entire pile of dirt on top of itself. They slid their shovels under the pile on one side and effortlessly spun the shovel over to mix the dirt and grey, powdered concrete. The entire pile had been turned over in less than three minutes. Once this was finished, they repeated the same process in the opposite direction.

I watched in amazement at how quickly and precise these two men worked with their shovels. They had taken this 300-400lb pile of dirt and concrete mix and mixed it together completely in a matter of minutes as we stood around watching and waiting.

Finally, Ali and Daisy approached our houses. Ali talked to them for a few minutes and then explained to us that they were showing us what we needed to do and we would do the next batch. Knowing that we hadn't done anything wrong was a relief.

One of the women that had been watching us started gathering buckets of water from behind a tree about 30 feet away. A grey tarp was stretched between the tree and another tree close to it. We would later learn that this was the only water source for these two homes; it was their drinking water and the place where they washed both their clothes and themselves.

The men had now spread out their dirt mixture into a large volcano and poured two five-gallon buckets of water. The water sat in the middle of the mix like a man-made reservoir. The slowly began shoveling the dirt from the base of the volcano onto the ridge, making the circle of dirt smaller and smaller with each shovel-full. We stood around and absorbed every move they made, hoping to help as much as we could once our turn arrived.

After several minutes of shoveling the dirt carefully into the water, making sure not to let the ridge of the volcano break, the pile of dirt and water had been turned inside-out. There was no water vi sable and the concrete mix covered the pile completely. After a few seconds break, the two men began rapidly mixing the concrete. As they broke into the pile, small streams of wet concrete began to drain from their pile. They used the sides of their shovels to quickly gather the wet mix and put it back into the pile. After a few minutes of vigorous mixing and stirring, a finished batch of concrete laid on the ground before us.

Within minutes, the four of us were filling buckets and carrying them to the porch at the house next to us. A young man, probably no older than 18, pointed where we should dump each bucket and began smoothing out the poured concrete with a worn trowel. As the first buckets were filled, they were filled to the top of the buckets. Each of these full buckets of wet concrete must have weighed at least 75 pounds. After two or three trips with full buckets, we soon began filling the buckets halfway.

Our first batch of concrete was added to the porch quickly and we all began working on the second batch. One of our youth wanted to throw the dirt from the large pile to the smaller pile, now knowing that you had to add 80 shovels of dirt for each bag of concrete. The second batch we mixed would be a double-batch, so him and our Honduran helper would have to count to 160 together. His first toss landed about four feet short of the pile, which drew laughter from all of us. Unfortunately, his second toss landed in the same spot and one of the men took his shovel out of his hands.

Once the two men had put 160 shovel-fulls of dirt in place, they went into the same house as before and brought back two 100 lb. bags of concrete. I sliced them open with my shovel and we began mixing the pile. After we had mixed the pile initially, I began to turn the pile over with one of the men. As I mixed, carefully turning my shovel to incorporate the mix as best as possible, the two men both said, "Yes, Brian, yes." I was stunned that they remembered my name and even more stunned that they approved of my work so quickly.

After we mixed the pile and we waiting on water, I tried my best to ask their names, uttering a hesitant, "Te llamo?" They knew I didn't speak Spanish, so they didn't complain about my poor attempt to ask their names and graciously responded. Their names were Carlos and Alex. I would later find out that they were brothers. And they would later become my brothers.

Carlos was probably 30 years old, wore jeans, a black t-shirt, and a grey Atlanta Braves cap. His thin, dark goatee stood out on his thin face. Alex wore a tattered reversible basketball jersey and jeans, along with worn loafers and a straw sun hat.

For the next three hours, all we did was mix concrete and carry it to the porch. One of the youth in the group had left to go play with the kids, which was fine since the work was very hard and we had at least 20 children to entertain.

I was so proud of the work that me and the two youth alongside me did that morning. The porch we paved must have been 25 feet long and at least eight feet wide. We mixed at least eight double-batches of concrete to finish the long porch before lunch. As the morning went on, we all became more sure of the work we were doing and our lack of communication was no longer an issue.

After I dumped the last bucket of concrete into the corner of the porch, one of the men who had been watching us work looked at me and said, "Finished." I was thankful that we would finally get a break and even more thankful that lunch would soon be in our hungry bellies.

By this time, Ali, Daisy, Tara, and the youth who had been playing with the kids were sitting on the porch of the house next to where we had been working. I grabbed my water and headed over to talk with them, having finished our work for the morning. Tara and Ali told me that the women had been commenting on what a good worker I was and how strong I was.

Being an overweight, lazy American, this was news to me. I knew I was working hard, but I had no idea that anyone would take notice of my work ethic or strength. I was surprised that they called me strong, something that would continue throughout the whole week, and even felt guilty that I was not in better shape to help them more. Not being someone who takes compliments well, I thanked them graciously and sat down on the porch.

After our short break, we walked about a quarter of a mile to the house where we would eat lunch. The home that we had just finished working on had mud walls and dirt floors. I was surprised to see that the home we lunch was had tile floors, running water, and a bathroom. The chairs that had been brought for us earlier in the morning sat in the front room of the house waiting for us.

Everyone looked tired and dirty after a long morning of work. One of the other groups had poured concrete in an interior room of one of the homes. Another group had started work on a latrine for one family. We were only 1/8th of the way through our working days and we had already accomplished a huge amount of work.

Ali soon brought in tubs of chicken, rice, and tortillas for lunch. Ubaldo stood by the door and opened cold, refreshing glass bottles of soda for us. After working tirelessly throughout the morning and not having had a big breakfast, lunch had never tasted more delicious.

As lunch ended, the director of the HOI ranch had come to speak with us. He talked about the villages that they helped, the work the clinic did for the people of Olancho, and the changes he hoped to see made in his time as director. He also talked about the reputation the United States has in the eyes of his people.

He said that the new immigration laws in Arizona and Florida had turned many people off to the United States. He said that many people who had once hoped for the American dream no longer thought it was possible because of these laws. He said that many people who had previously moved to the States to work and send money back home were having to return to Honduras because of economic and political factors.

I was not expecting to hear these kinds of things. I think most Americans think that people in foreign countries, especially in the Third World, all view the United States as perfect and the place where everyone is happy. It's oddly refreshing to know that they have a realistic view of the goings-on in our country at this time.

After the director has finished speaking to us, it was time to continue working. We all remained in our working groups from the morning, returning to our same houses. By the time we had walked back to our worksite, the young man (who we later learned was named Julio) who had been smoothing out the concrete on our porch had finished almost half of our porch. Somehow, he had used his tools to turn the rough concrete into art. The surface was smooth as glass and he threw red and yellow powder on as decoration. It was beautiful.

After a few moments gazing at our accomplishment, we soon began mixing more concrete for an interior room in the house. I'm not sure why we didn't work on the kitchen in the morning and the porch in the afternoon, which would have allowed us to use the doors of the home, but this was the situation we were in.

After mixing the concrete mess, my job for the afternoon would be to lift the 40 pound buckets of concrete through a window four feet off the ground and hand them to the men working inside. Thankfully, this room was about one third the size of the porch we had worked on the in the morning, so our task was not nearly as daunting.

We mixed three or four batches of concrete to fill the deep, uneven kitchen floor and I lifted countless heavy buckets through the window. The man working inside was the same man who had told me our work was "finished" in the morning. With every third or fourth bucket that I handed to him, he spoke the only phrase of English that he knew to me, "What's happening, Brian?!?" This cracked me up every time he said it and he knew it. The laughter helped make the tough work easier.

By the time the concrete slab was almost complete, I was having to hand the buckets to the men standing at the opposite side of the room. Lifting the buckets straight up through the window was hard enough after 40 or 50 buckets, but now having to extend my arms and pass them to the men, knowing that a dropped bucket would cause them to have to redo a large portion of the work, was excrutiating. Thankfully, I only had to pass three or four buckets along in this fashion. I'm also thankful that the buckets we were using had handles on them, as I would later find out that most of the other groups buckets did not, forcing them to bend over and hug each bucket tightly in order to carry it.

Since we would only be working two hours in the afternoon, putting concrete in the kitchen filled the remainder of our work day quickly. Once we were finished, we said goodbye to the men we had been working with and went to meet the rest of the group on the soccer field.

Some of the group was there already laying underneath a small tree for shade. Still having energy left, I pulled a frisbee out of my backpack and had one of the youth run deep onto the field to catch it. We were able to throw the disc for about five minutes amongst one another before Tara and her children surrounded us.

We would throw them the frisbee cautiously, not knowing if they had ever played with a frisbee before, and they would throw it back to us as best they knew how. Their first few throws wobbled and went into the wind, but after five or ten minutes of practice, many of them began throwing the disc accurately and for some distance.

We played with them for about 20 minutes before we left. I stepped in a cow pie as I was running for the disc once. My group laughed at me, but no one from the village said a thing. As the week went on, we realized that manure was a part of their life. The children walked through it barefoot and the women walked around it as if it weren't there.

Before we started to board the bus, one of the children from the village came up to David and said something to him in Spanish. Not understanding him and having been talked to by the same kid three times that afternoon, David asked Tara to translate what he was saying. It turned out that this boy had been suffering from a tooth ache for some time and thought David was a doctor.

David, and most of our group, had worn scrubs to work in since they would keep cool and could be thrown out after getting too dirty. He is also Asian and was carrying our first-aid kit around. Unfortunatly, David is not a doctor, but we were all amused at this child's assumption; this joke would not die throughout the entire week.

After Dr. David had cleared up the situation, we re-boarded our buses and told everyone that we would see them tomorrow. We were tired, dirty, and hungry after our first long day of work. I'm not sure we said more than five words to one another on our way back to the village. But before we had even left the village, we got a flat tire on our bus and had to stop to get it fixed on our way back to the ranch.

We stopped at a service station and all piled out of the van while they repaired our blown tire. I got out of the van and began to survey my surroundings when I saw Alex standing at the repair shop. I'm not sure why he was there, but he walked by me, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Brian!" loudly. I returned the pat and said, "Alex, my man," knowing he couldn't understand what I said to him. It was nice to see him recognize me and be happy to see me after a long day working together.

Once the tire had been repaired, we finished our bumpy ride back to the ranch. We piled out of the vans, thanked Ali and our drivers for their help, and headed off to shower.

The showers at the ranch were the best terrible showers I have ever taken. The shower head was nothing more than a metal hose spout that poured a gently stream of luke-warm water onto my head about an inch away from the dirty shower walls. I was tired and filthy and this bacteria-filled stream of water felt amazing.

After we had all showered, we sat on the porch together discussing our day and waiting for the dinner bell to ring. Once we heard it, we headed to the dining hall and ate another delicious meal of chicken, rice, veggies, beans, and tortillas. After dinner, we stayed in the dining hall and played endless games of cards and Bananagrams.

Once we had our fill of fun, we headed back to our dorms to begin our devotional. Two of the guys in the group led our talk this evening. We shared our pros and cons for the day one by one and then discussed what our expectations were going into the trip and how they had been changed after one day in the village. It was awesome to hear how perceptions had changed after one short day with our new friends.

After several long minutes of too many people talking at once and getting off topic, we reigned in the conversation and decided it was time to pray together. We prayed prayers of thanks for our new friends, prayers for strength for the days to come, and prayers of joy for being with one another. I love when my youth pray (and don't giggle through the entire prayer).

After we prayed, I passed out letters from more members of the church. I think this night's letters were from one of our fellow youth advisors. She wrote Honduras fun facts on each of the youth's cards and also included Spanish stickers for everyone. Tara gathered most of the stickers and they were a huge hit with the children in the village the next day.

Monday evening ended almost like Sunday evening. We all sat on the porch and reflected after a hard, but overwhelmingly rewarding day of work. I think everyone was in bed by 10pm on this night, an odd sight for any youth trip, but a welcome one.

This was the last night I wrote in my journal during our trip. I stopped mid-sentence because I was so tired. I don't remember what I wrote about other than the village welcoming us and the work being so hard. I also wrote about how proud I was of the lack of complaints from our youth. They performed beyond my wildest expectations today. I am so proud. And so tired.

Honduras - Day 2 - We have arrived.

2011-08-10T15:05:00.003-05:00

By Sunday morning, the realization that we were in Honduras was still setting in. Even as the week came to a close six days later, the thought that I was in Honduras baffled me and put the biggest grin on my face. Waking up in our nice hotel room and being able to take a hot shower helped wake my tired body that had traveled more than 1500 miles the day before. We had three more hours left in our journey and we would finally be at Rancho el Paraiso for the week.

After my shower, quickly re-packing my already stuffed backpack, and slowly eating a granola bar for breakfast to help calm my nervous stomach, David and I left our room and went to meet the youth in the lobby. Some of them were still finishing breakfast and a few were already there waiting on us. It was lightly raining this morning and the sky was cloudy. The security guard with his shotgun was standing by the door when we got to the lobby.

The kids who had gone to breakfast by the pool said they had fruit and pancakes. I'm not much of a big breakfast eater, so I stuck with my granola bars for the duration of our trip. After the previous night's long bus ride, we had no idea what could in store today. We knew we had to go up and down a mountain in order to get into the valley where we would stay for the week.

As we re-boarded the bus, we adjusted the curtains and windows carefully to keep the rain out as best we could, but also to keep as much air moving through the bus as possible. The next three hours on the bus would be a constant game of raising and lowering the windows next to our seats to keep us as dry as possible.

We stopped to refuel the bus a few blocks from the hotel, our huge bus narrowly missing buildings and street signs as it made the turns from street to street. Honduran drivers might scare the crap out of me at times, but they don't hit things. We drove past the capital building that was building sometime in the 1800's. It was a beautiful building made out of white stone that stood out from the blue and red shacks around it.

As we left town, we quickly began twisting and turning up a bumpy mountain road. In the rain, the trees and plants appeared even greener than the day before. We drove past a statue of a Honduran war hero who helped the country gain freedom from Spain. I couldn't see the statue on this trip, but Martha, one of our leaders, pointed it out and spoke very proudly about the man carved in stone.

As the rain came down harder, the bus grew warmer. Thankfully, a woman a few rows in front of me had decided that the rain would not be a factor for her; she had put on her poncho and left her window down completely. I sat next to one of our impressive youth on this trip. This particular teenager is impressive because he can fall asleep anywhere. We were literally on the side of a mountain, in the rain, with our bones rattled from the lack of suspension in the old school bus, and he was asleep for at least half the trip. I'm not sure how he slept or how he kept from hitting his head on the cold metal walls of the bus, but he did. David, I salute you.

About halfway into our trip, one of the youth came and told us that he had to use the restroom. We had been told there would be a bathroom break at some point during this trip, but we weren't sure if that was true or not. We asked him to wait 10 or 15 minutes to see if we stopped. After the 15 minutes had passed, he came back and we told him to tell Ali or Martha that he needed to stop.

Two minutes later, two of our youth were standing outside of the bus in the rain, peeing on a mountain in Honduras. Inside the bus, the rest of us were howling with laughter and some people were taking pictures. They took care of their business and were greeted with applause and cheers as they re-boarded the bus. These few moments of good-natured humor helped make the second half of our trip easier.

We continued up the mountain, moving at what seemed like a snails pace, yet the bumps in the road never seemed to let up with the slower speeds. Finally, the road began to straighten out and we had come into the deep valley of Olancho. After half an hour of rocky dirt roads surrounded by open pastures and rice patties, we turned onto a road that had a sign for our ranch. 1.5 kilometers stood between us and being able to get off of our bus.

We drove into the ranch, let the group we traveled with off at their dorms, and proceeded to be dropped off at our dorms. We had a little while until lunch to choose our rooms and start unpacking. We had three rooms in our building, so the boys took one, the girls took one, and the adults took one. I love my youth, but being able to have a separate room to relax and sleep for the week was spectacular. It took David and I a couple days to remember that Tara was in our room, but that was a small price to pay for quiet evenings and mornings.

After our first lunch on the ranch of chicken, rice, delicious tortillas, and more savory Coke, we met with Ali to discuss the ranch rules and what we would be doing through the week. We took turns reading each rule one by one and Ali listed a long list of projects that needed to be accomplished at our village. At the time, it didn't seem as daunting as it should have.

Ali then took us on a brief tour of the ranch. She showed us the offices where she and many others work in the evenings, the homes where the ranch staff live, the clinic and pharmacy that is open to the surrounding villages throughout the week, and all of the animals being raised on the ranch. The ranch had pigs, chickens, and cattle.

I was surprised at the varied reactions from our youth to the different obstacles and smells a working ranch provides. Having grown up in Indiana and spent many days on farms or around not-so-pleasant smelling animals, this was no big deal to me. But I quickly realized that the big city of Nashville was all many of our youth knew. This was both surprising and amusing to me.

After our tour, we returned to our dorms to relax for a couple hours before dinner. Most of us took the time to lay in hammocks and sit in rocking chairs, while a few of the youth played kickball in the rain. For dinner that evening, we once again enjoyed chicken, rice, beans, tortillas, and natural cola. After dinner, we returned to our porch and passed the time talking and laughing before our devotion would begin.

The devotion this night was led by the youth who had read from Tuesdays with Morrie. We started by going around the group and giving a high and a low from the day. If I remember correctly, my low was the rocky bus ride and my high was just the fact that we were in Honduras. I'm still amazed that I was able to make this trip and do the things I did. I hope I never lose that feeling of amazement.

After everyone in the group had taken their turn to share, Emily read a chapter from Tuesdays with Morrie to us. It was about doing the things you love and not worrying about money. It set the tone for our week perfectly and hit close to home for me. I work with these youth because I love it. I don't get paid and I don't want to be paid for the work I do, with money comes pressure and expectation. Seeing that these young adults were able to grasp the concept, if only the concept, of doing what you love over doing what gets you paid is so impressive to me. I envy their youthful wisdom.

After we prayed together, the leaders had a few announcements to share (confirming wake-up times, what time we be leaving the ranch, etc.) and then it was mail time. After a few mentions from different people leading up to the trip, the idea of having mail "delivered" to each youth every night got more and more exciting to me. In the weeks leading up to our trip, I organized several groups throughout our church to write letters to the youth that would be given to them each evening during our trip.

Most of the youth didn't know that these letters were coming, so they were very excited to receive them on the first night. Our first group of letters came from the junior high youth group and members of our church Session. Two of the youth got letters from my brother, a Session member, instructing them to give me lots of hugs throughout the week and to keep watch over me. They kept their end of the deal and I received many hugs from them as the week went on.

Our days at the ranch ended in the same way for the most part: after our devotion, announcements, and mail time, some people would head immediately to bed, others would stay on the porch for awhile talking and listening to music, and we would slowly head to bed one-by-one as the night grew later.

These were the times I cherished with these 12 young men and young women. The time spent where we were all relaxed and enjoyed one another's company. We swung in our hammocks, passed bug spray bag and forth too many times, and laughed with one another.

After some time on the porch, David, Tara, and I retired to our room for our first night on the ranch. Tara and David read before bed and I wrote in my journal. I wrote about our long and bumpy bus ride. I wrote about how amazed I was to be where I was. I wrote about how green the trees were. And then I slept.

Honduras - Day 1 - A world anew...

2011-08-09T10:25:00.002-05:00

Our journey began very early last Saturday morning. I was awake at 2:45am texting with the two other chaperons for the trip. David and Tara are two of my best friends, so I was thrilled that they would be with me for the week. By 3:35, Jeff and I picked up Tara to head to the airport. By 4:10am, the parents of the 12 senior highs making the journey with us had found their cameras and were snapping pictures of everything. By the time we checked-in, went through security, and found our gate, there were already pictures of us doing all of these things on Facebook. I love the 21st century.

Traveling by air with 12 youth is something I have never done before. I taken many groups to youth conferences and mission trips domestically before, where all of our travel was done by bus or car. Airports and passports and boarding passes and carry-on luggage bring new challenges that I never expected. I have never counted to 12 more times in my life than I did this past week, with most of those times coming on our first day of travel. Thankfully, our count was always 12.

After our plane ride to Miami and spending about an hour at the airport, we were off to Tegucigalpa. Upon arriving, we had to go through customs, which went fairly smooth. None of us were submitted to random bag checks, so that definitely helped the process go quicker. After we got our luggage, we headed off to find our hosts for the week from Honduas Outreach Incorporated (HOI). We knew their names, but had no idea what they looked like, so this process was a bit of a challenge.

After asking too many random people if they were who we hoped they would be, we finally found Ali and Martha, two of HOI's staff. Ali would be our leader for the week, so she helped us put our luggage where it needed to go and gave us our instructions. We were told we had an hour to eat lunch before we would board the bus for our three hour journey to Juticalpa.

We all ate lunch at "Il Panini," a Subway-type restaurant in the airport where one employee spoke broken English and the other didn't speak any. As we all fumbled to order, we fumbled even further when we got to the cash register. Having only American money and not knowing the exchange rate, we took whatever change we were given. Lunch was only $5 or $6, so all was well.

After eating lunch and going back outside to find our bus, we were told that two members of another group that would be traveling with us were on a flight that was delayed. Thinking the delay would only be 45 minutes or so, we went back inside and sat down for a short rest. After the 45 minutes had passed, we were told that it would be another two hours in this foreign airport. Some of the group decided to go venture into the city while a few of us stayed in the airport. The group that left was back within ten minutes, having been followed by both a homeless man in rags and a clown (yes, a clown), and receiving many cat-calls.

With the entire group back in a tight circle on the floor of the Tegucigalpa airport for the afternoon, games of cards and Bananagrams soon began. They tried to teach me how to play a card game named Presidents, but I got angry and quit after three minutes of not understanding the rules. With the games and each other to entertain us, the two hours passed quickly and we were soon told it was time to board the bus.

We all piled onto an old US school bus that had been slightly converted to be used as a transport for HOI. The windows had curtains to block the bright sun and there as an overhead rack for luggage. We were on the bus with a group from somewhere in Georgia, a few of whom had made the trip previously. We were warned that the ride might be a little bumpy. That was the understatement of the year.

As we left the airport and drove through the city, we were instantly hit with the views of the shacks and shanty's that stood on top of one another across the mountains in the city. Entire mountains covered in homes. Thankfully, our eyes were to drawn to this poverty-stricken city to notice how scary the roads were. After spending 8 days in Honduras, I'm still not sure of the rules of the road, other than the fastest car passes whenever and wherever they decide. There was more than one occasion on this trip where I uttered a few curse words loud enough for my youth to hear because of the fright in our driving adventures.

As the city ended, so did the paved roads. Our trip soon became incredibly bumpy. The roads throughout Honduras are dirt and filled with pot holes. The soil there is so rocky that the rocks create even more bumps so the wheels on our bus never received a break of any sort except when we stopped. After what seemed like 14 hours, and was really only 90 minutes, we stopped at a Mennonite bakery, owned and operated by American missionaries, that was unfortunately closed. We all lined up to use the latrines and began discussing our bumpy ride.

Before we stopped and before the night sky had fallen upon us, I couldn't help but notice how green the mountainous countryside of Honduras was. I saw every tree and every bush like I had never seen plant-life before. The pine trees that covered the large hills next to the road seemed as if they were the first trees I had ever seen. The scenery was mesmerizing.

It was nearly 7pm by this time our brief stop ended and our night's journey was only halfway over. Having had lunch some seven hours early, we were all very hungry. One of the youth pulled out a jar of trail mix and began passing it around the group. Those few handfuls of peanuts and pretzels might have been the best food I've ever eaten. After being frightened by the bus, the roads, the other vehicles, and wondering if our trip would ever end, the sweetness and crunch of this small snack was heavenly.

With our spirits lifted by this small morsel, we re-boarded the bus and were on our way to Jutilcalpa. The second half of the trip went much quicker and we were soon into the city. As we approached the city, one of the youth had read to me a short passage from Tuesdays With Morrie that she had brought along to use in the devotional she would be leading later in the week. I was so proud that she had read Tuesdays With Morrie and even prouder that she had thought ahead about what her devotional would be about.

Having read me this short passage, I joked that she should read aloud to us. She effortlessly agreed and began reading from chapter one. She read the first two chapters of the book and it was perfect. I was able to close my eyes, block out the bumps of the road, and focus on the words of her book. Those 20 minutes helped calm me and prepare me for an excellent first night in Honduras.

As we drove into Juticalpa, we were struck with how run-down the city appeared. We would see signs for hotels and wonder if each one would be our destination for the night. Finally, after weaving through the streets of the city for blocks and blocks, we pulled into a gorgeous villa hotel. The first thing we noticed was the security guard who opened the gate for us. He had a handgun on his side and a shotgun strapped over his shoulder. This was definitely not what we were used to seeing at American hotels.

The hotel was fantastic. The front desk staff was happy to see us and had our rooms ready within minutes. Our rooms were air conditioned and had fluffy double beds with six pillows each. I couldn't have ask for anything more after such a long day of travel.

We all met for dinner by the pool and were served Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light, and Sprite in glass bottles. Since they don't use high-fructose corn syrup in their cola, the drinks tasted light and airy. They were perfectly refreshing on a warm evening. We had fried chicken, rice, roasted vegetables, and tortillas for dinner. It was delicious.

After dinner and re-stocking our bottled water supply at the bar, we gathered to end the night with a quick devotional and re-cap of our long first day. The discussion was focused on the poverty we had seen surrounding us all day. The men in the airport exchanging dollars for Limpera at a not-so-fair exchange rate. The children in the airport asking for food or money, only to run and hand it to an old man sitting in the corner if they were to receive a small token from a traveler.

This was one of the last discussions we had all week about the poverty. I'm thankful for that. We stopped letting their lack of money and possessions be an issue and started letting their need for help be the issue. We focused on their happiness and sense of family rather than their lack of luxuries.

As the night ended I laid on my large bed and wrote in my journal. I don't remember everything I wrote, other than the sentence, "the poverty here is awesome." That statement is still true, but as the week progressed it doesn't matter as much as it did that first night in Honduras. The people there are more awesome than the poverty.

After I finished writing, I went to sleep and got seven or eight wonderful hours of sleep. Our first day in Honduras was eye opening, shocking, scary, wonderful, and amazing. It was a long day, but we were thrilled that we were able to make the journey safely.

I left my heart in Honduras.

2011-08-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

As our trip began, I intended to write something every night in a journal. My writings would be reflections from the day, the things I had seen, the emotions I felt, and the things the youth did that made me smile. But as our trip went on, I stopped writing. I stopped writing in the middle of a sentence on Monday evening. I was so tired. I was tired of writing, tired of trying to be poetic, and tired of trying to put our journey into a day-by-day log.

The first thing I wrote in my journal was, “The poverty here is awesome.” But less than two days later, my view of this new land, these new people, and, most important, my view of myself changed. I saw who I truly am and what I am truly capable of. I stopped seeing the poverty and started seeing the people.

I stopped seeing the poverty.

I wish this trip had helped me remember how to cry. There was so much that should have broken my heart, but the things that filled my heart made it too strong to break. Where I could have found sadness in the remote village of El Rodeo, I found joy and happiness. Where I could have felt guilty for the life I am so fortunate to have, I felt pride that I was able to help these people, if only for four short days.

I started seeing the people.

The people of El Rodeo, Olancho Dept., Honduras, Central America are awesome. They are beautiful, joyous, uplifting, funny, appreciative, caring, and loving. I was only with them for less than 25 hours and they made me feel like I could move mountains. They called me strong. They thanked me for my help. They laughed with me. They prayed with me. They filled me.

See the people.

The children in the village had smiles that melted your heart. The women in the village gave hugs that were real. The men in the village worked hard; they appreciated our hard work and showed it by asking to work with us.

The people.

I will never forget the moment that one of the men, Alex, interrupted me working on another project, put a shovel in the ground, looked me in the eye, and said, “I want to work with you. I like the way you work.” Moments like that give me confidence, strength, and faith in the people of this world. A man from Honduras, a man who makes less than $1200 a year, a man who works in the fields in the hot Central American sun (when he can find work) asked to work with me, a man from America, a man who makes more than 95% of the world, a man who sits behind a desk five days a week.

Or the moment when Carlos, Alex’s brother, and I worked together cutting rebar for his family’s new latrine we were building. The moment when I grabbed the bar close to the saw to make it easier for him to cut. The moment when I moved my gloved hand closer to the worn hacksaw to keep the rock that served as our work bench from shaking. The moment when we looked at each other and I gave him a trusting nod. The moment we became brothers.

Alex and Carlos are what I will always remember about my trip to Honduras. Working alongside these two brothers, mixing concrete with shovels in 500 lb. batches on the dirt, being careful to not waste an ounce as the slanted ground tried to steal our precious resources. Joking with these two brothers in two different languages, yet we somehow understood one another. Receiving gifts from these two brothers, who have very little to spare, to show their appreciation for the work I did.

I’ll remember our group leader Ali, a native Honduran who leads groups similar to ours throughout the year. Her passion and enthusiasm for her job is infectious. She cares about the people of Honduras. She cares about the people who come to help her people. Her smile and laugh will be in my mind forever. Ali is an angel.

I am so proud of the twelve youth that traveled with me and two of my best friends to Honduras last week. I am so proud of the work they did. I am so proud of their senses of humor. I am so proud of the way they represented our church. And I am so proud of them for being a family, for being my family.

I’ll remember how happy my youth were this week. I’ll remember how happy the other two adults and I would get when would hear the youth talk about their days. I’ll remember how bright they smiled when they saw me smile. I’ll remember how they supported one another through everything.

I’ll write more about our day-to-day accounts as the week continues and as I have more time to process the journey I have just arrived home from. But for now, these are the words I write. These are the words that matter. These are the people, the emotions, and the take-aways that have overwhelmed me.

Thank for you for all of the prayers and support this past week. I think I can safely speak for our entire group when I say that we had the time of our lives. God bless you all.

And thank you to David, Carolyn, Jesse, Anna, Bryan, Catherine, Annie, Merritt, Emily, Mackenzie, Isaac, Max, Tara, and David for our week in Honduras. You are all blessings.

Reviving Baseball's All-Star Game

2011-07-12T10:03:00.005-05:00

As I watched the Home Run Derby last night, I went through my normal routine: I enjoy the pre-game show with Barry Larkin and Bobby Valentine being ridiculous, I wonder why they need a band to play to open what should be one of the most entertaining events of the season, I yell a lot when they show Chris Berman for the first time, I yell some more when he does a terrible job introducing the contestants, and then I grin and giggle for the next 90 minutes.

Seeing men hit baseballs out of a park will forever make me smile, unless it’s against my beloved Cubbies of course. This thrill of the long ball is part of the reason steroids tarnished the game over the span of the last 20 years, but it’s also what makes the game fun, especially on the night where home runs are the only things that matter.

There are vivid images in my mind from Derby’s past: Junior Griffey, with his hat turned backwards, hitting a ball off the warehouse in Baltimore, Barry Bonds bat flip as he won in 1996, Mark McGwire’s moon shots over the Green Monster in Fenway, Sammy Sosa putting on a show in Atlanta, Bobby Abreu, coming from nowhere, to hit 24 first-round bombs in Detroit, Ryan Howard hitting balls into the river in Pittsburgh, Josh Hamilton’s fireworks show in Yankee Stadium, and, after last night, Robi Cano and his father sharing an embrace after winning.

Last night’s Derby did not disappoint. I was intrigued, as I always am, for the first 90 minutes; Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, Robinson Cano, and David Ortiz were putting on a show. And then you reach the point where things get boring. By the second round, you’re tired of Berman exclaiming about the balls that go 12 rows deep and seemingly ignoring the balls that are hit to dead center, you’re tired of the players taking five pitchers between swings, and you’re tired of constant Gatorade breaks and pep talks from whoever seems to be closest.

The Major League All-Star game and festivities are two of my favorite days of the year. There are no other sporting events going on to compete with them, so all eyes are on baseball. But over the last eight or ten years, things have changed. The Home Run Derby gets boring and/or obnoxious, the All-Star game started counting for something more than a night of fun, and don’t get me started on what ESPN and MLB did with the Legends and Celebrity Softball game this year. Taking a few queues from what the NBA has done with their All-Star festivities, here a few suggestions to help MLB follow suite:

1. The game cannot count for anything.

This could take a while…

After an 11-inning tie in the 2002 Midsummer Classic, Bud Selig and his crack team decided that the All-Star game should decide home-field advantage in the World Series. I hated the idea at the time and I still hate the idea today.

An All-Star game, in any sport, should not have any affect on the regular season and especially not on the postseason. This should be an evening of baseball’s best and most popular players having fun with one another. We should be able to see things that make the game fun, like Randy Johnson whizzing a fastball over John Kruk, that might not happen anymore with the game having an impact on the World Series.

If fans are going to have the ability to vote in whomever they choose, the game can’t matter. Derek Jeter probably didn’t deserve an All-Star start this year, but the fans voted to see him play so he had the opportunity to represent his league. Does this give the American League the best chance to win? No, but this game is for the fans.

And if the “best” players are going to play only the first two or three innings, the game isn’t played the way it would be otherwise. In a game that matters, I would want Albert Pujols and Adrian Gonzalez at the plate for my team in the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings, not the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

It’s also fairly obvious that many of the players don’t seem to care that the game counts. The list of players not on the DL who declined to play in this year’s game proves that point. I’m fine with them wanting to rest in the middle of a grueling season, but a game this easy to sit out of shouldn’t have any importance behind it.

Aside from these changes, the game itself is fine. It’s hard to mess up a baseball game once the players take the field.

2. Players voted in by the fans are required to be in attendance.

It’s as simple as it sounds: if you’re voted in by the fans, you’re at the ballpark in uniform for the announcement of the starting lineups before Tuesday’s game. Obvious exceptions would be taken into account here such as family emergencies and injuries that don’t allow comfortable travel, but outside of those circumstances the players that are voted in by the fans will be in attendance to represent their league and their fans.

I’m talking to you, Mr. 3000.

3. All-Star Monday can not grow stale.

As mentioned above, the Home Run Derby is one of my favorite events, but it could be better. Here’s how you fix it:

1) A hometown player must be featured. Nothing keeps the crowd excited like watching one of their own at the plate. No matter if he hits zero or 13 homers, the crowd would be buzzing for at least 15 minutes straight. (Justin Upton was made for a home run contest; Prince dropped the ball on this one)

2) Contestants only get one quick break after their fifth out. I understand letting bad pitches go and how tiring this event can be, but these guys do not need to step out six times over the course of 15-20 swings. This event needs to keep moving in order to keep its energy.

3) ESPN is only allowed a commercial break halfway through the first round, after the first round, and before the finals. Again, we have to keep the event moving. Don’t give me a chance to see that Braveheart is playing on HBO.

4) Remember several years back when MasterCard (I think) had targets up around the park and if they were hit, a fan had a chance to win $1 million? (I think that was the promotion, I could be wrong about the details, but it was very similar.) This needs to come back. There should be no less than 15 targets spread throughout the outfield at both attainable distances and locations, and a few just out of reach of even baseball’s strongest men, but with large enough rewards to keep the fans excited. If one of Price Fielder’s bombs had hit the Ballpark Franks logo and given every fan in Section K a free hot dog, the place would have exploded. If Adrian Gonzalez had missed the Red Bull sign in deep center by 10 ft that would have given one lucky fan a new car, the roof might have caved in from the noise. Even if it was a free foam finger for one kid, the fans would love it. There are sponsors willing to play this game and Major League Baseball has to take advantage of this.

Along with the Derby, there needs to be other exciting events for both the fans and the players:

Throwing accuracy relay: Set up a series of targets at home plate for pitchers to throw at. Once two different pitchers from each league have exploded their plates, we move to two of their teammates trying to hit larger targets on longer throws into the outfield. The first team of four men to destroy all of their targets wins. This would create excitement for all of the players and the fans, and would also involve at least four players from each league that would not be involved in the festivities otherwise. Can you imagine Justin Verlander, Felix Hernadex, Rick Ankiel (I know, it’s a stretch to have him anywhere near the All-Star game, but his arm is phenomenal), and Ichiro hurling balls against Jair Jurrjens, Roy Halladay, Jason Heyward, and Jay Bruce?

First to second contest: Speed is a huge part of the game and one of the most fun skills that a player can possess. Let’s put Michael Bourn, Jose Reyes, Carlos Gomez, and Tony Campana (a biased Cubs pick) from the NL against Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Austin Jackson, and Peter Bourjas from the AL in a race from the batters box to second base. In a bracket tournament, we’d put two men in each batters box and have them race from home to somewhere around second base (we obviously couldn’t have two men colliding at second). Players would drool at the chance to be named the game’s fastest man.

These two events peppered between rounds of the Home Run Derby would make the Monday before the All-Star game phenomenal and also help from keeping the Derby grow boring and drawn-out. Between the three contests, the league would have at least 24 players on display (unless we find ourselves in a situation where Ichiro is in all three contests), which is something Major League Baseball needs. With only three of four true recognizable superstars in the game currently, putting 24 fresh faces in front of a huge audience would be a great marketing tool.

4. Don’t mess with the Legends and Celebrities Softball Game!

Over the past four or five years, this has become one of my favorite events. It’s always shown at least an hour later than it’s supposed to because the Derby takes so long, but it is also always a fun event. Seeing Freddy Lynn and Rollie Fingers play on the same field with Meatloaf and Nick Jonas is fun, there’s no way around it. But this year, they changed things.

The Legends were still Legends, but the celebrities missed the mark. In the past, there were players like the previously mentioned Meatloaf and ESPN’s Kenny Mayne; guys who came out to have fun and knew they were there for that reason. This year, it was an ABC cavalcade of “stars.” I didn’t know who 75% of the “celebrities” were because I don’t watch ABC’s lineup of romantic dramas.

And the worst part? Gary Thorne was no longer calling the game, so no one was there to even tell me who the unknown man at bat was. If this game is going to be shown on air, there needs to be someone calling the game, to some small degree, and letting us know who the players are. Ernie Banks was the third base coach for the National League team last night and he was never recognized on the broadcast. All we got was Erin Andrews and James Denton, who I wouldn’t know if not for his reoccurring appearances at this game, random comments as they played in the game.

There you have it: four things (three of which are serious and the last being a personal request) that could easily transform the All-Star break into two days of baseball perfection.

Go Cubs! Go National League! Go baseball!

A time for God? Always.

2011-03-11T08:22:00.003-06:00

Moments before I fell asleep last night, I checked Twitter one last time to find a breaking news report of a major earthquake in Japan. There were no details yet, but it was still a frightening report.

And moments after I woke up this morning, I checked Twitter to see what the world had to say last night. The majority of the messages were kind words and prayers for the people of Japan and all those affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis. But there were a few messages that provided a different response to this great natural disaster.

Several people were saying that now is the time to find God because with all of the death and destruction in recent years, the end times are surely near.

As I read these messages, I couldn't help but wonder the same thing myself, but I was also filled with sadness. Does Christianity teach us to find God in the possible waning minutes of our lives? Shouldn't we strive for a Christian life because we are alive and not because we might die soon?

We are all going to die at some point; that is a fact. To place an emphasis on finding Jesus after an earthquake or a flood is a viewpoint that has strayed from the path that I think we are supposed to follow.

Yes, I would love for everyone to believe in the God that I believe in. I would love for the entire world to believe that Jesus loves everyone. I would love for the world to believe...

But we live in a world that believes many different things.

If you aren't drawn to Christianity, be Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist. If organized religion isn't your cup of tea, believe in something, something good hopefully; believe in the possibility of a peaceful world with opportunities for all.

Life is a journey up an enormous mountain. Amongst the countless paths up the mountain, we might stumble, but there is always an outstretched arm waiting to pick us back up so that we may keep climbing.

We're in this together. I'll see you at the top, if not somewhere along the way...

I'm kicking my ash.

2011-03-09T14:23:00.003-06:00

The seasons are changing. The seasonal calendar is about to turn to Spring. The baseball calendar is about to begin. And the Christian calendar has just turned to the season of Lent.

With Lent comes sacrifice. From Ash Wednesday until Easter, for 40 days, many around the world give up certain things. Some give up Facebook and others chocolate.

I have never given anything up for Lent. Presbyterians observe Lent and all of it's special days, but there is no emphasis put on the personal sacrifice like there is by other denominations and groups.

This year, unlike any other year, I am not giving anything up. I am, however, taking on a new challenge. Over the course of the next 40 days, I will do at least 2,500 push-ups and 4,000 crunches, and walk or run at least 100 miles.

This may not seem like an enormous goal for some and it might seem impossible to others. To me, it seems just right. Enough time and effort will have to be put into this to make it a significant task, but it is time that I normally spend watching television and effort that is wasted on thinking about tasks I never accomplish, much like this one.

I once heard one of my favorite sports writers say he never talks about potential projects because if they don't happen, people are constantly asking about them and he has to go through the story of what went wrong. Using that same theory, I'm blogging about this so people might ask me about it down the road.

I've learned I don't have much problem letting myself down, but very rarely am I willing to allow myself to let someone else down. So, hopefully, towards the end of this project, one of you will ask me how I'm doing and I will have good news to report.

And if I don't? I'll have one hell of an excuse.

Happy Wednesday,

Moles

Truly Appreciative: 25/25

2011-02-23T16:34:00.003-06:00

Dear Mom,

As I have completed each of my letters, I have noticed that some a different shape than others. My letter to President Obama didn’t end up saying at all what I thought it would while my letter to Leslie Acton said everything I hoped. With your letter being the last of my 25, I only hope I can find the words that carry the weight of son showing his appreciation for his mother’s love.

Thank you always being there for me. Thank you for caring for me through my struggles with nerves and anxiety, a minor issue looking back on my life, but one that only needed you around to be taken care of. Thank you for countless meals, which I took for granted until I moved away and had to prepare them myself. And thank you for supporting me through almost all of my decisions; without that support I would be nothing.

And most importantly, thank you for showing me how to be a hard-working, compassionate, caring Christian. Without your endless work in the church, that helped me find that church was my home away from home, I might not have the passion for youth work that I possess today.

As much as I am like Dad, I am also very much like you. I laugh at myself when I’m panicking to clean the apartment before friends are coming over or when I get frustrated with the kitchen not being clean.

Thank you, countless times, for being the best mom I could ever imagine. I only hope I am able to show my own children, my church, and my friends the kindness, generosity, hope, and faith that you have shown me.

Thank you, Mom.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

____________________

This was the last of my twenty-five letters. It was also the hardest to write.

It's funny, when I started this project I knew exactly what my motivations were. But upon completion, I'm not sure what they were at all. It might not be the proper response, but I almost cringe as various thank yous and signs of returned-appreciation (including an autographed copy of John Mayer's Battle Studies) have come my way. However rude it may be to react that way, I'm grateful that I know that I didn't do this project to recieve any gratitude.

As I look out the window of my office, I am unable to say what comes next for me. With the completion of 'Truly Appreciative' behind me, I'm going to continue living in Nashville, working where I work, loving the church I attend and serve, and thanking the Lord for every blessing in my life.

Thank you.

Truly Appreciative: 24/25

2011-02-23T16:33:00.001-06:00

Dear Dad,

Until now, these letters have been fairly “easy” to write. Most of the persons or groups on my list impacted my life in a specific way; one event or moment. But trying to capture the influence of a father on a son in one letter is practically impossible.

You have been the single biggest influence in my life. 70% of me is you (I’ve approximated). Until a few years ago, that bothered me. It didn’t bother me because I’m not proud of you or because there are inherited qualities I don’t appreciate, it bothered me because every boy wants to be their own man.

I have greatly enjoyed our evolving relationship in the past five or six years. Since I realized what good music sounds like, since I realized what an absolute joy it is working in the church, and since I moved to Nashville, our times spent together have been very special.

I’m not sure an evening could have been more perfect than the Roger Daltrey and Eric Clapton concert here. That memory is only surpassed by the times spent in the backyard playing catch or shooting hoops.

Thank you for everything you have done for me, my friends, my faith, and the rest of our family. It might still shock me when I do something exactly the way you would, but there is no one I would rather be. I only hope I am able to show a portion of the kindness, compassion, humor, and love you have shown me.

Thank you, Dad.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

Truly Appreciative: 23/25

2011-02-23T16:28:00.003-06:00

Dear Jeff and Sarah,

My favorite thing about going home is spending time with the whole family. Being able to sit back and realize that no matter how far away we live or how our interests and passions have changed, we always revert back to being children when we’re together. We are a mother, a father, two brothers, and a sister.

The two of you helped shape me into the person I am today as much as anyone in this world. The three of us are all so different, yet so similar, and our different strengths help mask another’s weaknesses. For that reason and many, many others, we are truly family.

Thank you, both, for helping me learn to be compassionate, kind, generous, funny, and loyal. Being able to have an older brother walk ahead of you and a fearless younger sister behind you made life much more enjoyable for me.

I look forward to seeing where the future takes each of us, as the past and present have already taken us so far. I am overwhelmingly proud to call each of you my brother and sister.

Thank you, many, many times over for all you have done for me.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

Jeff is my older brother and Sarah is my younger sister. Sarah, a graduate of Ball State University, is a preschool teacher in Indiana and Jeff, an alumnus of Indiana State University, works for Room in the Inn in Nashville.

Truly Appreciative: Almost there...

2011-02-14T15:50:00.001-06:00

As I near the end of 25 Truly Appreciative letters, I couldn't help but look back and wonder what my true motivation was for the project. For people that know me, they know I am not an outwardly emotional person; I haven't cried in almost ten years and could probably count on two hands the people that I've said, "I love you," to in my life. And for that reason, I had to do this.

I had to tell the people that mean the most to me how special they are. I have all these dreams and aspirations in my head, yet could I ever accomplish one of them if I'm not able to tell someone what they mean to me? And as the letters have shown, it's almost never a mushy I love you that I wanted to say. It's showing my thankfulness, my appreciation, for what these persons have done for me.

Looking through my list, five of the letters were to my closest family members, fourteen (not including family) were to people affiliated with the Presbyterian church, two were associated with Major League Baseball, two with John Mayer (included John himself), one with politics, and another with education.

That is my life in a nutshell: family, friends, baseball, music, and faith.

I have three letters left to write this week. One to my mother, one to my father, and one to my brother and sister. I've known from the beginning that these would be three of the hardest to write and saved them until now for that reason. Not only does telling them how much they mean make me anxious, but receiving any kind of response makes me even more anxious (I told you I wasn't emotional...).

I won't miss spending twenty or more minutes each day crafting a letter saying things I have never said before. I won't miss spending money on stamps and envelopes. I certainly won't miss the anxious thrill of dropping each letter in the mailbox, knowing that there was no going back once I let go. But I will miss the time it took to craft my list of twenty-five.

Twenty-five individuals, groups, and organizations that have influenced me more than they realize: a high school teacher from Indiana, a guitar player from Connecticut, four pastors, two churches, countless friends, the families of baseball legends, a best friend, an aunt and uncle, a brother and sister, a grandmother, and a mother and father.

I am truly appreciative. Thank you, all.

Truly Appreciative: 22/25

2011-02-14T15:45:00.002-06:00

Dear Grandma,

There have been very few people in my life that have had as much of a direct influence on me as you and Grandpa. The two of you showed me what family truly is. No matter how distant a cousin, or not even related at all, someone might be, the two of you always cared for the whole family.

Grandpa was the strongest man I’ve ever known, both physically and mentally. I will never forget one of the days when he had a doctor’s appointment and I had to lift him from his wheelchair. His eyes showed his weakness, but his grip was still as strong as ever. That was the most surreal moment of my life and the moment I truly became a man in our family.

You are caring, generous, and everything I could ask for in a grandmother. Thank you for all of the support, compassion, and generosity throughout all the years. And thank you for showing me what family really is; I appreciate it all more than you know.

I hope this letter finds you well. You know that you if you ever need anything, I’ll be there for you. Thank you many, many times over.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

Grandma is grandma. Need I say more?

Truly Appreciative: 21/25

2011-02-14T15:43:00.003-06:00

Dear John,

From the days of my earliest memories, I can not recall a time where there wasn’t a guitar around. When my brother, sister, and I were little, we would strum Dad’s guitars while he played the chords to our favorite songs. He listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Tears for Fears; always pointing out guitar riffs and horn sections that I never would have noticed or cared about without him there.

Because he loved guitars and the blues, I, being his son, wanted nothing to do with either of them. And then I heard your music.

Room for Squares opened my eyes to a world of music, really good music, that I had no idea existed. Your music, as you have said many times, was my gateway to Ray Charles, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, and my father’s beloved Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Your music helped me appreciate the music I had heard throughout my entire life, but never bothered to listen to. Your music helped me pick up the guitar and learn how to play after years of resistance to my father wanting me to learn. And your music has brought me new friends. Thank you.

Through my love of guitars and the blues, my relationship with my father is better than it might have been otherwise. When I am home, we show one another what we learned on the guitar recently. We have gone to see Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey, Buddy Guy, BB King, and Joe Bonamassa together. Those moments have given us time together that define love.

I hope this finds you and your family well. Thank you for all you have done for me, my friends, my family, and for the music we love.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

John Mayer is my favorite musician. I have been listening to his music for almost nine years now. His music helped the world of music I knew go from black and white to color.

Truly Appreciative: 20/25

2011-02-14T15:40:00.002-06:00

Dear Kyle,

From my first Sunday in Nashville, when you walked up after church and exclaimed, “Is this him?!?” to the Sunday when you left for college, when you left church with tears in your eyes, you have been one of my best friends in Nashville. Thank you for your friendship.

Not only have you been a friend, you have been a role model for both me and many others. Your passion for justice, peace, and equality runs so very deep; I envy that passion. Your confidence and willingness to take risks makes you who you are. Thank you for showing me the way I want to live life.

I hope school is going well. You and your family have helped make my time in Nashville fantastic. I hope I am able to return the kindness.

Thank you for helping make my transition to Nashville easier. Thank you for helping make my work with the youth at Second Presbyterian a joy. Thank you for your respect. And, of course, thank you for your friendship.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

________________

Kyle was in my youth group for my first two years in Nashville and is now a freshman in college. He is like my little brother. Him and his family are the lifeblood of our church.

Truly Appreciative: 19/25

2011-02-14T15:37:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Adenhart,

Aside from my family and my faith, baseball is my favorite thing about my life. I love the game and have learned many life lessons throughout my lifetime as Chicago Cubs fan.

I first heard of your son, Nick, just weeks before his tragic death. I normally don’t take interest in young pitchers on teams three thousand miles away, but Nick caught my eye.

And then he was gone.

I know very little about your son other than he was a baseball player, but that’s all the connection I need. The game I love was the game he loved. When I heard he had died, I was frozen. A person shouldn’t die that young, especially one with such talent and love for baseball. That’s selfish, but it’s true.

Through your son’s death, I learned to appreciate life more. I learned to appreciate the game more. I learned that my family is what matters most. Thank you for that.

I can’t imagine what you still must feel today with the loss of a son, as I don’t have any children, but know that your son’s life and death has helped me in my own life.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

"Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen,

give them a larger physical stoicism, tend to relieve us

from being a nervous, dyspeptic set,

repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."

-Walt Whitman

_______________________

Mr. and Mrs. Adenhart are the parents of the late Nick Adenhart, a pitcher with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until his death in April of 2009. A future star, he was only 22 when he was killed by a drunk driver after the finest outing of his career.

Truly Appreciative: 18/25

2011-02-14T15:34:00.002-06:00

Dear Neil,

Through the course of my life, I have attended numerous Presbyterian events; Presbytery of Ohio Valley’s Camp PYOCA, Synod of Lincoln Trails Synod School and Youth Triennium, and the Presbyterian Church’s Presbyterian Youth Triennium, just to name a few. At each of these events, there is always a leader who makes an impression on me; someone who makes me say, “That’s the person, and youth leader, I want to be.”

That person has been you many times.

From the first time we met at a Synod Youth Committee meeting when I was in middle school to our last meeting at Triennium this past summer, I always admire the way you carry yourself, your sense of humor, and, most importantly, your faith. Thank you for being an example, a leader, and a friend.

I hope this letter finds you, your family, and your church well. Thank you for being a role model to me and everyone you so graciously served.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

Neil is a youth pastor currently serving in Ohio. The letter says it all: he is the youth leader I want to be.

Truly Appreciative: 17/25

2011-02-14T15:31:00.002-06:00

Dear Doug,

From the times spent going to lunch in the park after vacation bible school to the weeks at Synod School to the quick visits when we are both home, there has never been a time in my life that I haven’t had you as a friend. And I don’t know what I would do if I knew there might be a time where I didn’t. Thank you for your friendship

I could start writing about the countless crazy times we have had, but I wouldn’t know where to stop. Through all of those times, both fun and serious, you showed me how to push myself beyond what I thought I was capable of. Your drive, your passion, your confidence, your compassion, your generosity, your faith, and your friendship are all things I admire.

I am truly grateful to consider you my best friend. We haven’t live near one another for almost seven years, but it never feels like much has changed when we see one another. If that isn’t friendship, I don’t know what is.

Thank you for all you have done for me, my family, and my faith; I appreciate it more than this letter could ever say. God bless you.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

Doug is my best friend. We attended church together from the time he was born until the time he went to college. I look up to him more than he knows.

Truly Appreciative 16/25

2011-02-04T16:44:00.002-06:00

Dear Bruce,

I have been a Presbyterian my whole life. I was born into Central Presbyterian Church in Terre Haute, Indiana, where I attended and served for more than 24 years, and now attend and serve Second Presbyterian in Nashville, Tennessee. Being Presbyterian is part of who I am.

Throughout the course of this Presbyterian life, I have attended events at the local, Presbytery, Synod, and national levels. With each event came new understandings. With each new understanding came a new step in my faith journey.

Along the way, there have been many, many people who have helped me along the way, both knowingly and unknowingly. You are one of those people and I am grateful for that.

The presence you brought to the position of Moderator of the General Assembly had a striking effect on my journey. Your willingness to serve the world, to the best of your abilities, in the name of Jesus is amazing. I believe your understanding and acceptance that the youth are the current church, and not the future as it is too often said, helped drive mine and the younger generation of Presbyterians to cry out for a world built on peace, love, and forgiveness.

The PCUSA has presented me with opportunities that have helped form my morals, my passions, and my faith. Your leadership within the church has played a part in all of those things. Thank you for that.

I hope this letter finds you and your family well. I led a group to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium this past summer and enjoyed hearing your sermon there. I look forward to hearing your message again, either in person, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Thank you, again, for your leadership.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

________________________

Bruce Reyes-Chow is the former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He currently serves as the pastor at a church in San Francisco. He transformed the position of Moderator into one that identified the current state of the church, understood the youth and young adult movement, and revolutionized the social media world for persons of faith (i.e. brought it to the Presbyterian masses).

Truly Appreciative 15/25

2011-02-04T16:41:00.002-06:00

Dear Keith,

I have attended many, many church events over my life. Some have been better than others, but they are all memorable. The time we spent together on the planning team at Montreat in 2004 was one of the most memorable for me.

I had never been to Montreat, so I was learning as the week went on, all while trying to act like I knew what I was doing. I had also never been in a true leadership role at such a large event before, so I was intimidated, but up for the challenge. With your guidance, I was able to find my place on our team and learn so much about myself.

I remember watching you prepare each morning and night, so jovial but also very focused. I remember how tired you seemed after each keynote. And I remember being proud that, in some small way, I had helped get your message out. Thank you for your words, your guidance, your respect, and your faith that week, and each week after.

The following summer, I started working with the youth group at my church in Indiana and have not stopped since. I have been in Nashville for three and a half years and my work with the youth at my church is the glue that keeps me in this city. Without our week at Montreat and without you there to show me how to lead, I’m not sure I would have found it within myself to be the leader I am able to be today. Thank you for your inspiration.

I hope this letter finds you and your family well. As I said, I have been in Nashville for more than three years now. I’m working as a Business Manager at The United Methodist Publishing House (Cokesbury) and spend many hours each week dedicated to the youth at Second Presbyterian. I also love attending Vanderbilt basketball games and playing ultimate frisbee and softball.

I appreciate all you have done for me, my faith, and the Presbyterian Church. You are a true disciple.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

___________________________

Keith Harris is a Presbyterian minister currently serving in Urbana, Illinois. He is famous in the Presbyterian church for his energizing leading abilities (YouTube energizers). He is famous to me for being an amazing man.

Truly Appreciative 14/25

2011-02-04T16:38:00.002-06:00

Dear Aunt Barb & Uncle Jeff,

Throughout my childhood, my youth, and into adulthood, it's hard to think of better times than those spent with my family. The time spent in Grandma and Grandpa's living room, sitting around laughing for an entire afternoon or opening presents on Christmas morning in your basement are some of my fondest memories. But those times provided more than laughter.

The two of you showed me how to enjoy life, you showed me how to be generous, and you demonstrated the best work ethic I've ever seen. Most importantly though, you showed me what it meant to be a Christian servant to the world. You are both integral parts of my life and I can't thank you enough for all you've done.

I wrote this letter to both of you because for the majority of my life, I knew you as a unit. The timing of your divorce corresponded with my move to Nashville, so while I have heard very much about the goings-on, I have not been there to see it first hand as much as I would have prior to moving. I know we are all dealing with the change in our own ways, but it’s because of the things in this letter that I know we’re going to be okay.

If either of you ever need anything, you know you can always ask. Thanks for all you've done and all you'll continue to do. I hope I can return the generosity, laughter, and love. Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

___________________________

Aunt Barb is my father's sister. Uncle Jeff is her ex-husband. I moved to Nashville day after his father's funeral and the day before he moved out. They were unable to have children, so me and my siblings became their children. There was nothing we loved more when we were little than spending time with them. Though we have grown and our family has changed, they will always be two of my favorite people.

Truly Appreciative 13/25

2011-02-04T16:37:00.003-06:00

Dear Annette, Erin, Katherine, Katie, Jennie, Madeline, and Trey,

Youth group has been one of my favorite things since I was in fourth grade. I got to attend youth group that young because Jeff was in sixth grade and my parents led the events. I never felt out of place because I had always been the young one in the group with Jeff, Michael Shaw, Cathy McLaren, and Chris Moulton. Then, after high school, I didn’t stop attending youth group. I was now the old one in the group with Sarah, Douglas Shaw, Amanda Green, and Ryan Giltner.

But then, I took a few years off. I didn’t have any of my good friends around in youth group and I had to focus more on college. In 2005, I decided that I was going to join you on the mission trip to Michigan. From that moment, I haven’t stopped working with the youth group at Central or at Second, here in Nashville.

From our trip to Michigan to our trip to Triennium in 2007, perfect bookends around my two years leading the Central Presbyterian youth group, I was able to grow as a Christian, a friend, and a leader. The seven of you were at the core of that experience and I am very grateful to each one of you.

Thank you for being willing to listen to someone only a handful of years older than you. Thank you for trusting me. And thank you for calling me out when I needed it (a strong point of the Cen. Pres. youth group). I would not be half the leader I am for my group at Second without the seven of you. And most of all, as we’ve all grown older, thank you for being my friends.

I often find myself comparing my current youth group members to you guys. You set the bar very high and I’m proud of that.

I hope this finds all of you well. I love Nashville and all it has to offer me at this stage in my life. If any of you ever need anything, and I mean anything, you know how to reach me. Thank you, many times over for your friendship; it is greatly appreciated.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

___________________

This letter says it all. These seven young men and women helped find my passion for youth work. They helped me grow as a person and in my faith. Their friendship means the world to me and I would literally do anything for any one of them.

Truly Appreciative 12/25

2011-02-04T16:34:00.002-06:00

Dear Second Staff, Members, and Friends,

I spent the first 24 years of my life attending the same church. My mom was our Christian Education Director and my dad taught Sunday School and led our youth group. Church was my second home.

And then I moved to Nashville.

After moving to town, I initially considered finding a different church. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle a church that was so open with their love. I wasn’t sure if the God I knew approved of some of the things Second stood for.

And then I found my Second home in Nashville.

I can not imagine where my life would be today if it weren’t for the open hearts and minds of the people at Second Presbyterian. You have helped expand my world view, open my heart to love the way Jesus loved, and explore my budding passion for social justice. I am all the better because of the kind words and works of everyone at Second. Thank you.

The future may take me to another place in this world (I have no plans to go anywhere, don’t worry), but I am truly glad that I know I will always have a home in Nashville at Second Presbyterian. Thank you, all, for all you have done for me, my family, and my faith; I am forever grateful.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

“When we stop loving the people that Jesus will never stop loving,
we have lost the essence of our faith.”
-Tony Campolo

_____________________________

Second Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee is my current home church. I have attended regularly since I left my job at HH Gregg in November of 2008. I am a volunteer youth advisor and a member of the Youth Committee. Second has more passion for social justice than any group of people I have ever met or even heard about. Their ability to show love is truly extraordinary.

Truly Appreciative 11/25

2011-02-04T16:31:00.000-06:00

Dear Central Staff, Members, and Friends,

Aside from my parents and grandparents homes, Central Presbyterian is probably the place where I have spent the most time. I was almost literally raised in and by the church. Central helped form my faith, has provided me countless opportunities, and been the source for many of my best friends. Thank you.

From John Chironna to David Perkins to Lant Davis, and from Francis Failing to Judy Lowder to Buck Brown, Jr., Central has had leaders within the church who have shown me what being a Christian means. These influences, along with hundreds of others, have certainly had an impact on the man I am today. Without my church family, I would not have the career I have, the relationships I have, and my passion for youth work.

My favorite worship service every year is the Christmas Eve service at Central. Coming home and seeing all of the people I grew up with makes me feel like a child again. I’m sure as life continues there will be many Christmas Eve’s spent elsewhere, but I will always look forward to returning home.

I hope this letter finds my church family well. It’s been three and a half years since I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, but that time has flown by. I am working as the Business Manager for Worship Resources at The United Methodist Publishing House. I am a volunteer youth advisor at my church, attend Vanderbilt basketball games, enjoy playing softball and ultimate frisbee, and root as hard as ever for my Cubbies.

Thank you, all, many, many times over for helping me grow as my life progressed. I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

“When we stop loving the people that Jesus will never stop loving,
we have lost the essence of our faith.”
-Tony Campolo

____________________________

Central Presbyterian Church in Terre Haute, Indiana is my home church. I attended and was a member from my birth until I moved to Nashville in August of 2007. Other than my parents, my grandparents, and my brother and sister, no one group has had a larger impact on my life than my church family at Central.

Truly Appreciative 10/25

2011-01-25T17:32:00.003-06:00

Dear My Stupid Mouth,

This letter is part of a series of letters I’m writing to individuals, groups, and organizations that have had a positive effect on the person I am today. I’m writing one letter each day for 25 days and each note will be posted to my blog at http://bmoles.blogspot.com.

It might not seem like a message board could have an effect on someone’s life, but this message board has had a significant impact on mine.

I don’t remember exactly how I first found My Stupid Mouth, but it was shortly before my first John Mayer concert. For some reason, I wanted to know more about the man whose music I had become very in to. From learning about the very early years of his music to the new songs, there are very few things that I have missed in my 9 years of being a fan. Thank you for that.

Aside from the music, this board has helped change the way I think. I came to the board a young, conservative, and closed-minded teenager. Through countless discussions about politics, religion, music, and probably any other topic one can imagine, I learned to expand the way I see the world. I learned that my viewpoint isn’t right for everyone, even if it is right for me. And most importantly I learned how to respect those different viewpoints. Thank you for that.

I’m sure I’ll receive at least a small amount of flack for writing and posting this, but that’s part of posting on a message board. All of the teasing is worth it when I think about the friends I have made through this board. Even though I have never met any of you, I feel like I know several of you. I communicate with many people who I “met” through this board on a daily basis. Thank you for that friendship.

I hope this message finds all who read it well. Thank you, again, for opening my eyes to new music and a world around me that I did not want to see.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

_____________________

My Stupid Mouth is a message board that was started more than ten years ago to discuss the music of John Mayer. My love for this music brought me to this message board and has now brought me many people that I consider friends. Without music and friends, life would be very sad.

Truly Appreciative 9/25

2011-01-25T17:26:00.002-06:00

Dear President Obama,

A quote from one of my favorite television shows, The West Wing: “We don't know what the next President's going to face. If we choose someone to inspire us then we'll be able to face what comes our way.”

You inspire me, Mr. President. Through your words, your actions, your family, and your Presidency, you inspire me.

As recently as 2007, I was a self-proclaimed conservative Republican. I lived in my mid-sized hometown in Indiana, where I had lived my whole life and gone to college, and had seen very little of the world around me. But then, in the summer of 2007, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, began attending a very liberal Presbyterian church, and had my eyes opened by a Illinois Senator named Barack Obama.

Through your many campaign speeches, I learned that politicians do care, that they can do more than raise and lower taxes. I learned that we can always have hope, even when we have nothing else. And most importantly, I was inspired to do more, to hope for change, and to hope for hope itself. I am forever grateful for the hope you instilled within me.

Thank you for all you have done for not only me, but this country. We are a country that has a large load on our shoulders, yet we too often let that burden fall on our neighbors when we could easily help them. Through your inspiration, I feel a spark was ignited to help one another carry that load, through service work, charitable giving, and kind words. Thank you for that.

I pray for you, your family, and your Presidency. I pray that I will continually do my best to serve this country and the men and women who occupy it. And most importantly, I pray that we always have hope.

Thank you, many, many times over for inspiring me.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

_______________

This is not the letter I had in my head at all. In my mind, I had crafted the perfect letter, the letter that would get me an invite to The White House (yeah, those are the things I dream about), but this is the letter I wrote. I am not disappointed in the words I found to write at all. With time, I might have been able to find more profound words, but this project is making me realize that what matters most, both on my end and the recipients end, is the thought to send a letter and say thank you. Driving myself to say things I might not have ever said otherwise is thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I can only dream that President Obama reads my letter and is somehow grateful.

Truly Appreciative 8/25

2011-01-25T17:23:00.003-06:00

Letter number eight is being kept private out of respect to the recipient. It is to a good friend who asked for my help and prayers in a time of great need.

Truly Appreciative 7/25

2011-01-25T17:19:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. McLaren,

You might not remember or know this story, but I certainly do. At some point in our high school or college years, the gang of me, Michael, Jeff, and Cathy were together doing whatever it was that we did. Cathy mentioned that you had been talking about me over dinner the night before. At first, this struck me as odd that someone was talking about me, but then I realized that is probably part of the normal routine for a family around the dinner table, especially since my own family did it as well. It wasn’t the fact that you were talking about me that stayed with me, it’s what you said.

You said how capable I was, how I could do anything because I’m so capable. I can’t thank you enough for how much those words have meant to me over the years, even though you probably never knew they reached my ears.

There is something truly amazing about someone you have known and respected your entire life speaking of you in such a high regard, especially considering how young I was at the time. Your words have helped me in everything I’ve done since I’ve heard them. They helped me get through my struggles as a salesman during my first year in Nashville and they have certainly helped me in my current position, especially when I’m swimming in never-ending spreadsheets.

The times they serve me best, though, are when I’m working with the youth at church. There are times when I don’t think I’ll be able to handle the situation, during a friend’s death or a parent’s sickness, but, somehow, I always find my way through. Thank you for giving me a true sense of confidence in my own abilities; I would be no where without that confidence.

I hope this letter finds you and everyone in your growing family well. Thank you again for all the help you have provided me throughout my entire life. I only hope I am able to show my church family a portion of the compassion, kindness, faith, and respect I have been shown by my church family. Thank you and God bless.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________

I don't remember a time when I did not know Mr. McLaren. He attended my home church and I have known him and his family my whole life. He was also my professor in college, so our relationship has many dimensions. He has always supported me and my family, so I am forever thankful for his guidance and friendship.

Truly Appreciative 6/25

2011-01-25T17:16:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. Dorsey,

There are few things that I am certain I will have with me for the entirety of my life: my faith, friends and family, and an absolute love of the Chicago Cubs and all things baseball. Thank you for sharing that passion with me many years ago.

I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, but I still remember the day I became a Chicago Cubs fan. It was one of the many days that Jeff and I went to your house after school to stay until Mom or Dad got off work. It was a dark and stormy day and since I was afraid of storms, you had me sit on the couch with you to watch the game. Even being so young, I can still recall thinking how white the player’s uniforms were and how green the grass was compared to the dark skies out the large front window at your house. From that moment, I was hooked.

I have now spent at least 20 years of my life living and dying with the team I love. Being a Cubs fan has taught me how to be loyal and certainly how to deal with losing. It might be painful to root for this team more years than most, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

That day also turned me into a genuine baseball fan. I have spent countless hours of time watching games, reading books and articles, talking with friends and sometimes strangers, watching TV shows and movies, and who-knows-what-else baseball related over the span of my life. My favorite movie is Field of Dreams and I’m convinced that wars could be ended over a game of catch.

I hope this letter finds you and your family well. I have spent the last three and a half years living with Jeff in Nashville, Tennessee. I am a Business and Marketing Manager at The United Methodist Publishing House (Cokesbury) and spend the majority of my time out of the office volunteering as a youth advisor at church, but I find some time to play softball, ultimate Frisbee, and attend Vanderbilt basketball games.

Your gesture that day was one made out of kindness and comfort, but it has changed my life forever. Thank you, many, many times over. Go Cubs!

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

"Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen,
give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.
Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
–Walt Whitman

________________

Mr. Dorsey is a Presbyterian pastor who I have known my whole life. We spent many, many days at his house playing with his two daughters when we were children. Needless to say, him and his family had a huge effect on my childhood.

Truly Appreciative 5/25

2011-01-25T17:14:00.002-06:00

Dear Mrs. Robinson,

One of my favorite days of the year is Jackie Robinson day. Needless to say, I think your husband would be honored to see the appreciation shown by the fans, players, executives, and everyone on that day, and every day. I am too young to have seen Mr. Robinson play, but the sight of every team, lined up each base line, in their crisp uniforms with a 42 on the back gives me chills each and every year.

One of my favorite moments of that day is being able to hear you share stories from your life. Baseball is forever grateful for the strength you provided Jackie with during the hardest of years. The way you carried yourself then and the way you do now, with grace, beauty, and humbleness, is striking.

I admire Jackie more than almost any man or woman that I have ever known of. My heroes are the people that inspire me and show me, through their words and actions, that I can make a difference. Jackie Robinson, along with John Wooden, President Barack Obama, my father, and my grandfather, are my heroes. Each of these men walked a different path through their lives on this earth, but they all did it with the compassion and strength that I only hope to achieve.

At first glance, I don’t think many would think that Mr. Robinson and I would have much in common, but I think we do. I see my passion to make the world a better place in him, I see my quiet strength in him, and most certainly I see my passion for the game of baseball in him. Jackie is one of my true heroes and I am ever grateful for all he has done for the game of baseball, this country, this world, and me. Thank you, both for that.

I am a baseball fan at heart. My passion for the game and my Chicago Cubs runs deep within me. I have many people to thank for teaching me about the game, but none have done more for the game itself than Jackie. I wish I could thank him personally, but I know my message will be appreciated by none other more than you. My many, many thanks.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________________

Rachel Robinson is the widow of Jackie Robinson. As I said in my letter, Jackie is one of my heros. I wear number 42 in my slow-pitch softball league to somehow honor Jackie Robinson. I feel an overwhelming sense of pride when someone asks me why I have number 42 and I get to explain why.

Truly Appreciative 4/25

2011-01-25T17:12:00.001-06:00

Dear Dr. Campolo,

This past summer, I was fortunate enough to lead a group of youth to the 2010 Presbyterian Youth Triennium. I attended Triennium as a high school student and also took a group in 2007, so I thought I was fully aware of the tremendous power and spirit that runs through such an event. I was wrong.

The sermon you gave during closing worship at Triennium in July was the greatest sermon I have ever heard. Your words filled the room with the Holy Spirit. Through the stories you told and the bible references you provided with the stories, you showed everyone in attendance how amazing a Christ-centered life can be.

I watch the video of that sermon often to better remember something you said, but more so to re-motivate myself to never stop pursuing a better world for all. Your words inspire me and I thank you for that.

I am a Business & Marketing Manager at the United Methodist Publishing House and a volunteer youth advisor at Second Presbyterian Church here in Nashville. Your words help me strive for higher heights in these endeavors daily.

Thank you for all you have done for me and my faith. I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you, again, and God bless you.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

__________________________

Tony Campolo gave the sermon at the closing worship of the 2010 Presbyterian Youth Triennium. As I stated in his letter, it is the best sermon I have ever heard. Here is a link to the video of the sermon: http://vimeo.com/14489484

Truly Appreciative - 3/25

2011-01-14T18:05:00.002-06:00

Dear Leslie,

This letter is part of a series of letters I’m writing to individuals, groups, and organizations that have had a positive effect on the person I am today. I’m writing one letter each day for 25 days and each note will be posted to my blog at http://bmoles.blogspot.com.

Of the thousands of days we live on this Earth, there are a very few that we truly remember and appreciate. I spent three of those days with you and I am forever thankful for them. You helped show me what true friendship is. Thank you for that.

I will forever remember the Thursday afternoon when my phone rang. I was off work and had just been to the library. You called to ask me to do something for you that no one had ever asked me before; you asked if I could pick you up and take you to the doctor. I wasn’t sure what was going on, and honestly, I was hesitant to say yes, but I couldn’t say no.

That first Thursday turned into the next and then the next. We only spent three days together, but they meant the world. I will always respect your ability to ask for help in a time of need and I am forever honored that it was me you reached to. That is friendship.

I wish your couple months in Nashville had gone differently, but I’m glad you did what was best for you. If you ever need anything, you know who you can call. Thank you, many times over, for your display of friendship towards me; I am forever grateful.

I hope this finds you well. I look forward to many more Thursdays.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

_______________________

Leslie lived in Nashville for one year during 2007 and 2008. During her time here, she was part of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Young Adult Volunteer program. She lived in a very small house, with one other volunteer, and worked for a non-profit agency helping to better the lives of Hispanic immigrants. She is now in graduate school at Duke University.

Truly Appreciative - 2/25

2011-01-14T17:59:00.002-06:00

Dear Synod of Lincoln Trails Staff,

For 12 years of my life, from ages 11 to 22, I was fortunate enough to attend the Synod of Lincoln Trails annual Synod School at Hanover College. Each year, my family would make the three hour journey to Synod School with excitement racing through each of us. Even as a young adult, driving through the main gates into the campus of Hanover was thrilling.

Going into our first Synod School, I can remember my mom having to pressure us into going. Having trouble remembering the name, I even called it “Suicide Camp,” because I did not want to spend a week of the summer both without air conditioning and my friends. But once those first days of Synod School started, I never wanted to be anywhere else.

One of the most impactful moments of my life occurred at Synod School. I had reacted poorly to a prank that the girls had pulled on the boys (typical Synod School occurrence…) and my reaction had ruined the mood of what should have been a fun evening of games. At some point in the evening, my younger sister, of all people, took me aside and explained to me that my actions had rubbed off on the entire group, that I was looked up to as a leader in this group and could not react in the manner that I had. I will never forget that conversation and I will certainly never forget the lesson learned that evening.

Synod School taught me to be a leader and, most importantly, it taught me how to be a friend. Synod School brought me closer to God; it helped me learn how to better communicate my beliefs and opinions to a world that might not always agree. Words can not express how thankful I am to have experienced those twelve amazing weeks. They might only be a fraction of a percent of the weeks I spend on this earth, but they are the weeks that mattered. Thank you, and thank God, for giving me the opportunity to experience Synod School.

For the past five years, I have served as a volunteer youth advisor at the churches I have attended (Central Pres., Terre Haute, IN & Second Pres., Nashville, TN). I have led and planned weekly youth fellowship, taken groups on mission trips, and to Montreat Youth Conference and Presbyterian Youth Trienniums. Without my Synod School experience, I’m not sure I would be capable of performing the work I do with these youth, and certainly not as well as I do. Thank you for helping me find something I am truly passionate about.

I communicate with several Synod School alumni on a regular basis. I can not speak for them all, but I see the extraordinary work they are doing in this world and cannot help but know Synod School has played a role in each of their lives like it has in mine. Thank you, many times over, to the Synod, the Synod staff, and the Synod School planning team did over many years to not only help me in my life, but to help the lives of countless others around this planet.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

_______________________

The Synod of Lincoln Trails (a Presbyterian Church (USA) regional body covering Illinois, Indiana, and a small part of Kentucky) Synod School was an annual family church camp that me and my family attended for twelve years. The event was discontinued in 2006 because of financial reasons. I'm not sure I have ever fought for something harder than I did when me and my friends attempted to save Synod School in 2006.

Truly Appreciative - 1/25

2011-01-14T17:54:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. Mann,

You have always been my favorite teacher. I've had teachers in both high school and college that taught subjects I was more interested in, but none have ever challenged and pushed me to do more the way you did. Thank you for that.

I remember you teaching the class how to shake hands properly, having a spirited debate on the flight home from New York City and Washington D.C. about which Rocky movie was best, “building” a factory to produce peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in class, and the way you taught us to organize and write essays, which I used in college and still use to this day.

From time to time through the course of Spectra, you would ask who in the class affiliated themselves with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Then, you would ask who did so because that was the way our parents leaned. Throughout my junior year and early in my senior year, I can remember raising my hand that I agreed with my parents. But finally during my senior year, I had learned to analyze the political spectrum in this country and form my own opinions. I will always remember the first time I didn’t raise my hand when you asked who sided

with their parents. To this day, that is one my proudest moments and I have always hoped you noticed me not raising my hand.

I hope this letter finds you and your family well. I have spent the last three years in Nashville, TN, living with Jeff, and working as a Business & Marketing Manager for the United Methodist Publishing House. I am a volunteer youth advisor at my church, attend Vanderbilt basketball games, enjoy playing softball and ultimate Frisbee, and root as hard as ever for my Cubbies.

Thank you for all you did to help me grow during my two years in Spectra and in the years that have followed, I appreciate it more than you know. I was glad to find you on Facebook recently; I look forward to keeping in touch with you.

The usual motive to do well in school is to earn good grades, to prove our own success and to share that success with our parents, and also to compete with our fellow classmates. But in your class, the motives were to show you that we were learning what you were teaching and to not let you down by performing poorly. The world could use more teachers like that.

Truly appreciative,

Brian J. Moles

_______________________

Mr. Mann was one of my teachers in high school. He teaches America Spectra, a two-year course that integrates United States History, Government, and Economics. He also taught my brother and sister and they hold him in a similar regard.

Update

2010-12-16T14:47:00.002-06:00

I haven't forgotten about you, 25 for 25 (see previous entry), I'm just putting you off until after the Holidays. It's a harder project that I ever thought, but I'll finish it.

A we society...

2010-11-03T15:37:00.002-05:00

Over the next 25 days, I will be writing 25 letters to individuals, groups, and organizations who have effected my life in some way, helping me to become the man I am today. Each letter will be posted to my blog, with some names and information withheld for privacy's sake. This is an exercise in pushing my own boundries and telling those that mean the most to me how important they have been. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do...

___________________________

Two weeks ago in church, one of the juniors in the youth group was asked to speak following the sermon. It was More Light Sunday at our church, where we celebrated the love of Christ we share with our brothers and sisters in the gay community. Emily spoke so eloequently for a 16 year old. She spoke with conviction and power that many of us can only dream about. Her words are shown below, but the passion in her voice does not translate. She loves as Jesus loved, openly and freely. I hope we can all know what that feels like...

For the past two years, I have been a participant in my school, Hume-Fogg’s, Gay-Straight Alliance. Once a month we meet and discuss the relevant situations going on within the LGBT community and talk about what sort of awareness projects we can participate in or host ourselves. The most prominent event we partake in is the Day of Silence. And if you aren’t aware of what exactly the Day of Silence is, it is basically when supporters of gay-rights are silent for an entire day to make people stop and notice what we are standing up for. It can be a struggle, especially for someone like me who can barely go 5 minutes without talking. But I am a passionate advocate for gay-rights and truly believe in equality for all people, no matter their race, background, socioeconomic status, and especially sexual orientation.
As I have been growing up, my parents have made a huge impact on my beliefs. But on the other hand, they have also made a big point out of letting me grow in my morals and way of life. So as I have been getting older, I have become more aware of the discrimination towards the LGBT community. Because of my parents’ beliefs on acceptance and because of this church’s whole-hearted acceptance of people, there was no hesitation in my choice to support gay-rights. To me, there is right or wrong way to love. No one should be able to tell you that you are wrong for simply loving someone, no matter their gender. If being with that person makes you happy and helps you grow as a person, then no one should stop you from being with them.
I am lucky to have grown up in such an environment that is so welcoming and accepting of all people. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the world we live in. Hate and discrimination against homosexuals goes on every day. The fact that someone can call themselves a Christian and say that they love everyone one second, and then turn around and say they hate homosexuals the next, is so unfathomable to me. Is it not a sin to hate people?
I struggle with dealing with rude people like this every day. They frustrate me beyond belief, but I just pray to God in those times of need and He grants me with patience and love for those people. Recently, the most awful events have occurred within the LGBT community. In the past 2 months, 6 homosexual teenagers in the US alone have taken their lives due to bullying and discrimination. These kinds of events should never happen. No person should ever want to end their life because of who they love. That is why I joined the Gay-Straight Alliance at my school. I am an ambassador around my school and for my friends as a person that anyone can come talk to and feel safe. By being a member of this club, I want to make not only people in my school, but also everyday people aware of the inequality towards the LGBT community, and gain support in the fight for gay-rights.
God made us who we are on purpose; no life should ever be taken because of that.

Ngi ne themba.

2010-09-29T02:13:00.003-05:00

1. I spoke my mind on an issue that might have gone overlooked otherwise at a meeting tonight. I spent the first 20+ years of my life being quiet, and I'm still quiet many times, but I've learned when to speak up. I kinda like the me I've turned in to.

2. The West Wing might be my favorite television show. Over the last several years, I have watched the series from start to finish a couple times, and I'm currently beginning season four. I know they're fictional characters, but this show gives me hope that there are politicians worth looking up to, that have the best interest of the American public at heart, and that are genuine, good people.

3. Sometimes I wonder if I've taken a strong and open stand towards a liberal agenda because it's what I truly believe or because the conservative right has driven me to it. I know I believe everything I preach, but I fear I have become driven by the fight instead of the passion. There are days when I feel that isn't true, but there are some that I do and that bothers me.

4. Why am I awake at 2:24am? And why am I not very tired? I couldn't tell you the last time I was in bed and asleep before midnight. I'm sure it was only eight or nine days ago, but I can't recall the occasion. My Dad would tell me, "You have your days and nights mixed up," and I'd shrug him off just like I did during my four years of college.

5. I've recently found a level of comfort in my job that I hadn't felt until now. I have always been comfortable at work in the sense of being relaxed and feeling like I belong. But until a few weeks ago, I hadn't felt like I was able to do my job, on my own, at a high level. Obviously, I still need help with many tasks and don't know how to do others, but I'm confident in finding a way to accomplish all of my tasks.

6. I've started running, again, in the past couple weeks. I say again because, in my few years in Nashville, I've started and stopped running at least three times. I'm hoping that this is the time it becomes a part of my normal routine.

7. I have hope.

False Evidence Appearing Real

2010-09-13T01:56:00.004-05:00

During the recent weeks, the debate over the construction of Islamic community center in New York City has overwhelmed me. I argue that not allowing a group to build because of their religious beliefs is un-American. I argue that grouping all Muslims in with a tiny sect of Islamic Extremists is racist and prejudiced.

I argue.

During these discussions, these arguments, I try to keep a cool head. I try to preach the love of Jesus. I try to explain that even though these Islamic Extremists murdered 3,000 Americans nine years ago, and tried to murder many more, they do not represent the world of Islam. I try to explain that as Americans, we can not judge someone based on the culture of another country.

I try.

As I try to convince those on the other side of the debate that they're wrong, I hope I educate them. I hope I teach them that love is always better than hate. I hope I share the lessons Jesus taught us about praying for your enemies, having mercy on the merciful, and loving everyone the way we longed to be loved. I hope they listen.

I hope.

I understand both sides of the argument. I understand that the events of September 11, 2001 were unimaginable. I understand that the events of that day might shape the way the entire world works for the rest of my days. I understand that we have to respect and honor those who lost their lives that day.

But I don't understand.

I don't understand how some say we're putting the country first by going against the standards this country was founded on. I don't understand how Christians argue with such hatred. I don't understand why we think Muslims are here to take over our society. I don't understand why we're afraid. I don't understand why.

Why are we afraid?

I'm fearful that this country is being divided over one of the bases of its beginnings. Almost 400 years ago, a group of English men and women boarded a boat and crossed the Atlantic. They risked their lives because they were being so harshly persecuted for their religious believes. And now here we are, half of the country telling an entire religion they aren't welcome on the same land those Pilgrims sought out.

It's not right.

I've never taken such a passionate stance on a political issue before now. For once in my life, my fear has driven me to action instead of inaction. I have a small voice in this world, but if I don't use it to fight for those in need, I'm the oppressor. We're on this earth for only a short time, shouldn't we do all we can to make it a better place? Shouldn't we always love? Shouldn't we?

I won't give up...

...I hope you join me.

Blue skies smiling at me

2010-09-03T10:00:00.002-05:00

I love my window office. I don't always love work, but I always love my window office. Having spent the first 13 months in an office secluded in the middle of a large building with nothing but blank walls to stare at, I appreciate my window office. Being able to look onto the streets of downtown Nashville and into the blues skies filled with white clouds makes each day a blessing. My window allows me to escape for a few moments each day; escape from my desk and the duties that come with it. It allows me to think about the things I want to think about: social justice issues, my place in the world, girls, and baseball (of course).

In the last few weeks, my mind has been everywhere. I can only assume this has been my quarter-life crisis, if moving to Nashville wasn't. I've been trying to figure out what I could do to both better myself and the world. I've considered finding a new job in Nashville, finding a job in Indiana and moving closer to home, and going to grad school in Vancouver, British Columbia. Each of these thoughts lasts for four or five days at at time, but while they're at the front of my mind it's all I can think about.

With my obsessive personality and awesome ability to over-think the most minute things, my mind never stops working. On Wednesday night, I finally found the quiet inside my mind. I went for a run in the park, knowing I needed the exercise, but also knowing I had to do something besides sit on the couch frustrated with my lack of forward progress in life. While running, I tuned out the music in my ears and tuned in the world around me. I realized that while I've been peeking over every fence I could find, I've missed the green, green grass below my feet. I realized that I'm happy.

Even I can't over-think that.

I have a lot to work on, but I'm getting there. I'm still looking for love, hoping for greater achievements at work, and always chasing success in all that I do, but I've understood that my place, for now, is in Nashville, Tennessee being happy. I have an amazing family, great friends, the best church I could ever hope for, an awesome group of youth to work with, and a window office.

You can't beat that.

_____________________________

I'd encourage you to take 45 minutes of your day and watch this sermon from the Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo. I was fortunate enough to hear it in person at the 2010 Presbyterian Youth Triennium in July. I've never heard a better sermon and I'm not sure I will. This gets me hype to change the world like nothing. Hope you like it as much as I do.

Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo - July 24, 2010 from Presbyterian Youth on Vimeo.

You down with BRC? Yeah, you know me

2010-08-09T19:25:00.006-05:00

The words below are from Bruce Reyes-Chow, former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, in his speech at a Prop 8 Verdict Rally in San Francisco. I might not have chosen such strong words, but the moment we stop being radical is the moment we stop being Christian...

I know that many of my people have influenced this particular journey in non-positive ways. I stand before you also confessing for the Christian church for too many times in our words and actions have created pain and violence. I stand before you confessing for those who have proclaimed a message of Biblical literalism and cultural narrow-mindedness that has oppressed rather than liberated. I stand before you at this time to confess for far too many of us well meaning straight allies who have not spoken out for justice that we need to step out now more than ever.
This is a time of great celebration. This is a time when Christians around the world who will continue to push for justice must come out and stand, stand long and advocate the message of God to those Biblical literalists who have poisoned our understanding of marriage, sexuality and love. We will no long stand and allow the message of hope, compassion, justice and love to be drowned out by the screams of hatred, oppression and injustice. We will no longer stand and see our friends, our family, our congregations members and strangers be denied the same civil rights that so many of us have been granted for a life time.
There is a time that we must each embrace our call to speak out, act out of our place of privilege, risk our power, our authority, our comfort and assure that justice, compassion and love prevail.

This is such a time. This is now.

Thank you and God bless.

Herculez! Herculez! Herculez!

2010-06-23T21:43:00.004-05:00

Before the World Cup started, I told myself that this was going to mark the time that I would become a soccer fan. It might be hard to get into things past being able to root for my country, but in two weeks I have learned more about the game and its players than I ever knew before. I'm in a fantasy league, in which I'm barely losing to a friend from Chile, and watching four or five matches every weekend. I took half a day off work today so I could watch the American match.

Today's match was one of the most exciting sports moments I've ever seen. The Cubs winning the 2003 NLDS against the Braves, Indiana State almost winning the 2005 Missouri Valley Women's Basketball Tournament, and Indiana State beating the eighth ranked Indiana Hoosiers in men's basketball are probably the three moments of my life that rank above today's soccer match. The day the Cubs win the World Series will top all of these, they're my first love, but today's match was exceptional.

There are hundreds of videos online from bars & groups of people watching the match this morning and celebrating Landon Donovan's goal, all of which still excite me more than they should. I was chatting with my friend Aston during the match today and the transcript is fairly hilarious. Mom, I'm sorry for cursing, but this was exciting as hell and you know how much I love sports and winning:

B: i'm almost shaking w/ anxiety
A: my heart is pounding
A: we are gonna freaking get screwed
A: this sucks
B: 6 or 7 minutes maybe to score
A: not gonna happen
B: you gotta believe
A: its tough
A: it just sucks how bad we got screwed
B: waht is that yellow for?
A: hah ano clue
B: yellllllllllllllllll
A: OH MY GOOOOOOOODDDD
A: HOLY FUCKING SHIt
A: i just had a heart attack
B: i can't even type the write words i want to
B: holy shit
A: un fucking believable
A: I am shaking
B: me too
B: and yelling and pmping my fist a lot
B: holy fuck
A: I am in utter shock
A: we better stop them
A: we gotta stop them
A: damn it I cant get on twitter

I was so excited that all I could type was "yellllllllllll," which I now find hilarious. All I can remember is the goal going in, hitting keys to acknowledge the score, and jumping off the couch and screaming as loudly as I could, followed by a series of fist pumps that Snooki would have been proud of.

Sports breathe life into me like nothing else can. They make me curse like I never do, they make me scream and yell with emotion that I show in very few other areas of like. Losing is one of my least favorite things in the world and winning is my absolute favorite thing in the world. Some have told me that I'm obsessed with sports; I haven't accepted that fact yet. All I know is I'm going to keep rooting for my boys on US Soccer for the rest of my life.

And for those of you who still say soccer is boring and will never be popular in the United States, you might want to consider changing your mind. I'm still amped with emotion from this morning's victory. I hope you'll join the club.

As I told my mom on the phone tonight, today was a good day.

Let's get 'em on Saturday, USA.

If fear hasn't killed me yet, then nothing will

2010-05-02T23:38:00.003-05:00

A town.

The rains started and, seemingly, never stopped. It rained for more than 30 hours. And now, Nashville is under water. Jeff and I are safe and sound, never losing power or cable television all weekend. But there are many in the community who have not been as lucky. Tens of thousands went without power, thousands were evacuated from their homes, and hundreds had to be rescued by boats to avoid the rising waters.

The waters will recede, homes will be repaired and rebuilt, and Nashville will recover. The items destroyed, cars, homes, and a tragic number of people, will be missed, but never forgotten. We'll remember that weekend in May of 2010 that the town flooded, but we'll also remember helping our friends and neighbors stay dry and safe.

A church.

The sanctuary of Second Presbyterian burned in 2003. Just weeks before, a new pastor had been called to serve at Second. That pastor would rebuild not only the sanctuary, but the church. Second is everything the Presbyterian Church is not: we're young and growing. I wish all churches could witness the strong leadership that Second has; it is a truly amazing church.

Several weeks ago, our senior pastor announced he was leaving to be closer to his family in California. The news was shocking to everyone. We had come to love and respect Jim more than we knew. But because we are such a young and strong-willed church, we will go on just as Jim would want us to. We'll remember his strong faith and his desire to serve the local community and fight for social justice for all, but we'll also remember him as our friend.

A man.

Annie and I had never met, but we got each other. We were "introduced" by a mutual friend on Twitter (ahhhh the 21st Century...) and from there, it went. We talked daily, most days more than once, for almost two months. We discussed music, movies, politics, food, sports, relationships, family, and probably any other topic you could think of. Many nights, we'd end up discussing our fears; it seemed to be a topic we both thought of a lot. And most of those nights would end with Annie calling me on my shit, telling me to live life unafraid to fail, regardless how bad I might hate it. For those two months we talked, I was more of the man I strive to be than I've ever been before.

I haven't talked to Annie for two months. Even though we had never met, I allowed myself to fall for her. It wasn't what either of us needed, especially her, and caused our friendship to end. I hate that I think about her most days, but it's hard not to. I remember Annie's ability to take life as it comes, her willingness to face her fears, but mostly I remember her willingness to help me face my own fears.

A town, a church, and a man.

All three have been changed by something that is no longer there, but we're (hopefully) better for it because we have the knowledge gained. The people of Nashville will appreciate what they have, including their lives, knowing it could be swept away. The people at Second Presbyterian will continue to serve the community, using the tools Jim passed on to us through his leadership. And as for me, I have the lessons Annie taught me.

______________________________

I've been sitting on this blog idea for at least a month. I've started writing it at least three other times, never being able to find the words that matched the sentiment they contain. I was also hesitant to write about my personal feelings, not knowing who reads this. But if I can't blog about me liking a girl on the internet so that the whole world can read it, then what can I do?

I'm truly blessed to live in the town I do, attend the church I attend, and have the friends I have. Things might not always go as planned, but we survive because we have hope. What we each individually hope for is different, but we also hope for things on larger scales. Tonight, Nashville hopes the floods recede and we're able to resume "normal" life, Second Presbyterian is thankful the flood damage was minimal, and I am thankful for all that I have been given.

"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." -James 1:2-4

TGIF

2010-03-12T10:52:00.003-06:00

1. It was dark and rainy all morning and now the sky is blue, the clouds are white, and the sun is shining. Hello, weekend!

2. I saw a two-car funeral procession go down 8th Ave. today. That made a little sad.

3. I'm excited to see Starlin Castro play for the Cubs at some point this season. We haven't had a young played promoted like this since Felix Pie. I'm hoping things go differently with Starlin.

4. And how cool a name is Starlin Castro?

5. This tweet from Keith Law cracked me up: "Carlos Gomez" is a Spanish phrase meaning "Willie Mays Hayes." (If you know baseball, it's funny.)

6. The Beatles & Wu-Tang mash-up album is amazing.

7. 99.99% of girls don't and never will understand sports.

8. I could name specific examples for #7, but that'd be rude.

9. Evan Turner's 40ft buzzer beater today is why March Madness is amazing.

10. The only thing better than Turner's shot was Thad Matta (Ohio St's coach) running towards the Michigan bench, pumping his fist, and yelling, "THAT'S WHAT I'M MOTHER FUCKING TALKING ABOUT!!!"

11. I'm sorry for cursing in my blog, Mommy.

12. Scouts have said the ball coming off Jason Heyward's bat sounds like a young Ken Griffey, Jr. or Albert Pujols. That's scary.

13. Can you tell I like baseball just a little bit?

14. And can you tell it's 3:30 on a Friday afternoon?

15. I started running again this week. It's a slow and steady process for me and my friend Asthma.

16. The SEC tournament being in Nashville has made traffic crazy. The only thing better than driving in a city of Southerner's is adding 30,000 more Southerner's for the weekend.

17. I had 8th row tickets to the John Mayer show in Louisville tomorrow and sold them to make a little cash. I kinda wish I going now that the weekend is approaching.

18. I'm not sure I'll ever hear the word "situation" the same after watching Jersey Shore.

19. I think I tweeted half the stuff I'm thinking of to say, but you're gonna read it anyways, so who cares?

20. I bought The Wire box set this week. I have only seen season one prior to this purchase, but the library was taking way too long to get season two to me; I couldn't wait any longer. I hope I love it.

21. I'm making it a point to try and read more books. When I say more, than means read books in general. I read the Kite Runner and it was great. Now the only problem is I'm four issues behind on ESPN the Magazine.

22. "Daughters" on the John Mayer trio album makes me angry. That song is so tragically over-played and that version is so tragically bad.

23. "Funny what seven days can change. A stand up n*#@$@. Now, you sit down to aim," might be my favorite Jay-Z lyric. Not because it's poetic or thought-provoking, but because anything involving a guy sitting down to pee is funny.

24. I have to go to the bathroom.

Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa...

2010-03-11T10:42:00.004-06:00

On Facebook this week, my sister’s college roommate asked a guy I went to elementary school with how he knew the Moles family. (Neither of them are probably aware that this conversation showed up on my news feed, but I enjoyed watching the exchange.) I haven’t talked to this guy since fifth grade, but his response to her asking about me was, “I went to elementary school with Brian and I know through Facebook he loves the Cubs.”

Baseball is a part of me and always will be. Even people I don’t communicate with know I love the Cubs, though Facebook does give me a platform I didn’t have ten years ago. When people ask me my dream job, my first answer is always second base for the Chicago Cubs. Ryne Sandberg was my favorite player as a kid and his job will always be the one I want.

Baseball is the greatest game on earth to me. I know most of the country finds it boring and too slow, but that’s what makes it perfect. Whomever invented the game (no one truly knows who the inventor is), along with a few very slight and helpful changes made here and there over the years, knew what they were doing: to align the diamond so a ground ball to a defender would, in most cases, create an out, but if that ball is hit in the hole or slow enough, rewards the speed of the base runner; to make basic outfield dimensions so a sacrifice fly, in most cases, creates a play at the plate, rewarding either the base-runner’s speed or outfielder’s arm.

The game is perfect to me. People often make fun of the game for being steroid-troubled, but that matters very little to me. Yes, I agree taking steroids and growth hormones are illegal and should not be done, but look at what they did for the game. The summer of 1998 was one of the most fun baseball seasons I can remember. Sosa and McGwire going head-to-head to break Roger Maris homerun record, and being friendly about it the whole way, brought hundreds of thousands of fans back to the game. We all knew then that McGwire was taking something, but we didn’t care. We care now because it’s easy to forget how much we enjoyed something we’re now sour to (McGwire’s day in front of Congress didn’t help our good memories of him stick around either).

The season starts three weeks from Sunday and I can not wait. Can it get better than a three-day weekend with family for Easter and the baseball season starting Sunday evening? I’m not sure it can (Well, it could if the Cubs and Reds were playing instead of the Red Sox and Yankees, but I understand that move…sorta).

Here’s a story Buster Olney posted yesterday in his daily blog on espn.com. It represents all that is great about the game of baseball (after you read it, we can all go watch Field of Dreams):

A couple of years ago, I was cleaning out some old trunks in the basement and found a familiar small tan box that I had kept in a desk drawer as a kid. Originally, it had housed a fishing reel that my grandfather had given me, but in time, I took out the rarely used reel and replaced it with a keepsake that didn't quite fit in the box, lightly bowing out its top and bottom.

On Sept. 29, 1974, the Expos played host to the Philadelphia Phillies at Jarry Park in Montreal, and among the 23,326 fans that day were the members of the Central Vermont Little League. We boarded a bus that morning, and I carried with me that baseball, and a mission: I wanted to get Willie Davis' autograph.

I was crazy for the Dodgers and Davis had played 13 seasons for Los Angeles, and some of my first baseball cards were of him in a Dodgers uniform. Before the 1974 season, he was traded straight-up to the Expos for reliever Mike Marshall. But to me, he was still a Dodger, and wore the same uniform number that I did -- No. 3 -- and I went to Jarry Park that day devoted to the idea that Davis would sign my baseball.

But as with most things in life, I really had given no thought to the question of how that would happen before we all settled into our seats on the third-base side, about 25 or 30 rows behind the Montreal dugout. Our family was chained to our dairy farm by the twice-daily milking cycle of the cows, and I had been to only one other major league game, at Fenway Park in September 1972, and I never even thought of procuring autographs at the time.

And besides the questions of how to best position yourself for an autograph -- Along the foul lines? Near the outfield wall? -- I was a shy kid, and major league baseball players to me were nothing less than gods; to ask someone like Willie Davis for an autograph, for me, was like the Cowardly Lion approaching the Wizard of Oz for a wish. I was completely overwhelmed, which is why I remained rooted in my seat before the game, and then right on through the first six innings.

I do recall specific moments in that game, such as Ken Singleton launching a first-inning grand slam, something he remembered clearly when I asked him about it many years later. But mostly I sat in my seat and tried to summon the courage to go to the railing behind the Expos' dugout and ask Davis for an autograph.

Now, 36 years later, I know that the notion of going to the edge of the dugout during a game and asking for an autograph is completely absurd, out of the question, a nice way for you to be intercepted by security. But at 10 years old, I had no idea that there was autograph protocol. I figured if a player had a free moment, he would sign a baseball. This is what my expectation of a benevolent god was at the time.

The Phillies batted in the top of the seventh. The records show that Del Unser grounded out to first base to end the inning, and then as the Expos ran off the field, I made my move, bouncing down the aluminum steps of the grandstands and reaching the railing quickly, just as Davis approached the steps in front of me.

I probably said something along the lines of "Mr. Davis, can I have your autograph?" and extended my baseball and a pen.

And Willie Davis reached up and signed my baseball, in a swirl of blue ink.

I turned around and there was a line of kids forming behind me, but Willie Davis was gone, off to do his work; in fact, the play-by-play record from that day shows that he led off the bottom of the seventh.

When I got home, I took the reel out of its case and replaced it with the ball that Davis had signed, where it remains, his signature faded.

I never spoke with Willie Davis again, never met him in person. But on at least one day, he made a dream of a 10-year-old kid come to life, fulfilled hope, and I presume there were many moments and days like that for him. What power he had in his life.

Willie Davis passed away Monday, at the age of 69.

The magic and the misery come and go so easily...

2010-03-04T01:08:00.002-06:00

1. I told Jeff that one of our friends wanted to come over to catch up on some Mayer stuff (Storytellers, etc.). To my delight, Jeff's quick response was, "Oh, racism?"

2. My mom got me a new Colts shirt for the Super Bowl. I can never wear it again on a game day. I'm paranoid like that.

3. "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone" -Orison Marden

4. I let my thoughts overwhelm me earlier this week. It felt good, in an odd way, to feel such pain, to feel anything really. The joy of letting that pain go is much, much better.

5. Spending Saturday evening with my Dad at an Eric Clapton concert was one of the best evenings of my life. Days like that are the ones you hold onto forever.

6. The Cubs are on television Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Spring Training games can be a pain to watch, but it will make me really giddy for baseball season to start.

7. My shoes are cooler than your shoes.

8. One of my favorite things about Twitter is seeing the Oklahoma Thunder teammates talk to each other. That team has chemistry out the wazoo and will be very, very good in a couple years.

9. My February concert list was pretty impressive: BB King, Buddy Guy, 'Keb 'Mo, John Mayer, Roger Daltrey, and Eric Clapton. I'm semi-bragging and semi-wasting words, but that list is amazing.

10. Mayer played a new song the other night. It sounds like something he used to write. That's an odd statement since he's the same guy, but I think it's true. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNhJycRTqVo

11. Trader Joe's microwave brownies are pretty neat (just add water & microwave for a minute) and semi-delicious, but for a dollar more you could get ten times the brownies already made.

12. It was almost a let-down when Hawaii didn't get washed away by a tsunami on Saturday. I'm glad it didn't happen, but the news had it so hyped up.

13. The NCAA tourney starts two weeks from tomorrow. I'm hoping my brackets turn out better than they have the past two years.

14. Gatorade dropping Tiger Woods as a spokesperson might be the biggest sports-marketing move ever. Adidas dropped Kobe after the rape trial, but they are not the biggest player in the shoe market. As both a marketing guy and a sports fan, I couldn't believe Tiger was dropped. He is golf.

15. I told myself I wouldn't write all of these things about sports and John Mayer. How'd that go for me?

16. It's 1:34 in the AM and my alarm goes off at 6:54. I'm gonna grab my five plus hours of sleep and enjoy Thursday.

17. "I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life. Am I living it right?"

I haven't done this in awhile

2010-02-12T09:50:00.003-06:00

1. I hate losing.

2. Colts fans are wuss bags.

3. The Drew Brees "I'm going to Disneyland" commercial makes me mad. Not because he's going to Disneyland, but because it still stings that the Colts lost.

4. Buddy Guy is an amazing performer.

5. BB King used to be an amazing performer. He played for 30 minutes, then talked for 45. I felt so bad for my dad who had waited all these years to see two of his guitar idols and he got Buddy Guy & an old, fat, creepy man.

6. I like a girl so much it hurts and she can't like me back. I hate that.

7. I should see a John Mayer show every night. It makes the next day a lot better.

8. I'm very, very excited for NBA All-Star weekend. My DVR is going to explode between trying to balance that and the opening weekend of the Olympics.

9. I think conservatives who say things like "What change?" are idiots. Obama has tried to change things and, who else, conservatives have blocked his attempts.

10. I also think people who complain about global warming are idiots. Just because it's cold outside doesn't mean we haven't effected the environment significantly.

11. I'm really excited for baseball season. Pitchers and catchers report next week!

12. The view out of my office is a lot better when the sky is blue.

13. I spend so much time trying to fix other things I almost never think to work on myself.

14. I taught a female friend how to change spark plugs last night. She'll probably never have to do it again in her life, but she was excited to learn.

15. I watched "The Hurt Locker" the other night. It was okay. The acting was phenomenal, but it wasn't what I like in a movie.

16. I designed a postcard that's going into print next week. I'm very excited about that.

17. I hope I remember to go to lunch early today. I have a meeting at 1:00 and usually eat lunch at 12:30-12:45ish. I'd be very hungry if I waited til 2:00 to eat.

18. That's all I got for you today.

19. Enjoy your weekend.

23. is my favorite number.

I'm not together, but I'm getting there...

2010-02-12T09:32:00.003-06:00

As I'm sure many of you have heard by now, John Mayer is an idiot.

In an interview with Playboy (full read here) that released on Tuesday, Mr. Mayer couldn't control himself. He called his penis a "white supremacist," talked about his sexual relationship with Jessica Simpson in a very un-gentlemanly manner, and might have used the n-word a couple times.

Needless to say, all three of these things caused a significant backlash.

I've invested the last nine years of my life into John Mayer and his music. I'm regularly post on a message dedicated to the man and his music, I talk daily to fellow Mayer fans through various social media outlets, and there is rarely a day I go without listening to his music. The majority of the past nine years as a fan have been great. His music is spectacular and I fully relate to his uncontrollable need to over-think everything.

On the message board, many of the poster's are reacting by lashing out against him for what he said. I can understand their frustrations because he shouldn't have said what he did, but I'm more frustrated with the person he's allowed himself to become.

Someone spoke up saying how many people this interview hurt. Here was my response:

"I don't think he's hurt people in a sense of true hurt. It's more a sense of surprise, disbelief, and let down. I've been a fan for nine years now and this is the person he always told us he'd never be. That's what "hurts" me. The John Mayer I learned to love was kind and clever and passionate about music; he was so self-aware that he knew he wasn't cool enough to sit at the big kids table yet; he knew he had a role to play, but wasn't quite sure of that role. The John Mayer that's been in the media the last couple years is not that guy. He's arrogant, brash, and seems like he takes for granted what he has. I understand that he has become infinitely more popular in recent years, but it wasn't supposed to affect him like this. I'm probably longing for the days when you knew a John Mayer interview was going to make you laugh and think about something from a perspective you'd never seen before. Fame has taken that sense of insecurity and replaced it with a sense of self-infatuation. He used to love out-thinking the interviewer, now he gets off on out-clevering them, except he left his cleverness in 2006."

(I'm not sure I need quotes when they are my own words, but Blogger is a pain and wouldn't cooperate with me indenting)

I hate that I care so much about the situation, but I do. John Mayer's music opened my eyes to a new world. I would never have gone to see B.B. King and Buddy Guy with my dad on Monday night if it weren't for John Mayer. I wouldn't play the guitar myself if it weren't for John Mayer. I wouldn't have several of my friends in my life without John Mayer.

At his concert Tuesday here in Nashville, he apologized for what he had said. 99% of the audience didn't know what he was talking about, but for those who did, it was much needed. I was glad I was there to see it live. (There are several video's of it online if you'd like to see it.) I hope he's sincere and truly changes his ways. The man has amazing music ability and is truly risking his life with the choices he's making lately (not just the interview). As a fan who cares, I really hope he turns things around.

It's been a long time since 22...

Is this Heaven? No, it's Iowa

2010-02-04T13:53:00.005-06:00

Yesterday during work, a local restaurant, tweeted that Kevin Costner had just left after eating. Being a huge fan of Field of Dreams, I texted a friend that we should find him and ask him if he "wants to have a catch." I told my brother about this and he laughed that I wanted to play catch with Kevin Costner, but he knew I was serious.

Chatting with a friend last night, we somehow came to the topic of death and dying. We discussed relatives who had died, our experiences with those situations, and also if we were afraid to die. We both agreed that we were afraid to die young, but not afraid of death at an old age as it is how life ends.

The question was posed of what we would do if we knew we only had a week to live. We both agreed that we would spend as much time as possible with our families; that was the most important thing. My friend went on to answer about eating fine food and throwing caution to the wind. My only other answer was a bit less extreme:

I would want to play catch with my dad.

I'm not an overly emotional person and I haven't cried in almost nine years, but this thought brought an immediate lump to my throat (I didn't cry, for the record). Having just referenced Field of Dreams earlier in the day, all I could see is Ray and John Kinsella playing catch on that magnificent field in Iowa, both with tears in their eyes. The next few minutes were filled with images of my dad and I playing catch in our backyard: me having to run into the neighbors yard to find the ball I let get by my glove, Dad having to chase down the ball I threw over his head, the crisp pop of the ball hitting the heel of my glove, and the smiles on our faces when we'd walk inside together when it was finally too dark to see the ball.

What's my point in all of this sentimental rambling? 1) Field of Dreams is my favorite movie. I feel bad for Remember the Titans for being dropped, but the more mature, moved-away-from-home Moles will take Field of Dreams. 2) There is nothing more important to me than my family. 3) Playing catch is one of the best things ever. A friend of mine wrote an article for our college newspaper that world leaders should play catch to work out their differences. I believe that would work more times than not.

Over the next two and a half weeks, my dad will be in town twice to go see two concerts: B.B. King and Buddy Guy together, and Eric Clapton. The setting won't be our backyard for these shows, but we will definitely come inside after dark with smiles on our faces.

"Hey.....Dad? Wanna have a catch?"

"I'd like that."

[This will forever sit in my saved drafts folder. I often blog about sad and thoughtful topics, but never have I shared something that I honestly thought would make my parents cry when they read it. As much as I'd love to let them read this to know that I'd like nothing more than to spend time with them before I go, I can't put them through the thought of it.]