It's the End of the Year As We Know It

As you may know, Peter, my brother, got married in April! We had a bachelor party for him with a bunch of guys who he has connected with from over his years in ministry and had a grand time playing games outside, seeing who knew him best through a Kahoot, and sharing some stories.

At the wedding, Peter invited some peoples from our childhood in Washington come! It was really fun getting to reconnect with them and just spend time hanging out and pretending like no time had passed since we last saw each other (when in reality, it had been close to 10 years since I've seen some of them!)

They had a photo booth at the wedding and we had some fun with it!

Every time we have friends from out-of-state come in, we always take them to Buc-ee's without telling them what it is. And it always happens to be on the last night too. I've had many farewells in the Melissa Buc-ee's parking lot. I mean, what else can sum up Texas as well as a trip to Buc-ee's?

I help teach the pre-K class at my church and on this particular day, we went outside to the playground. I have some of the sweetest kids in my class: When I asked one kid to push another on the swings, she let out a sigh and stopped what she was doing and started pushing him.

I left my phone unattended at Springjita, an event that our family of churches puts on to raise money to help send our teens to camp over summer. Of course, that means that I got a nice picture of Justin and Melissa to share with the world. :-)

Pizza Theology! Every time I talk about this event to people outside of our community, they are repeatedly amazed that we can get college students to come out on the weekend for basically a 4 hour lecture. I think this simple fact escapes us, now that we've put it on so many times. Garrett and Sarah did a great job talking about "God and the Bod." You can catch the video and get the handout here: https://anyfocus.org/pizza/

I'm going to meet my cute niece for the first time in July and Stephen (my cousin) just had his first baby recently! It's been crazy and exciting how many babies have been born lately in our family of churches! I'm so excited to be able to help teach them in the coming years. :-)

The Dallas World Aquarium is one of my favorite places to visit. It had been almost 5 years since my last visit, so I was excited to go again with some sweet friends. We got a picture with this weird whale humanoid statue for our troubles.