this is how i’m doing: in case you were wondering…

Ryan Finnerud! Ryan is the Worship Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Nacogdoches Texas.  Father of 2, husband of 1 Ryan has been blogging since November of 2006. The first few months were very rocky with posts appearing infrequently at best. Ryan has since turned that around in the month of March with 5 post for the month, 4 of which in the span of 4 days. His latest post even features an MP3! Let’s all encourage Ryan to continue his efforts by visiting his site and posting a comment or two. Hats off to you Ryan, your efforts have not gone unnoticed.

This school is full of blog worthy photos opportunites!

On my way back from Nacogdoches I saw a church sign that I had to blog about. Now typically I like to openly mock church signs for their use of “bumper sticker” theology but this one was actually really good! The sign could be read two different ways, I think:

“Jesus died for you not Religion”

The way I took it initially was that Jesus died for me, he didn’t die for religion. Then I thought, well it could also mean that Religion didn’t die for me, Jesus did. Either way, bravo little church in Eustace, TX that I can’t remember the name of.

*rant* - TxTag does NOT work at the DFW Airport. So what is the freakin’ point of getting one since the Dallas TollTags work EVERYWHERE now!? I feel completely ripped off. *end rant*

So, Tuesday afternoon I took off from work to pick up Abbey’s friend Brendan from the DFW airport. Apparently I’m some kind of hero for doing this - I saw it as an opportunity to take off from work ;-). When you get a week off from spring break you need a transition back into a full work week.

“Paul, you were in Nacogdoches and didn’t call me?! I thought we were friends!” I know, I know - but there wasn’t enough time to see everyone, so I saw none of you haha. Well, I did stop by the Admissions office at SFA to see my former co-workers but that was it. My little trip actually turned out to be a relaxing mini-vacation in Nac; I shared in great food, conversations and even made a new friend. Many thanks to Jeff and Leabeth for their hospitality and letting me stay at the Abt “Bed and Breakfast” (more like dinner, bed and breakfast).

In other news, I bought the Scrubs soundtrack on iTunes a few days ago - my favorite song at the moment is Jeremy Kay’s “Have It All”. Go check it out.

So I’ve told y’all before about how I’m currently finishing up a Web Design Certificate through Sessions.edu (hope to be done by the summer!). Well, they happened to have a competition for the Web Design students involving a real client, the Kohala Center in Hawaii. So I decided at nearly the last minute to give it a shot just to see how I’d do.  The client wanted a new logo and overall look and feel for their site - this is what I came up with.  THIS was the E-mail I found in my inbox today. (Bold and Italics added for emphasis).

Hi Everyone,As I mentioned, the work we received for this competition was overall the best web design competition submissions yet. We normally submit three finalists, but this time we could not possibly narrow it down to less than a top five, so the following participants’ designs were submitted to the Kohala Center:

Pablo Deza
Kim Philips
Alison Cairns
Tai Kenning
Paul James

The client’s initial response came in an email with the subject heading “WOW!”
He went on to say:

“Wow, Nomi!I haven’t had a chance to look carefully at the designs, but what I scanned looked terrific! Wow. Thank you, thank you. I hope to be able to spend some time with it over the next few days.You certainly have a most talented group of students. Best, Matt Hamabata”

That reaction is all down to your hard work and inspiration, so congratulations everyone! More updates to come…

Best,

Nomi

How cool is that? Very cool.

I just got back in from Nac and now I’m watching Master and Commander because I’ve never seen it and I was told I had to - another blog full of great stories including why I was in Nacogdoches to follow, I promise

I woke up this morning at 7:40, I had to be at the church for CR at 8 - needless to say I was still a bit tired when I got there. But then, like manna from heaven, I saw a cooler of energy drinks as I walked in the church. Now, I’m a big fan of Red Bull (sugar free of course) and have gotten pretty used to the delightful pick me up it gives me when I’m feeling a little groggy. I was definitely NOT ready for this Monster III whatever drink. 16 ounces of caffeine, sugar, ginseng and gasoline has got me STILL shaking and feeling like I can fly. I think I’ll stick to my Red Bull.

In CR part of the recovery process is what’s called a “moral inventory”. Yeah, nothing about the words moral and inventory scream fun and entertaining, so I’ve been working on it VERY slowly over the past month or so. Mostly because of fear; fear of bringing up my past, uncovering the things I’ve tried to hide from myself in an attempt to get rid of the guilt and shame. There comes a point in recovery where this fear is trumped by our desperation for a savior and for freedom - the desperation of a drowning man is the analogy used often at CR (I can’t swim so I can relate to that analogy!). Maybe it was just the energy drink, or maybe (most likely) it was the Holy Spirit, but I left the church today finally ready to push past my fears and finish up my moral inventory. I’m tired of walking in half obedience which has yet to lead me to true freedom. So far it’s lead me right up to the hill where I can see “the promise land” but I can’t enter in. My pride has been my biggest enemy; too proud to accept forgiveness, too proud to pick up the phone, too proud to call out to God. Absolute garbage and I’m tired of it and ready to do something about it. It’s amazing what happens when you put on paper the things you try the hardest to forget. It’s amazing what God can do when I submit.

In other news, I witnessed sort of a miracle yesterday. I walked out of a sports bar and didn’t smell like smoke! It was freakin’ amazing. I went to “Life’s A Beach” in Highland Village with Coley, my home group leader and his friend Aaron. When we walked in the hostess said it would be about an hour and a half wait (the parking lot was BEYOND full) so we decided to sit at the bar since it was open seating. We were there for at least two hours, people smoking as close as the table next to us and yet we couldn’t smell it. The ventilation system was insanely effective. These people thought of everything (except for parking apparently). Anywho, I was impressed so I figured I’d give them a plug.

Upcoming stories: “Where the heck did all my guitar picks go?” and “Who used up my deodorant?”  - Actually, I think those are country songs…

For the last 7 years spring break has become synonymous with manual labor (or “trabajo manual” para mis amigos de habla Español). My favorite thing about it, whether it’s painting, or raking, or digging ditches is that it requires very, very little thought; the perfect escape from school, though it could be argued that I did very, very little thinking IN school. Neither here nor there.

I decided this year to go home for spring break Yes, I still get a spring break. Work in education my friends - the pay isn’t great but where else do you get a week for Christmas and spring break? I am convinced that my parents had my brother and I just to do manual labor. I didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as a kid as I do now. I’m still not a fan of pulling weeds but this week should prove to be weed pulling free. The original plan was to pull up the vinyl floor in the kitchen and dining room and lay tile but due to time constraints we decided to finish remodeling the bathroom, replace the front door and maybe put up some wallpaper. A bit more thinking than I would like, but I guess it won’t kill me

Speaking of thinking, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up and trying to decide which Masters degree to pursue. Here are my options if God totally says “no” (or “no” para mis amigos de… do any of you speak Spanish?) to the whole Army Chaplain deal. At UNT I’m thinking about a Masters in Higher Education - I like working at Universities and it would be an “easy” degree to obtain and would allow me to move up in Higher Ed. This would of course mean that I would technically have a B.S. in “Speech” and a Masters in “College”… but I’m okay with that.

Option B or 2 or whatever would be a Masters in Organizational Leadership from Regents University, which is a completely On-line degree. This would be a more versatile degree and is in an area that I’m very interested in (leadership) AND most importantly (not) it sounds better than a Masters in “College”. The down side is the cost. I get a discount a UNT, which is cheaper that Regents right off the bat, but Higher Ed. is a pretty specific, narrow degree program.

Which do I WANT to do? Well I still want to go to DTS and be a Chaplain. The thing I’m most afraid of is doing something that doesn’t line up with God’s will because I know that things don’t end well for me when I operate outside of His will. All I DO know is that I’m doing what He wants me to do right now - shouldn’t that be enough? I wish that was enough…