Old Friends & the Redlight Angel

I woke up stressed out on Monday morning. I needed to raise $900 this week to help some of my high school friends get to Young Life snow camp. Our trip to Crooked Creek Ranch is almost here and there are so many of my friends who I'd love to come with me, but $ seems so tight for everyone. I feel that tension and understand that 150 bones is a lot for 48 hours of camp, but I'm just convinced that its worth it, and will be 48 hours of sheer awesomeness.

I prayed. "God, I know that Young Life camp is not the only solution and that You are way bigger than a Giant Swing and Frisbee Golf in the snow, but I'd sure love to be able to give some of these kids the gift of experiencing You at Crooked Creek. If you want that to happen, you're gonna have to show up." He wanted it to happen.

It started earlier this week with a Facebook post I almost didn't write. It was a simple ask for anyone who wanted to sponsor a kid to go to camp. I got only one reply, and it was beyond unexpected. One of my friends in high school, who I probably haven't talked to in 13 years, wrote back and told me that he would love to help. He's mailing YL a check for $150. I'm still blown away and encouraged. You made my week Heath!

Then yesterday Natalie got a random text message from a friend who was visiting us last week and heard me talking about camp. She was asking if we still needed $ to help get kids there. Another $150 in the mail. Totally out of the blue. Thanks Brittany and Chris for loving us by supporting these kiddos! I can't fully express my gratitude.

And then today came...and it was crunch time. I was encouraged, but still needed almost $600. I had made some great plans to rake a few yards with kids, but snow still covered the ground. Now what could I do to raise funds? I had two of my high school friends in the car, but was in a hurry to pick up some more. I was stuck at a red light, but thankful for a windows-down-kinda-day following last week's "wintry mix." I noticed my friend Jan standing on the corner about to cross the street in the quaint Littleton downtown we refer to as Li-do. The red light gifted me enough time to answer her question of what I was up to. "Trying to raise money for camp," I yelled as we drove away. A little while later my phone rang, and it was Jan. She said that she had some work that we could do if I brought some kids over. I'm not sure if she really did need the help or was just trying to find something for these kids to do to help them to get to camp, but either way, she was an answer to prayer. She was an angel at the red light. I'm not sure how hard those guys worked, but I guarantee you they were overpaid! That family blessed our socks off. And boy am I thankful.

Thankful for old friends on facebook, for 160 character text messages that say so much, and even thankful for red lights.

Father, its still crazy to me that You choose to work through such sweet surprises to remind me that You're in control. Forgive me for ever doubting that. I'm just itching to watch You show up in even bigger ways at Crooked Creek. Bring it on...

Tip of the Day

Tip of the month: This month our cell phone numbers are made public for telemarketers. If you call the number below, and it will take literally 30 seconds to do, it will block your number. No gimmicks, it's legit. I did it myself! Just FYI. 888-382-1222

Too Busy Not to Blog

It's been ten days since my last blog entry and usually that's a sign that life is too busy. Our friend Emily Brown is in town visiting and tonight she asked me about me our blog. She wanted to know if I typically just sat down and blogged my thoughts, or if I only blogged when I had something specific to write about. I replied with later, but thought I'd give the whole "just sit down and type" a go for tonight.

I'm not a blog-oholic like my mom or wife, meaning that I don't read many other blogs, but I do read a few. One of my heroes, a musician named Allen Levi, doesn't blog much but he wrote an entry this weekend that made me smile. Part of his entry just included a random series of things he was thinking about, so I thought I'd do the same.

Our 5th anniversary was this weekend and my mom came and kept HC for us so we could get some alone time. I cherish every second I get to be with my incredible bride. Her love and beauty amaze me more each day. And as much as I loved being "away" with her this weekend, both of our hearts deeply missed the few hours away from our daughter. Oh how I'm slowly discovering more of the way our Father longs to be with us.

I'm a nightly janitor at my school and I kind of look at cleaning professors offices a lot like I've looked at going to counseling in the past. Every time I've had an appointment to see a counselor, which have been quite a few over the past 8 years, I have dreaded going and tried to think of an excuse to get out of it. But I've always gone...and always been thankful. Cleaning, like therapy, never seems like its gonna be much fun, and its not always fun, but I'm always thankful for that time. Its been a real gift ever since I started doing it almost 4 months ago. Not just the extra $ to help with the bills, but even moreso, the hour of solitude to end each day. I remember when I studied abroad it Italy in college and had more "down time" than I'd ever had before. No cell phone, not too many people I knew, and a lil commute to and from Fiesole to Florence every morning and afternoon. I think the solitude that I experienced then was one of the reasons I still describe that season of life as my most intimate with God. I would say the same about my time emptying trash cans every night. It's crazy how singing loud at midnight, alone in an empty office building, can be such a sweet time of worship.

Worshiping always makes me want to go for a run. Even right now, at 12:30 late tonight, I'm checking the weather to see if tomorrow's morning sun will provide enough heat to motivate me to set the clock an hour earlier. It says its gonna be 47, which leaves me little excuse. If you like to gamble, I'd say the odds are pretty strong that even with the accountability of this blog post, I'm gonna probably end up horizontal and stationary come sunrise. We'll see.

I am taking a bunch of my high school friends to Crooked Creek Young Life camp in a few weekends and my thoughts today have been quite consumed with how I'm gonna raise the $150 x 6 kids I need to help raise more $ for. I don't have many friends in town that actually have yards with leaves, so the raking option doesn't seem great. I thought about renting Honey Cate out, because people like to hold babies, but Nat is worried about the whole Swine Flu thing, so that won't work. I also prayed for the $900 and God just reassured me that He's got this covered. Ever since then, I've been humming the last line from a song called "Distress Signal" by my friend Jeremy Casella: "Nobody holds you, nobody holds you, nobody holds you like the hand of God. Nobody holds you, nobody holds you, nobody holds you like the hand of God.Nobody holds you, nobody holds you, nobody holds you like the hand of God."

I think that I'll close now and let that truth and melody sing me to sleep. Drew

A Snowy October

We closed out the month of October today in style, which is more than I can say for our beloved Bulldogs who took a Teblow to the heart. After watching Georgia get blown out by Florida, we cheered up with a mini-me costume party here on campus. Boy, do we have some fertile seminarians around here..lots and lots of 'chidrens' runnin round. We then took a lil a hayride. It wasn't quite as fun as I remembered, especially since it was in a shopping center parking lot and not on the Robertson's farm. Everyone with toddlers went around our apartments trick or treating, but the sad thing about trick or treating with a 3 month old is that the folks giving out candy know that you as the parent are going to eat it, and not the 3 month old, so they are more stingy. Tightwads. My hope is that next Halloween they might actually think we'll let Honey Cate eat it and load us up some more. For dinner we enjoyed a tour of three different "Chipotle" restaurants, dressed in aluminum foil in order to get free boo-rittos. Looks like we now have lunches for the week! I'm actually blogging tonight because of that extra hour of sleep we're getting due to Daylight Savings time. Don't forget to set your clocks back and enjoy these pics below from the past week:

October 2009

"Spending Christmas" Part 2: Trade As One

A week ago I started a series of posts I'm calling "Spending Christmas." As we approach the highly commercialized holiday, I just wanted to throw out a few alternatives for how you might "spend" Christmas this year. Last week we looked at "Kiva," an amazing micro-lending organization. This post is devoted to another incredible organization called "Trade As One." This is a simple website that allows you to shop for fair trade gifts as opposed to buying stuff that was made with slave labor or labor that was paid unfairly. It's a great concept, especially as you think about Christmas gifts. If you're gonna buy it anyway, why not buy it "fair trade" and help families get out of poverty. Check out this brief video or visit their website for more info. How will you "spend" Christmas this year?

Great Baby Gifts

We've been given a lot of amazing baby gifts. This weekend we attempted to have a cookout in 30 degree weather and needed to break out a few of them. Thanks to Aunt Suellen for Honey Cate's festive pumpkin hat and to Melissa (Lewis) Litwiller for this sweet fleece vest Peakaru!

 

 

Happy Birthday Pops!

Today is my dad's (Douglas Melvin Hill) birthday and we just wanted to send him a shoutout via the intraweb. We love you Pops and are so thankful for you! Honey Cate is especially thankful for your massive chest for her to sleep on. She can't wait to see you in just a couple months! Thanks for being an amazing dad and Pops! Wish we could be with you today. WE LOVE YOU POPS!

Our Church

Here are some pics from the first 2 services that we've had at our church, New Denver Church. Its a new church plant in town. For more info you can check out www.newdenver.org.

 

 

 

 

"Spending Christmas" Part 1: Kiva

Retailers are already beginning to market for Christmas and it has got us thinking about how we are going to spend our money this holiday season. Here's the first post in a series of a few ideas on how to "spend" Christmas a little differently this year.

I'm sure many of you have already heard about "Kiva," but Nat and I just recently learned about it. (Thx Norton!) Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website. It is crazy cool and empowers individuals like me and u to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. It's worth checking out at www.kiva.org. Here's a video of how the lending actually works. Maybe this is a great spending alternative to the normal trip to the mall this Christmas?

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

A Compassion Video from the Catalyst Conference

Catalyst 2009 Compassion Moment from Catalyst on Vimeo.

It's awesome to see how just $30/month can change someone's life forever. You can forward to the 3:45 mark and watch for 6-10 minutes. Wow.