Its Christmas Time

Hey, below I have posted the accumulating Christmas gift list for the kids. Right now not everyone is on the list but as we get the lists I will post them here, on this posting so check back often to see if its updated. You might be able to sign up for a blog email reminder or something like that if you think you won't remember to check back.

Tony & Kathy VERGEER:

Emily:
- Soccer Ball
- Sporty Stuff
- Drawing / Tracing stuff

Landon:
- Motorcycle Stuff
- Puzzles (30+ pieces)

REDMAN:

Natalie:
- American Girl book - "Samantha"
- new books
- art/craft supplies
- Movies - Lassie, Mary Poppins

Camille:
- anything having to do with horses, unicorns, ballet, or princesses
- new books
- My Little Pony
- Barbie doll clothes

Jack:
- Sand box toys
- car or truck or motorcycle, etc.

ED & KRISTINA VERGEER

Daniel:
- K'nex
- Gift card to Hobby People
- Game Hut

Andrew:
- Science Projects
- Bike lock
- K'nex
- Electric Stuff
- Gift Certificate to Hobby People

Abigail:
- Candles
- Horse stuff
- K'nex
- Jewelry (necklace)

Charlie:
- K'nex
- Big rubber bands
- Small rubber bands
- Hot Wheels Vans

Joy:
- Dolls
- Twin stroller
- Play food

If you are having trouble with this blog or need more info for something, email John or Christy .

See you all soon.

Tecate Score Baja 1000

I just got home Sunday night from one amazing adventure. My buddy from church, Josh called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I wanted to go down to Baja California and help pit for his cousin's team, Deen Racing. This was for the big race, the Baja 1000. This year's race was a straight line from Ensenada to La Paz. I hesitated at first because of my schedule but decided that this would be too good of an opportunity to pass up. I had no idea what kind of team this was other than it was class 5, the 1600cc class Volkswagen racecar. We drove down to Lakeside to meet the rest of the team Wednesday morning and we crossed the border in to Tijuana around 9am. After stopping for our visitor visas we left for Ensenada where contingency was going to be held. This was the check-in and safety and mechanical inspection before the cars start the race Thursday morning. After contingency we started south to our pre-assigned locations. I was assigned to 'Chase 6'. Our job was to drive down to race mile 724 (about 30 miles North of Loreto) to do the third driver change. The driver change was scheduled to happen between 3am and 8am. The course was in really rough shape because of a recent hurricane but we had to be ready for anything. Our first night the whole team was still together and we stopped around 1am at an abandoned Pemex gas station. I really couldn't tell you how to get to it but I do konw that it was at the turnoff for the Bay of LA. We got up at around 7am, had a quick breakfast and hit the road for our campsite in South Baja. We got there around dark, but the drive was incredible. We were ahead of the race at large at that point so we settled in and made some dinner. Sometime in the middle of the night the trophy trucks and unlimited buggies started roaring through camp. Those things run a really high octane fuel and kick up a lot of dust and silt. The air at our camp/pit was really thick but it was exciting. These vehicles run lights that are bright like the sun. You can see them coming a mile away in the dark especially with all the dust in the air. Its all very exciting.

The driver change happened at 7am, a little ahead of what we were expecting given the bad condition of the course. After that, chase 6 split off and went about an hour South of Loreto and we waited at the next course road crossing. We met up with all of the other chase teams and we did a couple of tire changes there. After that we played leap frog with all the teams until we got to La Paz. My team beat the car there by about an hour. We had a chance to walk around the finish line and see the commotion and the energy of car after car coming in. We saw mostly the big dollar cars coming in while we waited and then finally, here comes 570, Deen racing. It was thrilling to see our car come accross and I am only a stand in. It must have been really satisfying for the people that really make up this team.

Deen Racing finished 2nd in their class and 32nd overall. There were 24 cars in their class, only 5 finished. The total number of entries for this year's race was about 450 cars, trucks, motorcycles and quads. I would say that they did really well for a family team from Lakeside with little to no sponsorship.

All in all, a great time. I will post lots of pictures in my Box. For now, check out the Google Earth file of this year's race course.

Hey look, I'm back

So I can't say that there is anything too exciting going on right now, and frankly I haven't had any really exciting thoughts or revelations. We are surviving. But, I might as well tell you about what we are about to be up to:

We are going back to San Elijo! Its been a while since we went there but we are going again. Sometimes with my schedule the way it is Christy gets the short end of the stick. So, the solution is to find a way to get away and turn off the phone for a while. I will be entirely out of touch with anyone but my wife, its going to be cool. Along with that I should mention that I am starting to look for another job again. Its been a while since we have been able to put anything in savings and that is just bad planning in my opinion so I am going to take something on. Obviously I will be pursuing engineering work on a contract or part time basis but I am not proud, I will work retail if I have to. It really doesn't matter to me, I am passionate about ministry and anything else I do on top of that is just doing what it takes to take care of business and thats OK with me. So, pray for me - I already have a few leads for some engineering work but its not on my desk yet.

Finally, a small bit of news: Jimmy Smith from Life Church is leaving to embark on a new ministry, Walk the Earth. It will be a missionary training center. I won't comment much on it here, check out his blog.

Making a difference

I have been seeing a lot of news reports lately about fear and hate and holy wars and other scary stuff in every part of the world. I wonder what will be the condition of the world that my generation will inherit. I have even heard Christians and the like talking about how there is a theological invasion coming and if we, being the Christians of this country, don't stand up and fight then we will loose our 'church'.

So as I look at what Jesus did while he was going from town to town and what he was accomplishing I do not see anyone standing up to fight. In fact, I see just the opposite and the one time someone did stand up to fight he was rebuked by Jesus. So if we are going to stop this 'theological invasion' then what will be the weapons of choice. How will we make our stand and set ourselves apart? How will the world know that we are Christians?

In John 13 Jesus told his disciples this, "Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." Jesus also told us in Matthew 22 to "love your neighbor as you love yourself."

OK, application time. The other day the Impact Church staff went to a park in Lake Elsinore and grilled 40 lbs of chicken for the homeless in the area. We met up with a group of people that do it every Monday and have been for years. They needed a little help that day so we came out in force. While this was being planned Jeff found out that a coworker at Applebee's who happens to be Muslim missed one of her fasting days, its Ramadan right now and you can read about that elsewhere. So to make up for it she can feed to poor. Jeff invited her to come along because we happened to be doing just that Monday night. We were talking about it and we wondered what would happen if during Ramadan we made it a point to do something like this every week, inviting local Muslims who needed to make up points to come join us. We get to know them this way and they get to know us. They get to see us for who we are and get to observe us loving and caring for people.

How many relationships would be formed from that? Do you think that some walls could come down? Do you think that the love that we have as believers of God would be apparent to them? It seems to go 90 degrees against what mainstream American Christianity thinks but isn't that exactly what Jesus did with the mainstream of his time?

Maybe making a stand in our community is the first step. We are in a war of attrition, person by person we can win.

Get a Box.net Account

This morning I happened to check Chirty's email for her because I knew that it had been a while since she had done it. I found that it was trying to download 20MB worth of emails from her sister. Her sister had sent her a bunch of pictures from the last time most of the family was together. About half of the pictures got bounced back because her inbox filled up too quickly. I have a solution for this kind of problem, its called Box.net.

Ok, now I am not big on selling products or services for people but this is one that is really handy. I got on board with these folks when they were just getting started and before they offered free storage. They now offer 1GB of free storage and they let you put anything up that is 10MB per file or smaller. This is perfect for a family like ours that take lots of pictures and live far enough away that email is the only way pictures are going to be seen.

So, with that said, go to Box.net and sign up for a free account and get your friends to do it. Its the best way to share large files with each other. With its drag and drop interface its as easy as moving a picture from one folder to another on your own computer. All you have to do is drag the file to your friends' folder and they get an email telling them they have new files.

Trust me, sharing larger files around a big family doesn't really get any easier than this. Follow this link to get your account and stop clogging each others email inboxes with pictures.

Just checking in

I know that I had said that I was going to be persistent in keeping this blog up to date and so far its been going better than it normally does. But its not going as well as I had hoped it would.

Many of you heard that Buster got his first injury under our care last week. It was great, nothing funnier than a dog in a bandage. I will post a picture of him with it as soon as I have one on this computer.

For those of you that didn't hear about it, his injury was minor. He sheared one of his pads when he was running around chasing my RC Truck. He will be fine, he is already out of his bandage and is running again. No worries.

I hope this finds you all well, I will update this later with a picture.

The Lesson I Am Learning

There is a man that comes to my house every couple of weeks or so to chat with me. His name is Billy and he is a Jehova's Witness. The first time I met him was many months ago when I was having the tree in my front yard trimmed. I happened to be standing outside when he came by and we started small talking. I knew why he was there but I didn't mind chatting with him. He told me that he saw that I was busy and he asked if he could come back and talk with me at a better time.

There started this relationship I have with Billy. He is a very nice older man who is very personable and always respectful of my time. So I started to carry on conversations with him whenever he came. He likes to talk to me about verses in the bible and what they mean and how they apply to life. He avoids topics where he knows we will disagree for one reason or another, but I do not go out of my way to point those differences out.

Tonight, at our iGroup we were discussing loving people and the time that I spend with Billy. I asked the question, "how do we typically respond to Jehova's Witnesses or anyone else that wants to come to our door?" One of our friends, Dwayne, asked a very honest question. He asked, "how do you love someone that just comes to your door from time to time?" He also wondered what is the point of letting someone like this come to your door 17 times and letting them spend 15 hours of your life if you know you aren't going to change their mind and they are not going to change yours. I loved that question! The answer to how to love them is answered in the second part of the question. When Billy comes to my door I will invite him in, I will offer him something to drink and I will ask him about his family and his life. We talk about what he wants to talk about because I am not threatened by what he has to say. I am giving him the 15 hours of my life because my desire is to love him.

When an expert of the law asked Jesus in Mathew 22 what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, "'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."

If we are going to be effective as believers of God then we must truly embrace this idea. That loving people without agenda is paramount and that it is not our job to change minds, to win arguments or to feel like we need to push people to make decisions. We simply need to love people. The trick now is to figure out how to do that in the context of our purpose driven culture.

Perhaps for another post. Be encouraged, God is moving in Murrieta and He is using His people to make an impact in lives. I can't wait to see what's going to happen next!

Getting outside before work

I have really gotten into a new sport: Disc Golf. Its really great fun and its a no brainer to play. And we have a huge 'green belt' park near our house where we have made up a course so going is nothing more than just getting out there to throw 9 'holes' before we start the day. Me and Travis (Impact Church worship leader) have committed to getting out there at 7 am a few times a week to throw a few discs and hang out before getting the day started. We are usually done by 8:15 am so its not like we are spending all our time out there. I like it for a couple of reasons. One, it is a hilly park and its full of obstacles so it requires a little thought and a little hill climbing so by the end of the game I have worked up a little bit of a sweat. Second, I take Buster out with us and he chases the discs down the field until he can't stand it anymore. By the time I get him home all he wants to do is find a nice cool corner where he can lay out on some tile and sleep the day away. I would have to say that its a fantastic way to start the day for bipeds and quadruped alike!

I play with 5 different types of discs, which is a lot for someone that is just out there trying to get a piece of the great outdoors. But, they are not too expensive and they each have a specialty when flying through the air. So after I got hooked it wasn't hard to justify a few discs. I also have a backup disk or two for loaners so if any of you ever want to come out and catch us playing just give me a call and I will have a few disks for you to throw as well!

Wow, its been a long time

Ok, so I know that I haven't been good about keeping up this blog. Seriously, I just feel like sometimes nothing ever happens and who wants to hear about how many times I picked up the dog's poop on walks this week? But, I know that some of you (very few of you) used to look at this to see what is happening in our lives. So in the spirit of fostering communication I will try to take it up again.

So, lets start with Sunday (the first day of the week). Church was a little shy on the numbers this Sunday. Some feel like its just because its summer and particularly that because its August a lot of people are squeezing in their last weekend trips before school starts again. Jeff and I had been doing a lot of leg work last week to try to rally the troops. I don't know how many people I called and chatted with or left messages for. Many of them sounded very happy to hear from me and told me they would see me Sunday. Of course, of all the people that I talked to and stopped in on only one family showed up. Now, this is a family that almost never comes because of some busy thing or just no energy. So it was encouraging that they came, but they were the only ones. Jeff and I talked after church and we felt pretty discouraged. Pray for us. Its intimidating to look at our little church plant and feel like no one is sticking with us. I know that I for one could be doing better to gather people to us, but I am realizing where I am going wrong and trying to improve. Jeff suggested that perhaps our resolve is being tested. After all, we are called to love poeple with no agendas, so as we do this should we expect to get a quick response? If we don't get a quick response, will we stop loving people? Or better yet, if we don't get a response ever, will we stop loving people? As hard and painful as it might be the answer must be, absolutely and without waivering: NO. We can't stop because regardless of the success of Impact Church or the potential damage to our egos, we are called to something higher. To experience personal growth in Christ and to daily endevor to become more like Him. And as we walk and grow and love others without agenda, we invite others to walk and grow and love with us regardless of where they are in the journey. We need to become the Church.

Man, what a journey! Its hard, its going to get a lot harder, but I wouldn't trade it for the world...

Well, I will try to keep up with this blog now. Maybe it will help me to apprehend the thoughts the run wild in my head and tame them into something I can grasp and maybe help others to grasp.

Hope this finds you all well,

John

Titus Peter Vergeer

I know that I am slow getting to this blog with the news but it was unavoidable. Titus passed away on Friday Jan 13 around 6:30am. He died with all his family around him and they held a memorial for him at their church in Carmel Mountain that Sunday.

I am late posting this because we got word early in the day and it was also the day we were packing and getting ready to leave for Canada. You can read about the Canada trip in a blog post that is soon to follow. Keep you eyes open because there will be links to photos and video.

Peace-

Why do we allow such things...

Barking up the wrong tree? Convict Sues Dog

I caught this article on MSNBC thismorning. Articles like this make me realize that insanity is a common problem in this country. Really, to be fair he is probably not crazy. People in this country have been given an entitlement complex, they get it from their parents. They have never had to own up to anything in their lives. Today's example, a furniture store owner. This guy has his store searched out and they find stuff he shouldn't have there. Face it, he is guilty and he should own up to what he has done. But instead of doing that he decides that it shouldn't be his fault that he did something wrong. Instead blame is being issued to other people and even a DOG who he claimed performed an illegal search. He can do this beause this is America - the land of the free, the brave and those who perpetually believe their problems are never their fault.

Sweet, sweet love of God
We revere Your firelight heart

Sweet, sweet grace surrounds
We’ve been sought, through all of our Years
You’ve carried our tears with you

We are all here to find
The place where our restless souls will be free
We were all made to see
Our hearts could not rest until found in Thee

In this divine invitation we find your embrace
And in our deep adoration see the light of your face
In this divine invitation we all find the place
For our souls where the longings were born long ago


Sweet, sweet Savior come
Near us now
Into the depths of our hearts

Sweet, sweet breath of life
You fulfill
With the warmth of your love
The mystery of your ways

We are all here to find
The place where our restless souls will be free
We were all made to see
Our hearts could not rest until found in Thee

In this divine invitation we find your embrace
And in our deep adoration see the light of your face
In this divine invitation we all find the place
For our souls where the longings were born long ago

Divine Invititation
Words and Music Eric Owyoung and ©2004 Birdwing Music (ASCAP)
Admin. By EMI Music CMG Publishing

News update: Titus

Well, the official word is that Titus has officially been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. His parents have opted to forgo any type of hospitalization because of their past experience with Hanah. The doctors that have looked at Titus feel that hospitalization would do little more than prolong what could be the innevitable. So, there isn't really much more to say then to consider this as a call to prayer on the behalf of the family.



 

Walking on water

Just a thought, sometimes I get them...

There comes a point when you know without a doubt God is working in your life and trying to stretch you. Trying to get you to take a step. Peter knew, he even asked for it. Peter said, "Lord, if its you then call me (to come out) and walk on the water." Well, naturally Jesus, who is a fan of people stepping out in faith tells Peter to "come". Knowing very well that he can't walk on the water he goes for it! He's looking right at Jesus, and it happens...Peter is doing the impossible! Its only when he lets the madness of what he is doing get to him that he sinks.

Pay attention because when God is calling you out its not always something that is going to make sense, after all, the sea can sometimes be pretty deep. But whatever the path, the destination will be sweeter than you had ever imagined, just keep your eyes on Him. You never know, you might just walk on water!!!