Week the Seventh

This week was a pretty normal week, flooded with excitement for my Belize mission trip. Work was great all week. I spent the week finishing the basement of the garage which was really fun! So fun that we worked an extra day and I used my free time on Saturday to complete it.

Andy and I workin hard.

The joists are laid.

The floor is done!

This week we had a couple meditations and watched Malcolm X, which is a great movie. On Saturday we went over to the Kane's for Lord's day and had a blast! I met all the Kane's, had some good competition, and had really good food! Then Sunday we relaxed, messed around with the Kane boys, and went to the Cramer's for dinner.

So the week was tough and the weekend relaxing. A good combo to have. It was all very fun!

One of the things we do here is put some of clothes in common, which basically means we all share polos and socks. And we also happen to have doubles of the polos, as seen below!

God Bless!

6th Week

This week was incredible. We did a huge variety of stuff with all our free time, working, training, and chilling. The work this week was really fun. I spent the week in the basement of the Greenlawn Garage, which is actually a pool, with a garage built over it. Its really cool that the nuns just built the garage over it instead of filling it in! So the week was spent preparing to lay a floor to flatten the sloped pool. We cleared out the junk down there, including shelves that were falling over and some antique wheelbarrels. Then we tried drilling holes with a hammer drill, but after no success rented a core drill, a huge machine that drills out huge cylinders of concrete. So we used that to drill post holes and then set posts down to hold up the floor, 18 in all. This week we will be laying the beams, joists, and flooring down.

After work was done on Thursday, we were introduced to our new project: researching the Mississippi River Valley, i.e. the POP citybuilding target area. We made a list of what we might care about, and looked around for helpful websites this weekend. Another project we've started is visiting the Juvenile Detention Center. We went on Friday to get signed up and have a tour, then came back and brainstormed on what we could do with them there. It was incredibly interesting to see how they live and just to think about what we could do, because there was pretty much no regulations on us, any activity was game. I'm excited to finally hear what we decide to do!

Saturday was a Kingdom Drill, where the two Peters were in charge and led activities for the day instead of David and Jeremy. So we started out the day with chores (I had to clean the bunkhouse and bathroom), then gathered for our mission: to find our way back to Greenlawn from a random location. We got dropped off in the middle of suburbia about 7 miles due east of Greenlawn. Blindfolded the whole car ride, we had no clue where we were to start out, its kind of a cool feeling, one I haven't felt before I don't recall. But after spinning in a few circles and trying (and failing) to get our bearings from the sun, we just set out in the direction of what seemed to be a busy street. On our way over, we stopped and told a lady we were lost, and so she told us we were near Jefferson, the street we were walking towards. When we told here we were looking for Greenlawn, she pitifully said, "You're a long way off!" and began questioning us so we ended the conversation and went on our way. From Jefferson it was a straight, 7 mile hike back. We were the first group back, because the one of the other groups took the Railroad tracks and the other was placed in a corn field. It was a fun drill! After that we all went to church. I went to Granger Community Church, which was definitely a production. There were 5 huge screens, lights, and a whole rock band, such that it gave it a more concert like feel than a church service. But the pastor was great and gave an awesome sermon about Christ as the authority! Then came an amazing Lord's day, followed by "Live Free or Die Hard" before going to bed.

Sunday was the real fun day. We all went up to Lake Michigian to go sailing with the Colemans! It was incredible! When we first got there it was too windy (damage the ship windy) so we went on over to a real WWII sub called "Silversides" and took a tour of it. Mr. Coleman even paid for us all, so generous of him! The sub was really fun, I've got some pictures courtesy of Eric Blair, who was really fun to have on the sub because he's spent 2 and a half years on a sub and is currently on active duty for the Navy, so the tour guide knew how they did it then, and he knows how they do it now!

The sub from the outside, big one!

I'm looking throught the aimer of a very massive gun. It could shoot up to 8 miles!

The steering equipment and gadgets. I thought it was pretty cool!

Some sub beds I decided to take a nap on!

Here's all of us on the sub!

After the sub tour we came back for Lunch and then went sailing! It was still pretty windy so we only used one sail but still went the boats max speed! (6 knots) We went out onto Lake Michigan and hit some huge waves, rocking the boat a ton! It was great riding out front on the boat, getting splashed by the waves and barely holding on to the cables. Sailing was a definite highlight of the trip, and the whole purpose of it! Here we all are on the boat:

From left to right, back to front. Jon Xenaxis, Jeremy Osterhouse, Justin Lokke, Collin Anderson, Peter Putzier; David Salmon, Andy Bowar, David Zimmel, Peter Coleman, Nick Raway, Kevin Mcshane, Joe Bulger; Eric Blair, Micah Olson, Zack Loughran. Thats all of us except Ricky Thomas and Eric Yost, who weren't there.

After sailing we went to the beach and swam in the huge waves. They were bigger than than the ones I saw at the ocean so it was really fun to just get hit by them and try not to fall over. Plus we tried body surfing but that kinda failed, so we resorted to more taking on the waves! Then after being exhausted from that we all came back and built a huge sand castle! I couldn't find the picture but I'll try and get it up later... After the beach we went back for dinner watched an awesome sunset and left for home at 10, not arriving home till past midnight, but it was worth it! Check out that sunset!

Justin and I watching it disappear over Lake Muskegon, turning the clouds red.

Another glorious week around here! Praise God for all his blessing!

Independence Day (and the week of)

This week was probably the best so far. The Indy missionary men came and visited for the weekend, which was sweet. They arrived on Thursday evening and then on Friday we celebrated the 4th with a pool party at the Havard's! It was a great day of pool volleyball, diving and other such activities!

We made a wavepool!

Then we played this sweet game where you jump over a bar as high as you can. Nick won in every catagory. I mean, seriously, check this out!
Nick flipping over the bar.

Then on Saturday we had a good prayer seminar followed by some work on people's houses in a the branch. I sanded a deck all day, but it was fun with Rus, Mike Coney, David Zimmel and Ben all singing some awesome songs. Then we came back, got all dressed up and had an excellent Lord's day followed by an incredible prayer meeting! There was a lot of prayers for our missionaries and their work. It was really powerful. After that we ate some watermelon and proceeded to jam for the next few hours. There were 3 guitars and 4 "drums" at one point! You can see a video of it here, its kinda funny!

Sunday I went to a really big church that was kinda weird with my bro, and then came home and found out we all had the day to do whatever we wanted! So we went and got supplies for Special K bar. It was amazing! The peices were HUGE!

Then we all decided to drive up to lake Michigan! It was about an hour long drive, but it was totally worth it! We got there and saw the massive sand dunes so we climbed up and jumped off the tops for about 2 hours! We found a nice grass knoll for more air!

Woo! Huge air!

Peter being ridiculus.

From there we went swimming, made a sand hole, buried Chris and played some water football. But then we wanted to jump again and Joe told us about this way bigger dune down shore. So we hiked down the beach to it and discovered that it was, in fact, way bigger! Here's some more footage:Me jumping Peter. I cut it a bit close!

Ben jumping me. TONS OF AIR!

Then at the end we all decided to run down from the very top of this very large dune, at full speed. You would seriously go faster than your legs could carry you. Thats why Nick tumbled, he let himself. Oh and Joe is just being Joe.

It was an awesome day, ended with cigars with Peter Putz for his birthday. Happy 20th!

Oh and I can't forget my present I got from Andy in the mail. My newest addiction.

It took me about 6 hours to solve, with dinner and a talk in there too. And yes I've already broken it from overuse! That black one is missing the yellow tile for it.

Excellent week! More next weekend! I'm leaving for Belize in 2 weeks!

3rd Week

I've finally settled into the schedule for life down here. I'm used to waking up at 6, and now I'm hungry at the right times too! Work this week was spent, once again, getting the slaggers to work. We got a new gun and I played with the machines for 2 days! But finally, on Thursday afternoon we had 2 guns working at the same time! Then on Friday we did work for South Bend Branch members. The deal was that we worked, and they paid the missionaries a donation for our labor. I ended up stripping stain off of a deck, which is far more difficult than I was hoping coming into it. It was a lot of scrubbing and powerwashing for about 8 hours!It was great to work for another cause besides our own self benefit. We had two talks too, one about the extensive history of the People of Praise, and one about the Spirit and Purpose of the People of praise. Both helped me understand the POP a lot more; how it came, what we're doing and why, when really cool things happened, like the beginning of Trinity. I am now way more excited than ever to work for the People of Praise and help it accomplish our goal of 200 new cities in 40 years! Glory!

Friday night was the first Community meeting for us this summer. It was a great meeting with a ton of people I didn't know! We watched the 3rd Indy Video which you can see here http://www.citybuilder.org/ The sight has a few videos from Indy and pictures too! After the meeting we went to the Pruess' and played some ping pong, pool and fooseball. Good times... I met a ton of new people! I got home late though and stayed up later so I didn't get enough sleep! Saturday I made some more bread! 28 loaves!

COUNT 'EM!

Sunday I went to church and then over to the Zusi's for brunch! It was a great meal and conversation followed by a game of baseball with the little Zusi's and then some intense volleyball for a couple hours! It was awesome! Then we headed over to the Heintzelman's for dinner! South Benders are so hospitable! At the Heintzelman's we had a really great meal full of all the summer goodies: corn on the cob, watermelon, patato salad, sloppy joes... etc. Then I had 4 or 5 brownies for dessert! After that we came home and watched Usual Suspects, our first movie this summer.

Baseball at the Zusi's... yes I tagged out a 5 year old.

Here's a couple clips from our life:

I thought this was cool. Jeremy Osterhouse built it with all the cans from around the One Ten office. This is David Salmon's desk...his boss who's on vacation!



This is how we do dishes around here, there IS a ton of 'em, we might as well make 'em fun!

The Night of Wonders

On Sunday night, there was the most incredible show of nature ever, and it can only be barely grasped at with a bunch of pictures.

Ahh beautiful shot... sunset... roofline of a mansion...WOW. Thanks Chris Milliren.

The sun in all its glory!

Wait! Turn around, and there's the rainbow! And the sun just barely hitting the tops of the trees!

Here's a panorama of the whole thing... incredible. Thanks Collin Anderson.

Hold on! Lightning too! Captured in a hurry it seems. Thanks Joe Bulger.

This was the most incredible night of nature I've experienced. Thank you Lord! And I promise you, it was way better in person

Indy week!

This week was our first full week! It was great! Monday through Thursday we worked 8 hrs a day. I slagged the fence most of that time, which involved playing with the machine and sorta getting it to work, but finally calling up the pro, Randy. He sold us our machine and knew pretty much everything there is to know about slagging. So, turns out our machine was not firing with enough pressure, and both nozzles at the front were worn down way too big. So he took our machine to fix it, and has ordered the nozzles. Another bonus is that David also ordered 2 more new slaggers! Now we can have 3 people slagging at a time and it will be way more fun! (If thats possible.) One day while the slagger was broken I moved boxes from the top floor of this mansion to to basement, 3 flights of stairs! The best part of that was going on the roof of the mansion, 3 stories up. We got pictures:

That's the front door to this mansion I'm living in!

Here you can see the auditorium which used to be a chapel when the nuns owned it, and the school in the back.

So work's been great.

This week the talks were on manliness; kind of a counter cultural way of looking at it, but I won't go into details. Another thing we did this week in free time was playing quadrat, a sweet soccer 4-square combination game. It was great to have a bunch of guys out there playing. I think we had 11 at one point. Another day after work we took a pile of bricks and made a bridge because David didn't think we could. So to prove him wrong we built a bridge expanding a 4 brick gap, and then to rub it in a bit we had him stand on it, and it held! After that we used them as dominoes, and made a nice long course that... sorta worked. (See the video) Just another couple examples of what happens when life is in common and everyone's free time is the same time!


Brick Dominoes!

And these are the Kane kids, William and Leo, watching Chris on the tractor. They are the coolest kids ever who love to come over and watch us work. Its so fun!

The highlight of the week though, by far, was our trip to Indianapolis to help out the missionaries there, my brother included! On Wednesday David informed us that we were leaving the next night for Indy, right after dinner. So Thursday we packed our small rubbermade totes full of work clothes, dress clothes, and a sheet, along with work boots and a pillow into a car and a van and set off for Indy. We arrived at 11 and went to bed, sleeping on the floor with just a sheet and pillow, missionary style! We woke up for an hour of prayer at 6 and started work by 7:30 without breakfast, fasting missionary style! Our work was demolition on a newly acquired house of theirs down there. By the end we had overfilled our dumpster and made a few dump runs with the truck with sheetrock, doors, flooring and trim taken out of this very old house. I spent a good chunk of the time hanging a couple doors with David. It was great, we had to make the opening bigger for the front door so I had to split the 2x4's on the side vertically with a circular saw, using the saw in the exact wrong way. But we got it done without much injury, and it looks great and the house is ready for action trips to start work on it!

The dumpster full of junk.

Me hangin a door. Yes I haven't shaved in a while.

The finished, brand new door!

Friday night we had a cookout in the South Side neighborhood. There were over 150 people there, and over half of them were kids! One of their new activities is bringing together the kids and teaching them bible stories and performing skits with them all. The Lord has been calling them to this and its been working great, as could obviously be seen at the cookout. Saturday night we had a gigantic Lord's Day, with 0ver 50 people! Afterwards we played some cranium, soccer, and had a fire! It was an awesome evening. Sunday was church (with an abnormal amount of pastries!) and then swimming at the Porter's pool! They were generous enough to let all 20 or so of us use their pool. Another great time with all the guys. Now I'm back in South Bend and very tired after a long, awesome week.

Praise God! Keep checkin!

First Week

Its been 2 days of work, 2 days of talks, and a lifestyle more scheduled than I have ever been a part of! The thing about living amongst 21 other young men is that real friendships are more freely developed. One reason is that we all wear white and gray T's, almost always khaki shorts, and 3 quarters of us have hair less than a half inch. Outter appearances simply are not a factor. We are then more able to differentiate between people more through how they act and what they are like rather than how they look and what they wear. This is an ideal throughout many groups of people I have been involved in, but only here have I fully basked in its glory.

Chris setting the very large table.

Another part I have loved is the work we do. They way we work together is of utmost humility, and the proper understandings of authority and servitude. Our leaders lead mercifully, and we all serve happily. I have spent 12 hours so far "slagging" a fence. Slagging is the process of standing at the end of a hose with a trigger and blasting an iron fence with water with tiny bits of metal and glass mixed in in order to take off the paint and rust. Those bits of glass bounce of the fence straight at your mask and arms. David asked me to do this, so I did, and Zach and I have had a great time doing it, though I must say my favorite parts were the times when the machine broke. We have spent almost as much time fixing the machine as slagging, but it's been a great time figuring out the machinery every time.

The talks given are incredible. They have so much practical knowledge on how to live life. Its like a humane seminar about exactly what I've actually cared about in that class for the past 4 years. After each talk we also discuss it and ask questions, the incredible amount of wisdom given to us through them is awesome. We've learned about freindship, right speach, being a servant, authority and obedience, how to correct someone, and having good conversation. And its only been 4 days! I took great notes (of course), and doodled meanwhile.

The most interesting part of my week, though, or at least the most fun to tell happened today. I made 28 loaves of bread! With 22 men to feed for a week, lots of bread is necessary. So for my Saturday "chore" I was assigned to bread making. It sure beats scrubbing the bathroom in 23 steps! Heres some pics:
The huge sector of kneaded bread rising. This was only a quarter of the bread we made today.

Some bread right before we put it in the oven.

Freshly baked bread, straight out of the oven. Yum!

I'm excited for all that the Lord will do this summer! I'll keep you posted. God bless!