Rudy Fernandez

We got him with the #24 pick in the NBA draft. WOW!





I hope this guy can come over this year and play for us. He is so good!

A memory

One of the highlights from my year in India was the week spent with Jon Foreman, the lead singer and songwriter of Switchfoot. While Jon was visiting we got to meet some pretty big fighters of the caste system in India and major freedom fighters for the Dalits. While there Jon was asked by one of these men to play something on his guitar. The men wanted to hear some of his music. So appearing out of what seemed nowhere a out of tune guitar was placed in his hands. He didn't have a guitar pick on him at the time so he asked for one. One of the men in the room actually happened to have one and gifted it to Jon. After a quick tuning session, Jon began to play a song I had never heard before and to be completely honest neither had the rest of the world. The song he played that afternoon was "Let your love be strong". The song struck me hard. I fell in love immidiately with it. In those precious few moments and throughout that week, Jon proved to me why he has been somewhat of a hero and mentor (though I am only an observer) of mine. Enjoy the song.



In this world of news, I’ve found nothing new
I’ve found nothing pure
Maybe I’m just idealistic to assume that truth
Could be fact and form
That love could be a verb
Maybe I’m just a little misinformed

As the dead moon rises, and the freeways sigh
Let the trains watch over the tides and the mist
Spinning circles in our skies tonight
Let the trucks roll in from Los Angeles
Maybe our stars are unanimously tired

Let your love be strong, and I don’t care what goes down
Let your love be strong enough to weather through the thunder cloud
Fury and thunder clap like stealing the fire from your eyes
All of my world hanging on your love

Let the wars begin, let my strength wear thin
Let my fingers crack, let my world fall apart
Train the monkeys on my back to fight
Let it start tonight
When my world explodes, when my stars touch the ground
Falling down like broken satellites

All of my world resting on your love

My favorite Goat!

I used to work at a Davidson's Casual Dining in Tigard. In high school I used to get to my night shift early so I could eat dinner. Occasionaly I would chat with an older woman who came in often. She was fun, reminded me a lot like my grandma, but totally and completly loopy. We sit and chat about life and her farm and her sons. And I would share the little things that I had experienced so far in life.

Well one day she told me about some of the goats they had on her farm. She called them "Fainting Goats". She explained how her sons would run to the top of the hill behind these goats and the goats would get freaked, stiffen up, and fall over. This usually ended up with the goats falling down the hill. To be honest I laughed pretty hard when she explained this to me. Her with her chocolate milkshake and me with my peanut butter shake. It seemed so insane and yet I knew she was speaking the truth. As much as I laughed I thought "man, what a sad predicament for the goats." I mean I WAS laughing at their expense.

The other day Erin and Amber and I were on Youtube and this was one of the videos that we watched...see for yourself. Laugh. Then laugh again.

Sorrow

Sorrow by :BAD RELIGION

(I recenlty heard a version of this song sung by Jon Foreman of Switchfoot and it really blew me away. Amazing stuff truly.)

Father can you hear me?
How have I let you down?
I curse the day that I was born
and all the sorrow in this world

Let me take you to the herding ground
where all good men are trampled down
Just to settle a bet that could not be won
between a prideful father and his son

Will you guide me now for I can't see a reason
for the suffering and this long misery
What if every living soul could be upright and strong?
Well then I do imagine

There will be (sorrow)
Yeah there will be (sorrow)
And there will be sorrow no more

When all soldiers lay their weapons down
or when all kings and all queens relinquish their crowns
Or when the only true messiah rescues us
from ourselves it's easy to imagine

There will be (sorrow)
Yeah there will be (sorrow)
And there will be sorrow no more

There will be (sorrow)
Yeah there will be (sorrow)
And there will be sorrow no more

Yeah there will be (sorrow)
Yeah there will be (sorrow)
And there will be sorrow no more

sam brown exploding dog dot com

Good News!!!

Caedmon's Call is announcing the birth of the new album Overdressed on their website. I am stoked for this album, I have heard a few of the wonderful songs that are on this album. One reason for my stokedness is because Andrew Osenga will be back on this album as well as Derek Webb formerly of Caedmon's. I saw these guys in October of '06 and was truly blessed by the band members and their hearts for worship and missions. I look forward to the new album. Check out their website. They have an awesome deal for the new album. If you pre-order the album now, which comes out in late August, they are giving 2 for the price of 12 bucks!!! How rad is that? Go now, pre-order and enjoy!

It's all over now

Today was our last performance of: "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." It was sad to see all of the hard work come to an end. It seems like seven perfomances is so small when you look at the big picture of things. I almost always never want a show to end, mostly out of fear of no longer being around the people I have been so intimately training and practicing with for the past few months, but mostly because the acting ends and reality yet again sinks in. This time however has been much more difficult for me. I was playing a five year old thumbsucking-blanket loving-philosiphizing-child. I will miss it. I will miss the day in and day out of trying to act child like again. The truth is I am not very far from childhood, but I still feel the strains of having to grow up. I embrace it and hate it at the same time.

Truly do we ever grow up though? Isn't there are piece of a child in all of us. Do we maintain that innocence forever? Can we truly lose the dreaming side of child or the artistic abilities and ways of thinking that only a child offers? Or do we chose to shove them aside and forget them because we "have" to act important or together or even...grown up?

I was thinking how truly great it was that the Peanuts strip was new and fresh for almost fifty years. Charles Schulz had the opportunity to think, write, create, experience, draw, and concieve like a child for all of the fifty years that the Peanuts gang ran in the newspapers. (The strip still runs to this day, reruns of course.) I thought to myself how great and hard it must have been to be able to portray these children as not only children but also as intelligent human beings who were philosophers, psychiatrists, troubadours, musicians, and so much more. Schulz had the ability to make a childrens stip truly become adult.

While perfoming this weekend I realized how little of the gags and lines a little child could truly understand yet alone laugh at. Like Linus telling a dressed up Queen Lucy that she truly could never become a queen and yet she believes it is completely undemocratic that a person could never become a queen. The gag was the undemocratic part. But how many people caught that? I know I didn't until someone pointed it out and I was in the scene!

For so many years now I have struggled with finding a balance between being an adult and maintaining a childlike heart, hope, and faith. I struggle with this daily. I am a believer in the idea that I was created to worship God and make Him known to others so that they can worship Him in all His Glory, but I am also a believer in the thought that God also has given me the opportunity to experience joy and to be happy. Now that joy and happiness is truly found in Him and His creation. I think often that God has the best sense of humor. I think He wants me to laugh and be happy. I believe He places things in our lives to cause us to catch our breath or catch ourselves being too serious or important to not stop and laugh at ourselves and enjoy this earth He has created for us to find ourselves in and to be creative in. Children are the most creative. (Sit in on a four year old Sunday school class sometime, then you will see what I am talking about.)

Some of us hold onto our creativity and use it daily, while others throw it out the window like a used cigarette butt because it is done and used up. I hate that. We were created to create as well. In the act of creating we again pull upon our child like-ness.

Here is an example: the other day, I was riding around in the campus golf cart monologuing to myself about a fictatious conversation between two penguins in antarctica when I got to a bridge that leads to one of our houses on the church campus. Standing on the bridge was a Blue Heron. It totally took me off gaurd and my breath was gone. I had a WOW! moment. God showed me His humor on how good He is about distracting me back to Him. I had been creating, but it wasn't going anywhere, seriously, penguins? And then God stepped in and said how about a Blue Heron???

So often I have awe filled moments, so often do I try to create, so often do I find myself dreaming about being five again, so often do I cherish the laughs and smiles of children, and yet so often I base the validity of my life on the fact of whether or not I can be serious or not.

I was having a conversation with a mentor over breakfast the other day. (A Tillamook cheese omlette if you must know.) And we were talking about some of my dreams. One of them being:
I would love to be a Youth-Style Mission's Pastor. Leading and training students from 6th grade on up through College about missions and the importance of it. Then joining them on some of the adventures throughout the world.

The ultimate goal would be to set up a camp directed towards the training and such. Fully equiped with live action courses, team bonding experiences, and classrooms for training.

The honest truth is I am not sure how this will happen. Before I can even begin to let my dreams come true I hush them up and silence them. Why? Because of the fear of them not being accomplished. A child would never do that. They would continue to dream and try and make it happen with all the hope and faith they can muster up.

So the mentor and I began to delve a little deeper. We talked about the possibility of leading teams and me possibly doing that, considering it is my dream. My beloved Klemtu was brought up. I would love to lead a Klemtu team, but my fear is that I am too young or to childish or not grown up enough. Bobby immediately laid into me, "why is that?" "why do you feel that way?" And to be honest? I have a fear of being to kid like. A fear of not being adult enough. And yet here I am talking about being a child. With all of my heart I want to lead a mission team of youth. And yet I am to scared of not being completely with it to accomplish that dream! The thing is, in that last sentence I grew up. It's sad really, I grew up, in the process of trying to grow up, because I thought I was too child like. Do not get me wrong here, I know what a leader is and how they are to respond and act, but truly to lead youth, a part of you must still be youthlike as well. Thus I consider myself perfect for the role. I walked away from that conversation blown away and seriously stimulated to act on my passion and dream of leading youth mission teams. I also walked away with this passage of scripture:

2 Timothy 1:6-9 (6)“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. (7)For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (8) So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, (9)who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace."

Wow! A spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. I want these things and I am truly trying to gain these qualities in my daily living. These are things that children may not have, the power and discipline part, but as an adult I can understand and impliment these into my life, the love part. Well, to be honest I have understood that since I was a little boy. Funny how those things balance out, huh? Funny about the timidity thing too. I am so timid to do things sometimes, because of fear of failure or being wrong. I truly believe that one of the greatest qualities a child has is lack of fear and huge portions of faith, hope,love, and passion. These are great qualities to have. And yet they are strongest in children. Why is that? It is truly a mystery to me, other than the idea of the world leaning on us to grow up and be serious. I can be serious, but I can also be childlike while doing so.

I am sad to see my role as Linus end on the stage today, but the role of Linus will stay with me forever, the heart of him and all other children are still in me I just have to let it loose every once in a while.

"Happiness is a fleeting thing Sally, but I think that a man can truly come closer to it by directing his life towards something he truly believes in. I also think that a man's personal search for happiness is not such a selfish thing either, because by achieving happiness himself, he can help others to find it. Does that make sense to you?" -Linus Van Pelt

That's It!!!

Only You by David Crowder

Take my heart, I Lay it down
At the feet of you whose crowned
Take my life, I'm letting go
I lift it upto You who's throned

And I will worship You, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have, I'm leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And It's just you and me here now
Only you and me here now

You should see the view
When it's only You