Eli vs The Chair

Here's the story. We left San Luis Obispo around 7am yesterday morning and made it to Portland around 1 am this morning. The fight of the century took place this morning between Eli and The chair. Here's the stats on both...

Eli the fly guy
Height: 2'6"
Weight: 22lbs
Hometown: San Luis Obispo, California
Advantage: cute
Weakness: cant walk well

VS

The Chair

Height: 3'4"
Weight: 12lbs
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Advantage: hard steel parts
Weakness: not cute

So it was a interesting fight. Eli started out very aggressively crawling over to the chair. He was making all the first moves as the chair stood still as a post...or chair. Eli took the first moves at trying to climb The Chair. But it was The Chair who came out victorious. Eli fell fast and hard with a blow to the head. After some ice on the head, Eli was back to his smiling self again. Here are some photos of the first battle wound on Eli.
We made it about 4 or 5 hours from Portland and the traffic came to a complete stop. This was us standing outside the car on I-5. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours. Apparently two big rigs got in a accident and one of the drivers died. It was really sad. I took a picture of the truck. While we were waiting on the road we stood in the shade of the big truck in front of us. I took a picture of Eli next to the trucks wheel.

DTS has come and gone....

It seems like only yesterday that 15 students from all over the place showed up here in Pismo. We started the DTS on January 7th i think. It's crazy how fast the time goes by. Lori and I ran this DTS with Mary one of our staff assisting us. We also had two other staff Brandon and Cindy who led the outreach to Kenya and Rwanda.

This has been the best DTS I have been able to work with our be around. They all had amazing hearts and all had a call to missions in some form. Here are some pictures of the group.

The whole DTS group

The Boys of the DTS and Will's small group
(left t0 right - Matt R., Me, Eli, Matt H., Cody, Coffe, Zach, Brandon)

The girls

Lori's small group
(left to right - Shelly, Katrina, Beth, Lori, Eli, Amy)

Cindy's small group
(left to right - Lauren, Stephanie, Katie, Cat, Cindy)
Mary's small group
(left to right - Crystal, Rhiannon, Mary, Kara)
The surfing track that me and brandon worked with.

So most nights the boys would go to sleep like this on outreach....
and wake up like this.

We really miss all of these guys. they are at home for the most part now. I look forward to hearing about the amazing things they are going to do.

For us, we take a little bit of a breather and start preparing for the next DTS to come next january. We start meeting with the staff that are going to work with the next school, figuring out speakers, and housing.

We are going to Portland on Monday to visit Tierney who use to be on staff with us but left to go and start YWAM portland. We look forward to going up there and encouraging and spending some time with her and her staff.

more of Rwanda

Here are some more photos from my time in Rwanda. It was a good time. This are some of my favorite shots that i got.

one of the orphans praying during church

a family at the church that we worked with

my favorite picture. we saw this kid when we
went up to a village to play soccer. It had just finished
raining and this kid was so muddy.

another kid that came to watch our soccer game

i loved having my new camera and getting great portraits

this man was one of the coolest people i have ever met.
his story was amazing. the stories of him surviving through
the genocide and how god protected him are wild.


we met this man that was crippled on our street. we saw him
almost everyday. our last day there i printed him this
picture and took it to him.
he was so happy.

this is a picture of beth among all the people that came
to our soccer game.