Let wonder replace worry

Saw this at youth group last night. Man, I feel bad for this guy!

Posted via email from Justin Ross

Picking wild blackberries behind our house

Driving In the Darkness - A tale of one amazing night.

I am pretty much in the middle of a much needed end of summer vacation. 3 weeks in recovery mode after an incredible, but very busy summer.

Almost 2 weeks ago, I attempted something I've never done before. We were heading down to Salt Lake City to visit some of Nicole's family. Not knowing how Jax would do on the 950 mile (14 hour) trip, we decided I would drive through the night - leaving in the evening and arriving early the next morning.

How was it? Amazing. I would do it again in a second.

Some of my experiences during this night:

3:00pm Car is loaded and everyone is ready to go. We planned to leave at 5 - decide to leave now.

5:00pm Hit the only traffic we would experience. Changing from 405 to I-90 in Seattle. Another big advantage of driving through the night.

7:00pm Stopped for dinner. Nicole moved to the back seat with Jaxson to get some sleep.

8:00pm Alone in the front seat, hearing Elmo playing in the back as Jax was getting ready to fall asleep, I watch as the sun slowly sets in my rear view mirror as we drove southeast. It was an incredible sight.

9:00pm We enter the lonely roads of eastern Oregon. I watch as the first stars begin to appear. One at a time at first, then almost at once, a flood of light as the sky filled with millions and millions of stars.

11:00pm On the dark quiet roads of Oregon, the stars are even more majestic than they were just a couple of hours ago. They shine bright and encompass me as I look to the left and the right horizons, straight ahead, and straight up through the sunroof. I feel small.

12:00am We leave Oregon and enter even darker, more quite roads through Idaho. The moon is exactly straight to my left, out the drivers window. I spend the night keeping a close eye on it.

2:00am The first time I actually yawn. Still feeling strong though. Listening to podcasts, eating beef jerky, drinking coffee, and keeping a close eye on that sky.

3:00am Entering Utah. This hour is the toughest of the night. I soon realize we are no longer in Pacific Daylight Time, but Mountain. It is actually 4:00am. Not sure why, but the realization gives me new energy.

4:00am Those amazing stars I watched appear just a few hours before begin to slowly disappear. One by one, the sky begins to empty and the horizon in front of me begins to lighten. A new day has come. I appreciate it. I am grateful for it. I reflect on how ungrateful I can be every other day as I just roll out of bed. I thank God for it. More than once.

5:00am That amazing sun that gave me such a beautiful show in my rear view mirror at the beginning of the journey slowly peaks over the horizon in front of me. Once again, it puts on an amazing show. I debate with myself the sense of experiencing a sunrise or a sunset verses staring at the billions and billions of stars in the vast, never ending universe. 

6:00am We pull into Nicole's grandparents driveway. After saying hi and very quickly washing my face and brushing my teeth, I sleep.

DCLA: 2 more observations

I'm guessing there are 4000 teenagers at DCLA this weekend. One of the best things about our first Big Room Experience last night was how YS has the stage set up. The bands and speakers utilize a huge stage in the middle of the room that is surrounded by chairs on all sides. 2 football stadium sized screens cover the 2 sides of the stage with 4 smaller screens in each corner. This set up causes a room of 4000 to seem intimate & engaging.
Secondly, Youth Specialties gets it theologically. God's Story is being presented with the crazy love of rentless prusuit of God for his children. This allows gosel truth to be presented without the guilt & manipulation prevalent at many youth conferences. That's one reason why I love YS. They get it.
Again posting from my iPhone. About time for Labs to be let out & 4000 teenagers are released on DC. Very exciting stuff!

DCLA: Friday Night Thoughts

DCLA is off & under way. We are staying in a great hotel, but they are charging $13 a day for Internet, so I'll stick to posting from my iPhone. Here are some random thoughts from the first night.

The programming is top notch & the theology is spot on. We are doing God's story & last night went from creation through Joshua. There is something powerful about teaching straight from scripture. I am a fan.

Francis Chan is such an amazing communicator. He did a fantastic job.

Kendall Payne blew me away last night. The power & theology in her lyrics left the room silent. She left such an impression I hear a couple of my high school guys asked her for a date on front of her husband last night.

These group leader badges are more than twice as big as they need to be. Looks like you have a sheet of paper hung around your neck. Not sure the thinking behind that.

My kids have mentioned they are having a hard time understanding Shane Claiborne. He's good, but I'm guessing speaking to students is not something he does everyday.

The games in the exhibit hall are amazing. Everyone had so much fun with them last night. I've got a ton of 12seconds.tv videos to post. I was also glad to see the exhibitors are very small & tightly compacted.

Since I'll be posting from my phone, I'll plan to do a short post sometime during the day.

How To Make Free iPhone Ringtones From Your iTunes Library

After patiently waiting for 2 years, Nicole and I made the jump to AT&T and are both happy iPhone owners. I love everything about my 32GB 3GS and Nicole is very happy with her 3G.

We were a little surprised at the small selection of ringtones that come on the iPhone. I quickly realized the reason may be that Apple charges .99 cents to create a ringtone from a song that you have already purchased!

So I did some poking around and it is actually pretty simple to create a ringtone from any song in your iTunes Library - except those with DRM protection. Now that iTunes no longer sells music locked with DRM, this should not be a huge issue.

I'm working on a Mac, but there is no reason this would not work on a PC.

How I did it:

1. Find your song and write down the time of the beginning and ending of the clip you are wanting to make your ringtone. I stuck with about 20 seconds.

2. Get info on the song file and click on Options. Select start and end time and enter the times you wrote down.

3. Right click the file and choose "Create AAC Version." This will create the small clip of your song.

4. Right click again and choose "Show in Finder." Drag the file to the desktop and delete it from your iTunes library.

5. On your desktop, chenge the file extension to .m4r

6. Add the file to iTunes and it will show up as a ringtone. Sync your iPhone and start using it.

It is as simple as that. Hope it is helpful. Nicole is going to be pretty excited when I tell her about this tomorrow!

Summer Plans

Things have been kind of quite around here lately. Blogging has taken on a completely different meaning to me in the past year or so. From the beginning (2004 here and even earlier in a couple of other places) my biggest joy in blogging have been the connections I've made with other youth workers. Now those connections are made through different avenues. Sharing life socially with ministry friends and family all over the world has become an integral part of my life-one I would not want to do without.

However, while the fun links and cool life updates have moved to other platforms, significant value still lies in writing & sharing in more than 140 characters.

So, this summer things will be picking up around here a bit. Some things I'll be writing about-

-For the second summer, I have a summer youth ministry intern working for me. Its been such a great experience and I have some thoughts for other youth pastors looking to hire an intern for the summer.

 -Next Tuesday, I am taking a big group of teenagers all the way across the country to the other Washington for DCLA. Pending a reliable internet connection, I'll be blogging daily about the content, speakers, reflections, and my honest opinions about the event. I am expecting big things and I believe Youth Specialties will deliver. I'll also have plenty of pics & video from my Flip Mino HD and my new iPhone 3GS

-The week after DCLA, I'll be the main speaker at Tall Timber Ranch for the 8th summer in a row. I'm getting so excited for it. I've got one message I wish I could deliver tomorrow. I'll have the Flip & iPhone along as well, so video & pics for sure and maybe even some audio clips of my talks.

-Nicole & I are planning on taking Jaxson on his first road trip later this summer. I'm not taking about a day trip down to Oregon. We're talking Arkansas, with many stops along the way. I'll be taking almost a month off through part of August & September. No doubt, there will be plenty of great stories to tell.

-Besides all of this, I've got a weekend retreat, speaking at several places, (including the National Church Librarian Conference-a little random, but I'm excited for it) and have a stack of books I'm going to get through this summer. This is sure to spark a couple of posts.

If you don't already, you can keep up on our family over at Nicole's blog.

Check in over the summer & see how its all coming along.

Thanks for taking the time-its a honor.

-Justin-

Flight - Sherman Alexie

While I was at Princeton 2 weeks ago, I participated in a seminar titled "Young Adult Fiction for Pastoral Care." I've never really spent much time reading young adult fiction, but after a great discussion of the powerful stories contained in some of these novels, I decided to give it a shot.

I went to the library last weekend and picked up Sherman Alexie's Flight. It's a quick read - took me about 4 hours - but I was struck at the way the story gave language to the struggles of many teenagers.

The book is about a 15 year old kid named Zits. (Not his real name, but how he wants to be known at the beginning of the book.) He is an orphan who really does not trust or care about anyone. Through his journey we see him confront this inability to care, struggle with race and class, repress memories of child abuse, and cope with the faulty system many foster children find themselves caught in.

Through all of this, we see Zits' transition from a deeply troubled teenager to a young man full of hope and redemption.

I should warn you, this is by no means a "christian" novel. It will make you uncomfortable. More importantly though - it will remind you of to whom we are called. Troubled teenagers just like Zits - who still have a chance as long as someone is willing to take a chance on them.

If you check it out, let me know what you think.

Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry: Friday

Had a great day doing all of the touristy things in Philadelphia. I downloaded this audio walking tour from iTunes to my iPod. It was great - I'm sold on walking tours now. 

Its easy to forget how old Philadelphia is. Walking on the cobblestone was pretty rough on my feet. I definitely did not wear the right shoes, they are pretty sore tonight.

In the afternoon, I made the hour drive up to Princeton. I'm attending a smaller weekend retreat led by Mark DeVries before the forum kicks off Monday afternoon. When it comes to youth ministry, Mark DeVries is one of the wisest men around. I could listen to him for hours - which is why I'm excited for tomorrow.

I'm staying on campus tonight and tomorrow night. Looking forward to Wednesday afternoon when I'll get to hang out with the guy I worked with and helped out for 10 weeks in the latest round of the online Youth Ministry Internship Program.

I'm never able to sleep well when traveling. I so thankful the Dr. has given me a steady supply of Ambien. (Seriously, I think I have 12 refills left.) That's what I'm taking now.

More tomorrow & throughout the week from Princeton.

Princeton Forum on Youth Ministry

I'll be heading back east early tomorrow morning to participate in Princeton's Forum on Youth Ministry. I'm also pretty excited to attend a smaller retreat over the weekend led by Mark DeVries. Should be a great time of thought, reflection, and discussion.

The forum begins Monday. Andrew Root, author of the fantastic book Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry, will be lecturing a couple of times. Really excited to hear from him. Also excited to connect with others I've met the past couple of years.

I'll have the Flip Mino HD along taking video and plan to post here as often as I can. Also, follow my traveling adventures on Twitter.com/justinross

If you'll be in Princeton - let me know. I'm traveling solo, so I'd love to meet up with you.