Back To The Land Of Oz & Catching Up On Blogging

 It has been quite a while since I have had the time to blog. And since it has been so long, you will just have to get the shortened version of everything that has been happening. Hopefully life will be less busy so that I can actually write about it.
Audrey and I were fortunate enough to be able to take a vacation to my homeland of Kansas. One of the main purposes was to visit my new niece and nephew Malachi & Isaac. They were born prematurely and they were in the NICU for quite a while before they got to come home. They are miracle babies! And we got to hold them!
First on the agenda was visiting Haviland: my family, Audrey's family and everything in between. I surprised Audrey with a brand new road bike for her birthday since she is going to try her hand at a triathlon this summer. We had a great time in Haviland and then went to Wichita to see the babies and Patrick, Janeen, and Micah. It was so great to see these little babies that we had prayed for for so long. Before heading back to Wyoming we ran a 5k race with Patrick. The Step Up For SIDS 5k. It was a good time. Here's a couple of pictures from the trip.

IWD District Conference & Cookie Chaser 5k

Life has been busy!!!! I am playing catch up on my blog posts, and because it seems like 3 months have been crammed into three weeks there is a lot that I want to post about. In my last "real" post, I was running on fumes... I was heading into Easter Sunday with no gas left in the tank; physically, emotionally, spiritually. I was done. Drained.

But Sunday went really well, and I had a couple of days to try and recuperate before the Intermountain West District Conference on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The IWD Conference was held in Sandy, UT at the Beacon Bible Church this year. They worked with the Hyatt Summerfield Suites and got us some sweet rooms at a great price.

This was the first Conference since the IWD was disenfranchised from the EFCA, so the banner that the IWD now flies under is the Evangelical Fellowship of Free Churches or the EFFC. This is a brand new endeavor, and the basics are for any Church that agrees with the Statement of Faith they can be a part of the EFFC. This bigger gathering of Churches allows for relationships and helping one another out. More can be done with a bigger group, and if you are a small Church you don't feel like you are alone.

Cal Hanson was the speaker for the Conference (The first Evangelical Free Missionary to Japan). The rest of the Conference went well. We also got to do some thrift store shopping and came away with some great deals. Let me tell you, thrift stores in Utah are the way to go to buy any type of clothing. I would have never thought that I could have found good running clothes from a thrift store, but this trip proved me extremely wrong. You just have to know where to look. Everything from Under Armour to Ambercrombie and Fitch to Patagonia to The North Face to REI. It was the motherload of Thrift Store trips!

It has become a habit or tradition or maybe just something that we always do now; is to look for races wherever we travel. So we were in Sandy UT for the Conference and decided to see if there was a race down there. So we found the Cookie Chaser 2k and 5k in Riverton, UT about 10 minutes from our hotel. PERFECT! We signed up and were ready to run on Saturday morning. We would be done with the race just in time to get back to the motel to shower and pack up our stuff and then head to the final meeting of the Conference.

During the night it snowed about 1/2 inch on the Valley floor. But the sun was coming up and no snow had stuck to the roads. Looked like it was going to be a very picturesque morning to run. By the time we ran the sun was up and the temp. was about perfect. They had the option of running both the 2k and the 5k so we opted for both; why not race twice in one day??? The 2k was first with a lot of little kids running it, so I had to dodge all of them at the start line. Audrey and I ran it together taking it fairly easily. It was over pretty quick, in about 8:05 to be exact. Audrey came in 2nd female and I was 3rd male. 

The 5k had more adults and more competition. I felt that I could set a PR for my 5k, so I took off and chased down a few of the leaders. I felt pretty good the entire race, and I was pushing it pretty good. After the halfway turnaround the few of us in the lead were pretty spread out and I guess that I was already in the place that I was going to finish. I ended up finishing 3rd overall with a new PR time of 19:29. Audrey was the first female and won a 75.00 dollar gift certificate to some fancy restaurant in SLC. All in all it ended up being just about perfect and we made it back in time for the end of the conference.

"Love Wins" By Rob Bell

I just finished up reading "Love Wins - A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived" by Rob Bell. At first I wasn't going to read the book just because there has been so much controversy over the ideas that Bell has written about. But then Audrey found it at our local library (which was a complete shocker to me that they would have it), and she checked it out for me.
So I read it. I guess for me, just as any other book that I read, I take the things that I agree with and agree with them, and then the things that I don't agree with I say, "That's not true." And then continue on with life. There are parts of this book that I don't believe are truth, but there are other parts that I totally agree with, and I really like the way that Bell writes about them. He is a good author.
Maybe the real importance of books like these that question things within Christianity is that it causes you to look at your beliefs about the Bible, it makes you search out what is exactly said in the Scriptures, and it makes you stand up for what you believe in.
I'd say go ahead and read the book, because it will at least make you firm in what you do believe.

Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan

Busyness & Stress = Running Killers

I'm not sure how everyone's week has gone, but as for me it has been one of the busiest and mentally exhausting weeks I've ever had. Not to mention emotional pain as well. Let me start off by letting you know that for Pastors the Easter Week is probably the busiest of the year. Sure, Christmas is a busier time than most, but it doesn't hold a candle to the Easter Week.
There are Good Friday Services, Sunrise Services, Resurrection Services; and even others in some cases; Maunday Thursday Services, Communion Services, Palm Sunday... This is just my viewpoint here, from a Pastors perspective: This is too many services. I know that they are all tradition and they all hold their important place in the Easter Week, but for me, by the time Sunday rolls around I feel more burnt out than joyous that Christ rose from the dead. (Which is an amazing event!!!)
So, not only have I been gearing up for all these different things all week, but there was a man that went to the Church that I am a Pastor of who died. I had the mixed emotions and feelings of walking with the family through this tragic event, and at the same time being honored that I would be able to bring the funeral message. All in all this has been a very exhausting week.
And I've still tried to have some semblance of my running schedule, which let me tell you hasn't worked at all. I ran 2 miles on Monday, 1.5 miles on Tuesday (I quit after this far because I could just not get my head in the right place to run), took Wednesday off, ran 2 miles on Thursday, 4 miles on Friday, and 2 miles today. Pretty pathetic compared to my normal weekly running routine.
Which leads me to my title: Busyness and Stress are running killers, not to mention killers of other things in life as well. Killers of sleep, of relationships, of eating healthy, of self care. The list could go on and on and on. I guess I'm just venting out my frustrations with it. In the words of someone wiser than me, "You must ruthlessly eliminate busyness from your life."

Slow Motion Stride @ Boston Marathon

I've been working on my stride lately, and found this video pretty interesting. Watch where their feet land (underneath their center of gravity), how their feet land (on the mid-foot, not heel striking), and how the rest of their body is straight up and down, not hunched over. Pretty good form for distance running.

Garage Sale

Audrey and I decided it was time to get rid of some of our "stuff". And according to Dave Ramsey having an Emergency Fund is the first thing you do to have Financial Peace. So, we teamed up with another family in town to have a garage sale. You would think that April 15th would be late enough in the year that the weather would be fairly decent.
Not herererer in Kemmerererer. The temps weren't too bad, 30's and 40's, but it was the constant 30 mph wind that made things really seem cold. I guess this is normal Spring weather because we had a pretty decent turnout and we did make some money. I am pretty exhausted though. I think the thought after every garage sale is, "Is it really worth it?"
I'm not sure how to answer that question, but we do have "free" money that we wouldn't have otherwise.