How I got to hang out with some fire fighters!!!

For the past week I've been at two different youth conferences. Both conferences were incredible events and I absolutely loved each event. Sadly after such an event is a travel day that usually takes most of your day. Such was my day on Thursday.

Thursday morning I woke up early and started my trip back to Louisiana from South Carolina (754 miles). The trip was a long trip filled with many stops due to Emily needing to stretch since she's prego. At about 7:15 pm Em and I stopped roughly 30 minutes from our house to fill up the suv. This is where things get interesting...

As we arrived at the gas station Em and I thought we'd grab a snack from inside. So at this point I began to set the gas to pump while I was inside shopping. Most of us do this. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except somehow the gas release got stuck and after the gas tank was full the pump never shut off. Gas was pouring all over the place. There was a huge puddle of gas under my car and I had to run through it to shut off the pump. (Where are those emergency shut off buttons when you need one?)

At this point the gas station attendant saw what was happening and began to call the fire department. 5 minutes later 2 fire trucks, 2 volunteer trucks and an ambulance was in the gas station parking lot. Do you know how awkward I felt? And to make things worse my wife, the one who promised me she would be my support over 5 years ago on our wedding day, was laughing her head off taking pictures with her camera phone to send to her parents.

Below is one of those pictures. Hope you enjoy!

Kids say the cutest things...

Kids say the cutest things:

This weekend talking with family Emily and I discovered that our 4 year old nephew said something really cute.  While playing he put a pot on his head and called himself a pot-head, lol.  Of course he doesn't have any idea what that means to us as adults but children are so cute when they say such innocent things.  

The thought occurred to me that you all probably have some pretty cute stories as well.  I'm interested in hearing them.  Let em rip!  

Brian

Confusion...

Have you ever had those times in life when you were confused?  I've recently had a moment like that.  I didn't know what I should do.  I've learned that if you wait long enough and pray hard enough God provides you with the best option yet.  Life has a way of just throwing things at you that you could never come to expect.  But God always has an answer.  The question is are we listening?  

Late Night

Last night was a late night for the Downing family.  About 1:15 this morning our house alarm went off.  I had the decision of having to have the police come or not.  That's a tough decisions.  The alarm company said that when it gets cold the window sensors tend to set off false alarms.  I decided to not have them send the police.  Fortunately I was still awake when the alarm sounded.  I knew what zone in our house was tripped and could tell that more than likely no one was trying to break in. Needless to say that feeling is hard to let go of.  I didn't go to sleep until after 3:30 this morning.  I am so tired right now.  I think I'm going to take me an afternoon siesta.  

a weekend summary

This weekend was a great weekend.  It all started Friday.  Can you believe that? Friday night Em and I went to the Louisiana State Fair.  As you can imagine there were a lot of weird things at the fair.  The one that caught my attention the most were 4 high school boys who were strutting their stuff.  The only problem is that its hard to look "hot" when all 4 friends are carrying stuffed animals around the fair with no women along side of them.  I'm sure they thought they looked cool knocking milk bottles over with a baseball, making a basket or tossing a pingpong in a fish bowl.  I wonder if they thought about what it looked like afterwards?  Actually I know the answer to that question but I wonder how long it took them to figure out.  However a highlight came out of the state fair.  Fried snickers bars are really good.  If you have the chance to try one do it!  

Saturday morning I woke up and my wife and I went to Robert Church of God for their fall festival.  It was so cool to see around 50 volunteers helping face paint, entertain, ride horses, give hay rides, watch inflatables and serve food.  All of this was free too!  What a caring church!  I think my favorite part was watching one of the volunteers accidentally lift up a flap to one of the inflatables and let go of it only for that flap to fling back and knock this little kid down.  The kid laughed so hard.  You could tell the kid wanted the worker to do it again.  He just stood there and waited.  Very cute and funny.

Later that evening we had a couple of students from a local church in Baton Rouge come over.  We watched some football and played nintendo wii.  They are some cool peeps!

Sunday I drove over 2 hours to Lake Charles Louisiana to preach at a youth service.  I spoke on "A shot at love" playing off of mtv's television hit "a shot at love".  Talking about the need to understand what true love really looked like I gave them examples of what love "isn't".

Love isn't about...

I ntentions

S elf

N atural Feelings

T rends

Through the years I've seen and come up with a few illustrations to prove my points.  One of my illustrations was to pull out some gaff tape.  Gaff tape has more stick than duck tape.  I showed the students how every time they give themselves to another person in a way that God did not intend that they lose what God intended for them to have with their spouse.  So I found the hairiest guy and busted out the tape and stuck it on his arm.  Yanked it off and stuck it on again.  After a little while of doing this the pain wasn't as bad because it lost its stickiness.  Then I showed the tape to the students and they saw all the hair on the tape.  I took the time to share with them how if I were to take that tape and stick it on someone else that they would also have to live up to the person who had already visited that tape before them.  The point was received very well!  After that I also took two bottles of water and asked one of the students which one she would rather drink from.  She chose one bottle.  I then opened that one and my wife and I drank out of it.  I asked her the question again and this time she chose the other bottle of water.  I asked her why?  She got it quickly and so did the students.  The other bottle was pure and didn't have any germs on it.  I explained that's how marriages work.  You want the pure thing because you know where it came from and you know its safe.  

Overall we had a great weekend.  I'm a little tired now but I loved every moment of it.  Probably the highlight of the entire weekend was feeling my baby girl kick my hand though. That is a special feeling!  Lots of fun!!!

Thinking versus Doing

Recently I've been reading a book that I highly recommend.  The book is called "Wild Goose Chase" by Mark Batterson.  Yesterday I read a section that totally drilled me.  Mark talked about how many times we are lazy in our actions.  We pray and ask God to help us but never doing anything ourselves.  He says that "signs follow faith".  To many times I have found myself thinking of great ideas but never acting on them.  Mark reminded me that God's Word tells us that God isn't going to say... well said my good and faithful servant or well thought my good and faithful servant.  God is going to one day say..."Well DONE my good and faithful servant".  

To many times I find myself waiting on God to move when He is really waiting on me to move.  Don't get me wrong there are times when we need to wait on God but I think if we're honest with ourselves most of the time that is just an excuse.  

Mark also mentions that when we begin to make excuses like this we are irresponsibly responsible.  We are being irresponsible with the responsibility God has given us.  We should rather be responsibly irresponsible.  Meaning that we start to put God's passions in front of our own and by faith step out.  I.E.  Noah left his job to build an ark.  David left his sheep to fight Goliath.  Moses left his comfortable home to lead a complaining group of people.  

I've been challenged to look for areas of my life that I just need to step out and act.  What are some areas you need to step out and act on?

Super Funny!

Today I was driving to Office Depot when I saw something strange in the middle of the 6 lane road.  It was a break pad & rotor.  As you know you have to have those two item on your car to stop the car.  I didn't make it to much further past the break pad and rotor before I had to turn but I did notice that traffic ahead of me was stopped and not moving.  I sure hope those folks had insurance, lol.  

I hate to laugh at someone else expense but how bad must someone's brakes sound before they just fall off?