The Cell Phone Story…
So I thought I would tell you the story of my cell phone. A few weeks ago, my cell phone and I went on a trip to Marion, KS. My grandparents own cabins and a boat up there and as a Senior Class Event we took as many people as we could. The weekend was amazing. Relaxation, boating, games, junk food, movies, hide and seek in the dark…basically everything you would want in a good college weekend. Backing up to the first night of our weekend, we ended up watching this worthless movie that a friend of mine told me was good. If you have the chance to watch ‘the Ex’ with Zach Braff and Jason Bateman, stick your head in the toilet and save yourself the trouble. Anyway it was around 3am when the movie ended and Jacob Starkey and I started getting ready for bed. Originally I had plans to put the boat in the water in the morning and then head off to play golf. But I wasn’t really tired so I asked Jacob if he would help me put the boat in the water that night. So we drive the boat down to the ramp and get the boat into position for backing into the water. I slowly take the boat back (an act I’ve done hundreds of times) and then got out of my truck. At this point I remembered that I had unhooked the boat from the trailer too early and my boat was floating away with no one in it. So I run into the water with my clothes on and swim a few feet till I get to the boat. This is where my cell phone comes into the story.
You see, my cell phone isn’t a great swimmer. In fact, it only took about 10 seconds of actual swimming in order for him to drown. I tried to resuscitate him over the weekend, but I would soon have to send him away for good. So sad.
But I got a new phone. This Samsung piece of junk cost me a $160 bucks. But I lived with Samsung for about a week when my mother told me that I should have only paid $100 in order to replace my original phone (which was much much nicer). So I took it back to the store again and got a replacement. After another week of this phone it started to fail me. So once again I took it back to the store in order to get it replaced. This time it wasn’t supposed to cost any money. But in the week that I had this phone, the all-knowing ‘water sticker’ (emphasis on the sarcasm there) had fallen off! I suspect that it was never there to begin with, but either way I might be forced to pay ANOTHER $100 bucks. I wont know that for a few more days.
Moral of the story: teach your cell phones to swim.
And You Are?...
I realized that if you (the reader) want to know what life is like for an MCC student, you should probably know who the student is.
 Basically there are a few levels of involvement that you can have. You can simply read this blog or move it a step further and visit my facebook page. Beyond that you could send an email, text message, phone call, or visit. If you really want to get to know me though, go on a road trip with me. Most likely, if you ask me to go I will say yes. I love life on the road and have a little bit of experience traveling. I spent a semester fumbling my way through Europe, spent a summer living out of a van traveling the United States. This semester I have plans to take 3 road trips in 5 weeks. I have already traveled to Texas and back to visit my friends who went to Europe with me. Next weekend I’m heading to Florida to watch the MCC boys soccer team win nationals (woot, woot).  And the weekend after that I’m headed to Cincinnati for the National Missionary Convention. I’ve been called a nomad and a hippie but I take neither of them as insults.
Another area of my life that I will probably share about is being a chaplain intern at Mercy Regional Hospital here in Manhattan. My major professor here at MCC, Greg Delort, said that you can learn more about ministry in 1 month at a hospital than 4 years at a Bible College. And when it comes to doing actual ministry, he’s right.
My other activities include being a Senior Class Representative, a full-time student, and a part time employee at Famous Dave’s Barbeque. I played basketball for 3 years here at the college, but decided to switch to baseball for my final year of college.
So if I did a list of priorities it would REALISTICALLY look like this: 1. Friends, 2. Hospital, 3. Traveling, 4. Being Mentored (Bible Study led by Kevin Ingram and Greg Delort), 5. Famous Dave’s. Baseball, movies, games, and reading would come next. School would wrap up the list around 23 or so. Don’t tell my parents…whoops.
That’s the basics of me, but if you really do want to know more, I wasn’t kidding about the emails, text messages, and facebook notes.
Memory Lane…
Going through some of my old stuff, I discovered a tape recorder. This cheap little thing is the type of recorders that reporters and doctors use to record their thoughts. I bought it my sophomore year of college in order to keep an audio journal. At the time I was doing a lot of traveling thought it would be a nice thing to have in my truck when going long distances. You see I love to write, absolutely love it. It’s almost therapeutic for me. And journaling my thoughts is kind of the same thing.
After finding this recorder I started listening to some of my old journals. Literally I spent hours just listening to myself talk about what my life was like 2 years ago. I could close my eyes and remember exactly what I was doing when I recorded them. I felt so much tranquility escaping into my past. I remembered having “Karma” by Alicia Keys playing on the radio, the smell of my car after it being pranked, freezing outside talking on the  phone till 2am, the confusion of trying to understand Dr. Delort’s sense of humor, the exciting anticipation of my semester in Europe ahead of me, and the responsibilities of being an RA in the dorms. For those short hours, I WAS a sophomore again. Here are a few pictures of that time:
Later on in the week I was looking at MCC online. It occurred to me I started up an email account with MCC right when I started facebook. I had not checked it in 2 years. So I took a looksee. 1,967 Unread Messages. Seriously. 95% of them were facebook notifications over the years, but a few of them were real messages. One of which was an encouragement email from my sister when I was going through a really difficult time. It was like reading a holy artifact. It was like finding treasure. 
I guess the main point of my message here is that the past can be good. Even all the crap, even all the drama, even all the difficulties. My journey has lead me to here, and I don’t regret any of it.
Figuring out Family...
It's hard to explain family. If there is anything I learned from Delort's classes it's that family is NOT just mom/dad/siblings. Family is a little more abstract than that. I think I figured out some of the confusion at Family Weekend.
Saturday afternoon I came home from our baseball game to find 6 families gathered in our house. And yes, I said 6 families. (Hannagans, Browns, Brabecs, Crandalls, Troutts, and Tolls) Every spot in our living room was taken, people were standing in the kitchen talking, all the seats on the porch outside were filled, and there were at least 8 kids playing football out back. This pure insanity. It was like the scene in Elizabethtown when Orlando Bloom's character goes to the South for the first time. I mean this was pure madness. People were laughing, some kids were arguing in the corner, a mom was yelling at her kids, the men were surrounding the grill, everyone is yelling at television for USC to fumble the ball, a couple is sneaking off to  make out in the back room, and everyone wants to know when dinner will be ready. There were at least 2 dogs running around barking at nothing, and the noise level was off the charts.
I had to stop myself in the middle of the madness to smile. It's really hard for me to explain the serenity I felt at that moment. In fact, I turned to a few of the people and commented on the crazy beauty of our house.
So thank you: Tolls, Troutts, Hannagans, Crandalls, Browns, and Brabecs. |
