Don’t read ahead!!!!

It is out of comical frustration that I write this post!

I was reading My Utmost for His Highest yesterday for April 29th. It is titled “Gracious Uncertainty” and it was very inspirational to me. Tommy and I were going to return some movies so I decided to bring the little book with me and read it to him while he drove to Hastings. I pulled it out, all pumped up to share this incredibly fitting message God had given me because it went so perfectly with his previous post titled “Uncertainty”.

So… here goes… the moment I’ve been waiting for… I’m about to share with Tommy this profound, divinely timed word that God gave to me through today’s devotion that was written so many years ago.

I begin reading and glanced at him all excited about this morsel God has given us for today and with a grin, he tells me that he read that already and that’s where he got the idea for his post in the first place.

I was shocked, horrified and mad! I think I hit him (lightly) and told him, “You can’t read ahead!!! That’s just wrong! The date clearly said April 29th and you used it on April 26th!!!"

Come to find out, he does that often. He says he reads this devotional book in spurts so when he reads it, he reads several days at a time. Oh well… what’s done is done. He read ahead and I think that’s cheating. That’s like cheating God out of what he was going to give you in His timing. That’s like reading the end of the book or jumping to end of the movie. We have to take these things in order and not mess up the intended plan.

I am joking about most of this. If you know me, you know I’m an organizational freak and like to take things in order and Tommy is not. We had a good laugh about this one.

If you have time, go and read My Utmost For His Highest for April 29th. It’s really good for most of our days when we find ourselves in the middle of the uncertainty ahead. I do think it’s okay to go read previous days to catch up on what God wanted us to know but didn’t take the time to read - just don’t read ahead!!

May You...

Over the past four or five years, Tommy and I have gone to a church in Houston in a shady part of town on an occasional Sunday night when we don't have our church Small Group meeting. They have always offered a benediction or what we sometimes call a "may you" at the end of each service. Someone writes it on their own and presents it to everyone usually with their right hand held in the air as a blessing or a prayer for everyone as we leave. It's really cool!

We talked about living in today last night at our Small Group meeting as opposed to living in the past or living for the future. If we live in only the past or for the future we miss so much of today. Here's a "May you" from Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill in Michigan from a video we watched at our Small Group last night. (If this were Tommy, he'd be linking all the stuff that needs to be linked but I'm not Tommy and I guess a much lazier blogger. Oh well... you can "google" it if you want.)


"May you accept the past for what it is. May you celebrate what needs to be celebrated and grieve what needs to be grieved and then, may you receive from God a new spirit, one for here, now, today."


May we start out our week accepting a new spirit and notice all that God has created and entrusted us to care for today.

Uncertainty

I have been learning a lot about how to tolerate mystery and uncertainty lately. Life cannot be controlled or made to happen in any specific way. When it comes at me I can only react appropriately. I am not saying that I should be passive and lack initiative or the ability to be proactive. I am saying that even being proactive does not guarantee any certain outcome. I am being vague but if I listed the situations this applies to it would sound narcissistic and boring. That is why people blog though isn’t it?

Anyway here are some quotes I found this week:

As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task he has placed closest to us, he begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or defender of a certain belief something within us dies. This is not believing God, it is only believing in our belief about him.
- Oswalt Chambers

It is necessary to run risks,
We only properly understand the miracle of life
when we allow the unexpected to happen.
- Paulo Coelho

Update: (Another One)

When the mysteries we believe in
Aren’t dreamed enough to be true
Some side with the leaves
Some side with the seeds
- Wilco, Side With The Seeds

Update 2: (Another one again)

Everybody will ask what became of you
Because your heart was dying fast
And you didn't know what to do
- Death Cab for Cutie, Cath

The Way To Africa

Our daughter, Tori, will be headed to Kenya in July with about 30 other students and adults. They are going with 410 Bridge to help provide people with clean water. They may be doing other projects besides water projects but the goal is to ultimately show Jesus to them in the short time they will be there and meet some basic needs that we take for granted.

Tori began saving her money about two years ago when she felt called to go to Africa before this trip was even planned. She asked for money for her birthdays and Christmas and has saved other money she has earned as well. About a year after she began saving, this trip to Kenya began to come together. The cost would be around $3000 and then some extra for the other things she’ll need.

One of the coolest things out of all of this is the generosity of people we know. Several generous people have given her money to help her go on this trip. Other things have been very confirming like gifts that she has received that she planned to spend her own money on and didn’t have to so that money could go towards her trip. Thanks to all of you for believing in her and trusting that your resources will not be wasted.

This Sunday, our Student Ministry is hosting a silent auction for 2008 summer foreign mission trips. The money raised will be divided between the students going on the Africa trip and another trip to Bolivia. There are lots of cool items and services being donated to the auction -just another example of generosity. We made a marbles game board with an African theme. I think it turned out pretty cool! We love this game and love making them to share!

Tori’s way to Africa has been undeniably, divinely paved, and for now, the road is crystal clear. I’m fairly positive that this trip and the people of Kenya will change her forever. Pray for this trip and also for the people of Kenya that Tori will be with - that they would be forever changed as well.

Prom 2008

Here are just a few of Tori & Peter's Prom pics. I took about 150, Jenny took probably that same amount. I weeded mine down to about half and I'm showing you only these. If you want to see more, you'll just have to ask... :)

The guy with Tori is Peter, her boyfriend. The girl with Tori is Katie, one of her close friends. The couple with Tori are her mom and dad, believe it or not, they look look sooo young!!! :) Her hair was gorgeous, don't ya' think?

I must say, we have a beautiful daughter - inside & out!!! We have two beautiful daughters but this post is all about Tori. Sorry, Anna. Your prom time will be here sooner than we think!

Oh, Tori & I and Debbie & Micaela (Peter's mom and sis) made their flowers. I think we did pretty good!

When Tori took her hair down, there were 60 bobby pins!!!

All this smiling hurts!

Pictures As Promised

Here are the photos and a couple of short video clips that I said I'd put up in my last post. We're getting the windows tinted on the car tomorrow so I'll take some pics and put those up later. Jakeb wanted us to put flames on the car too but I think we'll pass on that this time. Enjoy the pictures. Tori's Prom is this weekend so those pictures will be coming soon.

Gator Gallop at Brazosport College

The Littler Kids - too cute!

Anna is in the middle getting ready to take off!

Off to the races!! Look at the focus on some of these kiddos.

Anna coming in for the finish so fast she's a blur!

A.P. Beutel Annual Bluebonnet Festival Fundraiser

Hair painting...

Hair painting with a friend.

This is the first portion of the 3rd grade performance.

This is the finale part of the same performance.

How much can we fit in 4 days?

I think we made the most of our time over the last four days. It's long but here’s the rundown:

Friday – car shopped all day – literally! (That’s for you, Phillip) We began at 8:00am, drove to Houston and ALL OVER Houston and came home at 10:30pm with a ’07 Toyota Camry with just under 12K miles. White and a little sporty. I think we’ll enjoy it. I know we’ll enjoy the better gas mileage! We managed to squeeze in an excellent lunch at a Persian café close to Harwin area. We will definitely go back there. And we ate Vietnamese food for dinner. It was a very long day but Tommy and I enjoyed the day together. We got home around 10:30 and Tommy and Jakeb took off almost immediately for Houston to sleep in a hotel for a few hours before running their race in Huntsville. You can read about it on Tommy’s running blog and Jakeb’s post below. All in all, we figure car shopping went much quicker than furniture shopping. It took us about 3 months and many trips to Houston to find living room furniture. How odd is that???

Saturday – got Anna up at 6:30am and got her ready for the Gator Gallop Kids Run. She did good and we had fun. Someone had given us tickets for a fundraiser pancake breakfast so we went and got three to go plates. Anna’s school was having their annual Bluebonnet Festival with games, rides, food, etc. so we spent several hours there. Brought home some tattoos and a lemon cake from the cakewalk. Oh And a bear from the animal walk. Tommy and Jakeb got home around 1:00 and at around 2:00 we were off to Houston again to finish up car stuff that we couldn’t take care of Friday night because everything was closed and the lady helping us was completely incompetent! That’s a whole other story but suffice it to say that when I came back from getting dinner, the employee was sitting to the side and Tommy was typing all of the information in their computer! It was ridiculous and funny! We at Japanese food in Pearland and then went and spent almost as much on ice cream at Marble Slab as we did on dinner. Oh well… we had a good time and Anna, Jakeb and I all tried sushi! I’m not sure we’re fans of sushi but Anna is sold on Japanese food. She loved the other stuff we got.

Sunday – Tommy filled in for a good pastor friend of ours in Tomball. Danny is in Rwanda on a mission trip. So, yet another trip to Houston. Good thing we got a car with good gas mileage! We had a good time with friends and then got to eat at Chipotle for lunch. Another of our favorites! We came home and got to rest a little and then we had our weekly Small Group meeting. That’s always a highlight for us cause we get to spend time with friends, dig into and question God’s word together and we usually laugh a lot!

Monday – We all went to the courthouse at 9am to witness the legal adoption proceedings of some good friends. This was the best thing of all four days as far as I’m concerned! It was a huge check mark off of a list of things to pray about. Not that we'll stop praying for them, we just don't have to pray the way we've been praying. We’ve been on this journey with Phillip and Jenny (Jenny's blog) for several years now and it was just such a blessing to be a part of seeing it all become final and officially being able to welcome Mikey to the family. The kids went to school, Tommy went to work and I went and ran errands all day and got a lot accomplished and a lot of much more meaningless things checked off of my list. We began painting a really cool marbles board for a silent auction at church. The auction is to raise money for the students that are going on the Kenya mission trip in July. It has an African theme to it. I’ll put a picture of it up when we’re done with it.

It was a great weekend with friends, great food, and family fun. I’ve got some pictures from the weekend that I’ll put up soon. Just don’t have the time right now. Time to go to work and get cram two days of work into one since I didn't go in yesterday. Enjoy your day!

If you came up to me and asked if I had a favorite race I would say Hog's Hunt. Me and dad ran the 25k yesterday and through many self-malfunctions at around mile 3 to mile 6 or so (for which some of you may not want to know), we finished in an amazing time of 2:30:50 which we were both proud of.

Well we started the race at a reasonable pace and probably kept up with one group from about mile 5. We eventually passed them at the end. Once the finish line was in sight we heard someone say," Hey 226( my #), beat 227( dad's #)." So there we went off to the races and I must say I beat dad by a long shot.... of maybe 2 or 3 inches. And that's all I wanted to say. He beat me in Bayou City and I beat him in Hog's Hunt. But none the less he was the one who got me up all these mornings to train and it was a Christmas present from him to run this race, so winning or losing wasn't really what it was about.

With that said, we went to Pei Wei and ate China.... literally. Then was the traditional Starbucks and then home.

Once we got home we immediately left for Houston again where which we ate Japanese food and I just might let someone else blog about that little experience.

Funny Bella Movie

Haven't tried a video before but here goes... Bella loves playing in the water and we love watching her. She is one crazy dog!

Funny Dogs!!

Here is a picture story for you. I think you can figure it out. Feel free to make up your own captions. Bella is the "white" dog and Carrot is the other one.

Huntsville State Park

Huntsville State Park is one of my favorite places on the earth.

When I was a kid I was a part of a church group kind of like Boy Scouts and we used to go camping there. As soon as the van came to a stop at our camping spot we would bail out and start setting up tents under the tall pine trees. I remember catching fish from Lake Raven. If I think about it hard enough I can almost taste the over-seasoned greasy hamburgers we cooked over an open flame. We hiked the trails and killed water moccasins which I am sure we would have gotten kicked out of the park for. And we swam at the swim beach that is mostly unchanged some 25 to 30 years later.

Andrea and I took our first camping trip alone as a married couple with a new child to Huntsville State Park. We packed a tent, a play pen, a baby and some food in our Buick Regal and roughed it for a night. It was the first of many camping trips we would take with our kids.

The five of us in the Stunz family took some good friends from another country camping for the first time at Huntsville State Park. He was from Scotland, she was from England and they had two girls. His dad was visiting from Scotland and it was a great trip where we mostly swam and played horse shoes.

Jakeb and I went to Huntsville State Park a couple of summers ago for what would become an annual tradition of spending a couple of days alone as a dad and son. We hiked, swam, ate camp food and talked about guy stuff while the girls stayed at home.

I ran my first race longer than a marathon last year at Huntsville State Park. I ran the Sunmart 50k in a little under 6 hours.

This weekend Jakeb and I are going to Huntsville State Park to run Hog’s Hunt 25k. The plan is to make another good memory in a pretty cool place.

Nobody Didit Stunz - new family member

Since this is the Stunz Family Blog, I thought it fitting that this be the place where we officially induct “Nobody Didit Stunz” into our family.

I think every family probably has a "Nobody Didit". You know who I’m talking about, right?

Mom: “Who did this?”

Kids: “Nobody!”

“Nobody” seems to do “everything” around here so it’s only proper that “Nobody” get the credit for doing “nothing”!!!

I would also like to take this opportunity to instruct “Nobody” as to how actually doing something (see picture) should work. When the bag is full and the lid can still be removed without plastic bottles and jugs flying everywhere, then:

Step 1 – Remove the lid
Step 2 – Take the full bag out
Step 3 – Put a new bag in (notice there are extras right beside the can!)
Step 4 – Replace the lid
Step 5 – Repeat when the bag is full but not overflowing into the rest of the house!

"Nobody" is one family member that I would actually enjoy booting out the door one day. Maybe “Nobody” will leave and will be replaced with “Somebody” who actually did it! :)