Amber’s World Race.

I know a lot of you have supported me in the past, encouraged me, and even financed some of my crazy endeavors. Along the way we’ve gotten to see a lot of cool things happening, experience need and generosity. You all have been encouraging to me, supportive to me and even offered to partner with me in my future. I thank you for that.

But right now I am telling you all this not for me but for someone else. I have to ask this first. Have you ever believed in someone so much you see them for where they are going to be rather than where they are right now? You see their life, know their heart, and because of that you believe in them wholeheartedly before they even start doing what you know they can. Part of you is envious of them in the best kind of way because you are excited and nervous and in anticipation of their next move. I have a friend like that. Her name is Amber. This summer Amber is going to start out on a trip where she will go to 11 countries in 11 months. The trip is called the World Race and the point of the trip is to go around the world serving “the least of these” while among the “real and raw” community each country visited has to offer.

I am telling you this because Amber has been a friend of mine through my adventures, believed in me, and I can’t wait for her to go on this trip. I have fundraised before and it can be the most frustrating thing. Right now I am asking you to join with me to support Amber through our prayer, work and money. I really want this part to be clear; I make this invitation standing up, not ashamed or bowing down or sugar coated, because I really believe in what Amber is about. I really believe she has something good going, something to offer, and something exciting for us to join in on. This week Amber needs to meet her first deadline of a little over $3,000. I am already giving to her this week but overall the trip costs right around $16,000 which sounds like a lot but I believe is a small price to pay for what she’ll do, learn, who she’ll affect, and where this will take her in the long run. Whether it’s a one time deal or you want to support her for the long run with me I know as we invest our resources in this we will be happy with the outcome. This is a chance to think and live beyond yourself. I am part of this great adventure.

Join me.

Here’s a little more info on the trip. Amber’s travels will take her to Romania, Ukraine, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia. Here’s what that looks like…

Romania: Amber will spend time with gypsies who have been forgotten by society.

Ukraine: She will be with orphans and be involved in a society where human trafficking is an issue.

Ireland: Bring hope to a culture where alcoholism and suicide rates are high.

India: Focus on the poverty, human trafficking, forced prostitution, and religious persecution.

Sri Lanka: Experience life in the worlds third most religious country where most know works-based customs where you earn salvation.

Kenya: Orphan care and community development.

Uganda: Deal with the aftermath of The Lord’s Resistance Army who forced children to be soldiers.

Rwanda: Be in a country where genocide occurred 16 years ago (killing 800,000 people in three months) and join the fight against HIV/AIDS to help a still hurting and healing country.

Thailand: 2 million people here are being forced into prostitution, one of the most popular places for sex tourism, 600,000 people live with HIV/AIDS. Here Amber will be friends with prostitutes and care for orphans.

Cambodia: “1.5 million people here died 30 years ago at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime”. It is another country struggling with human trafficking.

Malaysia: Develop hope to a people who understand religion to be a matter of works and self discipline.

1 shirt, 1 child, 1 month

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I heard this girl get up and talk about the idea she had, then I watched her video, looked at the Facebook page and finally read the blog where she explains the idea like this…

“My name is Emma Dryden and I am a sophomore at Zeeland East. My family recently adopted two boys from Ghana, Africa. I was given the opportunity to go and bring them home. While I was in Ghana I was struck by the extreme hunger in children. It’s my dream and goal to help feed starving kids in Africa. This year I would like to give students at East and West the opportunity to give to children in need. By purchasing a t-shirt for $45 you can feed a hungry orphan for one month.”

 

So basically she came up with the idea to take something she normally has (dressing up for a dance) and giving it up so kids can have food. I love it because it’s simple. She saw a problem and created a solution.

Instead of wearing her dress to her high schools dance she made some t-shirts with different designs to wear and invited her classmates to do the same. Her idea was to give up the cost of the dress and instead take the money and give it to children in need. The t-shirt cost $45 which, cost to make the shirt included, is enough to feed a kid in Africa for a month (hence 1shirt1child1month). I love the idea but also like that the t-shirts look good so they can be worn more than once which will keep spreading awareness towards Emma’s cause.

What is especially cool is that Emma is trying to spread the word, get this into other schools, and invite others in on her idea. If what she’s done inspires you be sure to share it with your high school, teachers, YL leaders and anyone who might be interested in this!

For more information or to order a shirt (you don’t have to be in high school or have a dance to go to in order to buy a shirt or give to the cause) visit their Facebook page or email 1shirt1child1month@gmail.com

It’s hard to figure out what is good about life. Easier though is to explain the bad.

Let me tell you about a bad time.

My junior in college I was going through a specifically bad time which came, as bad times often do, after a specifically good time. The first semester of school was great right up until the end. I was living in my fraternities cottage, my roommate was becoming my best friend, I was healthy and in the best shape of my life, school was going great, and I had been hanging out with this really great girl who lived next door.

Cue bad time.

2 months later almost everything was going in a completely reverse direction. I still lived in the cottage and my roommate, thank God for him, was still my best friend but everything else was changing fast, like roller-coaster in free-fall fast. My passion for my studies slipped away without reason and along with the passion the good grades which had always made me feel good left too. The girl and I stopped hanging out which I, admittedly, was very dramatic about it all. To my defense it was tough because it had just been good and then it was done. I was sad and alone and the type of insecure most people are at 20 years old. I prided myself on resiliency but more so had good friends who told me everything would be ok enough to keep me from thinking the world might as well just end.

So I trucked on figuring it would be ok but for the next month I felt permanently tired and sick. I attributed it to the general college level lack of sleep and stress of the girl and the grades. My game plan was to keep busy with everything intending for it all to subside (secretly hoping sooner than later). Eventually I became too tired to look presentable enough to not hear “you should go to the doctor” a few times a day. Finally I went after losing the better part of twenty pounds realizing no amount of optimism allows you to claim health while looking skeletal and pale.

First, ironically, I learned I had mono. Shortly after another follow up visit made the doctor concerned about something else. This lead to a specialist who became concerned which lead to more tests and appointments. Apparently some of the symptoms I was having pointed towards the possibility of cancer. After some examinations and test work done I had to wait for the results. In this time I walked myself through a thousand thoughts and a thousand scenarios. Really I prepared for the worst, half expecting it to happen, so if the worst came true I’d be ready. Thankfully the test results came back negative but I still had to focus on putting weight back on, getting my mind right towards school and building my confidence of my personality and health and life back up after I had let it all be reduced to a small pile of mush.

It’s easy to look back at those times and point to things, explain what was bad, and be glad to have made it through. It’s like describing a storm which uproots trees and floods your house or the doctors mouth whenever the word “cancer” comes out of it. Damage in these places is clear and able to be pointed to without doubt.

Then there is the opposite, the good, which is much harder to describe unless you get married or have a great job or win a million dollars… or unless you are trying to describe any amount of tiny good happening to another person, how they have health and if not health then friends or a home and food.

But personally it’s much harder. This a way of living, explaining yourself in it, is much more like a telling how a sunset over Lake Michigan is good. How it works with colors twisting together, layering up on each other, how the water mirrors a more golden version of the sun on the water before a slice of tangerine sky slips down to let sky to turn shades of purple then blue then black. Then out of no where stars come and you wish you could explain the one or two moments where, for a split second, it was all just perfect.

Likewise when anyone asks about what you’ve learned in a certain month or year or two years or two and a half it’s often like reaching for those split seconds and trying to explain them. It’s easy to get out that your roof ripped off, or your sick but the problem is, among experiences of sunsets and sunrises and people and places, there are thousands of split seconds of perfection to reach at, in wonder, to try and explain and love and share.

I believe I’ve been lucky enough to have more than my fair share of these near perfect moments and places and people who I want to try bring about more often. Times where life gives into my deepest prayers, the fight and drive I’ve hoped for works out for the good I imagined might come of it, and even more so times where life comes apart at the seams and falls down in one big impossibly messy heap to be picked up perfectly. I’ve learned I want this, all this, even when it feels too hard for me to bear all at once.

So if you ask me, the good I’ve had and what I’ve learned, I’d say that sometimes the bottom of life seems to fall out. All is not ok and it sucks, terribly, but seldom irreversibly. And that’s what I like best I believe life is possible. There is this converging of it all where sunsets are that much better and more appreciated. There are people to be experienced as good. Not just friends but homeless people and drug dealers and unreasonable customers at work who can be seen and treated as good. There are moments where it all just works together, it clicks, and good is good is good and that’s all there is to it.

I’ve yet to describe it well but I think it is something made of personal, ideological, community wanting, sensation based experiences which promise the things I believe possible are in fact true. It’s equal parts safety and freefall made up of bad doctors visits and great sunsets, meals with friends and homeless people and homeless friends and anyone in-between. It’s something I’d swear on, promise on, but can do nothing more than keep living and showing to really explain.

But I’ve learned this good and promise of change is out there. Life is really bad which far too many people know but it is good as well which is, unfortunately, far from what many people know.

On Telling:”What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are” – C.S. Lewis

“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are”

I have not always, in one way or another, wanted to be the type of person who talks a lot. Talking is, essentially, the furthest thing away from experiencing anything as you can get (next to sitting in silence). It’s a good thing to do sometimes because it may be the closest thing we can get to an experience or feeling at any certain time but still, at it’s best, I feel it usually does a poor job as to what it’s intended for. Say you want to describe something about a friend; a good memory with the best one you’ve ever had or how you felt when you lost a good one last year, or the memory about a time riding a bike off into a sunset on the foreign back, unknown, darkening roads of Minnesota with 80 miles till your next known destination. These moments mean a lot to me and never thinking of myself as much of a talker it’s easy for me to shy away from telling much, excuse myself or flatly say I can’t do something justice, letting go of any attempt of getting closer than silence to an experience. Questions are good, curious, hopefully unassuming inquiries about some subject or experience or opinion. Good questions are not hard to come by but good answers, however, are a much more delicate thing. Good answers require the answerer to be good at telling. Telling is a skill I often feel I lack. For my whole life, literally, I’ve not wanted to be the type of person who talks a lot for the sake of talking, but I do grow and learn and share and become a version of myself which is comfortable with doing all those things, because that’s how I think things might get better. By having some vision and tact, keeping replies concise but better than short one word replies of “good” or “fine” when asked a good question about how something was. Because telling is much more than all that.

And through all this telling, here I am. My life has been an interesting bit for a while and I’ve been waiting for the time, the person, or the event in my life where I can say things right. Not for my sake or your sake but for our sake is why we should tell and ask, not so we should talk, as to think and spark interest and eventually do and experience.

I love movies about this, big picture by smaller story, where you learn something about a person and what they think. Movies like Rudy where you learn what he thinks of football and Notre Dame and chasing dreams. At the end you understand Rudy, learn from him, want to be more like him or at least approach things in your own life in the same way he approached things. It reframes things is all and I like that. One of my biggest regrets so far in life is when talking to people, even without meaning to, I regularly muff up opportunities to tell someone what I know or mean or wish they would know. Reframing things isn’t my strong point. I want to get better at this.

So I want to practice it. I’ve been writing letters the past couple of weeks, just trying to express in written word to people how life is going, ask them about theirs, while keeping things clear and concise. It’s these impromptu things I am bad at. I’m unprepared mostly and struggle to get the spoken word out, which I’m tired of. So I force myself to sit down and think of things and write to someone, slowly with a pen and paper, letting myself tell without worrying of getting it right instantly or wondering if they’ll like my letter or if I’ll like it. I just tell. So far it’s been good and I want to keep it up.

Here too, I want to keep it up, it would be good to try and explain and tell things more, which might take some time, but hopefully it’ll be good. So if you have a question you’ve wondered just let me know.

In the mean time I’m going to try and tackle the questions which come up over and over again. The first is “So what did you learn about being homeless in Denver”. I’ve quite possibly done the worst job in telling about that in some ways, my answer is always different, so I feel like I’ve let a good bunch of people down when I’ve not focused and just become stressed and given some dumpy answer. If you’ve felt like this about me, I’m sorry. I promise to try and work on it.

The other thing I’d like to think about also comes up a lot, usually from good people, and I hope I’ve done a better job with this (really I’ve tried here) because it actually matters. My cousin called me the other week asking me the question. She asked what I thought she should do for a homeless woman who asked her for help, the next week another friend asked me the same thing, and I’ve been to Grand Rapids three times in the past couple weeks and each time I’ve been approached and asked for money or dinner or coffee (I seriously think they have it out to make me completely broke) which has all caused me to ask myself about it all. So I want to try telling what I think about those things and responding better than I have.

All in all I have to think about where I am, who I am, then also what I want to tell. I just finished “The Magicians Nephew” by C.S. Lewis today. Great book really. In it there was a thing going on which one character, Digory, saw one way while his uncle saw something completely different. Lewis wrote of the two and how differently they responded “What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are”

I just think I could do a better job of explaining where I’m standing, what sort of person I want to be, and maybe by practicing it a little good might be had.

Hopefully not just for you, or for me, but for us.

2012 in review

2012 included time in Michigan, Colorado, Florida, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota doing things like snowboarding in the Rockies, surfing on the Atlantic Ocean, coaching a talented group of lacrosse players, white water rafting the #1 day trip in the world, Young Life, raising $4,000 for kids to go to summer camp by biking 785 miles, working with homeless men and then kindergarteners, watching my brother start medical school, officiating my first wedding and then my second, and just going through life. I’m thankful for two friends whose journey on earth finished this year. Mark, Vis Veres, thanks for the reminder to keep chasing dreams, living crazy and going non-stop with effort. Luke, bear a smile even when it’s forced, thanks for teaching me how to be thankful in a fast world and remembering who to know best, trust, and be thankful towards. A little of all I do has carried a bit of you guys in it.
So here’s to not slowing down in 2013.

My Top Ten of 2012: Call Me Uncle Travis in 2013

First I’d like to say some honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the top 10. There was the day the world didn’t end, but who really expected that to happen, the day congress declared pizza a vegetable which made my diet considerably more healthy, and the day I got hit by a car on my bike just to bounce off the car and on the cement a few times unharmed (not really a great day until considering I was completely fine). All in all it was a great year and a top 20 would have been easy but I didn’t have time for it.

So after everything happening this year here we are at #1. To me this was unexpected but always wanted and took the top spot as soon as I heard the news.

Sometime around June of 2013 I am going to be…….. AN UNCLE!!!

Excuse me to take a few moments of excitement here but it’s the most amazing, potential packed, exciting, loving, scary, nerve racking, thought provoking and inspiring thing which has happened to me in a long time. And I’m just the uncle. I can’t imagine how my brother Tyler and his wife Kerri are feeling.

It’s weird for me because I’m the youngest of three brothers and of all my cousins who were around growing up. I’ve never had someone to look at as younger. A person I am a close relative of to take care of, buy small clothes for, send a toy, teach something to, pick up in the air and give them the love you can give to a kid, or teen or young adult. But now I will. And I’m so pumped!

If things continue as they are I’m probably not going to live near him/her (him/her is also exciting to think about!!!). So I’ll be the uncle who lives in some place foreign to them who they get to go on a plane and fly and visit for a week to stay up late at his house and go on adventures with to be slightly or wholly irresponsible. I’ll get to the privilege to have fun with the kid and check in on life when them. Send them abstract gifts and clothes which don’t fit quite right or aren’t completely in style at the time (along with a check of course to make up for whatever shortcomings I may have in appropriate gift giving).

I think about my Uncle’s Eddy, Fred, Bob, Terry, and Randy. They were all sweet. Uncle Eddy is the crazy one always good for fun. Uncle Fred is a man I’ll always look up to as what a man should be in how he treated his wife and me and others. Uncle Bob is a solid family man established in his community. Uncle Terry, the one I looked up to the most as a child, is a strong and silent man except for the stories which he tells of being a pilot who in Vietnam, commercially and then privately. Uncle Randy is tall and quiet but always enthused and asking questions about my life. I like to think I’ll take the good of what I’ve seen of them and try to be that.

Whatever it is about it I’m overcome with it all. I’ll do whatever I can to be good once this kid comes along and it’ll be another reminder in my life to grow up to be someone worth visiting and having a relationship with on any level. So to my #1, niece or nephew, you’ve got one excited uncle (and another uncle and aunt and grandma and grandpa and many more) waiting for you. You don’t know it yet but you are already being celebrated and will know it from the second you come into the world.

I am guessing I already know my #1 of 2013 as well. See you in June.

Just adding a little Rieth to the family!

 

My Top Ten of 2012: #2 Weddings

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This was completely out of left field for me but early in 2012 my friend Addison called me because he was getting married and said he had something to talk to me about. I was thinking he was just going to see if I wanted to treck it out to Colorado for the wedding. There was more to it than the trip out there though. He asked if I would officiate his wedding for me. Like I said left field.

This was the first time in my life I was literally speechless. I sat on the phone before I could barely manage to get out “I don’t know… Can I even do that?”

It turns out I could do it. Addison had already done the research and in the next couple weeks we decided I would do it. And it actually happened. I wrote the whole ceremony out, got a suit, flew out to Colorado, and showed up. We practiced the ceremony but still I was nervous. It wasn’t until sitting with Addison the half hour before the wedding I calmed down for the both of us. My leg still shook almost the whole ceremony but the words came out, people even laughed at the joke I tried to make. Besides all that it was probably the most humbling thing ever to be asked to do. It was really a great privilege to be able to talk, in front of people who mattered to them, about Addison and Kali. At the end was the coolest part of getting to pronounce Addison and Kali Haynes; husband and wife. It really felt weird for me because I never expected to do it and because they thought I would do a good job.

It was interesting after as people came up and told me it was a beautiful ceremony. One guy even asked about how many weddings I do a year. I was worried I would be terrible at it but thankfully, hopefully, for Addison and Kali’s sake it was a good time.

Then about 3 weeks later when I had truly just started to de-stress from the wedding, bike trip and week at Young Life camp my friend Josh asked me to officiate his wedding. This was also un-expected. The second time around was easier because I had done it a first time already. The writing came easier and the day approached with less stress. The day of I showed up early to run through the ceremony a couple times and got soaked by a flash rainstorm as I sprinted back to my car. I ran through everything again while drying my hair with the vent fan on high in my car.

Eventually the rain died down and things went as planned. During the ceremony my leg didn’t even do the shaky leg thing it did at Addison and Kali’s wedding! I was happy again to tell a story of two people meeting, falling in love, about the engagement, about their faith and finally (I’m sure this never gets old for people who do a lot of weddings) pronounced another couple husband and wife. After the ceremony we took a group picture with both families and went to celebrate Josh and Molly Cooper.

Writing and performing the ceremony for these two couples was probably one of the more challenging things I did in 2012 (biking across 5 states was definitely easier) because I wanted everything to be perfect. I know it wasn’t perfect but I came to the conclusion sometime while working on Addison and Kali’s wedding I was just celebrating them. No matter how good or bad what I did was it had nothing on their love for each other. So I tried to look at it as trying to give a good gift. If it was good, they would like it, and if it wasn’t good they would still be just fine. I have to say though those two nights were the two happiest of my 2012.

My prayers, love, and best wishes to you, Mr. and Mrs. Haynes and Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, in 2013. Thank you.

My Top Ten of 2012: #3 Young Life

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These two were pretty easy picks for me. For the past 4 years Young Life has been something I do. Really it hasn’t been until this past year and a half where it really feels like a day without something to do with Young Life is an incomplete day. It’s been great to be a part of something which encourages earning the right to be heard through open and accepting relationships before anything else. I’ve gotten to go to go places and do a lot of amazing things through this great organization but above all am so glad I get to share in a growing friendship with a great YL team and great group of guys.

In other great news I learned Plainwell is getting Young Life. Plainwell is where I graduated from in 2006 and I’ve been hoping and praying Young Life would pop up there for a while now. It’ll be exciting to see Young Life get into the community and school there in 2013.

My Top Ten of 2012: #4 Biking from Michigan to Minnesota

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#4 Biking

This was one of the more adventurous things I’ve gotten to do in my life. The trip took seven days and I traveled a total of 785 miles. It all started in Holland and the first day was 164 mile route, with a detour through Gary, IN when I needed to get to a bike shop after popping three tubes and slashing a tire on the first day. In Chicago I got to stay with my friend Greg. That day I drank 8 32 oz Gatorades, 64 oz of water, had 3 snickers bars, a cliff bar, 3 packs of Gu, and once in Chicago ate 2 burritos from Chipotle and still lost weight. From there I stayed with a families I had never met in Janesville, Richland Center, and Fountain City.  I stayed with the Marshall’s in Richland Center and they treated me with the hospitality of a long lost brother. The mom made me eat my weight in food within the first hour and then we had dinner and after that the two Marshall daughters, Mckenzie and Alyssa, took me out for ice cream and a tour of the town.

The next day I got into Minneapolis late after a 130 mile day of bike problems, no cell phone service, hitchhiking and gut wrenching hills. It was nice to be done, as I rode past Target Field Justin Morneau hit a home run. I pretended it was all for me as the crowd went wild and fireworks shot up into the air from the scoreboard right above me. That night I stayed with my friends family and had some much needed food and fun. The next day was a little crazy. I thought it was going to be a normal short day. Only 99 miles to Little Falls, MN but when I got there the person I was supposed to stay with (he was an elderly man) never picked up his phone. So I ate at a bar and met a husband and wife who, without telling me, ended up paying for my meal on their way out. After the meal I went and saw a movie and since I still hadn’t heard back from the man started biking into the night. Around 30 miles later it was pitch black with enough light from my bike lamp to see the painted lines on the road. I was in the backroads in the backwoods of Minnesota when, about 50 yards off the road, I saw a light in the woods seeming bright than most. Turns out it was Sweet Water Lake Resort. I knocked on the lodge doors which were locked by the time I got there and was greeted by a nice old lady who gave me a 2 bedroom cabin on the lake for a mere $50 and then had the best sleep of my life. The next day I woke up and had a flat tire so I put a new one on. My pump broke when I was about half way done inflating the tire. I biked 20 miles to a gas station to fill up on air when I realized my back tire had 3 broken spokes. I didn’t care too much other than it made for a bumpier ride. 60 or so miles later I finished my journey at Castaway Club Young Life Camp in Detroit Lakes Minnesota. There was no one there to greet me, after all of the preparing I forgot to call ahead and let them know I’d be coming on bike. My Young Life guys were still an hour and a half away when I got to the camp so I went for a swim in the lake and laid in the grass before they got there.

The whole idea started when I heard some kids needed help with funding to go to Young Life camp. Total they needed $8,000. Through the help and generosity of others we raised $3,000 for those kids and they were able to go to camp, we also raised another $1,000 to help kids in Holland Michigan go to camp. It meant the world to me to be a part of something good happening. Since the whole thing ended I’ve just had the lingering thought of what if’s about getting in better shape, going longer distances, more days and the possibility of doing more to make sure kids are provided for. We’ll see what 2013 and beyond have in store.

My Top Ten of 2012: #6 West Virginia and #5 Greek Life Arc Project Surf Trip

#6 West Virginia and #5 Greek Life Arc Project Surf Trip

These two go together (kind of) and are possibly the two most exciting things of my top ten. I consider myself lucky and blessed and trusted entirely too much to have had these experiences. A little bit before this time last year Hope College’s chaplain asked my friend Jay and I if we would be interested in taking a bunch of Fraternity guys on a mission trip to Florida. It was a mission trip but I feel guilty calling it that because it more so had the feeling of vacation. Every morning we woke up early and headed to Jacksonville where we fixed up a day center kids from local schools hung out at after school and all day during the summer. We painted, shoveled, laid cement, raked, painted some more, moved and constructed with the efficiency of 21 young men. They came up with more work for us to do after we completed everything they wanted us to on the first day. Every afternoon we’d pack up, grab a quick lunch and head to the beach to give surfing our best try. At the end of the week we hosted a day long surf camp for the kids from the day center and then celebrated with them pizza party style in a nearby park.

Then this fall Jay and I got another call, seeing if we’d be interested in taking another group of Greeks to West Virginia on a whitewater rafting trip. Jay and I, being the willing individuals we are, eagerly agreed. It was another amazing trip but quicker this time. We only had four days to drive down, hike for a day, go white water rafting the next day and then drive back.

The trips are amazing. It’s just a bunch of guys from separate Fraternities who don’t really know each other hanging out, eating, hiking, serving, surfing, trying not to die on a river and trying new things together. The whole point of the trips is to create unity and community among these guys. It’s been fun to see it work. It’s easy for the people to critique each other, downplay the good they have to offer and fight, but it’s much harder to create. These trips have created something good among the Greek at Hope. I’m real glad to have been able to be a part of it all.

The trips were a great part of 2012… Now I’m excited as surf trip 2013 is in the works and we’ll be back in Florida in a few short months.

Surf Trip!

Fall Break!