An Unfavorable Favor...

I thought I would be all nice and try and offer assitance to Ross King and his band, Ben Love and Micheal Steel, by picking them up from the car rental return at the airport in Baltimore. This was a last minute plan, but seemed efficient and a no- brainer. I was already heading to a business that was only 10 miles from the airport and I was going to get there the same time they needed to be picked up at the return center. So, after a little coordination, we made the plan. The best layed plans...
go to Micheal's blog for the rest of the story that was completely my fault.

Just Plain Cool

I found this site while cruising around the web tonight and thought it was just too cool not to mention. Check it out!

Cool New Site...

After much effort on the part of these guys, and these guys and myself, LifePoint Church has a new one of these.

I'm excited!

Me and The President

Okay, so I respect the office of the President of the United States, alot. Therefore, I was quite overjoyed to see some "presidential" helicopters flying overhead today as we were downtown, admiring the cherry blossoms.

Anyways, I had my camera-phone out and was taking a picture of me at the Jefferson memorial. See figure 4-01.

FIG. 4-01

Okay, maybe a minute later I hear a helicopter flying low, so I turn around and see this helicoptor fly right in the same space that I just took my picture. See FIG. 4-02.

FIG. 4-02.

About 30 minutes later, we (Jodie, Rachel and I) are walking back toward the Metro, and we hear the helicopters again, this time they're on a mission. One comes in low from just over the Jefferson memorial toward the big house, and then another follows and then another follows. The first two come in for a landing and then bail at the last minute. But the last one, Marine One, settles in at the White House. It was very cool! I got home and looked up some details on the web. Look at the pict I found. See FIG. 4-03.

FIG. 4-03.

The very cool part is just after all the activity, I turn around and begin to look for the Metro station, I look towards the Mall and something catches out of the corner of my eye. Two men in black attire, emerge from a rooftop and swing very large black bags, as one would do a rifle. It was obvious they were security snipers. We watched them for about 40 secs, and they were gone. It was way cool!

Did Jesus show up on American Idol?

I don't know if you caught tonight's episode of American Idol, but it was quite crazy. Dolly Parton was the featured guest and not suprising, she sang about Jesus; something like Jesus and gravity.

Anyway, that was not too big a surpise. What was crazy to me was the fact that the Clark Bros, came out and sang "This Little Light of Mine" like from "Sunday school." I couldn't believe my ears! This is American Idol! The Clark Bros are an "up and coming" country/bluegrass band (that won "The Great Next American Band"), singing a children's song about a no less controversial person than Jesus? Could this be?

After Dolly sings she talks about the song and tells Ryan "I have Jesus and you a Simon." Then Brooke White shows up in the bottom 3 and Ryan asks her to comment on her emotions about the evening, and she refers to Dolly's song about Jesus and gravity among a few other things. I just couldn't help but think that there was a lot of references to Jesus! (Which I think is usually not tolerated for very long.) Overall, Idol (so ironic) felt more authentic and evangelistic than some of the churches I've seen on TV.

Anybody else agree? Disagree?

Rob's HOUSE SHOW!

I found this picture taken from a recent House Show that Ross was performing at in Sanger. Apparently, Rob wanted a little "house-show" of his own...

Ross is coming to Maryland in about 3 weeks for Weekend 180! It's going to be fun!

My Creative Wife

My wife is crazy cool! She made this silly flipbook for me for Valentine's Day. I loved it so much I thought I would share it with you all.

Saturday

This was my Saturday. Nothing special, just a Saturday.

1. got up at 9:30, skimmed through the book of Hebrews. Good book.
2. cleaned up the office 25%
3. went to basement and began a whirlwind of reordering/cleaning in the storage part
4. called Fedex Kinko's about my poster order
4.5 went next door to check on Delton and return a bowl. He wasn't doing real good
4.75 moved china cabinet to den
5. went to church to get poster backer board to cut down posters to exact size
6. went to gateway grocery to get sandwich stuff:
List: a. sub bread rolls
b. honey mustard
c. leaf lettuce
d. colby jack cheese
e. black forest ham
f. red onion
7. went to Owings Mills, first to Burger King then to Kinko's
8. cut down posters even though they were printed small, but will work temporarily.
9. went next door to safeway to get ice, half&half and sour cream & onion chips.(buy 1 get 1 free.)
10. came home. worked on office to 60%
11. skimmed Time Magazine
12. went to church
13. took backer board and posters to my office. met Rachel in auditorium. It was packed
14. after church, i talked to chad, lance, nicole, and dale. dale and I went to underground to troubleshoot buzz in montitors
15. left church to meet rachel and jodie at home for sandwiches
16. ate and cleaned the table and put up all the dishes
17. went back to church, put up posters.
18. replaced 1 of the monitors amps in the underground
19. found broken key in a closet door
20. went to worship center to find remote for new underground projector.
21. found remote for children's new projector and delivered it to the mailbox.
22. came home finished cleaning office
23. finished hanging towel rack in basement bathroom
23. picked up in the tv room. finally replaced ottoman wheels
24. folded blankets put back in ottoman.
25. decided to replace door handle to downstairs bathroom (after two years)
26. swept stairs and basement
27. blogged. went to bed.

Irish? On Saint Patti's Day?

I decided to look around for the origin of the name Fullen and found a few things interesting...





But to my surprise, this is the most wierd...

"Re: What is the origin of the name Fullen?"

Answer1: "My mother's maiden name is Fullen and her father was William John Fullen born in Desertmartin Co-Derry N-Ireland and lived there all his life.He died in1947. There is still a long line of Fullens alive and well living in Co-Derry.[Ireland] will try and find out more of your 3rd great grandfathers connection,if any,to my family."

Answer2: "The spelling is actually correct. Fullen comes from someone who feltches or felting they would be considered a fullen."

Answer3: "I am a Fullen by marriage. The information I got from a family name researcher is that Fullen is a variation of Fuller, an occupational name referring to the process of making full cloth from wool. Because the process involved walking repeatly over the cloth as it was formed, the name Walker is another derivitive. The Fullen variation was used in SW England and Wales."

If Answer1 is correct, then does anyone else think that it's crazy I discovered this for the first time on Saint Patrick's Day?

Recent Exchange

The following exchange took place in the car today between Rachel and I:

Rachel: “I don’t think we’re going to buy you any more cargo pants.” “The buttons come off a lot and they are too hard to iron.”

Jason: “Okay, then we won’t buy you any more cool clothes either. In fact, we can just get you a burlap bag to wear. That will be easy to maintain.”

Rachel: “If I were to wear a burlap bag, it would be in style after two weeks.”

Jason: [ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!aha!aha! ah!]

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Confession: I think she may be right. My wife constantly takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. I love her.

All The Freed

Lately, I've been listening to a song from this guy off this CD.

If you are reading this, chances are you already know Todd. If not, he is a personal friend for over 20 years. He's an incredible guy that loves Jesus and is an incredible musican and songwriter. He's just released a CD entitled All The Freed. He describes it as songs written for the church. I would recommend purchasing it from here.

Over the past 10 days or so, this song has really ministered to me. To be honest, it's a hard song to swallow. However, it's right and true. I just hope to sing it more and more as my own.

Lyrics and Music by Todd Wright:

My life is Yours for the keeping, my life is freely Yours to take
I know Your eyes are ever on me, through darkest night and brightest day

And I cannot pretend to know You
Your ways are higher than my own
So take these tears if they can be used
To make Your glory known

If it's in pain, that You're made great
Let it be, Lord, let it be
If Your true worth is shown through this hurt
Let it be, Lord, let it be
You're strength when I am weak
You're the words I can't speak
So if You want all of me...
Let it be

Poured Out

Okay. It’s time to write.

I have had very many thoughts over the past 5 days, in light of recent events. Just so we’re all on the same page, let me fill you in briefly so you can have a context for the thoughts. This past weekend, Lance and I were taking 11 people to a youth ministry conference in Ohio. The weekend had been planned for some time and we were looking forward to the time away and the focused conversation of “talking shop.”

The weather turned bad on Thursday afternoon, forcing our Friday morning departure date to leave on Thursday evening, to get ahead of the coming storm. Lance and I picked up the rental van at 4:30pm Thursday, and made plans to leave town with nine of us by 9:00pm. I made a run to Target to get Rachel’s prescription and then headed to the house to pack. About 5:45pm I decided to watch a little news while waiting for Rachel to come home. As soon as I turned the news on, I was confronted with a Breaking News bulletin. The reporter showed a map of our county and began to make report of a bad traffic accident that happened on Route 91 that involved five children including one being life-flighted. Due to the report’s proximity and detail of an SUV, my heart sank. I knew a family that lived very close to the location and had six children. Long story short, I made a phone call and waited. Soon a return call would confirm my fears. The SUV involved was the exact family that I suspected; only the news was much worse than expected. The father of the children had been killed. I didn’t really know how to respond. I was in shock. This was only supposed to be a nightmare that takes place in movies, not in the lives of my friends, and certainly not my own life. His name was Kevin. Kevin Lawyer. He was an orthodontist. Therefore, he was a doctor. So they called him Dr. Lawyer. Kind of confusing.

Anyway, I knew Kevin and his family and was shocked by the events that were unfolding. I quickly made some phone calls to confirm the stories and hoping beyond hope that is was rumor, but I soon found the unbearable news to be the undeniable truth. I called Lance to inform him. He had not heard anything. We quickly decided that we had to cancel our trip to Ohio. I made a trip up to the church to be with some students that were having drama/band practice and then came back home to get Rach and go to Johns Hopkins in downtown Baltimore to be with the family.

Lance and Amy introduced us to the Lawyer’s not long after we moved here. I got to know them more and more over the last couple of years though dramas at church. The very first drama I was in at LifePoint was with Kevin and his wife, Suzie. Rachel started to get to know them by teaching their kid’s Spanish in the summer time. Kevin and another friend Lou Sabad, invited me to golf with them at the Annual Men’s Summit. I wasn’t much of a golfer, but they insisted so I went. I was bitten by the golf bug on that trip. Those were the seeds of getting to know the Lawyer’s.

Kevin was an incredible man. His life was overflowing. Life just bubbled out of him, you know, like opening a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. He was involved in so much at LifePoint. He taught and acted in children’s ministry, worked on dramas that the main service was hosting and would lead a community group. His life touched so many people at LifePoint and beyond. In addition to his ministry, his professional work was as impressive. He was known for his fun-loving spirit and passion for helping people.

Okay, now for a few thoughts in light of the circumstance. I watched so many things this weekend that were hard to watch, yet fascinating. I saw the people of LifePoint pour out love on a family. Not just the immediate family, but everyone that was close to Kevin. I heard words of hope given to people who had no hope. I saw faith in action. I watched Suzie rely on her faith in Christ as she was forced to move from wife to widow. I heard story after story of how much Kevin’s life had impacted them to give their life to Christ. I watched about 2500 people come out to support Suzie at a visitation and another mass of people come for a celebration memorial. I could not believe the atmosphere. It felt much more like a wedding than a funeral.

The Church

I watched so many people sacrifice so much toward the memory of Kevin, out of their faith in Christ. Now, I think the cynic might say, “People just did that as a way to cope with their own pain.” However, I would argue that watching the church be the church was so much more than selfish people working to provide selfish relief. Watching the church this past weekend was supernatural. I watched so many people striving to commemorate Kevin’s life by serving each other and the community in a sort of biblical, spiritual triage. The idea of hope coming out of something so broken is so much the nature of God. The church is such a mystery. There seems to be nothing quiet like it. The mystery of perfect strangers becoming family, bound by the love of Christ, is so counter to our nature. Our nature is to serve self. The nature of Christ is to love others. When we become persuaded by the gospel, we surrender our lives to Christ and take on His nature, we become different. We want to reach people with the same love with which we were reached. Our collective counter cultural lives become the church. I love the diversity of it, the worldwide size of it and the message that is common to it; that Christ came to save that which was lost. Without Christ I truly would be without purpose and aimless. Evidence of this love was so vivid this weekend. Christ and His nature were seen in so many places, from Kevin’s life and Suzie’s faith to loving friends reaching out to each other and a community in pain. It was an incredible sight to see. What a joy to be part of God’s people.

Offering

My final thoughts during the memorial service were occupied with something my pastor, Joe said a few weeks ago. He explained what Paul, while on house arrest in Rome, meant when he said his life was like a drink offering. The drink offering was used as a means of making an offering on the altar that would essentially be wasteful. No one was allowed to drink from it, as it was only to be used to pour on the altar. Therefore it was seen by outsiders as a waste. Paul used it as a means of analogy to say that outsiders may see his life as a waste, just because he was in prison. I couldn’t help but think back to that analogy. I could see such a picture of Kevin’s faith being poured out as an offering to Christ in every area of his life. And then even in his death, what we might call a waste was no waste at all. God even redeemed Kevin’s untimely death to bring more people to Himself through the life and death of Kevin. It makes me wonder in what ways I can waste more of my life on others?

President Clinton Visits Nourishing Mother

Stephen F Austin is my Alma Mater. Alma Mater in latin is "Nourishing Mother." I thought this was funny. If your in the Nacogdoches area, you may want to drop by just for the heck of it.

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SFA Home / Public Affairs / News Releases / February 2008

Former President Clinton to speak at SFA Friday afternoon
Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to talk Friday afternoon in the Grand Ballroom of the Baker Pattillo Student Center. Doors will open for the event at 6 p.m.

The former president will be speaking to Nacogdoches-area supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a daylong, East Texas tour that will include Texarkana, Longview, Tyler and Lufkin.

Random Blog Thoughts

We just got back from Vertical Weekend 2008 at Whitetail Mountain. It was a great time. Jonathan Taylor Martin came up with a friend, Patrick Lockwood to lead us in worship. They did a great job. I had a friend from Grace Fellowship (Columbia), Jamie Schaad, come and teach the retreat. He did an amazing job. It was a great time. You can check out a few picts over to the right. (It's also some picts from my awesome trip with Rob's group to CO.)

P.S. I love my students and leaders! They were/are awesome!

Randominity:

- the shadow at the bottom of the picture is me.
- rach and I just purchased 1/4 of a steer (freezer beef) totalling 158 #s. I truly am from Texas.
- rach downloaded Eye of the Tiger from itunes; it reminded me of getting ready for church on Sunday mornings as a child. I would always get ready early and go listen to Dallas Holm's song Rise Again, and promptly after that I would play, mind you it was a record, Eye of the Tiger. Nothing like worship prep!
-I started watching LOST, but only the 1st 3 episodes on DVD. Long way to go but i'm hooked.
-I really love my wife. We seem to get along very well - and we've been married 12.5 years now.
-I'm already trying to figure out how to go skiing again before too long. Pitiful.

ok. done.

Look at Todd's blog first

Here it is. Be sure you go by Todd's blog first before watching this one.

Snowday!

Hijacked

You just thought you were smooth Jason Fullen. I have hijacked your blog. I've been trying to hack into this thing for a while just to see if I could figure out your password. Well, I've outsmarted you!!!!!

Love you bunches!!!! XOXOXOX

Uncle Jason...again!

A special welcome to my new niece just born this week! Paisley Jewel Carnley

You can find more picts of her here.

Just Curious...

Read the text below and honestly evaluate whether you knew the following before you read this post, or you had no idea until this, or you knew an estimated percentage of the information below. I will comment first.

The Cold War began after World War Two. The main enemies were the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold war got its name because both sides were afraid of fighting each other directly. In such a "hot war," nuclear weapons might destroy everything. So, instead, they fought each other indirectly. They supported conflicts in different parts of the world. They also used words as weapons. They threatened and denounced each other. Or they tried to make each other look foolish.

roads closed

I've been travelling for a week and saw some very beautiful landscapes and participated in the holiest of sports, skiing. We were snowed in momentarliy (1 night) so our trip back to Texas from Colorado was 22 hours instead of the 16 hours it took to get there. We pulled out of the Winter Park YMCA at 7:20am on Monday morning and turned left instead of right to go to Texas. Another way of looking at it is, we had to swing by Utah on the way to EAST Texas! It was all we could do and turned out to be a good decision, considering the CO Highway Patrol didn't open I70 until 6pm Monday. Wow! What a fun and challenging trip. Glad to be home!

The pict is somewhere south of Grandby CO on a back snow-covered windy road.