Isaiah is learning to wave!

Today Isaiah turned nine months old! I can't believe that just nine months ago we bought him home from the hospital. Having kids has made me realize how much time really does fly!

This year I'm committed to taking more pictures of my kids and documenting it. Here is a quick video of him waving...

Young Adults: State of the Union

Last Thursday, January 14, we started a new series in our Young Adults ministry. Its a seven week that I kicked off where we will go through the six core values of CPC. I started the message series off with what I called "The State of the Union" address.

The State of the Union is a rally cry for our Young Adults for the year, it is what we will focus on for this entire year. You can hear the entire message on our Young Adults site, but let me summarize what we're going to focus on.

The mission of CPC Young Adults is to make and mature more followers of Christ. 

This is the same mission statement for our entire church. We're not going to mess with that! Its a great focus for our church, especially with the location God has strategically placed us. We're going to have two main focuses for the year: to help more people find Christ and follow Christ.

Maturing Christ Followers
Our main goal for 2016, in the maturing followers of Christ part, is to double our small groups. We currently have 4 small groups meeting on a regular basis. The average size of each group is somewhere around 12 people. With the amount of people we have in our Young Adult ministry we need to double this this 8 groups so people can be in discipleship community.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25

Making Christ Followers
We live in an area that is approximately 97% unchurched. That means there are a lot of people who we can tell about Jesus! We're going to do this by focusing on friendship evangelism. The goal is for each person to share Christ with one of their friends this year, in hopes that they will enter into a life changing relationship with Christ. When a person meets Christ is it normal for them to go and share that truth with others.

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. John 1:41-42a

An Eternal Purpose
This ministry isn't about us, its about making the saving truth of Jesus Christ known. We're going to focus on reaching single and married people, on the Peninsula, ages 18-35. We're going to do this by meeting on a regular basis. If its Thursday, our Young Adult ministry will be meeting. We're going to do this because people are dying without the saving truth of Jesus.

Hope to see you on Thursday!

Belonging to Christ

On Sunday I preached a message on Romans 7:1-6. It was titled "Belonging to Christ" and I looked at the difference between being married to the law and belonging to Christ.

This was a great text for me to preach because I've never been able to keep the law. I have a long history of not being able to keep the law! I was fifteen years old the first time I was arrested. I was accused of doing a drive-by-shooting. I was pulled from the back of a car and had a shotgun firmly pressed against the back of my head while on my knees in the middle of the road. I didn’t do a drive-by-shooting, I know all criminals say they didn’t do it, but I was just a fifteen year old throwing fireworks out of the car.

Watch the entire sermon to hear the whole story and what's changed in my life...

Sophie's first time snowboarding

Growing up I loved snowboarding! I started the sport around the 5th grade. I had skied since I was 5 years old but once I saw a snowboard I couldn't get it out of my mind. I begged my mom to just rent me one for a day... and she did! She brought me to Snow Summit, put me on the chairlift and picked me up at 4:30 pm.

Sophie's experience was a little different than mine! See when I was a kid you couldn't just go get a snowboard lesson because they didn't have them.

I picked up Sophie from school and we jumped in the race car (Subaru Outback). We set our direction for Truckee, CA and we were off! We had a ton of fun talking in the car, making jokes and stopping for potty breaks.

The part of the (long) drive was when we got up to snow level. It was great seeing Sophie's face and hearing her excitement about our trip! We finally made it to Truckee and stopped by Tahoe Dave's to get Sophie her rental board.

After getting her rental we stopped by friend's house to stay the night. Peanut and Heather welcomed us with open arms and a warm meal on the table.

We stayed up late playing in the snow, making snowballs, sledding down the driveway and doing things every kid should have a chance to do with another kid their age.

I can't really say we woke up early in the morning, but it was pretty early when we woke up. We geared up and headed to Northstar for the day. The parking lot was packed by the time we arrived and we were ready for our day! Sophie did great with the cold weather and as you can see she is all geared up.

We went to Gondola first and then headed over a perfect spot for her to practice. Sophie did great at getting on her heel edge and learning to stop. She really is a natural at snowboarding. I used to teach lessons and I can see talent in kids; she has it.

After practicing for a little while we moved up to the magic carpet. The magic carpet it a great place for a kid to practice. It allowed Sophie to get a few chances to practice her J turns and work on her stopping.

Overall she did awesome! Take a look for yourself at this video I made for her from her first day!

11 Years of Marriage

On January 7, 2005 I married my best friend!

We met as interns at Eastlake Church in South San Diego
I asked her to marry me on the beach in Carlsbad
We got married in Encinitas
Two days later we immediately moved to Vegas to serve at South Hills
We had two kids
Moved to San Mateo to serve at CPC
Just had another kid
And celebrated 11 years of marriage!

When I look back on our lives there are too many thoughts to write down here but here are a few I'd like to share.

We've traveled

I was trying to do the math on how much we've been blessed to be able to travel together. Here is what I came up with so far:
We've visited 6 different countries (Mexico, Canada, Burkina Faso, Italy, Jamaica, The Bahamas)
Set foot on three continents together (North America, Europe and Africa)
Traveled to 12 states (California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Florida, New York, Atlanta, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Hawaii)

And this year we  celebrated our anniversary in beautiful Half Moon Bay, CA. We stayed at Oceano hotel and had dinner at Flavor. It was a great time to hang out, chat and enjoy our marriage. We took some time to look back on life and thank God for all we've been able to do together.

We've laughed
One of the things we've done most together is to laugh. Sure we have our times where we disagree on things but we'd rather laugh together. Sometimes we laugh at each other for silly things we've done. Sometimes we laugh at movies. Sometimes we laugh at the crazy things our kids say or the silly decisions we've made but we sure do laugh a lot and that has kept us in good spirits!

We've multiplied
We were reminded of this fact again this year because we brought our little Isaiah with us on the trip. For the most part he did really well and is the best third wheel ever. We have been very blessed to have children in our youth. We have friends who have struggled with pregnancy and experienced infertility. We are so thankful for the children God has given us!

Thanks for all the fun times Charity! Looking forward to many more.

Leah's first time snowboarding

January 1, 2016 was one of the best days of my life.

I didn't sleep in, in fact I woke up early
I didn't sit around watching football, I spent most of the day driving
I didn't have a fantastic dinner, I ate turkey jerky in the car

It was a great day because I was able to take my daughter snowboarding for the first time! I started snowboarding when I was about 12 years old and fell in love with the sport! When I dropped out of high school, at the age of 17, the first thing I did was head to the slopes to ride. When I thought about moving out of the house I head north to Truckee so I could snowboard more. Snowboarding is in my bones and taking my little Lead was so fun!

I woke her up at 6 am and gently brought her to the car, buckled her in and we hit the road. After two hours of driving she was pretty bored but she hung in there. We made it to Truckee and stopped by Tahoe Dave's to pick up her rental board. She was so excited that she wouldn't take the boots off in the shop but wore them to the car.

We headed to Northstar and got ready in the parking lot where we boarded the shuttle and made it to the mountain. There were light, I stress LIGHT, flurries as we walked to the gondola and Leah took it all in. She put her hands out and slowly walked just enjoying the beautiful 12 degree morning.

After getting up we spent most of the day snowboarding with some breaks to make snow angels, build snowmen and play polar bear family.

Thanks to my GoPro I was able to record some of the days events. The goal for the end of the day was to ride the chairlift and we made that goal! It was such a great day.

I'm so proud of my little girl for all her hard work. I knew the day was a huge success when we were driving home and I looked back to find this.