Remember that time I started a blog and tried to commit to one post per week? Yeah me either… Anyway, its been about 4 months since my last entry and I can’t even begin to sum up how many life changing events have taken place in that amount of time. So let me try to get you up to speed with a few bullet point updates.

Lyndie and I are still married- not that people thought we weren't, but I just figured I’d start by shouting out my beautiful wifey for dealing with such a crazy full life and still finding time to love me.
I am now a certified Groomsman for hire after being in literally every wedding ever this summer.
I still drink way too much coffee. -thanks to Trade & Lore for showing me what real coffee tastes like.
I’ve been doing a monthly paint event at Salud Cerveceria that has been so much fun every time! 🤙
We’re still the CARES Team at Novel NoDa Apartments and we have THE BEST NEIGHBORS EVER!!!
I turned 27 years old in August 👴🏼
Oh, and on top of all that, I am now the Director of the Student Ministry/Community at Mosaic Church. For those of you who don’t believe that one, heres a link to prove I’m not lying…😂 http://mosaicchurch.tv/new-here/staff/

Alright, you’re fully caught up. Congrats, now lets jump into why I really wanted to create this entry…

When I started working in this new Youth Director position at Mosaic, I knew going into it that I had a big learning curve to overcome to say the least. Growing up, I never went to church and my picture of Jesus was the white guy my grandma had in a frame on her nightstand. I definitely would say I grew up as a believer, but by no means was I a follower… That’s some real churchy lingo that I’ve learned in the last few years so if you’re reading this and just rolled your eyes, my bad.

My moment that I realized I wanted to become a follower of Jesus, rather than just a believer was when I was reassured by a Pastor that all of my doubts and weird vibes I got from the church in general throughout the first 24 years of my life were actually valid. “Religion” was just not natural to me and I started to see that the way Jesus was being represented by a lot of churches was actually responsible for this weird false image that was created. It felt forced and it felt like you just had to believe in something blindly without ever asking questions. I wasn’t really down with that at all and to be real with you, I’m still not. Since coming to faith, (another churchy term) I’ve encountered a new way of thinking about what the message and movement of Jesus was. As a matter of fact, at Mosaic we exist to do exactly that and we say it all the time… “We exist to reclaim the message and movement of Jesus” -I love that…

If you ever ask a teacher about their relationship with their students, you will usually get some cliché response like “They teach me more than I teach them.” I mean, I always heard people say that and my response to that in my head was, “Yeah but you know they’re like 8 right?” I thought it was kind of annoying that people would say that, so I’m not here to do that… but, at the same time I actually am. So I don’t know?? You already read this far so just deal with my indeciciveness I guess? 🤷🏻‍♂️

ANYWAY, I say all that just to set up this moment of truth that ABSOLUTELY FLOORED ME with how BEAUTIFUL it is to view the world with a CHILD-LIKE FAITH. This moment took place at our weekly Underground gathering on Sunday nights. (Underground is what we call our middle school/high school Student Ministry at Mosaic.) So that you can properly imagine this moment, let me paint a mental picture for what a normal Underground event looks like. We start at 6:00 pm by singing some worship songs together lead by a few of our amazingly talented students. After this, we transition into a teaching segment where myself or another Pastor/leader shares a message and then wrap up the night with some focused group discussion and free time.

***SIDE NOTE: I always want the non church-goer or non-believer to feel like they can follow this blog without getting thrown off by a term like “worship music” or “sharing a message”, so below I’ve linked some of the songs we sing together at these events as well as the "message” from Mosaic’s Sunday morning services the day this took place. -The reason I feel it’s important to paint this picture of what our church and Underground services look like is because if I were to read this entry in 2012 without those references I’d probably be picturing the Pope or something because I literally had no idea. LOL

We had just finished singing and I was ready to talk to the students about the topic of conversation that day, which was CONFLICT. Just like any other over-qualified 27 year old, new to ministry who is anointed beyond worldly understanding… okay I’m kidding. I went into this moment with the mindset of “I can’t wait to unleash my infinite wisdom upon these lucky students of mine.” Okay, again I’m kidding, but I definitely wasn't ready for the learning moment that actually wouldn’t hit me until the following week when I was looking back at pictures from that night.

My message was going to start with a little acted out scenario to hopefully grab their attention and set up the rest of the convo on a tee so I could knock it out of the park. My idea was to begin speaking and have one of my leaders walk to the front and start leaning on me. I would act like it didn’t bother me and I would keep talking like his added weight on my shoulder didn’t effect me.

After about 30 seconds of awkward looks from the students and even some of the other volunteer leaders who weren’t involved in the skit, I had my second leader join us in front. At this point, I would keep talking as if the additional weight still wasn’t a big deal even though it was clearly effecting me.

More confusion from the kids as to what the heck was happening ensued and I think Pastor Mike (who was visiting for the night and I forgot to fill him in on the idea) even thought about stopping the program to be like WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING? 😂 Anyway, we kept the visual going by having a few more leaders join me.