The Devil Went Down to Georgia, We Went to Mississippi...

"To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." - William Faulkner.

This will be a brief update; a much longer, more-detailed one should be expected in the near future. I will tell you though that C3 was phenomenal and life-changing, and I can't wait to tell you all about it. Today, however, I want to give you a status report on our progress. We are currently stuck, yes, stuck, in Pearl, Miss. After leaving Dallas around 3 PM yesterday morning, Waffle and I were so energized and spiritually enthusiastic that we decided to drive straight through the night and get to Charlotte early Sunday morning in time to go to Elevation Church, the church of Steven Furtick, one of the pastors that spoke (amazingly) at C3.

Well, around 10 last night we started hearing a weird noise and the car started shaking. We pulled over to the side of the road and realized our back-left tire was flat so I called AAA to come out and give us a hand. After hooking the tire up to a compressor and realizing that it wasn't taking air, the AAA guy helped us remove the tire to put on our spare. This is what we saw when that happened...

So, it looks like we had a blow-out. Thank goodness we were in a safe position and the driving conditions were safe because it could have been very bad otherwise. We honestly didn't even know that it was a blow out; we just noticed that the car was being funky. In the process of removing the tired, one of the 4 lug nuts broke off, taking the bolt with it so that's a problem to get fixed as well. Our plans for getting to church and getting home early ruined, we found a hotel and stayed the night.

Wouldn't you know, none of the auto places in Pearl are open on Sundays? The only place that was open was a Wal-Mart, but Waffle's tires are low-profile sports tires that nobody but specialty dealers carries (which worries us about tomorrow). So, stuck for another day, we saw a movie and generally hung out around town. We are hoping that early in the morning we can find a place to replace the tire (that's the one we need prayers on... Wal-Mart can special order them, and they'll get here in 6-8 business days) and the bolt. Then, when we get it all fixed we have 11 hours, roughly 700 miles to drive tomorrow. Missing yet another day from school for Waffle and from my wife for me has made this a less-than-ideal hiccup in our trip. But, thankfully we're ok, and this is far from the worst thing that could happen to us.

When we checked into our hotel tonight, through conversation we found out that the woman at the front desk, Laurie, had a much bigger problem to deal with last night. Her son, who she didn't know until he was 13, killed himself last night at the age of 21. She found out while working and she was working tonight... I don't know how she can be here. We talked about church and other things for a while and she's incredibly pleasant, and it makes my problem of being stuck away from home seem so paltry in comparison.

Waffle and I have discussed, several times, the significance of something that Bishop T.D. Jakes said the other night when he spoke. He said that the deeper into ministry you get, and the closer to God you get, the messier and more difficult life becomes. Waffle and I grew much closer to God this weekend and the fact that we were intentionally driving all night not to get home but to go to church cannot be ignored... Let me repeat that: we were planning on driving 16 hours non-stop just so we could go to church... after spending 3 days in a church, on the way to church, our car broke down. While the situation stinks and is certainly no fun, I can't help but be encouraged spiritually that we're doing something right. God is much bigger than our problems and if the best Satan can do is stop us from getting to church; he needs to try a lot harder.

Hopefully we'll be home tomorrow, thank you for all the prayers.
~Seth

C3, Friday morn

Well, so far C3 has been awesome. Craig Groshel spoke last night and was spectacular! Steven Furtick, my NC pastor crush will speak today, along with Bishop T.D. Jakes. Currently, we are sitting, waiting for the day to start. Hopefully you can see the bed on stage... Don't know what it is for but we are pretty sure Ed Young is laying in it. Thanks for the prayers, keep a lookout for the full C3 recap in a few days.

C3 is now

Time to get creative

Hello everyone!

So, I know I promised to update this more regularly and my delay has been both accidental and planned. When I get into a mood where I want to write it is hard for me to get out of that mood and the night I wrote my first post I could have easily written 3 more. I don't want to be overwhelming so I have purposefully restrained myself. But, I have been meaning to write over the last week or so and have found my time to be very fleeting. School has really kicked into high gear with book reports, ordination applications, and this week I have to write church constitution and bylaws. While the experience will be greatly beneficial, having to do it is super time-consuming, and this class just requires that we do these assignments without any real direction as to how. That aspect is both frustrating and nice because when it comes to actually starting a church I suspect there will be a pretty large learning curve.

I don't have long to write, in fact, the other reason why I have been neglectful is my reason for writing today. Tonight around midnight I will be leaving, with my brother-in-law Waffle, for Texas. My wonderful wife is allowing me to leave here for the better part of a week so that I may have some church leadership training, of sorts. Waffle and I are driving to Dallas to attend the Church Creativity Conference, a conference held every year at Ed Young's church. The speakers this year include two of my pastor-man-crushes, Craig Groeschel and Steven Furtick (the links are to their respective church website) whose blogs I have linked on my page, over to the right hand side. The purpose of the conference is to remind the leadership of the modern church that as Christians, we have no excuse for not being creative as we have been gifted by God, the greatest creator in the universe.

I am bursting with excitement and, assuming my computer doesn't die, will be updating from the road. The majority of the updates will be via Twitter, which all show up on the right hand side of this page as well. Waffle and I will be taking pictures (anyone seen the hand lately?) and hopefully some video, perhaps even some video updates to be posted throughout the trip. When we leave Dallas on Saturday, our plan is to take a minor detour down to New Orleans (right in time for Mardi Gras traffic) simply because we can. I have never been and would love to go and since it will only add three hours to our total trip we've decided to do it. When you're looking at a difference of 17 vs. 20 hours, 3 hours doesn't seem that bad. While I am away Allie will be by herself until the weekend, when she will be going to the Outer Banks with two of her best friends and roommates from college. Apparently they are going hunting for wild horses on some island (Allie is going to bring me home a pony).

So, that's the 5 minutes update of my life. I hope everyone in doing well and I will certainly keep you posted on my trip. If you think about it, say a prayer for all of our safety, for me and Waffle while driving (especially the 17 hour trip we are making tonight), and for Allie that she doesn't get attacked by the ponies they are so excited to chase.

Feliz Navidad everyone!