I work for The Marketing Institute at the FSU College of Business. One of our programs is Commuter Services of North Florida, which helps commuters in eight of Florida’s northern counties to find earth-friendly commuting options.
This week is Commuter Choices Week. We’re challenging people to try an earth-friendly commute for at least one day this week (which would include any sort of travel other than driving alone). If you pledge to do so on our website (commuterchoicesweek.org) you’ll be entered to win a number of really cool prizes, including a bike donated by The Great Bicycle Shop of Tallahassee or a new iPod Classic!
There are a number of different events happening in conjucture with Commuter Choices Week, including a kickoff in Kleman Plaza on Monday, October 27. Visit the website or one of the events to find out more.
Each spring since I’ve been at Florida State the Navigators have gone on a prayer retreat to spend time seeking God. Each one of these has been different. I don’t mean that the activity has been different. In fact, of all the things we do year after year, this is the one event that follows the same structure each and every time we go. We arrive on Friday night and start praying. We spend all day Saturday praying. Then we spend Sunday morning in prayer. When I say each one is different what I mean is that God says and does something unique each time. This time was no exception.
Continue reading ‘Prayer Retreat ‘08′
Last week I was in Chicago for the FSU Navigators’ spring break trip. This trip has been a major part of my life since this past November when we first started cooking up the idea. I was put in charge of the trip, mostly because I had made a couple of key connections with Chicago Nav staff this past summer. Today I’d like to talk about the trip and a little about the planning process that led up to it.
Continue reading ‘Chicago Spring Break Trip 2008′
The first weekend of this month I drove down to Hudson, Florida with a car full of students to the Navigators state-wide spring conference. Students from UF, USF and UCF joined us at Word of Life Camp, bringing the total number of people close to 130. Each year we only have one of these so it’s a pretty big deal. As you can see from the photo above FSU brought a pretty large group. Our guest speaker was Drew Frazer, Nav staff at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He spent the weekend asking us the question, “How big is your God?” He challenged our students to consider the God talked about in the Bible, the phenomenal power He has and what He has been able to do through people who trusted Him, verses our view of who He is and what He is capable of doing. Do we box God in, believing that He’s not capable of doing whatever He wants?
Continue reading ‘Spring Conference’
I write this to you from the Orlando airport, where my long layover has just turned into an even longer layover thanks to a half hour delay. I arrived here from Tallahassee at about 3:30 this afternoon. I won’t be taking off from Orlando until 7:55, assuming their current estimate is any good. And I’m not even flying into Hartford. It was cheaper to go through Boston. So when my next flight touches down I’ve still got a long drive home ahead of me. It’ll be well after midnight before I get to bed tonight.
Continue reading ‘My Buffer Week’
I went to St. Louis the first weekend of November for the Navigators’ National Staff Conference. I spent the second weekend of November in Gainesville at the Florida Navigators’ men’s retreat. It sort of seems like we just had one of these. The last two of these have been during the spring semester. This time it’s in the fall since we’re moving our big conference back to the spring.
Anyway, this was your typical men’s retreat, complete with lots of food, man challenges, and good speakers. We heard from Andy Farina on Friday night and from Dave Wirgau on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon was a panel discussion where students were able to ask the “senior staff” their questions. The goal of a weekend like this is to remind our students (or in some cases, introduce the notion for the first time) what it means to be a man of God.
Beyond the fact that the trip was spiritually encouraging the games were also a lot of fun. I stayed up all Friday night playing Risk. (Me and my partner were down to one man in Argentina but came back to take over the world.) The man challenges that I mentioned included a banana eating contest (which I videoed) and a minivan push. When it was all said and done UF won the man challenge and brought the trophy home to Gainesville. Will get them next year.
I’ve got some good photos and two videos from the event for you. They’ve been on Facebook for a while, but if you’re not a member there they’re now also up on my website (photos here, videos of banana eating contest and beatboxing here).
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to travel out to St. Louis for the Navigators’ National Staff Conference. They only have one of these once every four years, so I really lucked out that my first year on staff happened to coincide with this event. There were around 1200 Navigator staff at the event each day at the Millennium Hotel. I had the privilege of hearing a lot of fantastic speakers such as Eddie Broussard, Brenda Salter-McNeil, and Bill Tell. We also got to hear a talk given by Alan Andrews, the U.S. Director, and Mike Treneer, the International President. I have pages and pages of notes from these talks that I haven’t had the time to properly digest.
Continue reading ‘National Staff Conference’
Quote of the Day #1: “Is this where Satan eats?” — Chris Gatlyn, USF Navigators staff who can’t stand it when the different foods on his plate touch, describing a Vietnamese restaurant whose specialty involves mixing a variety of different foods
Quote of the Day #2: “Walk back over there.” — April Flores, USF EDGE Corps staff, to Dave Wirgau as he was pacing; he had an idea on one side of the room but forgot it on the other side
So I’ve been working this Navigators gig on campus for five weeks now and I have to say that it’s been a veritable roller coaster ride. You have to understand that the first month of school is always going to be the craziest, both for the students and for any organization on campus. You’re constantly meeting new people, your schedule is a complete mess, and you just hope to God that eventually things will begin to slow down and become a little more normal. I don’t want to jinx it, but I think we are about to reach that state of normalcy here in Tallahassee. But before I forget everything that’s happened up to this point let me tell you a little about what’s been going on around here.
Continue reading ‘Five Weeks In’
So here’s the long overdue recap of my fund raising trip down to North Palm Beach and Lakeland last month, as well as some of the events since then. I know it’s been over a month since I’ve last blogged. The week after that trip was an emotional roller coaster. I felt depressed, jealous and bitter a good bit of the week, and when I get that way I don’t do a lot of things I enjoy, hence my lack of blogging despite having more than my fair share of time on my hands. Since the end of that week, as you’ll infer, I’ve been very busy and haven’t had any time on my hands, hence my lack of blogging.
I left for North Palm later than I hoped on the morning of Thursday, August 16. I was going there to make a final fund raising trip to raise support for my ministry with the Navigators at FSU. When I left I was at 40% of my funding goal and couldn’t start working until I hit at least 75%. It’s a six hour drive down, not nearly as long as I remembered it being. When I left I really didn’t know why I was going. A part of me felt like it was going to be just like my Connecticut trip all over again. When I left for that trip I didn’t have too many face-to-face fund raising appointments made before arriving and I ended up not having many during the trip. The same could be said for this trip (though, once again, not for lack of trying). Many people were out of town or otherwise unavailable. Many I just hadn’t managed to talk to; I could only get their message machines. But I had a lot of peace about making the trip. I’ve learned to trust that feeling of peace a lot more in recent months. There’s something to it.
Continue reading ‘Palm Beach & Beyond’
This morning I will be driving from Tallahassee to North Palm Beach for the weekend. I am making the trip in the hopes of being able to sit down with a few people I used to know well and tell them about my ministry. This is really the last place I have to travel to that I haven’t already been that has a fair number of people who may be interested in supporting me. Already, however, I’ve had my fair share of troubles.
Continue reading ‘Palm Beach Bound’
