Well, it seems we are nearly in the clear. Our phone was disconnected due to HUGE billing errors on the part of our PREVIOUS phone company (well, almost previous). They have been billing us the wrong amounts, not billing us, starting new accounts, telling us wrong information, and threatening disconnects that they said should be disregarded … SINCE APRIL. So, Wednesday morning their computer system finally decided to turn off our phone. That was bad.

Today, after spending nearly ALL of the last two days on the phone with them (using our neighbor’s phone, or ours – you can call EXCEL, but not anyone else – and we could not receive calls) we finally have our service restored.

The funniest part in all of this is that I saw again how in the minor stuff, I still am not like Daniel. Daniel was so cool when stuff did not go his way… when he was treated unfairly. In the worhsip service we did on Wednesday, Troy was talking about Dan 6 – the lion’s den story… and just helped me see again the complete surrender of Daniel to his God. Really. I’m just talking about not having a phone for two days… which was completely annoying.. but Daniel was injustly treated and it was going to cost him his life.

And we have no record of him putting up a fight. No record of complaining about unjust treatment. Just simple lived-out faith in God to save him — or not. It was a cool pitcure of complete surrender. Troy called it "Looking Up". Whenever a minor or major bump in the road came Daniel looked up to God for help. Didn’t try to do anyting on his own… just trusted God’s goodness, faithfulness and ability to come through.

With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

God, help me remember to not take on the world myself when things get twisted (and they WILL get twisted…) but to look up and peacefully trust you.

I just thought I’d clarify on last night’s entry. Jen wanted me to. 🙂

I am not so full of myself that I need to go around proclaiming our fame to anyone who will happen upon and read this blog. That was not my intent in posting yesterday’s blog entry. For those of you who read this, you probably know that already. That’s not me.

I set this thingie up so I could have a place to share thought (random and wandering a plenty) from my head. That was yesterday’s thought du jour. (I don’t speak French)

Anyway – I know we’re not "Famous"… but there sure are a lot more people who know or know of us than people that we know back. Very interesting.

In other news… we caught a mouse that was hanging out in our silverware drawer. Ian thought it was pretty cool. 🙂

And, if you never check the Other Bloggers links to the left… WHY DON’T YOU? 🙂 Check out my friend Joe’s latest entries… talk about famous… 🙂

I think we’re famous. Not like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or Arnold Schwarzenegger famous. (I had to look that one up…) But, we are famous.

I don’t mean that to sound as arrogant or self-proclaimed as it does. What I have noticed, though, is that quite frequently in many places around the country, there are people we do not know who know us. And often we will hear from friends of ours that they met someone who knows of us or some strange connection like that. It’s kinda like that Kevin Bacon thing…

It’s rather strange, actually. And today, for the first time, I think I noticed that I was kinda getting used to it. And I didn’t really like that. One lady knew us in a grocery store, and I kind of treated her (in hind-sight) like she was supposed to know me, and I was not supposed to know her. And I wasn’t even trying to get to know who she was. Then there was a lady in the bank – same deal. She knew me. Even knew of our recent trip. Asked about it. I could not place her at all. I did try a little bit more this time though.

It is just odd that so many people have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with my face, my name, my life… and at some level they expect that I have that same familiarity with theirs. I wish that I could. But that is becoming more and more impossible. I am not sure how really famous people do it. I guess I might find out.

Till then, if you see me out and about, come on up and say hello, and unless we have had some relationship before, just tell me your name! 🙂 I’ll be glad to chat and get to know ya! 🙂

I think I am a Bengals fan now. You know, we have stated here on this very page before, that we are BIG Bills fans. And always will be. But you know what… THEY’RE BAD!!! Oh boy. It’s bad.

So…

Who dey? Who dey? Who dey said they gonna beat them Bengals???

🙂

We both went to school in Cincinnati… my sister and family live there… my parents live close to there… I was born about 80 miles north of there…

WHO DEY!

(Can someone say, “BANDWAGON”?) 🙂

It’s 1:28 in the morning, on Saturday night… and I have to get up early tomorrow morning to help lead worship at Cross Creek Church here in Palmyra. So, I have to go to bed. But I am not tired. Not one bit. You know why? I have too much stuff I like to do.

I am not a work-a-holic… I just have a lot I like to do… and sometimes I feel like I am living life about twice as fast as eveyone else, cause my days start around 8:30am and go till 2:00am usually… and they are jam-packed! It does feel like I have packed about 50 years into my 28-yr-old-soon-to-be-29-yr-old frame.

Really. I have seen and done a LOT in the last 3 or 4 years. It’s kinda scary.

Perhaps I should slow down? But I am having fun… But I think I will try a week of normal pace…

You think I can do it?

Well, we are HOME now!!! Whooo-hoooo!!! And there is a TON of snow here!!!!!!! (OK, not a ton, but more than there was in Orlando…)

Our trip home was adventureous and a bit slow — took us almost 14 hours… but it was great to pull into OUR snow covered driveway, and shovel snow off of OUR deck and stairs and shiver in OUR house. 🙂

It is great to be home. More later.

I was just thinking tonight that God is so much cooler than we even know. There’s a line in Chris Tomlin’s song, Enough that says "and still more awesome than I know…" It’s true.

Tonight went very well. We sang and talked about God’s grace, and the freedom that we have in that grace. And it seemed to be very well received. But there were no earth-shattering decisions, or apparent life decisions made tonight. Just good reflections on God’s Word. And that, in itself, is great.

But even cooler than that will be when Holy Spirit uses words that were spoken or sung tonight to gently remind someone of his grace. To remind them that they are holy and blameless before God. To remind them that we walk by faith, not by sight. God’s plan is so much bigger than ours. I planned for tonight… God may have been using us in his plan for 2038! (Who knows… God is cool like that!)

All of that is just to say to you… be faithful. Do what you do. Let God use you now — and who knows when. Just live for him and be who you be. God will do the rest.

And even more. 🙂

Just a fun report of an amazing day of fun from our amazing God…

We got up at 7:30am (way too early for the Campbells!) and got everyone ready for breakfast… and then headed out at 8:30am. The skies were overcast and there was a light drizzle, but that did not concern us in the least! We were going to Disney!!!!

We got there right around 9 when it opened and headed up to Epcot to get into the parks. Once we went through the gates, we went right back out (to the surprise of the guy at the gate, who like an automated disney character blurted out "Have a nice day!" as though we had already spent a day there!) and we headed to the Monorail! Whoohooo!

From there we hopped on the ferry to the Magic Kingdom! We ended up spending most of the day there, and most of that was spent waiting in lines! Even on a rainy, overcast day! But it was so fun! We rode lots of rides, one of them being Ian’s first roller coaster ride! We got to meet and get photos with Pooh and Tigger and Eyeore and even Mickey and Goofy! We saw fireworks at two different parks (we went back to Epcot for their later fireworks show!) and we got a LOT of excersize!!!

We didn’t get home till 10:30 or so after a long, long, AWESOME day. So fun. Even with no sleep and not much break… the boys (and Jen) did great. It was SO fun!!!

For your amusement… here is a link to a slideshow of some photos from the day:

http://www.basicmm.com/blog/disney.mov

for you Windows users out there, you’ll have to get a copy of Quicktime to play our awesome slideshow!!

God Provides

On Saturday, November 8th, we were going to be spending a good bit of energy for a small crowd of people – and we were totally OK with that. We love those people, and they are so good at loving us. Always great to be there. But, at the same time, I was thinking in the back of my head… shouldn’t I ask if they are going to be paying us at all? Shouldn’t I just gently remind them that our only income is from people like them???

I could not remember for sure if we had discussed money with them, so after a bit of wrestling, I decided with God to not ask and let God directly take care of us. That was mighty hard to do, mind you, but I decided to trust Him and see what would happen.

At the end of a very long day, and a particularly long night, God reminded us that it is not actually His people that take care of us, but in fact our Father directly. A couple different people came up to me afterwards and just started handing me checks and cash. They said they wanted to give us something for our ministry. The same thing was happening to Jen at the back of the room!

When we went home, we had $195 from "love offerings" that no one had asked for. We did not mention it, nor did anyone else that evening.

But our God knows our needs, and He faithfully provides. He knows our needs. And, He knows yours too.

Well I told you we would get you some stories that have not made it to the BLOG from this trip… and I am sitting here watching the Bills lose to Dallas, so I thought… what better time than that?? 🙂 Let’s see… where to begin….

Stories From Clearwater…

We told you the amazing story of Ian’s Watershoe (see Oct 29-30, 2003) and the funny story of our first night at the time share resort… but, there was more! Tuesday of that week was Jen’s Birthday, so we had a full day of celebrating Jen! It was fun. We went to a bunch of thrift stores (one of Jen’s favorite things to do!) And we went to Skyline Chili!!! Another favorite! It was a great day. We also got to go to Skyline another time that week with some friends from Cincinnati Bible College (well, one of them is). That was awesome. AND, we got to have a free lunch from someone who was trying to sell us a time share! 🙂 When they couldn’t sell us one, they cut us a check for $125.00!!!! That was a pretty awesome blessing!!! But probably the most fun thing that week… feeding the alligators!!!! 🙂 There was a mini-golf place right next to our time share that had baby alligators you could feed! How fun!!! The boys loved it!

Stories From Ft. Myers…

When we first got to Ft. Myers, it was Halloween night, and we dressed the boys up and got to do the Trunks of Treats event that a church was hosting. We were singing later that night at this church. There were only 5 trunks… 🙂 So, we headed out and hit a couple houses in the neighborhood. Our boys were just tooooo cute for 5 trunks. So we had fun, and then a great concert that night. We also got to spend the weekend with some friends of ours – they knew Jen when she was born! That was cool to spend the weekend with them, and sang at their church on Sunday morning. That saturday we also played at a coffee house that sold tickets for people to see us!! And people bought them!!!! 🙂 We got 6-of-7 dollars from each ticket, so that was nice. A good night there, too. Also hooked up with the Race family… friends of ours from our church in Victor.. moved down to Cape Coral, FL 3 years ago or so, and we’ve gotten to visit them each year we come down. That was a nice evening. We finished the weekend with a meal at Skyline!!! Whooohooooo!!!! 🙂

Stories From Tampa/Clearwater (the second time)…

We returned to Tampa on Monday Nov 3rd and got to stay with some friends from the Univ of South FL (Where we sang on Tuesday night of that week). We went swimming there!!! The water was kinda cold, but it was fun for me and the boys to get to swim in November! 🙂 Tuesday night’s concert was very cool, too. It was fun to see a lot of familar faces, and it was fun to worship with them. That Wednesday night we did a worship concert for the youth at First Christian Church in Clearwater – on Total Surrender – using the Rich Young Ruler story (see below for thoughts on that…) Was a good night. Got to spend a little more time with our friends there, too!

Stories From Orlando…

Have you ever driven around Orlando??? We drive everywhere, but we have never gotten lost as many times as this past weekend?!?!?! It was crazy. A fun and interesting reunion this weekend was seeing my Grandad’s (my Mom’s Dad) widow (not my Grandma, his second wife). I have some good memories from that house! Was funny to be there again like 16 years later! Wow! She took us out to dinner, and then came to our concert last night. Was great to see her again. The concert was a lot of fun last night… we ended up doing a shortened set because one of the groups opening for us got a bit overzealous… 🙂 They went about an hour instead of 15 minutes… 🙂 Oh well. We didn’t actually start till 9:30, so we cut it short so everyone could go home! But everyone who stayed was very happy to be there. Very cool. Nice night. Also got to hang out with some friends with a NY connection. They also helped us with our accomodations for the weekend. That was so cool! We actually stayed in our own place for MOST of this tour!! That was so crazy! 🙂

So… that’s some catchin’ up. Stay tuned for more…

Sometimes… if you trust Him… when you follow Him… you will find a surprise along the way. 🙂 Jen was asking God to hook us up with Disney while we were down here… knowing full well that there was no way we could afford to even get in the parking lot. But, she asked anyway.

Last night, after the concert, one of the guys in the church said, "Just let me know if you guys want to visit one of the parks tomorrow after your concert in the morning."

I said, "Pardon me??"

"You know, Disney? Just let me know."

I said, "Pardon me?????"

He told me that he works for Disney, and he could get us any amount of admission we’d like! FREE!!!! But the problem was that Saturday was a dreadfully long day (more on that later) and today was to be early (I was up at 5:45) So I knew Jen was going to be too tired to do it. But, when I told her about it… it was a gift from God to her, so she did not hesitate at all!!!

We’re going to Disney World!!!! 🙂

Cool part is, this couple (giving us the free passes — to ALL FOUR PARKS, by the way — for two days!!!!) also offered to give us a place to stay!

So, FREE lodging, and FREE ALL-DAY PASSES to Disney. We’ll go tonight to see the fireworks at Epcot and then tomorrow as much as we can do in a day. Then start home on Tuesday.

That’s the other cool part… we have a little chunk of free time before the next gig that we were wondering how to spend…

Guess we know how now. 🙂

We’re going to Disney World!!!!