Strong Until the Finish Line

Hey there everyone,

First off happy Father's Day to all you Dad's out there and hope you had a good day celebrating it in whatever fashion that turned out to be for today.

Secondly, I must admit I'm still somewhat bummed out about today's service. It was a bit more stressful than most Sunday's in the past. Why? Partly due to that I was involved in more of putting it together than normal even including changes and additions in the morning. We had 3 DVD clips plus some pictures that was part of the kid's presentation. The pictures of the kids got some laughs especially one where a guy (I don't know his name) was exiting the bathroom. I must admit it took a bit of fine tuning i.e. removing some red eyes plus adding eyes to a kid. In the final group shot a kid on the end, in regards to his eyes, looked funny. The camera made it so one of his eyes looked odd; it had a white glare/dot. (Trust me it is hard to describe) Anyways, I used the red eye removal tool in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (plus I made some automation along the way to help me in the future while editing photos) which caused him to have entirely black eyes i.e. you couldn't really see a white pupil. So, in order to not make him look weird in the photo, I zoomed in on his eyes, used the pencil tool to add some white to a pixel on each eye, and when I zoomed out it looked more normal. Granted on a close look from the other kid's eyes to his it might not appear right, but up on the screen it looked better than just a kid with black eyes.

Lastly, about today's service...it was not pretty to say the least. On the last DVD that was cued up I closed the program and cued it up again, just trying to make it easier to start. That's it; nothing major technical failed, the equipment was working fine, and I was back there. I made the decision, closed the DVD playback program, and cued it up again. I alone caused the technical failure to occur and nobody else. I also take the full responsibility and ramifications for my actions. *sighs* I probably should have left well enough alone and it would have ran fine yet, that wasn't what happened. I was just trying to save a step and make it easier to start the DVD; instead of clicking OK on a dialogue box just hitting the play button.

On a positive note, the service overall went very well (late) and I felt the Holy Spirit there. I hope the rest of you did too in some way or another. Plus I'm looking forward to the upcoming Leadership Summit 2007; it will be a good team for us leaders (and others too) to connect, refuel, and have some fun along the way.

That's it for now; have a good week everyone.

Plus, I'd appreciate your prayers and I must admit I was not in Bible class today like I stated I would be in my previous post. Things just didn't quite play out liked I planned today. That's life: turns, twists, accidents, stalls, unforeseen changes, plus friends, families, and good times along the way.

Take it easy all.