When I was volunteering with high school youth at our old church in Lake Oswego, we played the DVD version of these videos, and had small group discussions about the particular topic – it’s still some of my fondest memories, being in these small groups and listening to youth explore their religious beliefs.

I hope more of these dvd’s show up as apps! I can’t wait to start showing these to my daughter and discussing them with her.

I ask, because last night I had an incredible vivid dream about a youth who hasn’t attended youth group in a while – in my dream she and I went out for coffee and got caught up.

Which, well, hasn’t happened. I haven’t thought about her for a few weeks… and I thought to myself when I woke up today, what caused me to have that dream? If you believe in God, could it have been God whispering to me to call her and actually do that?

I don’t know – I’d be curious what you think causes us to dream – but it kinda freaked me out. Enough that I’m going to call her this afternoon and see about coffee at some point soon.

On Sunday the youth met with the volunteers (everybody but me because I’m down at Apple right now) to talk about the what they liked and disliked about small groups in the past.

In Jennifer’s group, a sophomore named Kelsey who was in my small group last year mentioned that we had a great small group. Jennifer asked why and she said it’s because I let them be serious when they needed to be serious, and let them be goofy when they needed to be goofy.

This has gotten me thinking today about how to apply that to business. I believe if you are running a meeting or getting a group of people to talk about a topic, you should allow people to talk. Don’t forcefully cut things off. Allow some frivolity in your meeting before getting serious. And if it gets serious, let it. Don’t be afraid of frank and serious talk.

That’s my learning for today from a 13 year old teenager. Are there any young people in your life you can learn something from?

Link to my Vox Blog with the song you can listen to for free.

Lucien in a Bandana, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Most of us went to Stubbs in Austin for a free BBQ lunch… and is seemingly normal in Austin, it was freaking hot out, and my head was getter burned.. so I borrowed a bandana from one of the First Pres Portland girls, and became instantly cool. And fat, mental note start working out more when I get home.

Click through to see a few more pictures.. bandwidth is bad here, so I’ll save more uploading for when I get home.

I’m not sure what to expect – the only convention I’ve been to has been MacWorld.

I’m planning on blogging my thoughts on the convention here, so stay tuned.

It’s also really amazing to see the devastation down there. It seems basically that no one had ‘flood’ insurance, and the insurance company classified the damage the homes got as a ‘flood’, so the owners are out of luck.

Take this family:

This is what’s left of a multi-million dollar home on the waterfront. Notice the FEMA trailer in the background behind the beams of the house.

Part of me doesn’t get it… why not rebuild? I guess if insurance doesn’t pay, what do you do? Submit a request to the First Presbyterian Church in Bay Saint Louis and pray people like our youth group keep coming I guess.

Becca Sanders is over in Africa right now for 7 weeks, and she’s blogging. She is the daughter of the pastor of the church I volunteer at, and she’s on a mission.

She’s given the 1400 folks or so that go to LGPC a look inside a mission, pictures, thoughts, day to day activities.. pretty awesome stuff.. it makes me want to go to Africa.. seven weeks, I don’t know.. but 2 weeks, sure.

Just an FYI for those of you who read the weblog and are wondering how it went. (I and other on the trip took about 1400 pictures, of which I have about 1000 of them now).

Well.. it was really much more than that, some bits about Darwinism vs creationism too.. it is hard to describe, you had to be there.

The thing that struck me tonight though was the worship. We always spend a good 20 minutes singing contemporary praise songs.. the last song (of which I already forget the name but have it written down in my notebook downstairs) was just incredible.. I felt God in the room, you know? The whole spine tingling thing as I was singing with my eyes closed, I felt really emotional..

I suppose it could be the lack of sleep I’ve been getting recently.. but wow.

If you ever want to see the world from a youth’s point of view, go volunteer at some place with them.. you’ll get to experience their passion for things. Makes me feel young tonight – and incredibly thankful I can spend my Sunday and Tuesday nights with these kids.

So, it turns out I have a reader or two, and one of them posted a comment to my posting.

Diane, and anyone else who was wondering what my last post meant, here goes. I told a similar story to this to 40 high school kids on Sunday night, I volunteer and they attend Entheos.

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In or about 1995, I worked for Apple Computer in the Newton group. It was a fabulous time, the people and the work and the energy in the group was incredible. It’s my best work job, and so far nothing has eclipsed it. I then moved on to work at @Home.

It was during my time at @Home that I started to feel empty inside. There was this feeling, you know, like is this all there is? Is there more to life than working really hard, earning a lot of money, and going home and watching tv and working some more?

A good friend of mine, Maurice Sharp, invited me to his church in Sunnyvale, to what turns out to be a really cool contemporary service called Intersections. That night I met my wife Jennifer, among having a good time listening to some great music.

Over the years there, I started learning more about God, Jesus, and the bible. I watched people who believed in God, and how they treated one another, how they gave of their time for others, and liked it. I wanted to be like them.

When Jennifer and I moved up to Oregon in the fall of 2000, I wanted to get involved in a church up here. Through some searching, we found Lake Grove Presbyterian, and eventually I started helping out with their youth groups.

Doing this, the youth group thing, has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve done in my entire personal life. It’s changed me from a person who’s identity isn’t defined by their work career, but more by personal actions and feelings towards volunteering and learning about God and the bible.

Doing this volunteering has also lead me to a conclusion, I don’t like working at home. I’ve been doing this for 4+ years now, and while I’ve learned a lot about Macintosh development, and particularly Cocoa over the past 10 months or so, I need people interaction. I crave people interaction. I could work at Home Depot if I was working with a great group of people.

Back to the God shaped hole – basically it means if you have something missing in your life, if you wonder if there is more to life than what you are currently doing, I urge you to check out the bible. I’d of course suggest a Christian religion, based upon what I’ve learned about them. But truly, it’s worth it. It’s worth the effort to search out a great place to learn about faith. It’s worth it to drive around to find a parking spot to go inside and hear a preacher talk. It’s worth it to ask the hard questions you have about religion.

Ok, that’s it.. enough preaching. If you have more questions, comments, or you disagree with me, sign up for a TypeKey identity, and post a comment to this page.

Thanks for reading. I’m pretty sure this is the longest entry I’ve ever written.

“Man was created with a God shaped vacuum that nothing else can satisfy.. And that is certainly my experience”

Nice.. I completely agree with that, I even mentioned something similar to that in my testimony to 40 high school kids last night.

Go read Steve Harrington’s March 7th sermon, and Bob Sander’s March 7th sermon. (note you might have to hunt around for Bob’s if you read this after about a week, as they don’t have a perma-link for it yet).

Tell me which one makes you think more, consider life and how you act in it. To me it’s Steve’s all the way.

Jennifer and I have high hopes for this service. We met at an awesome evening service in the bay area, Intersections at Sunnyvale Pres. It’s a hard act to live up to, and it’s been one of the big reasons why every few months we consider moving back to the bay area.

Down2Earth started off pretty well, with 4 quick, upbeat songs. I was like “Ya, this rocks, we can stay!!”. Then it went downhill from there… the piano guy started talking a lot, and it got really preachy and serious, close to their morning services.

Yes, while you might say ‘hey, that’s what religion is all about’, it isn’t too me. I, as a moderately young married guy, I am looking for a fun place to worship, with a good message, and not a whole lot of real ‘preachy’ stuff.

I don’t know if that’s not being a real Christian or such, but it’s what I want right now, and what I miss from Sunnyvale. I suppose I’ll get used to it, as much as I consider moving back to the bay area, it’d be a bad financial move for us.

Although I should hope that it will get better, or maybe go and tell them my thoughts, eh?

It’s going to be a busy year again.. I sense it.

I’m going to be doing a ton o’ cooking, all Mexican food this year! Guac for 300 people anyone? Heh heh.

We’ll see how things go.. if I could find my S50, I’d take pictures, but I (or Jennifer) seem to have misplaced it. Or, sigh, actually lost it, which would suck.

I was a little scared about this weekend – having kids in high school looking up to you for answers is a bit frightening.

We arrived at about 8:30pm on Friday, after waiting for about 30 minutes for 5 kids that ditched at the last minute. Turns out that was fine, as we got some more intimate small group time. We worshipped for a while (basically singing some christian “pop” songs), and then played some games with everybody. It was a great icebreaker for the evening, got everybody laughing and learning about each other.

We all seemed to sleep ok, my first time in a sleeping bag was ok, a little confining (6′ 2″ is tall!). Breakfast was good, and then the kids had some free time to do their devotional. Then we did more worship, and Alison gave her talk (Acts 7:54-8:1 and Acts 9:1-22).

Then we split off into small groups. Mine turned out to be great. I’m not going to list the participants on here, out of respect for their privacy, but I am going to keep notes for myself, just because I have such horrible memory.

I’m going to keep more detailed notes about the different comments the kids had, but one thing struck me after the small group session. Life seems very hard for these kids, and perhaps kids in general. They worry about being cool, or being too cool, or doing things like reinventing themselves when they move from one part of the country to another.

In talking about the scariest thing one has done, one of the kids who has gone through the death of one of his best friend’s father had a profound thing to say. What scared him the most was that he hasn’t ‘reacted’ yet, he hasn’t cried, he hasn’t really gotten sad. He worries about his reaction to it all, and how it didn’t even seem really human.

I cried a bit that nigh, just because I can’t believe that kids have to go through such hard lives, such dramatic experiences, such hardship. Being there for them this weekend really felt great, really felt like I made a difference, however tiny, in their lives.