The M-Strike

Washing dishes at the kitchen sink after our casually late Saturday morning breakfast, I saw the stealthy, charcoal gray Toyota Prius turn into our driveway.  I announced to the household, “Kids, The M-Strike is here!”  All of a sudden shouts of excited panic erupted as three energtic kids bolted down the hallway to assemble their battle positions and stage an ambush. 

We greeted Matt and Emily at the door with excitement – dear friends of our from back home whom we’d been anticipating spending the day with since we learned of their planned trip to visit their family who live just a short distance from us.  We chatted as we showed them around the house but as Matt traveled down the hallway he was met with a hail storm of rubber-tipped Nerf missiles!  Matt, given the battle name “M-Strike” by the kids at a previous war scene back home, sprang into action making short work of the children.

After Matt and Emily left from their morning visit, our good friends from back home, Beth & Joe stopped by on their way home from their California family vacation with their kids: Emma, Easton, Zoe & Ezekiel (Zeik).  We had a great time catching up with them, playing with their kids and eating a few otter pops.   

By late afternoon it was up over a hundred degrees out and we headed over to M-Strike’s mom’s house… I suppose her official title is, “Momma-M-Strike.”   They have a sweet pool and we had another killer pool party.

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My dad’s birthday is today.  We called to sing him happy birthday and emailed him the link of a video we made and uploaded to Youtube.  The distance of separation from family is felt in a much greater depth when you’re sharing experiences over speaker phone.  We’ve been here two weeks to date.  Little homesick today.

Whiskey Town Lake Reunion

When I first mentioned that I was moving to Redding, CA  to my friend Sam he said, “Sweet, Whiskey town Lake.”  I had no idea what he was talking about, but just nodded and smiled.  Today, however, we were invited to go out with the Stevens Family to spend the evening there.  About fourteen miles from our house, West of Redding, up in the hills about a thousand feet higher in elevation, off a road that winds up to the top of a ridge there is an absolutely gorgeous lake below as you crest the point to turn into the park by the Ranger Station off the main highway.  Driving around the dam of the reservoir we could see amazing, tropical-colored-blue rocks deep in the clear waters dispersed casually along the shoreline.  We arrived to our destination which was a scenic beach front in a wonderful cove of the lake surrounded by tall ponderosa pine trees.

My good friend Aaron, who is truly responsible for my being down in Redding (okay, him and Jesus) along with his wife, Crystal, and their son, Judah, try to make going to the lake a weekly outing.  Aaron’s parents, his two brothers, wives, kids, girlfriends, etc. all came.  It was a great time.  

Aaron & I at the Lake 

A mutual friend of their family came along, that once introduced I said, “I know you from somewhere but I just can’t place it.”  His name was Tom.  I knew his face and his voice so strangely well but I could not place where from.  I introduced myself as “Joben” and later as we were all sitting around talking he said, “Wait, Joby Jarvis, why do I know your name?!” as we could both see the connection start to come into focus.  We narrowed it down to Springfield Faith Center, where we both been attending during the same time.  Tom is fourteen years older that I am and as we started to figure age and placement it clicked!  He was my leader in “Knights” when I was in the fifth grade!  Knights was a mid-week bible-memorizing-youth-program that was part of our church during the Wednesday evenings, kind of like Awanas I suppose.  “I spent the night in your backyard!” I announced as it all came flooding back, and detailed exactly where his old house was at of 73^rd Street out in the Thurston area where we had our end-of-the-Knight-season sleep over, or whatever it was. 

Tom moved soon after that and I had not seen him since I was ten-years-old until today, twenty-three years ago.  The Lord has done some really incredible “relational re-connecting” lately.  Crazy!

Zipline Addition

Yeah, so we came over to hang out with our British Friends this afternoon and into the evening to play in the pool since it was a nice 101 degrees... oh yeah, the first cloudy day we've ad here too. James reminded me to bring over the zipline I had mentioned to him that I decided to bring down here with us last minute. It took a bit of engineering, but when take a little British ingenuity and an American who thinks he can do anything, you know you'll come up with something spectacular. Check this out! click here for video

Kiddos School Day 1

The boys’ first day of school was today.  Three hundred elementary school kids from across the country and around the world converged in the gym, which doubles as the sanctuary of Bethel Church, to listen to the state of the student body address from Mr. Mayor followed by his commissioning prayer – pretty awesome.   I chatted with parents who had all recently moved to Redding to attend the school of ministry that I will going to and in turn had enrolled their kids at the Christian school as well—a guy from Florida, a gal from Taiwan, another from England and others from everywhere else. Richly diverse that’s for sure.  I stood beside Hudson as the boys lined up beside the girls before entering their classroom.  "Okay boys, we'll let the girls enter the classroom first because they are true gentlemen," Ms. Rust instructed -- right on teach, right on!

We bumped into our English friends from the pool party, James and Fiona, and invited them over for a cup of coffee (we did offer tea).  They are in a bit of a crunch looking for a car while they’re here in the states for the next couple of years and lucky for them Mica is a car shopping champion.  Mica and Fiona sat at the computer busy with craigslist and autotrader while I ceased the opportunity to show James my pistol.  He was pretty impressed and I promised to take him out shooting in the near future.   I guess in England you have to go to some kind of club and rent guns to shoot there.  I told him that was lame and that back home you just shoot in your back yard.  Here in the city though you just can’t go shooting, but you can throw knives!  Lucky for James I brought my throwing knives and a freshly painted cross-section of a Doug Fir tree for just an occasion.  I had him throwing knives like James Bond in no time.  I alluded one of his first attempts as “weak throw” in a joking way and he responded, “I cannot believe you just called me a Nancy” – classic.

Today was the first day of Lily’s new found liberation from the boys.  Don’t get me wrong, she loves her boys and they treat her good, but today was different in that she was home hanging out with mom and dad all by herself while the boys were at school.  She watched a “Kitty-meow-meow” cartoon for a bit when we got home cause that’s what she wanted to do.

We picked the boys up from school, came home, played in the pool and finished the day with dinner at In-and-Out Burger.  I’m not trying to make it a habit, but man those burgers are good!

Summer Bust

First day of school starts tomorrow for the kiddos (way too early if you ask me).  The school of ministry I’ll be attending doesn’t start until the second week of September but we moved down a month early for the kids’ sake.  Lily will be rocking pre-school at home with momma, Josiah’s taking the plunge into first grade & Hudson’s stepping up to the big leagues as a third grader.  Being that we are in full-time ministry made us eligible for both boys’ tuition to be cut in half -- Two for the price of one!  They’ll get a quality education at a private Christian school this year and we couldn’t be more blessed about the whole deal.  Great teachers, awesome staff all lead by a stellar principal named “Mr. Mayor.”  You can’t go wrong with a name like that, plus he use to sell hot tubs… beat that!

We did a lot this last week to squeeze out the last bit of summer break before the kids got back into the full swing of things, even in the midst of getting all settled into our new place.  We brought our own pool with us, one of those inflatable ring-topped Costco jobs.  It’s pretty awesome and provides us a lot of entertainment in the summertime.  That got filled up day one, along with the trampoline of course, especially with the sprinkler shooting up from below. 

We went on a pretty sweet, exploring bike ride too.  We’re really close to open expanses of “green space” with all kinds of bike trails criss-crossing to connect adjoining neighborhoods.  The boys loved the neighborhood curbs that sloped like one continuous ramp of BMX excitement compared to the square-edged curbs back home that seek to wipe you out.  The neighborhoods were adorned with warm-weathered species of flowering shrubs and the occasional palm tree.  The evening air was a warm invitation and the gorgeous sunset was graced by a pair of gyrocopters flying low overhead.  Josiah was convinced they were remote control model plans from his perspective.

The grand finale summer-end event was going to “Water Works” water park.  I’m not gonna lie, the place is pretty sweet.  The kids are at a really fun age to enjoy it and the boys did all the BIG rides.  I rode backwards down the “Avalanche” with Hudson on a double-tube… his facial expression of grimishing thrill-seaker-borderline-freaked-out-but-it's-okay-cause-dad's-here will be forever etched in my mind. 

However, summer break for the kids has come to an end.  In the last two hours we’ve laid out clothes, packed lunches, cut hair, did bathes, brushed teeth, read books and said prayers… and I helped J.

English Pool Party

We’ve been here a week now and we feel pretty settled.  Both Mica’s and my parents moved us down last Saturday, but my mom stayed through this last week and just headed back this morning.  I worked in the front yard tiding up the shrubs, mowed the grass and had a bit of fun watching the phone service repair man fighting a wasp nest in the phone box twenty feet up pole.  He went through five or six cans of bee-spray contending with those demonic insects and finally won after a fifteen minute battle.

It was ninety-five degrees around one o’clock in the afternoon when Mica came out front and told me a of an email invitation she received.  A parent in Josiah’s class that just invited all the first graders to come over to their place for a pool party, “Do you want to go?”

“Are you kidding?!”

Mica baked chocolate chip cookies, we packed a bag and let the GPS guide the way.  Mica told me from the email that the family was from England and just moved here to go to the school of ministry as well.  We pulled up to this large house in this nice neighborhood and made our way through the open front door toward the sound of pool activity in the back yard.  We were instantly greeted by a wonderful couple with the most remarkably authentic English accents – James and Fiona.  We had a really fun time just getting to know what each other were referring to.

They were so impressed they we brought cookies, or should I say “biscuits.”  Fiona said it was so American of us and “absolutely lovely.”  Chips are called “crisps,” the oven is a “grill” and the garbage is “the bin.”  They came from a “village” in England and have two kids – Cocoa and Caspian, the sweetest most polite little ones you have ever met, honestly.  For example, here’s Cocoa asking for more water: “Mummy, I’ve finished my glass, may I please have anuther.” 

James told me a bit about his life story going from the stock exchange in London to becoming a circuit preacher in rural England and I told him about Springfield and Young Life.  He told me all about Cricket and fox hunting with hounds and I told him about hunting bull elk and trapping bobcats. 

We stayed long enough into the evening that we had to make dinner plans, so James and I drove to the local store to get stuff to make burgers.   He actually told the cashier “Cheerio” as we turned to leave!  This guy is the real deal, I’m telling you!

We had a great time with our new friends and I expect I’ll write more about them in the near future as we promised to have them over for “biscuits” and gravy.

Blessed & Blessed

We have been so blessed in so many wonderful ways as we have moved in this direction:  encouragement, financial gifts, physical help moving our stuff, etc.  But there were several things that happened each day during the week leading up to our departure that I wanted to share.

Monday Aug 8: I needed to get a bike before we moved.  I started looking on Craigslist for a total “dad” bike, you know, something with one of those sweet hard plastic seats to strap in the smallest member of your family that can’t keep up on their own.  I finally found one for $160 out Fall Creek, but was having trouble finding time to drive all the way to the location to make a purchase.  Finally after our Young Life meeting on a Monday evening I drove up with one of my old YL leaders, Mike, who was in town visiting.  We had a great visit on our drive out and nearly got lost after going to the wrong house and driving through someone’s front yard (the guy said it was okay).  The guy selling the bike, Scott, was a super nice guy.  Through our conversation I told him I was moving to California to go to a school of ministry this next year.   His response was, “Praise God, that’s awesome, the bike’s yours!”  He totally just gave me this awesome bike!  Schwinn, cruiser, five-speed & killer kid seat on the back! (Lily loves it.)  Mike and I prayed for Scott and his family, we loaded up the bike and praised the Lord as we drove off.

Tuesday Aug 9: My laptop crashed the week prior and I had to get a new computer before we left.  A good friend, Doug, who helps us out with our computers at the YL office took my laptop to see if it was salvageable.  He diagnosed it and told me it had a pulse but suffered severe brain damage.  He directed me to Office Depot to take advantage of a couple rebates they were offering.  While purchasing the cahier suddenly realized something, left for a moment and promptly returned with a $100 visa cash card and said it was one of their promotions they were doing! Ha!  Doug was able to transfer all my information off my old computer onto my new, like I never missed a beat!  If my computer would have crashed down in California I would have had to pay sales tax and I wouldn’t have had Doug!

Wednesday Aug 10:  My friend Jesse has a drift boat and has been telling me at summer that he’d be glad to take the boys and me fishing whenever we wanted to go.  I made plans with him Wednesday for an evening float and went to Bi-Mart to get the boys new fishing poles as a surprise.  I ran into a friend of mine named Doug (Different Doug than Computer Doug).  I coached his son in wrestling back in the day and his wife works in Sporting Goods at Bi-Mart.   He asked about the fishing poles for the boys and said he walk them up to the front for me.  I grabbed a few more things, came to the front and discovered the Doug had bought the fishing poles for the boys! 

Thursday Aug 11:  I’ve met every Thursday morning for breakfast at “Steve’s Breakfast & More” with a group of guys for the past three years.  When Betty, the owner and our waiter every week, handed out the checks she skipped me.  When I asked for it she said, “It’s on Steve!”

The Lord loves to bless us with the little things.

Blogging This Endeavor

I have had this tugging on my heart for the past several years to attend the school of ministry at Bethel Church in Redding, CA.  My first introduction to Bethel was through my good friend Aaron, who moved down here the summer of 2006 to go to school.  I remember that summer as somewhat of a "busy season"... having child number three, living above the garage at Mica's parents' and building our dream home in the woods up the beautiful Mohawk Valley outside of Springfield, OR -- the community in which we feel called to do ministry in forever.  Young Life has been our life and calling for basically the past fifteen years since I started volunteer leading.  We consider ourselves missionaries to our Springfield through Young Life and see oursleves serving our community long term through this mssion.  However we felt strongly that we were suppose to leave for a season to recieve further training in order to more effectively minister back home.

So... here I am.  Sitting at a borrowed table in the dining room of a rented home in the state I swore I'd never live in, "blogging."  I've packed up my family, rented out our dream home and moved to a foreign land where the water taste terrible and they sell hard liquor in the grocery stores.  As long as my family still loves me and we come out of this experience with some good memories we'll call this whole deal a success! 
Seriously though, this truly is and already has been an incredible adventure.  The Lord has has proved Himself so incredibly faithful like he always does.  The "borrowed" table is an incredible blessing, the house we've rented is so much more than we expected -- really nice -- and the weather here in Northern California is pretty awesome : )

Our vision is to not merely survive and adventure, it's to live out a dream!  When the Lord puts a dream in your heart that's so ridiculous you laugh  outloud and then suddenly get so freaked out that you might actually allow Him lead you into some distant, unkown land... BEWARE!  You might start living life the way He's intended you to live.