Finished up our second week of our missions emphasis, missional minded series this last Sunday.  One more week left.  We had a great time with missionaries Larry & Rhonda Allen.  Here are some of my thoughts from this weekend.

• We broke three records this weekend…
  • Smallest crowd on a Sunday this year
  • LONGEST gathering time, we went almost 17 minutes over on time.
  • LARGEST special offering we have taken up
•  Really missed our two worship leaders, Perko & Byron, both were out of town this weekend.  The worship team did a great job in their absence, but there was something missing.  The transitions of songs and the feel just seemed off.
• Great song that one of our musicians Steve Matney wrote, I think it was titled Awake.  Great song!
• Larry & Rhonda Allen did a great job talking about Malawi, Africa, and their missionary efforts there.  I think the whole gathering was touched
• Not a dry eye in the place with that scene in the video of the boy holding his little brother crying…it got me.
• A lot of excitement with the announcement of our new missions trips, especially the trip to Malawi, Africa next year.  Applications and payment schedules, including fund raisers, will be out soon.
• Thank you to Ryan and his wife Darcy for helping with setup of sound and taking it all down…it was a project, but we DID IT!
• Miscommunication with who was doing what on take down for kids, we got all done with everything and still had our whole sign-in area of kids still up…yikes!
• Again, lots of people at the theater this weekend to see BATMAN, fastest movie to reach $300 million at the box office.
• We had to cancel one of our missions dinners on Sunday night cause our missionaries couldn’t make it, but Saturday night we had a blast.  Great little get together.  Not too long.  Great food.  Great stories.  Perfect!
  • You should sign-up to go to one of the dinners this weekend with our missionaries that are going to be here this weekend, Earl & Janet Creps.  Signup here!
• Found out that Abi, who has been coming to Elevation for a few months, especially to our house church that meets on Tuesday nights, was attacked by a bear in Alaska.  Yes, you probably heard about it on the news. We prayed for her and her family on Sunday…keep her in your prayers…
• We have a great God…be blessed.

we started our new sermon series this week at Elevation.  It is our annual look at missional living and what that means.  This is a three week series this year where we will focus on HERE, THERE, and BEYOND.

This last Sunday we started with WONT YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR: HERE and we talked about the ministry of reconciliation.  You and I are called as followers of Jesus to reconcile this world back to Gen. 1:1 and the way God intended our lives to be.  2 Cor. 5:17-21.  Our faith should move us and it should bleed over into ALL the areas of our life.  God has us in Utah for a reason.

• great weekend, lots of new families
• met a new friend, Andy.  I met his mom at a church I was speaking at in Florida…great story on how Andy ended up at Elevation, it is a God thing.
• stripped down worship, only three people on instruments.
• Heather did a great job with the HERE and our missions endeavors for this next year HERE in Utah
• LOTS of people at the theater for BATMAN
• sorry if I stepped on toes this weekend, but our faith SHOULD move us, it should not be a compartment of our life.
• had a blast speaking in kids during the first 12 minutes of the gathering, they are so much fun and they really do listen to what you have to say
• smell the throw up in the hall…I hope you didn’t, but it was there
• great intro video Brandon…
• by the way…Doyle, aka SOX, will be with us the second week in Aug., if you want to donate some socks to Sox Place, or anything else the drop in shelter could use (video games, TVs, computers, clothes, kitchen supplies, FOOD) then bring it that Sunday morning for Doyle to take back to Denver

Well, Ami and I gave into all the hype and went to see the dark knight at 6pm yesterday.  Great movie!  Heath Ledger did an amazing job as joker.  It was one of those rare performances where the character that the actor is playing really just fits with the abilities of the actor.  I was really impressed with the skills of Ledger.  All the Oscar talk is a for sure in my opinion, but I’m not a voting member of the Academy.

I grew up in the area of super-heroes.  Superman, Batman, Spiderman.  These were my favorite crime fighters.  I loved spiderman as a kid, cause I thought it would be fun to web up the city, while climbing everywhere.  I wanted to be superman, cause who doesn’t want to fly.  BUT – Batman was the one character that seemed like you could actually grow up and be.  This was a normal guy that just made crazy suits, gear, and cars to fight crime.  This seemed possible.  Maybe that is why I loved Batman so much.

The Dark Knight was more a crime movie than a superhero flick.  Two thumbs up, but parents…be a good parent and go watch the show before your kids go, I was uneasy at parts.

In 2005, when Elevation Church launched our Sunday gatherings at a movie theater; there was only one other church in Utah that was meeting in a movie theater.  That church was Rock Canyon Church in Provo, meeting at the Cinemark theater.

Today the number of churches meeting in movie theaters in Utah has jumped through the roof.  At the Megaplex theater, THE DISTRICT, owned by Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, there are 5 churches meeting in the 20 plex theater.  5!  

I was talking to our team about what that would be like to have other churches using the theater we meet in while we were there on Sunday mornings.  We all agreed that it would be very interesting and hard for several reasons.

Looks like Utah is catching the church theater bug. 

To continue our story…

So, on Tuesday night we boarded a plan to South Africa and awoke Wednesday morning to a beautiful land.

We spent five days in South Africa and it was amazing.  We had the best hosts…Chantal and her family were great, you couldn’t want or ask for a better group of people.  They took us all over the place.

We first went to a lion park.  As you might not guess, it was like a petting zoo only no sheep or goats here, just lions.

Ami was a little nervous about being around these cubs.  They acted like puppy dogs, wanting to play and bite everything, but were very strong large cats.

They also took us to an elephant park.  I rode on an elephant when I was a kid at a circus, but this was different.  We got to get right up to the elephants, feed them, touch their trunks, tails, legs, faces, body, ears…you name it.  I have never been so close to such wild animals.  The elephants even gave us kisses with their trunks.  It was like a large vacuum that was very snotty and dirty.

South Africa was great.  They have very British and Dutch influences, from their language to driving on the other side of the road.  They are very charming people and we were treated great.  Loved it!  I really want to go visit Cape Town now that we have been in South Africa…we have heard it is top shelf.

P.S.  The birds are little trouble makers at times.

You have probably noticed that I have been absent from the blog.  Ami and I just got back from Paris and South Africa yesterday.  It is 4:33am in the morning right now, I can’t sleep…so, I thought I would start updating my blog with our adventures.

We left last Monday night from Salt Lake and arrived in Paris on July 1st at 11am.  The amazing thing about arriving in Paris on Tuesday was that my friend Jim and his wife Dawn just happened to be in Paris as well.  Ami and I didn’t need to catch our flight to South Africa until 11pm that night so we met up with Jim and Dawn for lunch at the famous Angelina’s on Rue de Rivoli which is almost across from the Louvre.

Jim and Dawn are missionaries that are working to help plant and take European churches to the next level by partnering U.S. churches with what is going on in Europe.  They are doing some great stuff and you can’t find a better couple.  Check out their website.

The food at world famous Angelina’s is AMAZING.  I had the most amazing eclair of my life.  Seriously.  I haven’t tasted anything like it in my life.  The chocolate is great!