This past weekend we began a new series here at The Gathering entitled The Journey, which will lead us through this time of transition as we keep truckin’ towards moving into God’s new house down on the “east-side” (envision Ernie H. attempting to throw up some kind of “gang sign” and cock his grumpy had sideways gangsta style). 

As we begin this Journey as a church family I was reminded this morning of a specific Journey I am on myself.  It is called “School”, and today as I went to go do all my registration I thought to myself, “self, finally this Journey shall come to an end come December.”  I found myself very proud of me, then as I walked into the JBC chapel/gym/registration waiting room in my shorts and hair way past my collar (two major rules at JBC, NO shorts and no men’s hair past their collars, because I’m sure Jesus had a crew cut) I remembered this was the sixth, count em’, 12345 SIX, sixth time I had done this registration thing here at JBC.  Most people who go through college registration  SIX times turn out to be Doctors, Scientists, successful businessmen or teachers with masters and Dr. degrees, not this guy I am simply on the 6 year Youth Ministry program, that’s right Youth Ministry and as long as Church History treats me well I shall be done with this wonderful Journey by December! 

As we travel along these Journeys in our lives let us always remember to keep our eyes focused and FINISH the Journey, it may get tough, their will be some bumps in the road but if we set our eyes and continue to be determined we will finish the Journey although it may just take some of us a little longer. 

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Ok, so if you have not noticed the change in the subtitle for this blog, it is no longer “Randomness from a Children’s Ministry Mind”, instead it now reads “Randomness from a Junior High Ministry Mind”.  This change has occurred because I, Charles Benjamin Van Hook III am no longer the Elementary Director here at the Gathering.  I am movin’ on up to the Junior High, and this weekend I got my first chance to speak to the youth.  

We discussed the different paths in our lives and some of the many road signs we come in contact with along those paths.  We dissected the story of the immoral “Girls Gone Wild” chick and the “innocent just so happened to be passing by her corner” young man from Proverbs 7, and the path he decided to take while Solomon observed from a distance.  Why is it that we are always so blind to the wrong paths we take, yet it is so clear to see when others wonder down that “Danger KEEP OUT” path?  We must always remember that it is the path we are on that leads us to our destination, not our intentions or plans.  We can always talk the talk, but that does not insure us that we will walk the walk.  We need to always keep our eyes on our destinations and with Christ we can stick firmly to our paths. 

I am so privileged to be working with our Junior High Students, I know that this is my calling within my life assignment of sharing the Good News with everyone I can.  I continue to pray for God to use me each and every day in ANY way He desires.  I know God has got great things in store for The Gathering and especially for the Junior Highers here. 

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Over the last week I have had a couple incredible God moments.  You know the moment, the hair on your arms stands at attention and your entire body tingles like that one strangely interesting “5 Gum” commercial where the guy is laying on a bazillion marbles in an abnormally large booming subwoofer. It’s a little like that with the addition of some tightness of the throat and jaw as a result of getting choked up and refusing to ball like 3^rd grade school girl after finding out her future husband from High School Musical 17 is actually a 38 year old man with a wife and 3 kids.  You know, that kind of moment.  The kind of moment where you know God is there, don’t get me wrong God is always present.  However there are defiantly those God moments like described above where God is all over whatever activity is taking place. 

This first “5 Gum Commercial Moment” occurred last Thursday at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  It was absolutely incredible, I was overjoyed and flabbergasted almost speechless, but then God reminded me of a little story in the book of 1 Samuel.  This was such an experience I don’t want to jip anyone out of any of the details so I am going to save this story for its own post.  Just a little teaser..

Any-who, the “5 Gum Commercial Moment” I would like to share this evening occurred yesterday after our 12:00 service @ The Gathering.  You see June 29, 2008 was a day we had set up for our baptism service.  Over the previous weeks I had a chance to sit down and speak with a few of our KIDZPLAYCE kids and their decisions to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and follow Him in believers baptism.  I was absolutely blown away by how much these kids new and understood about baptism.  I am quickly learning to never underestimate the things that these kids soak up while they are around us, whether it be at church, when we visit at school or while we are on trips or outings.  These kids are watching us, every move we make, everything we say and just when we think they are not paying a lick of attention to us, they hit us with some deep stuff we discussed 8 months ago.  We need to make sure we are showing these kids our Christ…always!

Now back to this “moment” yesterday.  I had the great honor to partake in my first ever baptism service.  I was no longer the dunkie, I had now become the dunker.  Now I know there is nothing special about the water or the baptismal pool, but yesterday there was something holy about being in that baptismal.  I went to the baptism service expecting to partake in 3 or 4 of the kid’s baptisms and by the end of the service I had the privilege of baptizing 15 kids.  15!  I could not believer my eyes when I saw all of these kids lined up waiting to follow the example of Christ Jesus and proclaim His name without shame.  It was most defiantly a holy “5 Gum Commercial Moment”, the nervousness, loss of words, the choking up and watery eyes, all of it holy.  Incredible. Mind-boggling.  Another level.

I say this all the time, I do not deserve any of this, God has so blessed my life in every aspect.  I wake up each day wondering why me, but each day I pray and ask, God use me.  I believe He has, is and will continue to use me as a vessel for His Kingdom as long as I stay faithful and continue to pray that I be used whenever, however and wherever. 

He longs to use each of us for something, allow Him to use His tools.

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Yo son, let me just start this off by saying that Father’s Day is so much more stinkin’ awesome when you are actually a father.  Add another day to my calendar where I get cards and gifts and I am a happy camper.  I pretty much racked up this past weekend.  Saturday was my 23rd Birthday, I got to hang out all morning with Baby K while mommy took and passed her last Praxis tests, she is finally finished, at the end of 5 years she finished up with her masters degree, all while getting married and having a kid.  She is most likely a superhero or something and I am so proud of her.

Getting back to my birthday day, later that night Rachel and Baby K surprised me at church with a birthday cake and we had a mini snack time birthday extravaganza with the KIDZPLAYCE crew.  Also I got me a new Kelty hiking bag with a special pocket for a kid up to 40lbs.  Its a pretty sweet bag and I got an awesome deal on it down at the local Mast General Store. (greatest store ever)  And last but not least I got bamboozled and then suckered Rachel into falling for the Banjo Minnow infomercial.  That’s right I got the whole 110 piece set and a DVD for $19.95, I can’t wait to get out on the river and let the Banjo Minnows fly.  I hope these things work or else infomercials will be ruined for me forever.

On Sunday I woke up to my first ever Father’s Day.  It was such an awesome feeling, I got a bangorang(adjective used in the movie Hook staring Robin Williams meaning cool, awesome or off the chain) glittery fluffy white princess cat card from Baby Kennedy, a Bass Pro Shop gift card from my mom and a priceless gift from Rachel.  You see last week she learned how to do all this cool stuff on a Mac so she decided to make me the greatest gift ever.  She made an awesome DVD of a bunch of pics of Kennedy and I set in motion to a real sad daddy daughter song.  I cried.  It really opened my eyes to how blessed I am.  It is truly unbelievable how much God has blessed my life, and I deserve none of it.  I thank him everyday for every hour He gives me to spend with Rachel and our new baby girl. 

thank you Lord.

 I love you Dad happy Father’s Day.

What up world!?  Man the last two Wednesdays have been a blast!  Last week Rachel and I finally got to hang out, we left baby Kennedy with Grandma Harrison for a few hours. Man, I bet Grandma hated that. (sarcasticness)  Any-who Rachel and I went and hung out at S.W.A.T’s Schools Out at Spin City evening down in Pigeon Forge.  It brought back so many memories, the good ole’ skating rink, backward skating (not possible for me), reverse skating (I survived) and my favorite….COUPLE Skate, which was off the chain.  Dudes I have not skated in like 10 years and I just knew that I was gonna break my tail bone or one of someone else’s bones.  But as it turns out I did not even fall one time, by the end of the night I was a master roller blader, minus a few off balance moments and the whole thing about not knowing how to stop myself without hitting the wall.  But by far the greatest sight of the night had to have been Mr. Pastor Scott holding on to the side for dear life, I love that man, and by the end of the night he was skating around like Apolo Anton Ohno, sept for on roller skates instead of extra long ice skates.  To wrap it all up the night was awesome, the S.W.A.T band did an amazing job and Joey had a killer message, there were no broken bones and my wife was HOT out there on her skates. 

Word to the wise, after removing your publicly used skates after 2 hot hours of skating do not, I repeat, DO NOT inhale, you could die.  Those skates smelled like hot corn chips smothered in pig fat.  Just some advice from one who experienced this exact incident.

Now on to KIDZPLAYCE and this awesome Wednesday.  We had our first McFlick today (a $1 movie and some Mickey D’s for lunch).  We went and saw The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, pretty good flick if you ask me, then we made our way over to the McDonald’s for some snackage.  We had 19 Kids for our first McFlick, no one got lost and we got a couple compliments on how well behaved our group was.  Huge plus in my book.  I haven’t had so much fun at a McDonalds in a long time, all the kids got some Kung-Fu Panda action figures in their happy meals and there was like a Kung-Fu Royal Rumble going down, it was great.  These kids are the best, and our volunteers are even better.  I cannot wait until our next outing.  I am truly blessed to be in this position and share my life with these kids. 

I Love this Junk.

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Nothing like a day in the smokies with my beautiful girls.

Ok, so about a two weeks after praying for patience I said to myself, “self you have lived in Tennessee for 5 years now, I do believe it is time for a Tennessee drivers licence.”  So on Friday my day off with Rachel and Kennedy I decide that the DMV would be a great place to spend the day off. 

First stop, DMV in East Towne Mall. 

Fist mistake, going to the DMV in East Towne Mall. 

These people at the Tennessee DMV might me the most hateful people on the planet besides they guys who take your order at Wendy’s.  The lady that “helped” me ripped me a new one because I was born in Germany and didn’t bring in all my paperwork to prove my American-ness, as if the Military ID Card, Social Security Card and old North Carolina Drivers Licence were not enough I had to drive home and retrieve my ORIGINAL Birth Certificate.

Second stop, back at home. Searched the house for the Birth Certificate, finally I found it filed away with our Auto Insurance and left the house again for round two at the DMV.

Third stop, DMV in East Towne Mall.  

Second mistake returning to the “O so angry, I hate everything DMV” in East Towne Mall. 

I got my number and approached the window with every important document about my life from the last 22 years in hand.  Show the woman my Birth Certificate from the military base in Germany, my Social Security Card, Military ID, Old North Carolina Drivers Licence, 25 bills to prove I live in Tennessee and my check for 15 bucks so I could hopfully get a new Drivers Licence.  Turns out that my NC Drivers licences is so old you cannot read the number on it unless you have extremely good eyes or can read the have hand written number I wrote on the back of the card with black sharpie.  So my new friend at the DMV informs me she cannot do anything for me because she nor anyone else working in the DMV can read the number, even though I am telling her the number and informing her that if she strains her eyes hard enough she could read it. 

At this point I am about to go through the roof, then my friend sheds some positive light on the situation and lets me know that there is another DMV off of Strawberry Plains that can look up my number to make sure I am not an illegal alien and finally get me a new Drivers Licence.  So I gathered my belongings and headed back to the car.

Fourth Stop, DMV on Strawberry Plains. 

Third mistake still attempting to get a Tennessee drivers licence after 4 hours of getting nothing accomplished on my day off.

So I go in, tell the lady all the crud I have been through that day and ask her to please help me.  She looks at me, looks at the Drivers Licence, looks at me, looks at the Drivers Licence, then asks ”What is it you need again sir?”, like she wasn’t paying a lick of attention to me when I explained it 35 seconds earlier.  I re-explain and she tells me that they cannot do anything for me there at this time, I have to call the North Carolina DMV and get an official copy of my driving record, then bring that in and “we can move forward from there.” 

I wont lie at this point I was beyond any words or actions of anger, I dreamed about what it would be like to set every DMV in the country on fire and call it a day! (not really kids, fire and arson are bad things its just a metaphor or simile or something)

Needless to say I wasted about 5 1/2 hours at DMV’s all over east Tennessee on my day off and three weeks later I still do not have a Tennessee Drivers Licence, I finally got my NC Driving Record Monday and will make another attempt at a TN Licence this week.  Pray for me, my patience and the DMV workers.

O yeah and to top this day of patience tests off, that evening I was gassing up my car at Food City minding my own business, I finished pumping the precious gasoline and proceeded to pull away from the pump.  Out of the corner of my eye I see a “piece” rolling up on me.  (for those that do not know a “piece” refers to a junker, hooptie, rust mobile, whatever you want to call a “piece” o’crap car)  I apply the brake slowing myself down from a 2 mile an hour roll to a stop.  As this man drove past what did he have for me to look at?  You guessed it, the o-so-calm middle finger, the bird the original road rage instigator.  Dude that fired me up, I was already on edge from the DMV crap all day and that got me going even more, my heart is pounding out of my chest right now just thinking about it.  The famous “flipping of the bird” is so frustrating is it not?  and all it is, is a finger, I don’t understand how it makes us so mad, but it does. 

Anyways those were just a couple more patience tests that God threw my way to see if I really desired to learn patience.  I believe I am beginning to handle these situations much better lately.  God is testing and I am learning, and I pray I continue to learn.  Be careful what you pray for, God will have fun with you while providing you with situations where that prayer can be answered.

I’m done, but if you need a good laugh about similar situations Dane Cook has some pretty funny sketches about the DMV and the “Bird” if you are interested, I think you can find them on youtube.com (I am not condoning Dane Cook & his language or views on life, its just stinkin’ funny)

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….BE TESTED!  I am learning that you have got to be careful when you ask God for things.  Pastor touched on this last weekend when he spoke about praying the dangerous prayer “God use me”.  Trust me, that prayer works (I’m in Children’s ministry now for goodness sake) and I now believe I may have recently stumbled upon the second most dangerous prayer. 

“Lord, teach me patience.”

Holy Crap!  I prayed that prayer a little over four weeks ago asking God to prepare me for the new baby that was scheduled for last weekend (May 18th) but arrived three weeks early, about two days after the patience prayer, SUPRISE!! 

And let the patience be tests begin!  Now do not get me wrong my baby girl Kennedy Jane is the greatest baby ever, she sleeps well, eats well, takes baths well and poops weller than well.  But with every newborn baby comes those stages where baby is just not happy and they like to scream at you to let you know.  I, being a man, always want to fix broken things (crying babies) and make everything peachy.  Yet it is so hard to hold eight pounds of screaming baby in my hands and have no clue how to fix the situation and calm her down.  Enter first test of patience. 

Now at first I must admit, I was failing this test with flying colors, turning the TV/Radio up louder, covering my head with six pillows or just locking myself in my fishing decor bathroom until the storm had passed.  But lately I believe I am doing a heck of a job about 90% of the time, the other 10% falls between the hours of 1 o’clock a.m. and 6 o’clock a.m. and interferes with my sleepy time but I am getting better gradually. 

Patience with the babe is on the rise, so God found some other ways test my patience bone.  I’ll touch on that a little later. 

For now though, babies are awesome, I cant believe I love her so much, and I cant figure out why she loves baseball so much…

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The eagle has landed, Rachel and I’s little baby Kennedy Jane Van Hook was born at 10:24 p.m. Friday night April 25th, 2008 during the 9th inning of the Braves 6-3 win over the Mets and weighed 7lbs 15 ounces and was 3 weeks early.  She is all good, beautiful as can be with a head full of hair (non-dreaded).  Our God is amazing, watching a life come into this world just blew me away, when I find some more words to express the feelings I will write another post.  But right now it is ten after 5 and I am missng my girls, so therefore I am heading home.

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This my friends is the numero uno reason why this summer is going to be off the hook, I am going to have a kid (pictured above in the smaller of the two red circles), can you believe it?  I Charles Benjamin Van Hook III, the same man who paralyzed his own eyes with jalapeno juices, the same man who almost got murdered by the energizer Bambie, is about to be responsible for another human life.  I keep telling everyone I am “ready” and everytime I make that statement they all keep laughing at me, so I have decided to offically change my statement to “I am excited about learning how to become ready to have a kid.”  Whatever that means and whatever the statement is all I know is that I am stoked to see this little baby that God is so greatly blessing Rachel and I with, and Lord if you would like to allow her to come out with a head full of dreads that would be an amazing double bonus.

Moving on from baby…

We have got so much planned for this summer here at the Gathering, many churches sit back and cruise through the summer while everyone is at Disney World or the beach, but not us, these next two to three months are going to be jammed packed with all kinds of savory goodnesses.  The only cats I will let slip out of the bag right now are some of the summer plans for KIDZPLAYCE, you “big” church people will have to wait a couple weeks to hear about yall’s summer goodnesses.  As for now lets check out our KIDZPLAYCE summer agenda, shall we….

Sometime in May: A Baby?

June 11th: McFlick, which equals some Mickey D’s and a 1$ Movie at the extravagant Sevierville Picture Show (movie theater)

June 27th: Berry Blast, the kick-off for our summer series which ironically is entitled Berry Blast and will be a study of the Fruit of the Spirit.  Full of inflatables, games, food music and mucho mucho fun.

June 30th -July 3rd: Camp Kid Jam, KIDZPLAYCE’s very first camp experience for the Elementary aged kidos

July 16th: McFlick, Round two

July 22nd: Possible Zorb Day (Insurance questions & approval pending)

July 30th: McFlick, Round three

Sometime in August: Back to School

There is a quick peek at the KIDZPLAYCE summer in an Egg shell.  So, kids, parents random people that stumble across this blog the Kids and leaders of KIDZPLAYCE are bout to have the Bombest summer in Tennessee history, let the countdown begin. 

Before I leave you on this day, just remember that myself and this woman will be raising a kid in less than a month.  (there was no lead in the paint, so I was told)