The Office

With my new assignment I've moved out of the office I had at the Family Life Center, where the offices of Central Mission are located, and into my home.  I call it Inland West-East.  I do miss some of the camaraderie of an office, but I must say I enjoy the peace and quiet as well as my two office buddies (our two Labrador Retrievers).  

Tomorrow I head out on another 5,000 mile road trip through Idaho, Washington, Montana, and Utah, (as well as Wyoming and Nebraska to get there!).  I'm looking forward to it, but today was Andi's first day of surgical rotations and she is going to be pretty busy while I'm gone.   

After this trip I am going to build a new desk for my office as well as add some different furniture and lighting.  Don't worry Inland Westers - the Chatburn Family is footing the bill for that little renovation project.  Time to finish packing for an early start tomorrow!

Vacation in the Rocky Mountains

Andi and I make it a point to take one vacation a year.  We call it our annual honeymoon and this year we went to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We camped out at the beautiful Moraine Park and we had fun staying in our modest backpacking tent and cooking our own food.  We both enjoy the outdoors and I particularly enjoyed stretching my legs after a series of long road trips.  

I did learn an important lesson.  I tried baking biscuits using a backpacking s

tove and a double boiler with two pots.  I learned this trick from a Peace Corps Volunteer while I lived in Kenya for a summer.  You can see, however, things didn't work so well and I actually burned through an entire pot.  I'd like to talk to that PCV about how she did that.......

One of the days we were at Rocky Mountain National Park we drove up Trail Ridge road that took us way above the tree line into the tundra.  Near the Alpine Visitor's center we ran into several huge elk.  Good times and it was great

 to experience God's presence and divine creativity in the great outdoors.  Equally as fulfilling was getting to spend quality time with my best friend and wife, Andi.

SPEC & CLW

The last two weeks of July I spent on the campus of Graceland University in Lamoni, IA.  Spectacular directly followed the Hills of Peace Reunion in Alberta, so I booked it from Canada to Lamoni - about 30 hours of over the road time.  I figure it was good conditioning for my new assignment:)  

This was my second year to serve as the Financial Officer for Spectacular.  I have really enjoyed that role, but it will likely conclude with this SPEC since my new assignment will place different demands on my summer schedule.  This year's SPEC was good and it is good to be around the creative energy of the SPEC leaders and participants.  The most notable thing about this year's SPEC was all of the rain!  Founders Lake spilled out across the street and merged with the murky mud hole on the other side.

The Congregational Life Workshop followed SPEC, however, I was able to sneak away for an evening and spend time with Andi.  This was a new experience for me.  I taught a class with Erica Blevins Nye and Amanda Edsall.  It was a good experience and it was good for me to get more teaching experience.  

Between SPEC and CLW I met several folks from the Inland West Mission Center and the West Central Field.  It seems like there are a lot of goods folks out there and I'm looking forward to hearing more stories and sharing more cups of coffee as time goes on.