Had a nice full weekend with friends and family. Went out with Joe Long, Paul Mcg. and Craig Spinks on Friday night, took my wife on a date on saturday night and had our monthly OCC Leadership Team meeting on Sunday. In attendance was also Dan Peterson, the exec. director of the MBC (our spiritual family), and it was good to catch up with him as well and report on what we've been up to.

The Body for Life challenge is going great. I'm feeling motivated to eat right, exercise hard and feel better. I'm already "feeling" so much better physically than I did 2 weeks ago and my workouts are getting stronger each time. I can actually monitor my progress which is cool and I'm sleeping soundly so I wake up rested with energy throughout the day. I'm sure I'll have a wall to work through here in my near future, but feeling good today.

I couldn't be more excited for our first annual OCC winter retreat at Camp Burton in Northeast Ohio. About 30 of us are going January 28-30 for a whole family retreat. Its all really geared towards the kids and I'm sure adults will get a lot out of it as well, plus guaranteed quality time with their kids. Our theme is "Super Power Weekend" where we will be having 3 gatherings around that theme. The kids will be dressing like super heroes and we will all be playing in the snow and doing some monster tubing. I'm just thrilled that the entire OCC community made a priority of this to put it on their calendar. We're gonna have such a good time and trust that God will move amongst us as we gather together away from all our distractions to sit at His feet.

Our theme for that weekend comes from II Timothy 1:6-7, "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of POWER, of love and of self-discipline."

Stop and notice the Kingdom around you today,