Last weekend my father-in-law gave me an old laptop (PII 266 MHz, 128 MB memory, 6 GB HDD). I promptly removed Windows 98 in order to install the lightweight [tag]Linux[/tag] distribution, Xubuntu, only to find out that the CD-ROM drive barely works. To make a long story short, I spent about 15 or more hours this week (staying up to 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning!) trying to find a way to successfully load [tag]Xubuntu[/tag] on the system without spending money for any new working components.

Yesterday I was finally so frustrated with it that decided to sit down and pray. I told the Lord I wanted to install it the easy way from the CD and asked Him to make the CD-ROM to work long enough to last through the entire installation process. With that prayer, Xubuntu loaded perfectly fine. Here’s a screenshot of my desktop to prove it (click it to view full-size image):

I laughed at myself, “Ya know, I might’ve saved myself a lot of time if I had asked God to help me from the very beginning.” Sometimes it’s easy to go through my routine tasks and mindlessly leave God out. I wonder how much different life would be if I conversed with God over every little thing, if I really prayed “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). God is interested in all the “little things” in my life, too, not just the big issues I can’t handle.

[tags]Ubuntu[/tags]

Wow, God just did a huge thing for my me and my wife!

We’re both big fans of [tag]Youth Specialties[/tag]‘ [tag]National Youth Workers Convention[/tag] and have attended several of them over the years. This year I was especially glad to see the [tag]NYWC[/tag] coming to [tag]Austin[/tag] since it’s relatively close to us here in Dallas and would save us a lot of transportation costs (driving 10 hours to Nashville last year was pretty rough). However, a quick estimate of the registration costs, food, lodging and gas easily went way over this year’s youth budget. My wife and I evaluated whether or not we could cover the expenses out of our own pocket, but there’s just no way. So, knowing we wouldn’t get there on our own, we decided to trust God with the details.

To make a long story short, Marko, president of Youth Specialties, heard about my request to find an affordable way to attend the convention this weekend and e-mailed me yesterday saying he’ll cover the registration costs for me and Dana if we can still make the trip! I read the e-mail and my heart stopped. I re-read it and then read it again just to make sure it was real. Dana worked it out with her job to take Friday and Monday off work, our interim pastor gave me the go-ahead, God lead us to a quality hotel at a dirt-cheap price and now we’re set to go! Woo hoo! Thanks [tag]Marko[/tag]!

I’ll do my best to blog throughout the convention about what the Lord’s teaching me, new youth ministry ideas, cool resources, pictures, etc, so check back often.

Thanks God! I can’t wait for Friday!