A picture is worth a million bucks.

Last weekend Leslie and I were given a great gift of time with family. After playing golf with my dad we were off to Lubbock where we got to spend the night hanging out with my sister, her husband and their friends. It was a fun night great conversation and tons of laughs.

The morning was a different tone all together. Still full of the greatness of friends, but now it was relationships with guns. The Lubbock Young Life skeet shoot was Saturday morning and Brian, Chad, and some of the guys went out to shoot for a little practice.
Brian won our group by shooting 28 of 50 skeet. It came down to the last station because of a tie between Chad, Brian, Chip and myself. But Brian prevailed by shooting 4 for 6 on the hardest station of the day.




















After driving back to Abilene in the afternoon for birthday celebrations, the evening was hilarious. All three of the kids, Scout, Will, and Austin, were in rare form. Will and Austin were dressing up in all sorts of costumes, while Scout was the star of the show. I love being an uncle!!! Angela and Brian must have felt like the Pied Pipper as they read to the kids and Brian entertainied in his many ways.




















On Sunday Leslie and I were given a wonderful gift of a post wedding reception so that Leslie could meet my family and friends. The day was beautiful. Cammie, Megan, and Dad spent the mid-morning decorating for the reception while Ang, Brian, Leslie, and I hung out with the kids at the house. It was a fun weekend and I look forward to many more.

On Her Day, She Gave Me a Gift

On the day of the wedding I was given a huge gift by my beloved bride. After everyone was seated and my attendants and I were standing in the front, I got one of the greatest gifts of all time. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle and the music came to a stop. Just then, an unforgettable song began to play and it was all for me. Leslie knows that my favorite movie of all time is the miniseries “Lonesome Dove.” She secretly planned to have the opening overture played before and while she walked down the aisle.

What an amazing woman to give me a gift on her special day. I was drawn to laughing tears as I looked around the church and saw my dear friend Glenn, who also loves Lonesome Dove, as he smiled from ear to ear. Then my brother, who has watched the series with me often, leaned over and asked me “Did you know that she was going to do this”? I could only smile and look at him with an awestruck look of “Are you kidding me???”

She is such a generous person to love me so much to give me a gift on her day.

The BIG Day

Leslie and I are back from a fantastic wedding weekend, honeymoon, and the move to Texas. As the weeks roll on I will update you on all the festivities and fun but I did not want another day to go by without saying thank you for the prayers and encouragement to friends and family over the past few months.

The wedding weekend was amazing, full of time with family, friends, and of course my beautiful bride. It was a fantastic celebration that Leslie and I are excited to tell you and show you, but time is something that I don’t have a great deal of right now with work and settling onto our new life. I would love to share a few pictures with you and then share the stories along the way.

The only thing that I can leave you with is how overwhelmed that I am to have such an amazing gift it is to have a new, bigger family, as Leslie and join together.

The Big Day is Coming!!!!!!!

What do you do when the day of your wedding is coming and it won’t come fast enough, yet you don’t feel ready either? Do you ever feel ready though? I have learned over the past month how unbelievably selfish that I am. It scares me to think how much is going to change, and yet so excited that my dearest friend will be the one to walk through life with. For example…

Leslie and I have the opportunity to move into a house vs. living in the apartment that I currently live in. My lease is up and they are jacking the price up so we started thinking about moving out into a house. Oh Lord, the frustration behind this decision!!! I would, however, finally get the yard that I have been wanting for years, have a place that I am not embarrassed to invite people to, and allow us to start our marriage in a place that neither of us have lived in. The only downfall is the cost of living. What do you do? Do you take the risk and trust that you can do it or do you take the safe road and live in a place you hate?

Add on top of all these decisions the fact that after 29 years, she and I have to talk about every decision that we make for the future. We have both been so self reliant till now that it seems like trying to stick two magnets together with the same pole facing each other. We want to connect, but with so much resistance to change it makes it interesting.

The great news is that the wedding day is coming and we will never have to live in a different state again. We will get to make these decisions with each other as a couple, bound by God, and continuing to learn to die to self. I can think of no better way to live my life. I can’t wait to share my life with Leslie and learn together all the joys of life.

A month of Service

One of the gifts of being on Young Life staff is working for a month on an assignment at one of our national properties. Some say it's much like a vacation, which it seems like from the pictures, but let me tell you this year was long, hard, and full of God's grace.

I was able to get Leslie on my assignment this year which allowed us to be in the same place at the same time for a whole month, a thing that we have not had the chance to do becasue we dated long distance. She was amazing!!! She was responsible for overseeing the college age volunteers for the month, while I was responsible for the entertainment for the month. The property where we were working is Young Life's only family directed property, "Trail West"! It was like going home for me as I had had 3 earlier assignments in my career but this was different than any other by far. The assigned team was great, property was great, and time with my fiance' was really great!

It was a very different time for me of realizing that I am no longer alone in this world. For the first time in my life I had to think about telling Leslie my plans, talking over the day, and making sure that someone else was being cared for. The truth is that I did a really poor job all month of caring for her, but Leslie was great! She understood how draining that my job was and she was extreamly independent and caring in a crazy season of our engagement. It was an interesting month for us as we continued to see life in a whole new light.

It was not without a few dumps and freakout moments though! I have had my days where I didn't know who I was or who the crap was taking over the thoughts in my head. Scared to death of failing at caring for a spouse, being financially responsible, and helping with the little deatails of planning a wedding that I really don't know how to help with. Needless to say, while I was on my assignment pointing others to Christ...I was struggling myself to hear his discernment for my own life. He is ever present though and gives strength when we can not find it on our own. The month was amazing and I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to serve Him and others for a month.

I think that pictures do a much better job of showing the month, so I will put a few below and catch up the blog on another day...


Leslie's sister Allie got to come visit and even got to meet "Cletis and Clyde"!


The "Godfather of Soul" and the "Prince of Funk"


Dear Friends...


Program partner and dear friends... The Sanchez family!


Leslie and Katie O at KrunkFest!!!


The finale of the week. Tableau!


Cletis and Clyde entertaining thier friends!!!!

Showering the Couple

Last weekend my dear friends hosted a wedding shower for Leslie and me that absolutely great. It was such a blessing for these friends of mine to meet Leslie for the first time. They were so great to provide a cookout, pictures and presents. The greatest time was simply allowing these two, very important, parts of my life to come together. Everyone was so great to care for me with their words, time, and gifts. It was a blessing beyond measure.

Easter Weekend

Though it has been a while since I have made time to place a new entry on this site, it has nothing to do with the amount of great things that have been happening in our lives. As I was having lunch with friends the other day, we talked about how Leslie and my stories “are a lot like cotton candy. You know that if you have too much of it, it’s gonna make you sick, but you just can’t resist because it taste so good”. (Jeff)

Easter weekend was fantastic! Leslie had the opportunity to come down to Texas for a long weekend and we took advantage of the time and spent it with parts of my family. Thursday was a great opportunity for us just to feel married. We traveled to Abilene for and stayed the night with the parents. I got to share Leslie with my grandmother as we reminisced over her life growing up on the plains of west Texas from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. Leslie got to laugh a lot at what I looked like as a pudgy little kid through Memom’s pictures. All in all, it was a celebration of merging the past with the present.

The next morning Leslie and I finally went for our first run together. We have visited each other half a dozen time and every time we talked about it, we found something that we wanted to do instead. Though my knees will never afford me the chance to do the extended runs that she likes to take, it was a gift none the less.



After a quick breakfast with dad, Leslie and I were off to Lubbock to spend the weekend with my sister, her husband, and my niece and nephew! I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I don’t get to make it out to Lubbock too much, but when I do, it always brings joy to my heart. We spent the weekend laughing and playing with Scout and Will. I got to see my future wife playing games and loving on those that are important to me. And all the while, it felt as if I were home again.
We spent Easter with the Carter’s enjoying all the kido’s and finding out what the future as husband and wife may truly look like. Oh, what a joy that it will be. I can hardly wait till the day where all will know and see, first hand, the love and joy that I have for Leslie. I hope and pray that all would be so blessed to find a partner to join with them in this battle called life.