Missions Conference Kickoff

Well Missions Conference has officially kicked off here at Moody Bible Institute, and it proves to be a good week. Probably not as good as last year, as the keynote speaker last year was Steve Saint. Last year was the best Missions Conference in my time here at Moody. (Read my two posts from last year: Juntos No More and The Call)

For those of you who don't know, Missions Conference is a week when many, many missionaries from all over the world come into our school and teach different sessions throughout the week on various different aspects of missions. It is always a great week, and I actually find the workshop sessions more beneficial than the keynote sessions. This week also gives students alot of time to meet and talk to different missionaries and missions agencies, and get a good feel for the opportunities that are out there after graduation.

So tonight was kicked off by a professor from Wheaton College, Dr. Jerry Root, who spoke on being intentional about loving others around you, and reproducing the life of Christ. The main point of his message was that there are people all around us, and God loves them, and God wants us to show them His love. He told many stories about started relationships with people by just doing simple things like starting conversations with his garbage man, or mail man, and those conversations turned into showing God's love to them.

I'll be honest, I wasn't impressed with the message. It was a good reminder that we need to be intentional about building relationships with others around us, but as my roommate point out (@natenearpass) he stopped his stories at the point of the people being saved. He didn't really say much about follow up with them, or if they reproduced the life of Christ in other people.

So it was a good reminder, but I'm hoping for something better as the week goes on.

So you can expect to read some summaries and reactions to this week's sessions here on my blog. So feel free to give your feedback and opinions on missions conference this week.

Also, for all you Moody students who are tweeting this week, the official hashtag for missions conference is #mbiMC so anytime you send a tweet about missions conference just make sure to include that hashtag at the end of your tweet, that way it will be easy to look back on all the tweets from missions conference.

What did you think of the first session tonight? 


If you weren't there, what did you think of the summary I have written?

Weekend Update 9/19

It's quite obvious, but I haven't written a post in a couple months. Part of that is just craziness of life, the other part is that whenever I think about writing a post I just question the value of what I have to say. Is it really necessary to write a blog post about whatever I am thinking? Sometimes I think not, but most of the time I think it is necessary, I just need to dedicate the time to doing it.

So here I sit.

So since the title of this whole blog is "Updates in the life of...Josh" I thought I would give you some updates in my life.

I had a great summer where I worked as the "Media Consultant" at my church back home in Covington, Kentucky, Calvary Baptist Church. I absolutely loved that, and learned a ton about many different ares in life. Media, Print Design, administration, decision making, among other things. So it proved to be a profitable summer.

Now I am back at school at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL. The bad part about that statement is the part about school. The good part of that statement is that means that I am back at college. I've said this several times but college would be awesome if it weren't for the school part. So as you can tell, I'm not a big fan of school. But it has been awesome to back with friends, and playing soccer again.

Speaking of soccer, we now have a 6-2 record, which is the best record that we've had in my 4 years here, so it poses to be an exciting season for our team.

Also, me and my roommate Nate and our neighbor Alan are back in action with producing "Wheel Seat" episodes. We have put out 3 more episodes since being back at school and they are all great, especially the most recent episode entitled "'I Am T-Pain' - Taylor Swift" where we address some recent happenings in the entertainment world, and we have some fun with autotune. So you all should check it out below.

And be assured that I will begin to post more frequently. Enjoy!

Growing Close

Well I am officially done with my Junior year of College, and only 1 more year to go. This post will not be a reflection on what I've learned this year, but rather a reflection on someone who I have grown really close to over the year.

This person has been one of my roommates this year, his name is Nate Nearpass or @natenearpass on twitter. I do have another roommate, his name is Kyle Isabelli, and I love him dearly, but I'd like to talk about Nate right now.

I did not realize it until the day that I was leaving, but I have grown really close to Nate over the past year. And most of this is due to the fact that we roomed together. We have spent measurably much more time together than we have in years past. It is also due in part to both of our break-ups this year, and we have each helped each other majorly through those. But I think the mere fact that we have spent so much time together has made a huge difference.

The day I was packing up and getting ready to leave, I was telling him goodbye, and I realized that I am going to be talking to him alot more this summer than I have in past summers. I have talked to him practically everyday for the past 2 semesters. We have talked about lives, school, everything. Not to mention our videoblog/internet TV show has taken off, and we have had a blast with that.

So even though he is going to be in Africa and California the whole summer, and I will be traveling coaching and running soccer camps, we will definitely still stay in contact with each other and keep each other update on what is happening in our lives.

I just want to encourage you to cherish those people who are close to you, and who understand you, and will listen to you, and will talk to you. Because they are very few and far between.

To all my other friends out there, I love you all greatly, and I could write a whole blog post about each one of you, but this has risen in my mind recently with leaving school, so I thought I'd write about it.

Love you all

Do you have someone in your life that you are close to, or that you will be leaving soon that you are going to miss extremely?

Also below you will find the latest episode The Wheel Seat, if your interested.

A Speechless Easter

Well this past weekend was Easter Sunday and I spent it in somewhat of an unusual way, for me at least. Me and about 10 other guys from my floor and from the soccer team spent the weekend at my rommate Nate's house. It was a great weekend overall. It was very relaxing, and great to hang out with a bunch of my friends. We attended Nate's church on Sunday morning where his dad is the pastor.

I returned to school with thankfully absolutely no academic homework. Although I did have about twelve 5 minute interviews to edit and condense into about 16 minutes. So the deadline for those was today, and I started on them at about 11pm last night, and got them done in about 4 hours, and went to bed at 3am. Not too shabby.

To make this week even better, we are going bowling on Thursday for one of my sports ministry classes, and then on Friday night is JSB (Jr./Sr. Banquet). So it is just going to be an all-around fun week.

Check out our latest episode of The Wheel Seat to see just how much fun we had this Easter

my roommate twitters!!!

I would like to apologize to those readers who have no interest in media whatsoever, my last several posts have been all about media and for me it has been great, because it is a great way for me to get my ideas out there, and get your feedback. But for those who are not interested in that type of thing, it has probably been boring you to death. So this might be the last media related post for a bit. But I've just had media on the mind constantly lately, and there has been lots of stuff going on.


One of these things is that my roommate is now on twitter, and has his own blog. Now I haven't figured out yet whether he's actually realized the value in these things or if he just started doing them because I am huge on both of them. I think its a bit of both.
So his twitter is NateNearpass and his blog is "This is for my people".

He said the thing that drew him to twitter was that he read somewhere that Lupe Fiasco had a twitter, and he had heard me explain the purpose and benefit of having an account, so he decided to go for it, and I'm glad he did. I've been preaching about twitter ever since I realized the purpose and benefit of it, but people just don't get it, and they don't take the time to get it either.

But now that someone who is not a geek is on twitter, I'm hoping that it will catch on among my other friends. I think it will eventually, it just takes a long time. I mean, Nate is already getting discouraged by the fact that one day he had 12 followers and now he only has 9. I told him that is the way twitter is, people come and go. And I told him, it is not as easy as adding friends on facebook. I feel like there's alot more commitment with twitter. I mean it took me 2 years to get to 200 followers. But then again, its not just about your followers, its also about the people that you follow.

Also, to talk about Nate's blog a bit more, he loves to write, and he does it almost constantly, so I think this blog will be good for him. He has posted every day since he created it, and the good thing is, they're not long posts, alot of them are poems.
He was telling me last night that he had a problem that he has written so much, that he could do multiple posts per day if he wanted to. Now that's a good problem to have. LOL.

I told him that its ok if he posts multiple times per day, or he could spread them out over each day, so he always has a post for each day. But I think he's definitely understanding the purpose of social media more and more. And its good. I wish more people would take the time to try and understand it.

Now for those of you who are on twitter, lets show my roommate some love and give him a follow. Let's show him the power of twitter...All together now

Do you twitter?
Do you blog?
Do you have friends who don't see the purpose in either of them?

Let's spread the word, there is purpose in these things, and they can be profitable.

a break...kinda

Well, this weekend was somewhat successful as far as this sport that is my life right now (soccer) goes. We tied Robert Morris 1-1 on Monday, and won 2-1 against Andrews University on Tuesday. So it was a good weekend overall, except for the fact that both of these games were away, and these two days were our "Fall Break" or "Study/Reading Days" so we didn't have any class, but we still were busy as ever. But o well. Thankfully Coach gave us off practice today and tomorrow, to give us a bit of a break. I guess it was a break. It has been more of a break mentally, than it has been physically. We still are required to run for at least 30 minutes on each of these days, but 30 minutes turns into about an hour and a half of being in the gym, which is ok I guess. Actually I was in the gym today for longer than that cause I had to TA (Teacher's Assistant) for one of my Sports Min. Profs. So anyways, I say all that to say, that coach gave us these days off to sleep, catch up on homework, or just rest, but none of those things got done today. LOL. O well, it was good to just run on a treadmill again. Never thought I'd see myself typing those words but it is true. I've actually been gaining weight through soccer season this year, so today I lost about 3 or 4 pounds, just by running 4 miles. It felt pretty good except for the fact that my calf muscle was killing me. So we'll go back at it again tomorrow. Another "day off" practice, but it'll be good cause I'm meeting with my former roommate, Tom Clark for our weekly catch up/get in The Word time. I would like to write a post about how crucial it is to set aside time like this with a close friend to just talk about each other's lives, spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally. But I'll save that for another day, maybe tomorrow in fact, since we are meeting tomorrow. Give you something to look forward to.

But in the meantime, I've got a 12 page Systematic Theology research paper on "The will of God" due on Monday, which I just started, so I better get to that.

I also wanna welcome back my best friend and roommate, Nate Nearpass. He returned back to campus last night, and he's almost going at full force. I wouldn't say completely full force yet, but he's almost there. He's gotta rest for like another 4 weeks, but I sure did miss him, and its good to have him back.

shout out to spleen boy, love you.