» Tagged 'vacation'

wow, what a week

family, Life - by - August 2, 2008 - 11:14 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!

Yes, I am still here, still going to post. It has been a busy few weeks.

Last weekend my family and I headed to Memphis for my wife’s 20th year class reunion. The children had a great time with their grandparents, and Amy and I had too much fun enjoying time together and with her old class mates – but that’s another story! Then I headed to WorshipGod08….

I do what to praise God for this past week though. A lot has gone on, and I have seen Him work in some awesome ways. A little background. Pastor Juan had suggested that we, the staff leadership should attend this conference together back some time ago. We had made our reservations and our wonderful travel planner had booked our flights. I was excited as this was to be the first time we as a staff had gone together to any of these conferences and knew it was going to be an awesome time.

It was only after the plane tickets had been booked that I found out we would be flying thru Memphis on the way to Gaithersburg, MD…. yes, Memphis, where my wife’s class reunion would be taking place. Well, that seems awful silly of me to drive back to Austin on a Monday so I could fly back to Memphis (on the way to Maryland) on Tuesday….. why don’t I just plan on catching up with them at the Memphis airport on Tuesday and let my family stay in Memphis for the week? Great Idea…. or at least I thought so.

I tried to change my ticket, but it was going to cost $450, almost twice the price of the original ticket. So after talking to a few people I decided I would check in on line for my flight, “miss” my flight from Austin, and “catch up” in Memphis…. after all, the airlines I usally fly always seemed to help me get to my final destination, right? BAD IDEA. First, this wasn’t the airlines I usally fly. Second, well, read on.

I check in online Tuesday AM, and I notice a little disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying if you don’t notify the airlines before the missing the first leg of your flight the travel ticket is null and void….. so I call the airline to let them know what I am going to do, and am told I can’t do that. I am told that my ticket will be cancelled if I do, and it is going to cost me $1680 to change my ticket. Thanks, but no thanks. So I start praying. I know I am suppose to be there. We have others start praying. I know I need to try everything I can. So Amy takes me to the airport (memphis) – sure enought, I don’t have a reservation anymore (the plane had already left Austin at this point, Matt tells me later they came on the plane right before shutting the door asking if Jeffrey Jones was anywhere on the plane….) BUT, what’s this? I can still check my luggage? Okay, I wasn’t planning on it, but yes, one bag to Baltimore!

So I go thru secuity (yes, I had my boarding pass that I had printed earlier, yes they questioned me about being there before my flight had arrived…) and go back to the gate. I ask the gate agent to check my seat assignment while I prayed furvently. No sir, you are not listed in that seat….. infact sir, you are not listed in any seat…. here let me take care of that for you…. Praise you Jesus!

Now I admit, I was nervous as anything till the plane took off from Memphis, but I did meet up with the pastors and we got on the plane and left on time. So I made it….. BUT.

Brenda, who arranges our travel (THANKYOU!) called to confirm my return trip, and sure enough, my ticket was cancelled. The airlines said there was NO WAY I should have been allowed on the flight there, and there was NO WAY I would be allowed on the flights home. I started thinking about what I was going to do on my extended stay in D.C…… But Brenda was able to work out a return trip for me after begging and pleading with the suppervisors at the airlines, who assured her this was the ONLY exception they have or will EVER make, they reinstaited my ticket for only a $100 change fee. PRAISE GOD.

Meantime it has been an AWESOME conference, I will post more about that later.

What’s up?

Excellence in the Arts, family, thinking green - by - June 17, 2008 - 00:26 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!

It’s been a while since I posted, a lot has been going on, so here is a brief rundown.

First of all, Vacation! Yes, my family and I actually took some vacation, and I really did take off a few days – that’s right, several days without ANY work! Now to be honest, we were gone 10 days, and I did work part of at least 5 of them. So what did we do? Our youngest 4 went to have a vacation with my parents in the Houston area, then Amy, our oldest 3 boys and myself took off on a road trip and camping.

We challenged ourselves to do this trip for as little cost as possible, so we pushed every mile per gallon we could out of our little hybrid Escape, avoided eating out as much as possible, camped or stayed with friends and family and had a fun time doing it. A big thank you shout out to all of Amy’s e-maginary friends that hosted us on the road and helped us with supplies and food camping (sorry, you just can’t fit that much food in that tiny SUV when you have 5 people and their stuff in there too!) A big thank you to our media team and church staff who covered all the happenings at church while we were gone also!

So where did we go? Photos and Google map are here: but the short of it is DC and then camping in NW Pennsylvania. We had a wonderful time but we are also glad to be home.


Planning Retreat – Yep, while I was sitting on a stump out in middle of a forest, spent a good part of a day and a half praying to reading scripture, listening to teachings and sermons and firing up the apple laptop and writing out a ministry plan for the media ministry for the 2008 / 2009 planning year. More details will be posted as we start to work thru the plan, but you can rest assured that we really do have a plan in place!

Consulting – it seems like when it rains, it pours. Right now we have a half dozen clients whose projects are in full swing and need design work done NOW. So I am in middle of several designs, working with the clients to meet their timelines and needs, all of which is keeping us very busy. With some careful planning and scheduling, it looks like we will be able to get everything done for everyone, but it is looking like a busy summer.