Swimming and fishing

 Only 3 of these were actually fish I caught...but it sure looks cool!

This is what I spend most of my time doing when I fish... that's me up in the tree bending a branch down so that they can reach up to get my snagged lure. Oomps!

On the serious end of things, our semester is wrapping up quickly and we're starting to think about summer. We'd like to spend some time this summer getting involved with our church, so if you're praying for us please pray for opportunities with people there. God has been challenging both of us from the word lately, and it's pretty neat - both Gina and I seem to be burdened for people in similar areas. Gina really feels passionate about discipling parents - to teach them how they can better understand and protect their kids. I feel really burdened for churches to have an urgency in the way they approach discipleship. I feel that church leaders should be actively sought out and discipled and I want to be as involved as possible. Both of us could probably write tons about this, but I want to post here mainly about what people are interested in (which seems to be pictures). If you want to hear more about this stuff, shoot us an email or comment!

More about us: From Ben

At the risk of sounding too over-spiritual from the last post, I figured I should lighten things up a bit and post a little bit about us, that way you all remember who the blockheads are that are posting all this stuff. So here are some things you should know about me (Ben):

I find it incredibly hard not to speak ironically in normal conversation. I think sarcasm is hilarious, so I often say things that are opposite of what I really mean or how I really feel. I worry that this puts a lot of people off, so we'll see, I may have to learn to do this differently. I will never stop thinking that things like this are funny, though.

I often write with smilies. I know that bothers a lot of grammarians and I know it's not grammatically correct to randomly throw down a colon and an end parenthesis, but at the end of the day I just don't feel like there's a better way to convey facial expression (and thus spoken intent) in casually written language.

I'm SUPER-dee-duper right brained. It's possible that you've never met a less logical person than me. I can't really seem to grasp math beyond a middle school level. I have tried computer programming (which goes great, until I have to do something more advanced than displaying "hello world," then keyboards are flying out the window (If you don't speak computer and you don't know what in the heck I just said, type hello world into Google). I often worry that my personality being this way must get on the last nerve of anyone with even a slight aptitude for logical thinking.

I'm pretty self-conscious. Have you noticed? I think faster than I talk, so most of the time I worry that when I speak (even in normal conversation) I'm not making sense. I've been told that I'm really hard on myself. I have a hard time feeling like I should be trusted. I have a really hard time trusting God sometimes.

Hmm let's get to some good stuff, shall we? Both my wife and I love photography, and someday I'm going to make enough money to buy her a rig so that she can join my endeavors with http://www.benbrendlephoto.com. We love to take pictures of our awesome kids, Atalie & Carly.

As a bit of a hobby, I'm currently attempting to develop an i-phone game based on a story that I've been rolling around in my head for a few years. Who knows if it will ever get finished, but it definitely fun working on a video game - that's always been a dream of mine :) Here is a tiny sample of the graphics I've been working on: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25375424/terrordrone.gif

I hope this helps anyone reading get to know me a little bit. Sorry about my awful personality, I truly feel sorry for you now that you know me a bit better. ;-)