Happy Birthday to Me

This weekend, LaRissa and the kids took me camping at Eisenhower State Park for my birthday. We had a really awesome time without any major disasters, which is usually what happens when we go camping.

We got to play games, lay around and be lazy, and do some hiking! We hiked a little over a mile on the Fossil Ridge section of the trail around the park. It was some of the best hiking I've been able to do in Texas. There is actually quite a bit of variation to the trail, and it goes along the shores of Lake Texoma on some really cool bluffs. The ground is literally littered with fossils from the ancient ocean floor, mostly smaller shells, but I found one that was this really big chambered nautilus fossil. Super cool.

The trail is well-marked and the hiking was perfect for taking kids along with you. Just some moderate stuff, which is a good thing since I wound up hiking the whole thing carrying Abby on my shoulders.

Monday Movie Review

Larissa and I watched The Sentinel last week. We have had the movie sitting on our chest of drawers for weeks and just haven't had a chance to watch it. I'll make this short: It was nothing memorable.

It had all the right elements: a great cast (Michael Douglass, Kiefer Sutherland, Eva Longoria, and Kim Basinger), good points of intrigue (secret service agent having an affair with the president's wife, falling out with his best friend because friend suspected him of having an affair with his wife, assassination attempt against the president), and decent effects, but it just didn't all come together. The storyline got in its own way at times and character development was really weak.

Bottom line: Don't waste your time or your dime.

The Cake-Mix Doctor

We have been using Chocolate from the Cake-Mix Doctor for about a year now to make birthday cakes for our family. They are incredibly delicious cakes. We just make the "cookies and cream cake" for Katie's birthday this weekend. We also got The Cake-Mix Doctor for Katie for her birthday.

New Kemp Family Fave

If you haven't checked out Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Food Network, you need to. It's a favorite at our house. Guy Fieri, the host, is just a really fun, likable "guy".

Katie's Birthday

I can't believe it. My Katie turned eight years old this weekend. She is such a sweet, loving, happy little girl who is a joy to her father. We celebrated by taking her, her brother and sisters, and a friend to Frisco to spend some time at the Build-A-Bear Workshop, pick up some new books at Barnes and Noble, and eat at The Cheesecake Factory. Happy Birthday, Tinkerbell!!

More Robert Frost

I guess Frost is my favorite poet. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was the first poem I ever memorized. Some think it was at a time when Frost was contemplating suicide. I prefer to simply think of it as contemplation of life as a journey, another good reference for "Walk the Trail."

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Monday Movie Review

A couple of reviews for you:

This weekend I watched Alvin and the Chipmunks together with the family. I had low expectations for the movie, but I can honestly say it was the funniest movie I have seen in quite some time. You don't have to think. Just sit back and enjoy. Plus, if you grew up in the '80s and were a fan of the animated Saturday morning series, it will take you back.

Horton Hears a Who: Probably one of the best adaptations of a Seuss book you'll see. Visually, it was really cool. Very reminiscent of the illustrations in the Seuss books. Plus, I love the basic theme of the story: a person's a person no matter how small. A good starter for talking with your kids about the value of every person, and particularly to talk about where that value comes from.

10,000 B.C.: I was trying to kill a couple of hours the other day while I was having the car serviced, so I went to see this. It did serve that purpose. The movie was decently entertaining with some cool visual effects. However, it was nothing memorable and had no real storyline connected to the redemptive story.

The real problem with the story was that the history and the geography were just all off. As a history major, this bothered me to the point that I had a really hard time paying attention to the plot. The story takes place in 10,000 B.C. (as the title may give away), but in the movie, Egyptians are building fully developed pyramids. All wrong. Additionally, the main character seems to begin his journey somewhere in Europe or northern Asia, but somehow winds up in central Africa, approaching Egypt from the south. Oh well, that may be confusing to you. I know it was to me. Suffice it to say, it killed a couple of hours for me, but I would not recommend this one as anything worth your time.

National Poetry Month

April is national poetry month. Now, the theme poem for Walk the Trail is the walking song from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." But, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" really is an incredible poem that comes in at a close second.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Pray for the Peace of the City

Each year for the last four years, twice a year, mission teams from our church have traveled to Juarez, Mexico, to help with Vacation Bible Schools, to assist new church plants, to help with evangelistic worship services and to deliver blankets and toys to offer relief to impoverished families at Christmas time.

An advance team from our church was preparing to travel to Juarez this weekend to make preparations for our annual summer trip, but they received word yesterday that they should not come. Our summer trip has been cancelled due to violence that has broken out in Juarez.

Rival drug lords are engaged in warfare to gain control of the city's drug trafficking network. One hundred people were killed in the month of March alone. Police who have tried to gain control of the situation have been killed. Two thousand Mexican troops are currently on their way to Juarez to try to regain order in the city. More information is available here.

Please be in prayer for the peace of Juarez. Pray for the police and militia trying to regain order. Pray that the responsible parties would be brought to justice. Pray for the citizens of Juarez. And please, please, be in prayer for the churches and for our friends who are in Juarez.

Another Snow Photo

We actually had a white-out in north Texas. It snowed eight inches in about three hours time. You can see in the picture that the snowflakes were the size of silver dollars.

Spring Break

We had a great week with the kids last week. We just spent some time with my parents and LaRissa's dad. Here are some pictures of the kids fishing at LaRissa's dad's cabin in south Arkansas.

As White As Snow

As I sit in my warm kitchen tonight, outside the world is blanketed in eight inches of snow. Everything is a beautiful white.

"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

Another reason to love Texas

Weather in Texas is just awesome.

Last week, we had days with highs in the 80s and I rode around with the windows down on my car.

This week we woke up on Tuesday morning with seven inches of snow on the ground. The kids played in it for a little while before school. By the time they got out of school, the temperature had gotten to the upper 40s and most of the snow had melted. It's great to be able to enjoy snow for a little while and not freeze your tuckus off.

Here are some pictures and a video of Abby. See if you can hear what Abby thinks the snow is.






How great is it to wake up and find the whole world is covered in "ice cream"?

Pre-Discipleship

In their book Breaking the Missional Code, Ed Stetzer and David Putnam point out that emerging generations are taking longer to come to a point of making a commitment to being a follower of Jesus Christ. Many of these people are involved in the life of a church, attending bible study and small group, connecting with believers, and even actively involved in a ministry for six or seven years before they commit to following Christ.

They go on to point out that this extended time of examining the church and Christian faith is actually a good thing:

A number of years ago, we began to observe an interesting trend in many of our new churches that attracted a large number of unreached/unchurched people. It seemed that the longer individuals took to finally go public with their faith, the less likely they were to fall through the cracks or go out the back door. On the other hand, when someone came in and rather quickly expressed a commitment to Christ, they seemed to
disappear just as quickly.

The longer people explore the faith before making a commitment, the greater their commitment. The more they are involved in the life and activities of a Christian community, the greater the likelihood they will stay commited to that community.

For a long time, we have place the emphasis on becoming a Christian at the point of decision. You walk down an aisle, pray a prayer, fill out a card. We emphasize the need to close the deal and want to get people to pray the prayer. But how would it look different and how would it change our methods and our results if we saw evangelism and discipleship as intimately tied to each other, in fact as two sides to the same coin? We tend to think of evangelism as something you do before a person becomes a Christian and discipleship as something you do after a person becomes a Christian. But what if we saw evangelism as pre-discipleship? What if we began "discipling" people before they actually became disciples? Would we see greater commitment and more long term commitment?

After all, Jesus didn't tell us to go into all the world and "make decisions." He said go into all the world and "make disciples." For too long we have tried to get people to make a decision so they will "get saved." But maybe we need to get people to commit not to a one time decision, but to a lifetime of being a Christ-follower.

Arrrrrgh!

I am feeling a bit like Charlie Brown right now.

My wife informs me that someone has been sick at our house since September. There are six of us, and when one of us gets something, it just seems to make its rounds.

I can't remember all of the sickness, but I do know that I came down with some sort of respiratory infection the week before Christmas, and I am pretty sure it turned into pneumonia. I broke a rib from coughing so hard. Not fun.

My oldest daughter, Grace, had pneumonia, and it took about three weeks for her to recover from that. Now, my middle daughter, Katie, has had a cough for about three weeks. This weekend, my son, James, ran fever and complained of a sore throat; and yesterday, the baby, Abby, started running a fever.

On top of all that, we are trying to get our house ready to put on the market. So, we are pretty exhausted right now. Be in prayer for the Kemp family.