in honor of opening day_san francisco (sep07)
canon rebel xt
iso 1600
59 mm
f/7.1
1/100
following a year in which i got married and had two honeymoons and spent a few months in the states, 2010 seems kind of anti-climactic. but this past year held some great moments and one specifically that was one of the best moments of my life! 
ten | marriage retreat_krakow
if you knew how hard the marriage retreat was for emily and i, then you’d be shocked that this made the top one hundred! but the words that we heard and the discussions we had will serve our marriage for the rest of our lives.
nine | 24-hour prayer time_stramberk
as i wrote yesterday, i don’t really love being alone and i really don’t like spending focused time doing one thing (especially for 24 hours). but, i try to get away every once in a while* to pray and fast and spend time with the Lord, leaving behind all distractions.
the last time i did it, the Lord took me to the woodshed and showed me many area of sin and places that He wanted to redeem in me. i went into this time having similar expectations and God really only showed me one thing:
i need to be first in your life.
over and over He showed me Scripture about how He should be first and how i should not strive to please anyone but Him. He revealed to me that i often seek the approval of others above Him and in decision making i think about how my decisions affect others, but rarely do i think through my decisions in terms of whether or not something would please Him or not. i spent some significant time confessing and praying for the rest of the 24 hours.
i always leave a time like that longing to do it again and appreciating un-interupted time with my Lord.
*read once every three years…the last time i did it was in the Spring of 2007!
eight | kids camp_osilnica, slovenia
the josiah venture kids are some of my favorite people in the world. i have had the privilege of being in some of their lives for ten years! the last four years i have been able to serve them at their kids camp in august. the group i have led has morphed and evolved over the years, but getting to spend significant time with caleb, noah, jacob, and blake is a definite highlight of my year!
seven | london
i almost forgot that emily and i went to london in june! in fact, as i was thinking of my favorite places, i did forget about it!
em and i had to go to london in june because emily’s tourist visa expired and we were required to leave the schengen countries in order for her tourist visa to reset and give her another three months in czech. we were only there for twenty-four hours, but in the midst of an insane summer, it is so great to get to retreat and hang out together. we were also able to watch the England-Slovenia world cup game while eating fish and chips, drinking guinness, and sitting in a sweet little british pub! perfect cultural experience.
six | whiskerino
november1, 2009-february 28, 2010 i was not allowed to shave! now, those who have seen me lately know that this isn’t too big of an issue for me, but it was joyous to be able to do that in the midst of a community of beard-growers all over the world doing the same thing. whiskerino is an online beard growing competition community. you can see my submissions here. unfortunately, 2009/10 was (supposedly) the last whiskerino ever. while there may not be another community of beard-growers converging again on one internet page, whiskerino will forever live on in our hearts and on our chins and cheeks.
five | camps
this year we saw some great fruit through our summer camps. an abnormally above average amount of students decided to follow Christ during camp. one of my favorite moments of the summer was when a number of students had trusted Christ at a camp, so they invited their pastor to come and perform baptisms in the camp pool! six students (three new believers and three who had just never been baptized) got baptized that day! i love hearing stories where God moves in the lives of students!
four | jimmy eat world
one of emily’s all-time favorite bands is jimmy eat world. i’m not a huge fan, but i’m always up for a good gig and when we saw that they were going to play in belfast and we knew that we needed to go there anyways, it was a no-brainer to make it happen. plus, as an added bonus, one of our best friends is friends with zach lind, the drummer, so he was able to score us backstage passes and we got to hang with the band and talk with zach for about an hour after the show. we also got the privilege of hearing a local band from belfast, more than conquerers. we were surprised to hear a rather good, raw new band! click here and go to belfast for links to both jimmy eat world and more than conquerers.
three | first christmas
yes, emily and i have been married for a year and a half.
yes, we spent christmas together last year.
but, this was our first christmas together in our own apartment, with our own tree, with our place decorated, and our own traditions. i was rather surprised to experience so many emotions around this time as em and i created our own traditions and experienced this season together here for the first time. an additional blessing was walking through the advent season together by going through the book, preparing for jesus by walter wengerin. nightly, we prayed together and were drawn into the story of God becoming man in a way that we never had experienced before. wengerin has a special way of drawing out the humanity of Christ while still highlighting His divinity.
two | family vaca
there is almost nothing better than having family visit (see number one for the only thing better). we had the blessing of getting to spend almost three weeks with emily’s family here in september! mom, dad, brother, grandma, and grandpa travelled out from arizona to experience our life here in czech and to do a little family vaca to italy. its such a blessing to have our family see our life here and to experience a small bit of what we experience. we loved showing them our lives, introducing our friends, taking them to youth group, and experiencing new things together (italy!).
one | the giants win the world series
i have been a life long giants fan. there is no sport i care about more than baseball. there is no team i care about more than the giants. there is no team that has given me more heartache over my life than the giants.
this was a team that was good, but they probably weren’t going to make the playoffs. once they made the playoffs it wasn’t certain they’d make it past the first round. once they made it past the braves, there was no way they were going to be beat the heavily-favored phillies. once they beat the phillies, most people picked them to lose to the rangers. but, when all was said and done the giants were the world series champions! i was able to watch all fifteen of the playoff games, with most of them playing between 1-4 am it wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle, but well worth the lost sleep.
in the end, as the world champions celebrated on the field, i sat on my couch in cesky tesin with tears in my eyes and unbelievable joy in my heart. thirty-two years of waiting for me was over.
my team finally won it all!
its quite vulnerable for me to share so openly of my experience on monday night. it isn’t that the experience was that profound to the normal man or even interesting for most of you to read, but i feel that i must chronicle my experience. if for no other reason than to try and remember the feeling/emotion/euphoria that is sadly already wearing off a little.
so, what am i talking about?
the san francisco giants world championship!
i have already lost some of you. sports are not interesting for a vast majority of you and reading about someone else’s team winning it all is also not the most fun thing to read, so it is totally fine for you to leave now and go and read another blog or watch a funny video clip. or if you want to skip the boring giants history you can scroll down to “monday night” and read of my experience. its up to you, as i said already, this post is mostly for me.
________________________________________________________
the beginning (september 2, 1954)
at a hospital in the san francisco bay area a little boy is born: gary benjamin hughes. it is this birth that subsequently births the beginning of my love for the san francisco giants. ironically, exactly one month later the new york giants (they moved to san fran in 1958) will win their last world series for fifty-six years.
my dad is a giants fan and it is because of this that i love the giants.
growing up in central oregon didn’t lend itself to any home state teams, so it was either the seattle mariners or one of the bay area teams, so following the giants was an easy choice. additionally, spending summers visiting family and my parents high school friends (one of whom was/is a cameraman for the Giants) opened the door to seeing lots of games at the always windy, candlestick park.
thanks, dad!
my experience of disappointment
the giants of my youth were an average team that had a couple of decent years followed by one magical year in 1989 when they made it to the world series to face the powerful oakland a’s. the first world series in san francisco in twenty-seven years was then marred by the loma prieta earthquake and the giants were swept.
thirteen years later the giants again found themselves in great position to win their first ever world series since moving to san francisco. they were led by the most prolific home run hitter of all time, barry bonds, and surrounded by a great supporting cast of players. this team had the making of a champion.
during game six with the giants up 3 games to 2, leading the anaheim angels 5-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning (eight outs away from winning the title), scott spiezio hit a three run homer that started a rally that continued into the bottom of the eighth when the angels scored three more runs to lead to an improbable comeback to force a game seven. the giants went on to lose game seven thus cementing the dread and despair into the hearts of giants fans and officially driving a dagger deep into my heart.*
the following years were shrouded in controversy and mediocrity as allegations of steroid abuse by barry bonds and rifts among players sent the team back into the middle of the pack in the national league.
*ironically, it is this world series loss and the disappointment of it that made monday’s world championship victory that much sweeter.
the present
then there was this year. everyone knew that the giants had the pitching to make them a great team, but could they pull the hitting together. it was possible, but not probable.
but this team put it together. they had chemistry, as many of them had played together in the minor leagues. they had veterans. they had characters. they had beards. they had talent. but did they have enough to win a championship?
after an amazing september and an epic collapse by the san diego padres, they qualified for the playoffs on the final day of the season, just barely squeaking in.
every year i purchase the radio package through mlb.com, so that i can listen to giants games since they don’t show baseball in czech. i made a deal with myself that i would only buy the video package if the giants make the playoffs.
this was my first year obtaining* the video package.
i then spent fifteen of the next twenty-six nights watching every** inning of every game. most of which were shown between 1-4 am…definitely not a sustainable lifestyle!
*big thanks to one, joseph daddio, for giving me his login and password so i could watch the playoffs!
**i slept through my alarm for one game, waking with a jolt realizing that it was 4 am. fortunately, i was able to catch the last three innings.
______________________________________________________
monday night (read 1-3:30 am tuesday morning)
as brian wilson struck out nelson cruz to end game five, i was overwhelmed with emotion.
the giants, my favorite team in my favorite sport, were world champions!
the giants fans rushed on the field surrounding wilson…jumping…yelling.
i sat on my couch some 5000 miles away with a gigantic grin on my face, chills on my arms and tears welling up in my eyes.
i know that there is no way to adequately describe the emotion and the feeling i felt. its probably a bit strange that a grown man would get so emotional over baseball, but maybe i can remind you of a time when you felt something similar
_ when kerri strug vaulted the US women’s gymnastics to gold in the ’96 olympics? _ czechs, when you heard your national anthem playing for hockey in ’98 _ red sox nation…you know
that swelling up of pride that your team/nation did it. they defied the odds…or they ended years (decades even) of pain and heartache.
that is how i felt monday night. joy filling and overflowing out of me. alone in my apartment, but rejoicing with the millions in san francisco and all over the globe who could only truly know what i was feeling and experiencing at that time.
giants, thank you!
thank you for ending 32 years of longing for a championship. thank you for being a team worth rooting for. thank you for being a crew of guys who played hard and for the love of the game.
you made all of us fans proud!
