The Personal Weblog of Travis Kaiser

That’s the number of days in 63 years. Today is the 63rd wedding anniversary of my wonderful grandparents, Joe and Edith Snoddy. In reality their time together has been more than 23,000 by the time you add in leap years and their years of dating but WOW what an achievement. Can you imagine spending over 23,000 days with someone? I’m sure it seems like an eternity since 1946 and in some ways like it was just yesterday.

When I talked to my grandpa yesterday he said when they got married that they were told since they were both hard-headed it wouldn’t last 6 months. Then he said, “it’s been a little longer than 6 months.” I couldn’t help but laugh. When I talked with them again this evening I asked, “so what did you all to today?” With laughter in his voice my grandpa said, “Well Trav when you’ve lived together as long as we have, you’ve done pretty much everything. We just hung out today.”

Well Grandma and Grandpa, here’s to your wonderful 63 years of marriage! Thank you for your amazing love for each other, for our family, and for the Savior. Thanks for showing this generation that two teenagers can get married and stay married for life!

There has been a myth flying on the internet since 2000 that Bill Gates left some insightful words to his high school alma mater, a list of ten items about real life education. According to Snopes.com the list I share below comes from Charles J. Sykes in the 1996 book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, Or Add and is the skeleton for his 2007 book 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education. This list has been printed in Ann Landers and recited by Paul Harvey but usually stops at number ten. However, the real list consists of 14 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School and what I like to call ”higher” education:

1. Life is not fair - get used to it. The average teenager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.

2. The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)

3. Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.

4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.

5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

6. It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.

7. Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No 1, 2, and 4.)

9. Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day, for eight hours, and you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization (See Rule No 1 and 2.)

10. Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.

11. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

12. Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11 year old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

13. You are not immortal (See Rule 12). If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you’re wrong.

14. Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing, but someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.

This last weekend we had our guys, or should I say manhood retreat. It was full of football, man talk, and eating. We even had a special man movie. For you guys who saw the first half of it you can finish it from the comforts of your own home. Go to you Youtube and do a search for “hunting chris ryan”. There are three episodes and the one we were watching at the retreat was episode one, the jungle. An easier route is to just click here http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hunting+chris+ryan&search_type=&aq=f.

In case you missed the opening few minutes describing who Chris Ryan is, here is a link to a little of his biographical information. He is one bad man! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ryan

Our culture has been on a manhood attack for decades. The war has been good except for someone/something standing up for what it means to be a man. If you are a male attending out church and not attending Men’s Fraternity - you’re missing out! I’m not talking about just missing a good time like I just invited you to a football game, I mean you’re really missing out on an opportunity to understand yourself better. It’s an opportunity to be honest with yourself and to see that men have Someone calling them to a higher standard. This week I ran across a poem by Rudyard Kipling that I thought was beneficial for men. Here it is….

“If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

Our precious Ellie Claire has finally arrived! She was born on March 8th at 9:31 am. She weighed 8 lbs and 1 ounce and is 21 inches long. I’m sure you will agree with me that she is the most beautiful girl ever born!

 Oh - and don’t worry, this won’t be on the only pic I post on here of our newest gift.

First let me say that my commitment to blogging has been renewed! Ater taking a blogging sabbatical many adoring fans have asked me to update the blog so here it is. There are so many topics I want to address but I’ll space them out to let your brain have a little rest.

 So here is today’s topic - The Lovely Ladies of Long Hollow. Often times the girls in our student ministry are complimented as sweet, God-fearing, servant-minded, caring, teachable, loving, compassionate, and gentle. Even those these are great attitributes, one thing I want made known about the Lovely Ladies of Long Hollow is that they are TOUGH. A prime example is this picture from last Sunday of our 9th grade girls taking each other out in a heated battle of LaserQuest. A quick glimpse at these ladies will sending your trembling with fear - at least I’m scared. Great event ladies - I hope you had fun. Oh…. and next time I want an invitation.

I’m on vacation along with doing a little reading and writing. Check back on Monday the 14th for a new posting that I’m already working on!

We have some of the best youth workers in the world! Last night we had one of our high school youth worker meetings. We had a special guest come to train our group in a new curriculum that LifeWay wants us to test run. As the guest was teaching, I was looking around the room at the people who invest in our students on a regular basis. We have adults from all different backgrounds, experiences, life stages, and yet, God has unified us to serve the common purpose of shaping the lives of young people for the Kingdom! The team is so talented and I’m truly grateful that God has brought them to us.

I was reminded again how thankful I was for our adults in the middle of our meeting last night. We provided childcare on-site in order to make it easier for more adults to attend. One of the kids that needed to be watched was my own son Will. I wasn’t sure how many kids there would be (we have some young families who keep having date night) so I asked four of our high school girls to watch the children in the bonus room. As we were meeting you could here the pitter-patter of feet and bouncing balls. Our student ministry was coming full circle. The adults I was speaking to last night invest in our students, who were investing in the life of my son -RIGHT THEN. I was truly grateful!

If you’re a parent reading this, I wouldn’t wait one more week to meet the adults who invest in  your student(s). You owe a great amount of gratitude to them. They all do a lot that I know about, but I’m also sure they do things that I will never be aware of: phone calls on the way home from work, an arm around the shoulder of a teen just to encourage them, letters and cards mailed to students, events at their homes so teens can hang together, giving up family time to go on a retreat, giving up vacation time from work to go to camp, and the list goes on.

If you’re a student reading this, you better say “thank you”……often! Youth ministry is a thankless job. It’s very similar to parenting. You plan, you drive, you pay, you clean-up, you serve - and in the end you just get a wave out the door and a “see ya later”. Ha! A “thank you” to your Connect Group Leader will mean more than you know.

We are blessed as a church to have such great adult volunteers week-in and week-out working with our high school students. I’m confident that I could take this group of adults and go anywhere, do anything, and be successful.

Hey team - you guys are the best and thanks for being passionate about teenagers with me! Let’s go change the world!