Monster Foot

This post is not a normal post, but my wife has bugged me to write about it. I will write about the football clinic with the Steelers and my andventures with Steely McBeam soon.

This is the story of Monster Foot

It all started a little over two years ago. It was during finals week at the end of my junior year of college and some of my friends and I went on a late night hike around the reservoir. It was a beautiful night for a hike... or so we thought.

I walked along with my friends laughing and reminiscing about the year that had seemingly flown by faster than the year before. As the night wore on we decided to return back to school and get a few hours of sleep before our final finals. On our way back we came across a large swampy mud puddle with a thin board laying across the murky mess. One by one we stepped onto and off the board. Everyone seemed to to this with relative ease, but when I stepped onto the board my foot became stuck. I lifted my foot and the board rose into the air. The board was nailed to my foot. This is not a figure of speech. A nail sticking out of the board was now in my foot. In more shock than pain I placed my other foot firmly on the board and pried the nailed foot off the board. I immediately went to the ER and they performed an x-ray, gave me a tetanus shot and assured me my foot patched up nicely. But little did they know a monster was born beneath my skin.

Now fast forward eighteen months. In this time I married and moved to Pittsburgh; all the while a monster slowly grew in my foot. Starting out I barely even noticed the little lump on the bottom of my fat foot. It never impeded my walking, but if I poked at it I could feel a little hard speck under the skin. Thinking it may be a wart I decided to attack the little guy with some good ol' Dr. Scholl's. This battle went on for several weeks each day taking off a little more skin, but each day the little speck remained buried in my foot. The little speck persisted until I ran out of Dr. Scholl's. Getting fed up with the whole process, I stopped attacking my foot and hoped the speck would remain just a speck and leave it at that. But I was sorely mistaken.

The speck did not remain speck but soon grew, slowly taking ground and ravaging my foot. What was once my foot now became the lair of a monster which bulged under my skin. It soon felt like an alien trying to rip through my flesh. I could only imagine the devastating havoc caused if I did not redouble my efforts and attack it once again. With my imagination firing off images of my foot slowly devouring the rest of my body, I went and bought another box of Dr. Scholl's, Compound W, and Duct tape. Over the next couple of week I strategically advanced on the monster peeling off multiple layers of skin at time. Through many a sweat and tears I finally came upon the eye of the monster. Now when I looked at the bottom of my foot my enemy looked back at me. I saw a little white ball peeking out at me surrounded by a trench of skin, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. I continued the good fight and the eye on my foot got bigger and bigger. Soon it began to move around in my foot like the little track ball on a blackberry. With this development I knew it was now or never. My wife now came along side me. As I pushed down on the skin built up around the monster my wife pulled at it with a pair of tweezers. Grinding my teeth and turning my head away my wife gave one mighty tweeze and out popped the monster (and a little blood). The monster in my foot was no more. A little white, rubbery ball a centimeter in diameter is now dead.

Epilogue
My foot now feels great. It feels like new and the crater left by the monster has filled in nicely thanks to some off brand Neosporin.

Planning, blah, blah, blah

I started to write a post last week but soon realized it was not necessarily the most interesting or exciting. It kind of went something like this:

Planning, planning, blah, blah, blah, planning, blah, blah, blah...

I am still in the planning process, but I wanted to update everyone with whats been going on here in Pittsburgh. It has been a strange time of ups an downs. While my life has remained rather steady in the past few weeks, family, friends, and some of our Urban Impact kids' lives have been rocked. Rocked by great things like my little niece and the sudden barrage of lots of little nephews (all of which I am trying to instill a love of Star Wars), but also rocked by many unexpected health problems and deaths. All the while I have been an onlooker, while crying at times, but really spending a lot of time listening and mulling over what's happening. Although this is a time where I have seen the fragility of life I have even more overwhelmingly seen the strength of God in those who know and trust in him...

In this spot I tried to write something really "deep", but it sounded really cheesy. So this is the bottom line: knowing that I will see someone again in heaven, after death, comforts me. Yes, I still grieve and probably cry more than most other men, but I know what God has promised to be true. This is why I am here.

God's promises make all the planning blah, blah worth it.

Prayer Request:

• Summer Programs: Tuesday Nights and Young Men's Bible study!
• Summer Concert at my College Church
• My Grandma
• North Side Neighborhood Renewal Project (The Urban Impact Drama Team will be Performing Thursday Night)

Thank you,

eric

"I'm just a chicken with a bow tie" --- Ben Doohan

The past couple weeks have marked the end of the winter/spring Urban Impact Programs. This includes Global Impact, Play Ball for Kids Luncheon, Performing Arts Academy Parents' Night, the Urban Impact Choir singing at Christ Church at Grove Farm, and the Urban Impact Arts Gala. Usually these events are spaced out over a month but this year four of the five landed in the same week! So it has been quite the happening place here at Urban Impact. My part in these events have varied from directing theatre students, making graphics for tee shirts, to dressing up in a chicken costume and dancing for youth groups arriving at Global Impact. Yep, nothing says being a missionary like being tackled by a bunch a kids because they thinks that's the correct way to greet a giant yellow chicken. As interesting as sweating profusely inside a wrap of yellow fur and latex is, most of you are probably wondering how the PAA Parents' Night went.


PAA Story of the Week
If you have been following the North Side Stage you have probably noticed that Parents' Night has been one of the top prayer requests. Every Thursday night and many Tuesday evenings North Side students came and fine tuned their creative and artistic gifts. This all came to a beautiful conclusion last Thursday night at the Parents' Night. The children displayed artwork , performed to a very enthusiastic audience, and made all their teachers and parents very proud.

By far the coolest moment of the night was when the high school students performed the Lifehouse "Everything" drama (it is a popular gospel drama that can be found on youtube). During the drama the audience was yelling at the stage, cheering, and some even crying. It was like a rock concert (minus the fog machine). The kids did a really great job even our little elementary drama queen held it together only taking five extra bows leaving the stage. All in all thank you to everyone who was praying for the event God was very gracious and hopefully very happy with the event.

Prayer Requests:

• Planning for Summer Programs (Urban Impact Singers and Tuesday Nights)
  
• Summer Small Group Bible Study
  
• My Grandma
  
• Macy's commercial audition
  
• Support Raising (The business of the past weeks have put me a little behind)
  
  God certainly hears your prayers! Parents' Night is a testament to that.
  
  thank you

MusiCalifornia

Every couple of years Tammy, my supervisor, goes to a christian music conference to try and find some good christian, urban, youth choral music. This is apparently hard to do, but every once and a while something pops out of the Brooklyn Tabernacle or Nashville. All this to say this time she decided to go to MusiCalifornia which also has a drama track which means she brought me along.
The day after Easter Tammy, Sherri (A local church's choir director), and I hopped on a plane and landed in the MusiCalifornia. During the next few days I went to lots of theatre and video seminars and an occasional music seminar if Tammy needed to be in two places at once. Most were good, some were great, and others left something to be desired. Now, at the end of the three day marathon event I get to reflect.
I discovered church dramas are one of two things: short skits or slightly longer short skits about Christmas/Easter. Of course there are some full length plays/musicals out there, but they are pretty cheesy. (At this place some may think I am going to rant about how awful christian theatre is, but that is not true. They have there place and purpose but they fail to ring true with relevance to my urban kids.) I even asked one of the seminar instructors if there was anything out there which urban kids can relate. She said she didn't know of anything but she would look for me. The next day she said she thought of a great idea for me, "You should write the show." ......................... what?! This was first reaction, but I get it now. I should write a show. I just expected her "great" idea to be something more along the lines of, "I found you a great show" or "there is a great passage in Matthew that deals with inner-city youth." This would have been a little easier, but hey, why not write a show! (footnote: in college I wrote a show called the The Tinker's Toy and the play was worse than the title.)
I am now praying, reflecting, thinking about how to run with this. I know God wants to be glorified through these young kids. I know He wants them to understand how much He sacrificed for them. How the giving of His son frees them from the guilt of the disturbed lives they've been suckered into living. How can a play do this? What play can do this? This is what I ask God.

Prayer Requests

• For guidance and discernment about script material for students
• Continued growing friendships with the guys I take home after choir
• Car situation
• My Grandma
• Support Raising
• PAA Parent's Night this Thursday!

Thank you all. It encourages me to know that you care enough to read about life on the north side, and to know you pray.

eric

The Little Drama Queen

I am sorry I missed writing to all of you last week, but life just never seems to slow down.  Laura and I have both been constantly going and so much has happened since I last wrote.  It's hard to know where to begin.  Where better to start then with the PAA Story of the week.

PAA Story of the Week:

This is a story about our littlest child who is our biggest diva.  First, to give a little history.  This little girl was the first person I met when I came to check out Urban Impact Performing Arts Academy.  She sat outside the room waiting for class to start twirling an empty plastic mug around.  Written on the mug with big puffy rubber letter were the words "Drama Queen".  I now know this was a sign from God.

Don't get me wrong this little girl is incredibly cute and knows how to behave; it's just that she chooses not to.  Two weeks ago Ms. Laura had to escort her to Mr. Rick because she would not stop rolling around on the stage.  In the middle of running through Sir Humphrey's Honey Stand (our elementary drama) she would run up and lie down right in front of whomever was on stage.  Why?  I don't know.  

The next week, her antics continued and I really didn't want to send her to Mr. Rick, because she needed to learn her part in Sir H.  As a side note she plays Beyonce the Police Officer; she picked the name herself.  So, to keep her from constantly rolling around on stage, she was punished.  For her punishment she had to hold my hand.  Although she found this to be more amusing than punishing, it kept her from bursting on to the stage and flopping on the floor.

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In other news Laura and I have kept busy with theatre.  A couple weekends ago we participated in a 24 hour theatre marathon.  With in 24 hours six 10 minute plays were written, cast, rehearsed, tech rehearsed, memorized, and performed.  This was an annual fund raiser for a small theatre company and Laura and I were asked to participate as actors in this constructed mayhem.  

The following weekend Laura and I also performed in SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) day.  We once again performed in a couple of 10 minute plays, but this time we had more than a few hours of rehearsal.  Both of these events were wonderful to participate in but also sucked up most of our weekend.  With the time that we had left we went to Muskingum twice, and performed with the Urban Impact Choir at the local Church on the North Side. 

Prayer and Praises:

• Praise: One of our High school girls just got accepted into Messiah College
• Praise: God is good
• Prayer for our upcoming PAA parents night
• And the many other things that need prayer....

 Laura and I are very blessed.  Thank you for your prayers!

Kids Can Really be Adorable... when they're not calling you hoopty

As a follow up to my last blog, after choir on Tuesday when I got off the bus several students ran up to me yelling, "Hey hoopty! Wheres ya hoopty at?" It was nice, but it makes me wonder, "Were they calling me hoopty and if so what does that mean?"

I also want to take this time to follow up on a few prayer requests I have posted.

I innitially asked for more young men to be involved with the drama classes on Thursday nights. Since then young men have been coming back and even inviting their friends. I think some of this is because they like improv, but I know God is moving in their lives.

One of our students also had an audition for Hope college. His audition went great, and he got some great feedback from the professors. Overall he didn't like the college (a little too "Hippyish"), but he felt he nailed the audition.

I have constantly been asking for prayer about raising support, and God continues to provide for us. In less than three months over half of the support has been raised, which is a huge, huge, huge blessing. I know I have much more to go and it will still be tough, but that has been an incredible encouragement to Laura and I

Overall the drama classes have been going very well and I love being here. God is really doing some amazing things with these kids and it is a trememdous pleasure to be a part of it.


Thank you God!


PAA Story of the Week:

This week in the elementary class we read through Sir Humphrey's Honeystands, clearly based on the parable of the unmerciful servant. Suprisingly the kids took right to it and really enjoyed going through the show. But what made me really smile was when I looked over and two of the little girls who had some trouble with the larger words were sitting on either side of my wife, Laura. Laura would occasionally lean over to one and help them with their lines and by the end both of them were resting their heads on her. It was very cute. Kind of like the Ewoks taking to Han Solo, but a little different. Later Laura and I were talking and she said one of the little girls noticed her wedding ring, and Laura told her we were married. The little girl looked up at her and said, "You musta thought he was crazy when you first met?" Laura said, "Yes."

Prayer Requests:

• The "Everything" Drama Laura and I are working on with the high schoolers
• For God to encourage me on this second half of support raising
• Some of the students in the choir are really going through some troubles
• the Urban Impact Singers (The summer group)

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

"Hoopty"

Highlights in brief:

• I am Carlo
• I am Rorschach
• I drive a "hoopty"
• Daylight Savings Time

A lot can happen in one week. In fact a lot happens every week, but this week did not disappoint. This week I will start off with the Performing Arts story of the week

PAA Story of the Week:

So after choir on Tuesday nights I usually take a few kids back to their homes. This usually entails several younglings anxiously ready to get home, and every week is a different experience. I have taken kids home, who have not realized they lost their key to their house and had to wait for their Mom to get off work, kids who think it's hilarious to give me directions to their house first leading me in the complete opposite direction before guiding me back through dark, skinny alleys. My favorite happened this past week when upon seeing my car one student moaned, "Aww man, I gotta ride in 'at, you got a hooptie." Later looked up hooptie on urbandictionary.com to find hooptie means, "A piece of junk* car." (For those of you that don't know my car is a 1990 Dodge Dynasty and is huge blessing to me, even though the ceiling is sagging, the odometer stopped working, the airbag doesn't work, and it takes two people to open the hood.) I know my car is old and may in fact be a "Hoopty", but I never thought an Urban Impact student would be embarrassed to ride in it. Despite the jabs at my beloved car the rides home also provide some great time to get to know the kids a little bit more. Even if some of that time is spent driving in the complete wrong direction of their house.

*junk was not the word used by urbandictionary.com

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Other exciting news. I signed with a talent agency called "The Talent Group". This came after a series of events/major blessings the latest of which was an instructional video for EDMC, Education Management Corporation. I played Carlo a minor leauge baseball player. He had damaged his knee running into a player and now worries and slows down while running the bases. I spilled my guts and deepest fears of never making it to the majors to my "Psychologist" (A man named Tom who played the real estate agent in The Mothman Prophecies). This has all been a whirl wind, but most of all it has been a tremendous blessing.

Besides playing Carlo I also had a brief stint playing Rorschach from the Watchmen. By playing I mean dressed up in a costume to go see the movie, and I say brief because I was asked to take off the mask. Although the true Rorschach would have probably broken one of the managers fingers, I instead gruffly said "Someone's pickin' off costume heroes..." He didn't really get it so I said "okay" and went to the car and took off the costume.

All in all it was a busy week. The PAA is going very well and Laura and I continually excited about the progress of the students. We are now working on our scenes and short plays for the Parents' Night on April 23rd. You are all welcome to come that night to see these very talented younglings.

Prayer Requests:

• Building deeper relationships with the students
• PAA Bible Study this week (I am leading it)
• To continue to walk through the doors God has opened form me.

I thank you all for your continued prayers, and when I invited you to the parents night I really meant it. If you are interested let me know.

eric