It is finished!

I just finished the latest weekend video. It's a promo spot for next week's topic, insecurity.

I don't think it'll hurt if I honestly tell you that this one was a pain in the rear to kick out, mainly because of the headache that came from trying to find interviewees who would be both willing and authentic about a topic almost no one wants to talk about on camera.

This is ministry, though, where lack of resources is the mother of innovation, so after some major revisions to the original plan, and by the grace of God, we've got a video, and I am happy. Tired, but happy.

Actually, I'm tired, happy, and very very grateful to my roomate, Aaron, for being willing to take both the crew and soon the rest of Flamingo into a very painful period in his life. It's rare in my experience to find someone who's gifted enough to tell their story in a compelling way with that level of honesty in such short notice.

Success!

Strangeness

Pictured below is the view from my car window as I sit parked in front
of a local GameStop, waiting for my friends to return from their spot
in line, presumably with three copies of Halo 3.

I'm still wondering what I'm doing here...
Well hey, everyone's back. Here we go...

W00t w00t

Quite the day today.
We had ourselves a kickin' beach baptism, the details of which can be found here and here. I'm sure there will be some sort of recap to follow, although I may have to take some aspirin while I'm editing; we had some very active waves, so there's probably going to be quite a bit of movement (Hooray for the smooth cam filter!).

About halfway through then event I whacked myself in the head with my camera when a big wave caught me unawares, which the rest of the team thought was just hilarious (Ha! Mo gave himself a concussion! Brilliant!). Don't worry, though, he camera's fine. If Evan managed to tape it by accident, I'll post it so you too can laugh at my misfortune.

While I'm on the subject, I'd definitely like to give a shout out to the wild n' kooky crew that make up the FRC video team. We're more volunteers than paid people now, (which means we actually have to be nice to them sometimes- ha, just kidding Stacie and Evan) which is really encouraging considering that a mere six months ago there was Brian and myself (with our friends Ian and Carolina occasionally helping us out). Now there are enough of us so we can actually play a pickup game of basketball if we wanted to and school the worship pastors on the court (watch out, Pastor Ricky!)

Anywho, all that to say that I was very proud to be a part of the team I'm in today; life's just more fun when the right people are in it, and I'm working alongside the best! (even when they laugh and call me a whiner when I almost knock myself unconscious at the beach.)

Okay, who else can I give a shout out to while I'm here? Oh, yes....






Arturo De La Mora is a genius!



A genius with an antennae hat that reminds me of something....








....what could it be....



....ah, yes....

The first guest blogger, ever!

Hey gang, I'd like to take a minute to introduce Robert, my guest
blogger for the evening. Be nice to him & visit him at www.robertolopez.blogspot.com

. Hooray!

Wussup yall...we it's about 11:15pm and we are hanging out at denny's.
As you can see I am sporting my home made iPhone I made at the
restaraunt. Hopefully one day I can afford a real one. Well my salad
just got here so I gotta go...PEACE!!!

-Rob

I once killed a man with this thumb...

This is a picture of my roommate and I in the bathroom we share.
Notice the demolished toothbrush I am holding in my hands. I was
brushing my teeth after finishing lunch today and it snapped in two.

That is the power of a strong, manly thumb right there.
I just thought I would share.

-Mauricio

Sent from my iPhone

Really cool skit

Check out this YouTube video...what a great illustration a profound truth.
This gave me goosebumps when I saw it (Hat tip: Chad Swanzy)

It is ready!

Wedding Update!

I have finally finished designing and uploading the first draft of Steph and I's wedding website and I am excited and exhausted. I really should have gone to sleep about two hours ago, but I got excited when I saw the end was near (well, the end of this part of designing it, anyway)

So be sure to stop by, and, once I get the guestbook up and running, feel free to drop by and leave some comments. Stay tuned for more updates as we go. Woohoo!

For now, www.tinocosanchez.com is open for business!

Thoughts on becoming

“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!"
Matthew 6:22-23

"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."
Matthew 12:33-37

I heard a quote once, and I can't remember where from. It goes like this:

"Right now you are becoming the person you are going to be for the rest of your life,"

or, put another way,

"Who I am is the result of the choices I have made."

I gave a talk on that in Elevate a few weeks ago and it tonight a conversation I had brought the thought to the fore in a big way. (Elevate is the name of the college ministry I help with at FRC. Sorry, no web page...yet, muahahaha)
Sometimes that's a really cool quote to keep in mind, especially when I'm on the verge of doing or saying something stupid (which, as my fiance can attest to, can happen quite frequently). It helps me to keep an awareness of this strong truth, that what I do and say matters, that my habits and routines form who I will be, and that the things I say and do now are either taking closer to the person God is forming in me, or farther away from it (Thanks toPastor Matt Miller for keeping that phrase in our collective sights each Tuesday night). A very cool quote indeed.


Tonight, though, it scared me.
Sometimes it's too easy to oversimplify and - especially - to judge when you're watching someone close to you make life-destroying decisions, but I believe that, handled rightly, can lend a certain amount of clarity about the kind of person you're dealing with.

The quote scares me, because I'm witnessing the end result of what happens when an individual makes the same kinds of choices over and over again, until the choices start to make them.
It's a wonderful principle when you've trained yourself in habits like discipline, selflessness, and concern for others.
It's horrifying when you witness the kind of Spiritual blindness that leads to the destruction of a marriage and suffering in the life of another, especially when it's justified by reasons like "he isn't romantic enough for me."
And he hasn't eaten for a week and barely sleeps and when he does it's because he's exhausted from crying.

The quote scares me, because this person has become who she is as a result of those choices. You can only justify darkness when you've been living in it so long that you've forgotten what light looks like.

The quote scares me, and those verses scare me, because this is my story.
Not the specific event, maybe not that bad (as far as surface-level things go, anyway), but the reality is that both her and I are broken, and all of us are capable of both great and terrible things. Not one of us is exempt from the need for the power of Christ to renew us on the inside.
I am just as capable of drifting far enough away so that up becomes down. All it takes is small steps away from the cross, short trips in the dark that become vacations from what I once knew to be right, so much wandering around in darkness that I forget what the light ever felt like.

Hearts can become calloused. Our choices matter.
And that's scary stuff.

Epilogue

Man, it was a good night...
If you weren't logged on to mynakedpastor.com for the launch party tonight, know that it was definitely a night to remember.
I was mainly behind the scenes, filming and generally holding things that needed to be held and standing where I needed to be stood, but I had several observations after participating in the event:

1) I don't think I have ever traveled as much under one roof in two hours than I did then.
(From the Launch Pad, to the Naked Bar, to the Karaoke (Naked Idol) Station, back to the Bar, to the Launch Pad, to the Bar-no, wait, the Karaoke Station! Quick! Etc...)

2) The Jazz Trinity is going to be a huge musical sensation if they continue to practice the way it sounds like they do. They put college age musicians I know to shame (and sorry about the roughness of the audio. Guess you'll have ot ask me to listen to the recording I made while I was there to experience the awesomeness :)

3) Troy is going to need lots of prayer, for both him and his family. I've logged on a few times, and it's cool, but I've also happened to be around several conversations that included enough detail to make me uncomfortable to be talking about it. Sure, he's pretty much asked for it by going through with this, and that may be the difficult part of this whole deal that comes with the territory, but I don't think that means that we shouldn't be praying for his family, for his life. He's put himself out there because he believes in the something beautiful and huge, namely, that God can use the small and often broken details of a family's life to both reflect back to us our own brokenness as well as to glorify and draw people to himself, and Troy (unlike many) is willing to live like that's true. Pray that more of us would have that kind of courage.

The Launch party! The Launch Party!

Man, I love Sunday afternoons.
It's that tranquil little oasis of time in between the morning services and the evening services. The two to three hour period doesn't give me enough time to start any in-depth projects or do anything that requires me to drive more than a few miles from church, and Stephanie often works on the weekends, so I'm usually left with time to spend either napping or reading, or, in this case, blogging while listening to the soundtrack from Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong.
(So who cares if most of it feels like it was taken directly from Dvorak and Stravinsky? Speaking of which, if you know any serious classically trained musicians who know their stuff, you can have a very cool and possibly very spirited conversation about why most pop and cinema music sounds the way that it does and who ripped off what style and/or chord progression from where...as Solomon used to say, there is nothing new under the sun.

Just a little extra info I thought I'd throw in, free of charge)

Soooo...I am so excited to talk to my fiancé today. I really am.
The day before yesterday I started reading the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, and it has turned on some major light bulbs for me, especially in the area of my approach toward her in general. Anyway, I'm eager to test out all the neat stuff I'm learning, which may or may not go over well (although I think it will), but in any case, I'm pumped now, and that's the important part.

Anywho, I'm going to res a little and double-check my equipment for tonight. In case you hadn't gotten a chance to click on that odd-looking banner with the goldfish to your right, tonight is the mynakedpastor.com launch party, and it is going to be HUGE.
Log on and see.
For now, here's the promo spot we showed this weekend:

Mazel Tov!

I just want to give a quick shout out to my beloved for getting promoted today!
After months of insinuations and much prayer and hoping, she got the news that her career is moving up to the next level!
Hooray for my beautiful assistant manager in training! You've earned it!