A month and two days later....

Alrighty, I've had a good solid month to try to adjust to the nearly indescribably (for me, anyway) profound life change that happened on May 23, and so now it's time to get back into blog world and start writing about it.

Before I dive into that, though, here are a couple of relevant links I'd like to plug for you:

-All of the wedding pictures are now up at our webpage, so feel free to head on over there, comment, add to them, or download them. The URL is www.tinocosanchez.com.

-While this isn't strictly wedding-related, Steph and I do work with Elevate, the college ministry at Flamingo Road Church, and they happen to have a blog. Check it out!

Alrighty. So the big question is, "how was it?," the definition of "it" varying depending on whether I was talking to guys or girls (it's kind of funny how that works like that, isn't it?). For now, I'm going to define "it" as the entire experience (and I'll probably have to dedicate an entire post to just stories from the trip, because there were a ton of stories).

There were two things that I was aware of right from the start. One: life can and does operate on two separate levels, and Two: We choose what level it operates on.

Our ceremony was amazing, it really was, but as I'm thinking back now, I realize that for some people, it was just a ceremony. A slightly more important day on the calendar, but still a day.

We didn't approach it that way, mainly because we understood on what level we wanted to experience this day. We firmly believe that God was there, and that on this side of the trip, we are one, and as such, now relate together to God in a way that we didn't before we were married and had the honeymoon. But the way some people ask about it (a small minority, btw), one would get the impression that it was all about the honeymoon.

You see? Two levels.

It's a little trickier to see on "normal" days (as it there were such a thing), but the dynamic is there nonetheless.

And so, Jacob wakes up one morning and calls the place Bethel, because God was there and he didn't see it until just now.

And so, Moses turns aside to a bush that he may have walked past a thousand times, because now he notices that there is something profound going on.

Is it just a day, or is it something deeper?

Or is everything an accident?

This is how I think the rot settles into a marriage; everything turns provincial, and it stops being profound. 

And so, I'm trying to train myself to see life the way God sees it, to understand that the moments I live in have a purpose attached, and that the notion that any aspect of my life is somehow disconnected from what God is doing in this world is a selfish myth.

What level do you operate on?

Colombia!

Hey gang,

I'm sitting here in my cousin's bedroom, getting ready to knock out; I'm not officially married yet (48 hours!) so I guess it's okay for me to blog.

This will probably be the last thing I post for a while (if you see a something up here next week, it's probably a bad sign), but I had a lot on my mind, and thought it would be cool to look back on the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head in the days before Steph and I got married.

Simply put, this is turning out to be one of the best weeks of my life. Everywhere I look I see my family united and celebrating in a way I haven't seen in ages. I think the coolest thing about it is the realization of how blessed Steph and I truly are. Two years ago when we determined the direction our courtship was going to go in, I don't think either one of us had the slightest idea that the kind of moments we're experiencing this week could even happen. 

It's like God took what, at times, seemed like a tedious amount of obedience and went to work blessing it in masse. 

And now, in less than two days, I get to walk into a marriage more sure than I've ever been that this was the way it was always meant to be, that it was always going to be her. Moments like today as we rode in a carriage together through the old city in Cartagena are reminders that obedience is so worth it, that we didn't keep ourselves pure in vain.

I'm reminded that all of the bone-headed habits and self-centered ways of thinking that I'm having to break myself of daily are worth it because the effort puts me in a place where the kind of marriage dreams are made of isn't just a pipe dream, but rather becomes a distinct possibility.

I was talking to Matt at our table this evening (he's the officiating Pastor, by the way. I haven't done any fact checking on this, but all the same I'm pretty sure he's the first Arkansan to ever preside over a wedding in Colombia) about the whole thing, and we both realized how grateful we are to work at a church under a leader who teaches us to never quit in the pursuit of our full potential, and nights like tonight confirm that yes, it's worth it.

I realize that I'm writing this now to the young guy or girl who's wondering if pursing a relationship the way God asks us to in his word is worth it.

Please trust me when I say that it is.

This week is proof of it.

Thought Avalanche

I am sitting in my room trying to wrap my brain around the events that have transpired over the last week, but it's not really working.

Let me try again.

Did I really see almost 50 people experience a college ministry Monday night that not even a year ago was made up of 12 people in my backyard?

And Thursday? The night where Steph and I got to go have dinner with Matt & Jenn and talk over what our wedding ceremony is going to be like? That was fun in all kinds of ways, because it's no longer just me or just her, but it's starting to become an us. 

And then of course Friday night just blew my mind right out of the water....if you weren't there,  just know that it was a ceremony (service? Send-off? Roast? I still don't know quite what to call it. Any ideas, Brian?) that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. The long and the short of it is, that I know some world class people.

Which is why I'm okay with writing a post that on the front end may look like a laundry list of how much better my week was than yours.

Collaboration. Around FRC, it's the notion that who you do life with matters. The quality of the people you spend your time around (or who allow you to spend your time around them on less endearing days) affects the quality of your life.

And thus, this week.

I get to lead a college ministry along with a crew of passionate and sharp people who practically run the thing like they were getting paid to do it, and so together we get to experience more relational success than we've ever had and the launch of a multi-campus college ministry.

The day Steph and I get married is going to be that much more special because the guy who's officiating it has been my friend for years.

And then Friday night was pretty much a culmination of all the things I love about the people I get to do life with. Steph and I are launching into married life knowing that we are surrounded by the best community of people we could ever have asked for...

So, yeah, this post can pretty much be summarized like this: the right people can make all the difference in a life.

only fifteen more days...

work, run, wedding, sleep, work, run, wedding, sleep, work, run, wedding, sleep.....

Holy cow!

It's May 1!!!! 

You know what that means??

I'm getting married in 22 days!

I feel like this cat right now:

My life right now

A sample itinerary in inner monologue form for all you folks wondering where all my posts went:

~ 5:30 am ... Wake up. 

Freak out because you have less than a month until your wedding. 

Calm down.

Work on wedding stuff until time to leave for work (the quiet time goes somewhere in here usually).

~ 8:30 am ... Make phone calls while driving.

Church stuff until lunch

~ 12:30 ... Insert wedding stuff and possible meal here (with phone calls thrown in for good measure).

~ 2 PM ... Return to church and edit/schedule/shoot/produce/design/yank out hair until dinner time.

~ 8 PM ... Find food while working on/thinking about wedding stuff.

~ 9 PM ... Go see Stephanie and remember why I'm doing all this.

~ 11 PM ... Go home and work some more on wedding stuff or random posts so people know you're alive. Try to carve out time for silence and stillness so you don't go crazy.

~ 2 AM ... Sleep.

Throw in meetings, location shoots, planning/teaching college ministry, seeing my fiancé, and the occasional bathroom break, and it's a wonder that I'm still able to function sometimes...however, considering the fact that I get to marry Stephanie when all's said and done, I'd say that it's worth it.

 

29 days, people. 29 days.

AHEM

I will be married in 34 days. 

That is all.

(insert barely-contained glee)

VEGAS!!

Okay I'm not gonna lie to you...(LOL), the only reason I'm blogging is because Miggie brought a wireless card and Phil is taking a shower before we head off to the convention for day two (for the seven of us that arrived yesterday) of the awesomeness.

I don't have time to give the full rundown, so bullet points will have to do:

*The convention is still too big to take in even though we have four days here.

*We met The Real Nick Jones, along with Mark Dawson and Warren Hough from Lifechurch.tv...what a great group of guys!

*The Monte Carlos is about 60 1/2 times better than the Stratosphere was last time I was here

...Uh oh, it's time for breakfast...catch you later!

*is awesomeness even a word? I dunno...I'm using it anyway

Editing break

Check out what I found during my creative break today!

I liked this song full band, but with the one acoustic guitar it sounds sick! Wait until the 2:21 mark...then you'll see what I mean...

Hat tip: Ian & Phil for discovering it for pointing me in the right direction!

Easter Recap '08

12 tapes, 7 volunteers, and three days worth of editing later...


Easter '08 Recap from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

Equipment: Canon XL-1 {} Sony HVR-A1U {} Panasonic AVG DVX-100B {} Panasonic Handicam from Best buy {} Apple Motion {} Final Cut.

Peeps: Luis, Javy, Evan, Stacey, Jeff, Maria,Alex, Ian, & Phil. Heredes brought food (and direction :).

If you feel left out of the loop, I'm sorry

If you're in any way involved or planning on attending either of Stephanie and I's wedding ceremonies, you should pop on over to our website and check the blog over there for regular updates...you might miss some important travel info without meaning to. 

And besides, it's a pretty sick website for a guy who's never designed one before (Thankyou, iWeb!). 

There's your sign

I can tell when my life has become a little too tightly structured when I find myself awake at 1:00 AM on a Saturday cruising blogs just because I need some kind of unscheduled time to let my mind wander to things besides work and wedding planning...I was going to take a walk around my neighborhood, but that would involve the putting on of shoes, and frankly, playing guitar sounds like a better option, so there I go.

I think I need to go camping...

Before I depart, props to:

-Stacie for the insightful letter from God.

-Evan for having a blog

-Heredes for pointing me to John Mayer's blog (bookmark!)

-Wagonsdeep for getting me all fired up about what's possible in this business.

-J. Budziszewski...I haven't read office hours in ages and forgot how much I enjoy his writing.

Sam

Thursdays for me are always cool days in that I get to experience the novelty of actually putting my degree to work.

Most days are spent in media producer land, but on Thursdays I give saxophone lessons in the afternoon, and today I was reminded once again of why I love teaching.

Sam hit her first G above high F#, which officially puts her two notes into the altissimo range on her horn. On its own it's impressive, but in the context of the last six months of working towards something she's never done and seeing what seemed like little to no results for months on end, it's huge. And she's not even in high school.

Anyway, I mention it only to draw attention to the point of it all: persistence matters.

Chechanie

Last night I was in the middle of one of those great 2:00 AM phone conversations with Stephanie when a really neat realization struck me.

I have the ability to to make Stephanie the happiest fiancé in the world.

Now, that's a neat privilege.

Oops

Hey there, kiddos...
I know, it's been ages since I've made a proper post...Easter will do that to you- correction, Easter while working in full-time ministry in the United States will do that to you.

Anywho, to sort of make up for it, I'm attaching a small diagram of various things I've been up to over the past few weeks (notice how all of it is church-related)

Actually, the truth is that there are way more cool things to write about than I really have the time or the energy for at the moment, so I'm going to be lame and reference Heredes' blog. He's got all of the facts and sums it up nicely. Suffice it to say that we're still trying to recover some of the sleep we missed over the last two weeks.

Given all that went down, though, I'd say it was worth it...here's one of the videos the team put together last week. It was filmed on Thursday morning at 8 am and finished Friday around 7:30 am, an occurrence which probably won't be happening anymore once I'm  married. 

Enjoy!

Graveyard Video-RationaLIES from Flamingo Road Church on Vimeo.

"Hey Phil! Look at that funny stain in the parking lot. Do you have your camera?"

I HEART my job...

I was supposed to post this last week after we finished putting this video together, but I got a little sidetracked (Steph and I are getting married in less than three months. Cut me a little slack), so to make up for it, I'll post two videos for the price of one:

So...this is what I and the the team get to do for a living (unless you're talking about our volunteers, in which case they are way more hard core than us paid sissies, because they actually make a living doing something else, but come in at all hours anyway).

In case you're interested, here are some facts about said videos:

-This is all Photoshop CS3 and Apple Motion

-We pre-composed pretty much everything; nearly everywhere you see a blank screen, even for a frame, it marks where we pre-exported our stuff and reimported it into another project file (even with 12 gigs of RAM in my tower, the lighting effects alone in that second trailer would have crashed the computer pretty quickly.

-Both of them took about three-and-a-half days to pull off, although that mainly included some really late nights (It's 3:30 AM on a Saturday morning and I'm writing this as my final render is exporting)

All that being said, it's still the best job I've ever had (although being a clown assistant ranks a close second.)

....Okay, my render is done. It's time for me to go home and not wake up until after the sun comes up.

Peace!

Oh my word....

Jesus Is: Remix is my new favorite album...you should all go to iTunes right now and download it and then play it many times.

The remix of "Where the Love Lasts Forever" is suh-weeeeet! Especially where they replaced the I-V-vi-V progression in the hook with the IV-V-vi, just to make it sound more hip...yeah, the song now sounds like about six other trance tunes you've heard fifty times, but I still like it. Yeah, I know it's Hillsong and that I work in ministry, which pretty much means that every one of their songs is my favorite worship song of all time, but this one is really good, I promise.

1+1=1

I think that one of the coolest things that Steph and I get to do together is work with the college ministry here at FRC. Her work schedule is a little tough right now so she can't go as often as she likes, but when she's around, it really adds value to what I do. At least it feels that way to me.
I can remember talking to her on the phone as we were discussing different observations we had about our group. The whole time I was wondering what it was that I managed to get right along the way that allowed me to be here now, sharing the joys of a mutual passion with someone that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. This is one of my favorite examples of grace.

It's so different from what I expected it to be. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I had no idea of what to expect.
I'd never been in a courtship before, never been in a relationship that had this much potential to glorify God in some serious ways, and I definitely had never been in a relationship with a woman who flat out told me that she was willing to submit to my leadership - which, if you're ignorant, sounds like a free pass, until you realize that the flip side of all that privilege is the responsibility to do the whole "love your wife as Christ loved the Church" deal ("With great power, comes great responsibility, Peter").

And it is a big deal. I told the guys in the small group this much, too. The day I figured out that growing up isn't something that just happens to you was one of the best things I ever learned, because it meant that I wasn't somehow excluded from manhood because I happen to be a knucklehead. It just meant that I had to learn a whole lot of discipline (I haven't watched cartoons in at least six months, for starters :)

It's a really big deal. I get to do something I love to do with someone I love to do it with, and we get to be a part of some seriously God-glorifying life change...I don't know that I've had many feelings like this one, this sense of rightness that is telling me that I'm on the right path, that yeah, it's a fight, but that by the grace of God I'm also a different person than I was a year ago. In this moment, it's tough for me to balance it well against all of the other really cool moments I get to experience on a weekly basis, so I don't think I'll be trying to make any comparisons right now.
For now, I'm just grateful that I've got Stephanie Sanchez, and that she's got me.

Today

Today will be a good day.


Today is my day off, which means it's wedding planning day!

It's also the same that the gorgeous young lady in that photo over there has off from work, which means I get to spend time with her!

I love Tuesdays....