Rainbow


?? Which Natural Wonder Or Disaster Are You ??
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Well, I've never thought of my self as pretty.

Just got back from la Rebe's house. We got together for a barbeque to celebrate her new fence and shade structure. And i'm proud to say I took part in accomplishing the shade structure. Dinner was good, vino tinto, ensalade mediterranea y chuletas de puerco. Gracias Rebe la cena estubo deliciosa. Especialmente el vino al cual entre mas tomaba mas bueno estaba.

I took la pepita, and you can see part of the new fence.


Our hostess la Rebe,.


Rebe y Luna.


Surround yoruself with 'safe people' dijo Larry.


Rebe's vision, can't wait to get together on hot sunny days and enjoy a nice cold glass of lemonade.


Just for kicks. La pepita as someone tried to sneak up behind me. She went wild.

Here are some notes from the conference I attended yesterday for all you ministry friends out there. I would encourage you to look through them. They came straight from the mouth of Larry Acosta whom was more real than last times i've heard him speak. The stuff he was saying was real to me. They are copyright to Urban Youth Workers Institue. I will post some more personal notes later on. I pray Gods best for you friend.



The Next Generation Urban Leader

II. Present Trends in Urban Youth History
A. Youth Led (Entertainment to Empowerment)
B. Worship Focused (Performance to intimacy)
a. Reconnecting to the heart of the father.
C. Service Oriented (Self to others)
a. Servant Leader Model
D. Community Centered (Individualism to real relationships)
E. Holistically Minded (Compartmentalized to developing whole people and whole communities.
F. Multicultural (Dominant culture to diversity)

III. Urban Leadership of the Future

A. The Next Generation Urban Leader will be known…

1. Less for what they say and more for what they deliver.
2. Less for their title and position and more by their character and competence.
3. Less by what they control and more by how they work through teams.
4. Both for their personal integrity and for their organizational capabilities.

B. The Next Generation Urban Leader will have more of the following characteristics.
1. Incredible understanding and insight into the realities of the world (relevance) and into themselves (authenticity).
1st Chronicles 12:32 “The men of Issacar understood the times and knew they should do.”

2. Huge levels of courage to enable them to endure the inevitable pain of learning new way and bringing about change.
3. The willingness and ability to involve others because tasks will be too complex and information too widely distributed for the leader to problem solve on their own.
4. The ability to share power according to people’s knowledge and skills thereby encouraging leadership to emerge throughout their ministry.

C. The Next Generation Urban Leader will live out the following core values:
1. Accountability.
1. Who has permission in your life to ask you the hard questions?
2. Personal wholeness
1. New generation urban leaders must give greater attention to being more balanced and fit in the areas of their inner life.
2. Application: Each week schedule time for becoming more personally fit: body (physical exercise), mind (read more…”leaders are readers and readers are leaders”), soul (relationships that refuel your soul)and spirit (some form of the disciplines that will feed you spiritually).
3. Community.
1. A strong commitment to community will challenge you to lead through teams, work collaboratively with to others and practice relational ministry, thus avoiding burnout.

4. EMPOWERMENT (KEY).
1. The next generation leader must make leadership development one of his/her top three priorities!
2 Timothy 2:2

5. Transformational.
1. Personal inner transformation changing young lives, community transformation, and even ministry transformation will lead to deeper holistic impact.

IV. Core competencies of the Next Generation Urban Leader.
A. Vision casting
B. Ability to communicate
C. Decision making
D. Conflict resolution
E. Budget development
F. Fundraising/ grant writing
G. Strategic Planning
H. Time management
I. Tech Savvy
J. Team Building
K. Personal Selection
L. Board Development/ Governance
M. Organizational development
N. Mentoring, coaching, leadership development
a. NOTE: The urban leader of the future won’t have to be great at each of these competencies; he or she must value each of these and see to it that these core aspects of leadership get handled with competence.

V. The lasting Next Generation Urban Leader!
Dare to:
• To Change the things that will help you or your family get healthier
• Schedule a weekly date night with your spouse
•Schedule a one on one date with each of your kids once a month.
•If single, schedule a by-monthly meeting with an accountability group.
•Seek out a counselor and /or mentor.
•Set healthier boundaries (i.e. out doing ministry no more than 3-4 night per week)
•Schedule time to read your bible and other books that will strengthen your spiritually.
•GIVE YOURSELF ENOUGH PERMISSION TO HAVE FUN!

Endure...
•Relationships that will refuel you and share the ministry load.
•Schedule social time once a month with “safe people” who just love your for who you are and not for what you do in ministry.
• Recruit and lead through teams who will help you in the ministry.
•Enlist a leader(s) who will “coach” you in key areas of leadership that you know are important, but may not be in your present skill.

© Urban Youth Workers Institute-for use contact UYWI @ www.uywi.org

I'm praying I don't get sick. My throught feels like is trying to caught something. I just got done watching a movie called 'Valentin' which is a good movie so I thought. Its an Argentinian film with English sub-titulos.


On thursday we celebrated a friends birthday over carne asada and arroz. And instead of your normal cake we had pudding cake which was very good.

Most of the night people just hung out and talked.


We had a piñata.


Chris scaring the little ones as the terrible cabeza de piñata man.


On friday I got to see the USC campus. Its really nice, especially the architectural structure of it.
A nice place to take pics. I might just grab my 35mm and my beach cruiser and go around campus looking for great shots one of these days.


On Saturday I attended the Urban Youth Workers Institue Reload. It was good to be there. I saw a lot of familiar faces. And it was good to catch up with some poeple and make some connections. We took the junior staff from Harambee. One of my guys from my bible study was happens to be on junior staff went, having him there was a blessing for me. To be able to spend some time with him outside of our community. He got to do some workshops and so did I. We are going to be sharing with the rest of the bible study what we learned next time we get together. It was rewarding having him sit in between me and Ramiro, the brother that mentors me. But it was more rewarding hearing him sing "Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you are my God, You are all together perfect, all together wonderful to me." There was something at that moment that helped me understand this little dude is going to be alright.
Here some pics from today:

Harambee's Junior Staff


Wendy and junior staff girls


My boy Rigo and Lee posing for a shot.


Lunch.


Final session. Noel Castellanos was the guest speaker. He gave a good talk about teamwork. It was good.

After reading my friends post over at www.urbanonramps.blogspot.com about Ruben Navarrete's article on how too many Latinos keep each other down instead of encouraging each other to move forward. I got encouraged to post an article I wrote a couple years back. Let me know if you like it.

Here it is:

Malcom’s Infuence In My Life
by
Sergio Alfredo Castaneda
Professor Blackwood
April 8, 2003


There is an old saying that “reading the book is better than watching the movie.” In the case of the autobiography of Malcom X, this is absolutely true. Never before have I read an autobiography on someone and then seen the movie based on the book. The experience of doing both was refreshing. Reading the book was good because as the reader, one can see more in-depth, Malcom’s life and how he evolved into the leader he died as. In reading his story I learned why he says, “...people are always speculating-why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that happens to us is an ingredient” (pg.173). This is profound to me. Reading Malcom’s story gives me strength, as part of a minority, to change my life for the better. To help my people come out of oppression and victimization. As minorities, we must start taking advantage of the opportunities given to us, to better ourselves and stop complaining about racism.
Creating a beneficial and equal rights society. Black progress seemed to come to a halt in 1980. Seeing this as a Mexican -American (more Mexican then American) and being a leader in my community, I was able to learn a few things about progress in life. Progress to achieve high goals, such as gaining a college degree. Going to college is not so unusual for an Anglo-American, though for someone who grew up as a minority it is a great challenge.
Growing up around illegals and seeing the circumstances they lived under, shaped my thinking into a prejudice attitude towards the ones who appeared to be above us (whites), or so I thought. My blindness made me believe that I could not achieve what I really wanted in life which was to move past a high school education, into a promising career as a Family Therapist. On a daily basis, all that I saw were farm workers who came home everyday, tired from a long aphoristic day picking apples.


I never heard one of these tired workers converse about moving into a more promising future than stay working in the orchards for minimum wage. I didn’t understand why.
Americas measure of progress. Do you make more than 25k a year? Do you own a car? Do you own a house? Why can’t your parents buy you clothes at JC Penny instead of Goodwill? If you grow up in Mexico, measures of achievement are not based on the individuals ownership of material possessions. But more on the life one gives to his or her family. At least that’s what I remember when I lived there as a young child. Seeing people in the orchards be comfortable with what they had, didn’t measure up to me. It didn’t measure up because I was thinking outside the box that many immigrant workers stay in and because I was looking to an American standard of progress. I know that it goes far beyond just material gain. At least for me, as a son of two immigrant workers of whom I’m very proud of. I desire the satisfaction of making a change in my life and honoring all the suffering that my parents endured providing for me and watching over me.
We cannot get there by being angry such as Malcom X was. In his autobiography, Malcom X states that he “..learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things” (ch.nigtmare, pg.11). This is an ideal that many minorities have. We cry in complaint hoping somebody will hear us. But no one likes a crying child. We need to be able to use our God given brains and start squeezing out solutions to our problems.
My life like Malcom’s. I endured some racism. Though not quite so dramatic, as I did not grow up in his era. But I had my blue devils encouraging me to be a menial worker. Trying to tell me how to think. This was the spark of my anger towards white people.

Thinking that I was pre-destined to become part of the “help” because of my disability to comprehend. This did not sit right with me and the only people that I could be angry at were the whites, though I did not discover this anger until later on, still not knowing why I had it. Not too long after, I discovered the movie “Malcolm X” by Spike Lee. Watching this film to me was like being enlightened. My understanding of whites was right. They were the oppressor and I was the oppressed, I knew why I was feeling angry. My thinking made me believe they were the reason why I couldn’t achieve the goal of becoming a successful person in life. Watching the movie helped me to seek inner power to self convert and stop making myself be a victim of white America. Which is an idea that many minorities fall into. And something I encourage my people to step out of.

I didn’t understand white America. To the point that I thought to myself that I was dumb and would never amount to be anything else than a minimum wage worker, sitting in class and not understanding what the teacher was teaching out of the English textbook. It wasn’t that I was dumb. It was that my comprehension skills were not as sharp as those who grew up in an American family whose primarily language is English. I viewed myself as an outsider being one of the few Mexican kids in my class, that was predominately white. The only way that I could express my anger was to change their norm. So, I rebelled against every rule they had at their school. This anger that I had didn’t help me have a fun filled high school experience or make many friends during my freshmen and sophomore years, even some of the Latin kids were afraid of me. But I didn’t know how else to respond to the grief I was feeling. I lost all interest in reading books because I didn’t understand what I was reading.

On page 155 in the “Caught” chapter Alex Heley writes “...my working vocabulary wasn’t two hundred words.” He writes this about Malcom. The type of person he describes is the type of person that I was. Every other word that came out of my mouth was a foul word. I didn’t have much to say.
I knew there was a need. Something was missing from my life and I didn’t know how to address it. But it was there. This something was not helping me get anywhere. All that I knew was that I had this anger and nothing else. What do I do with it? I couldn’t keep on trying to fight against the system. I was letting the system keep me down and I couldn’t figure out how to move past that. So, I began asking myself questions. What is it that I really need? And I began getting answers. Realizing that I did not need to change my surroundings, but more my inner-self, was a milestone breakthrough in my life.
A step towards personal progress. There is a book written by a man named John Perkins, the title of the book is WITH JUSTICE FOR ALL. In the book there is a story Mr. Perkins tells about a woman meeting Jesus at a well. It reads like this “...Jesus opened the conversation with the woman. He let her felt need determine the starting point of the conversation. She was at the well to get water: He asked for a drink. Notice that He didn’t just talk about her need; He brought his own need. Her need was water; His need was water. Asking her to give, by asking her to help Him, He affirmed her dignity. Mans’s most deeply felt need is to have his dignity affirmed. He wants to feel his somebody-ness---to know that he is a person of worth. That is what the woman at the well needed to know. She needed to know that she was as good as a Jew.” And just like that woman, many people today who belong to a minority group need that affirmation. Affirming people causes them to rise above their past, and helps them according to Mr. Perkins.

Realizing my own personal need. The beginning of my senior year in high school is when I knew I had to change my attitude towards others. I discovered no self-love inside of me. The past three years with the attitude I had, did not take me anywhere. I was still the same person with no more than 200 words in my vocabulary. With a violent past behind me. A past that was hunting me. Making a relic out of all the evil things I did, I felt I had nothing to contribute to society.
Meeting my personal Jesus. She was tall, white and spoke my language. Her name was JoAnne Brower. She had club called God’s Gang to Light. It was a ministry to reach out to gang kids. And there I was. Needy. She came to me and introduced her self with five tough looking gang bangers behind her. All who were smiling as they introduced themselves to me. Which I recall was kind of strange. Gang bangers don’t smile much.
JoAnne or Jomama as I later found out she went by invited me to hang with them. It took a while before she broke in and I actually started hanging out with them. Being around them and being part of their leadership, doing volunteer counseling with the Mexican kids that would pop into center helped me understand my need. Just like the one at the well, I knew I was messed up and thirsty for something. All these children would come in and play basketball or pool and hang out. Some of them would share the things that were going on with their family. And I was able to counsel them. That moment I knew I could actually bring a change to a cycle that was keeping my people down.
Getting over the barrier. It was one of the hardest things for me to believe I could go to college. One because I couldn’t afford it and still can’t. Second, I didn’t have the right counseling. No one in my family has attended college nor aspired to. I’m the first one. About six months before the school year ended, there was an announcement that a local foundation was going to be giving out scholarships to the high school graduates whose parents work for First Fruits of Broetje Orchards. I was praising God for that news.

I fit the category. Both my parents worked for that orchard. So, I saw the opportunity and went for it. At the end of the school year I was the first ever in my family with a high school diploma and a full paid scholarship to the local community college. Even though, all I did my first year of college was prepare myself for college. It opened a lot of doors. Doing every volunteering opportunity available. Receptionist for the local senior center, little league referee, tutor for the local children’s center, I was even a summer trainee for a church leading kids on outings.

There is no excuse. No one can say that they ‘can’t do it’. Trying to get some of my friends to follow in the same direction was tough. I heard about every complaint imaginable. Shortage of money, language barrier, I’m too Mexican and the list keeps going. The only people that I could think would not be able to do it were the undocumented. But I was wrong. In an article titled “Undocumented Grads to Get Tuition Breaks From Calf. Institutions,” a John Ghering explains the problems are over. Our Governor Grey Davis has signed a bill to help undocumented students to be able to attend college and still pay in-state tuition. There are millions of scholarships for minorities to be able to attend college. The Hispanic Association Of Colleges and Universities(http://www.hacu.net) has a tremendous amount of resources for Hispanic students to take advantage of. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) is a non-profit and non-partisan educational organization established in 1978. Their mission is the development of the next generation of Latin Leadership. The Ethnic Majority (http://www.ethnicmajority.com) is not only committed to empower Latinos but Africans, and Asians to achieve advancement in politics, business, at work, and society in general.

And in the future, once I get my four-year and my Masters, there will be M.O.C.O.S which is going to be dedicated to the advancement of children of illegal aliens in education.

In conclusion. The help is here. We as the minorities have all the resources and help we can think of to achieve a full college education. The challenge is, are we going to do it? My personal goal is to empower those in oppression and to unite them to create a strong enough force that is going to tear down the walls of oppression.

One of the importances when it comes to working in a multiracial organization with people coming from different racial backgrounds is to have open communication and an understanding of the common goal you are trying to achieve. Team work people. Team work. Very important.

At home watching 'All Night Bodega' with mija Blanca Camacho and enjoying un cafecito con bizcocho vale. Esas mujeres Dominicanas son bravas chico.
Today was a long day but good. Always putting one foot in front of the other and letting God handle the rest. I finally got around to calling the city to arrange a trash pick to get rid of all the stuff that has been sitting behing our house, they are coming by next friday. So that means that we are going to be busy a week from tomorrow taking all that stuff to the front of the curve.
Afterschool was regular today except some the Spanish speaking kids complaining one of our staff members told them not to be speaking Spanish. Other than that everything was cool. Gerald one of the dads of the kids I tutor asked me to watch his son for a while tomorrow afterschool because he is going to be late picking him up afterschool. So, since I'm doing the carne asada for a friends birthday tomorrow it looks like little Omar is going to be learning some carne asada grilling skills.

Bible study was good. Jesus walked on water was the topic of our bible study today. And I'm happy to say the boys are gettting better at looking at stuff more in depth. They understood why Jesus walked on water and why He asked Peter to join him. So Fernado was like, 'Oh! I get it. We are suppose to keep our eyes on Jesus when we are in struggles.' Good job man. It was good. Next week we are skipping bible study and heading down to Anaheim to accompany a bro to a dinner.

Out.

Este Abner sent this:
Its the waterfall at the end of Eaton Canyon. The one I was trying to get a few days ago but didn't go all the way.

-Shoes By Rigo-








the artist @ home

Playing action figures with Mark.



You decide which one you like best.






In the time I have been working and observing kids behavior I've realized they all have a different need. And they all have a different way of connecting with you. All the kids in my class have a way of connecting with me. And I have to see to their different need. Becuase they are all not the same. Every single child I serve in my classroom is different and I need to know how to reach them individually.

After driving John back from dropping off his car to get a smog check, I decided to take Pep up to Eaton Canyon for a walk. Eventhough I didn't make it all the way to the waterfall I had fun discovering and watching Pep splash in the water.


Eaton Canyon Rapids 1


Eaton Canyon Rapids 2


Mojados...


Roots....


Nopales...


This would be fun to slide down except for all those rocks at the botttom.

The Feast Of The Tavern-tacos, I mean, Tabernacles

John 7
1After this, Jesus went around in Galilee, purposely staying away from Judea because the Jews there were waiting to take his life. 2But when the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, 3Jesus' brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. 4No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

   6Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right. 7The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil. 8You go to the Feast. I am not yet[a] going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.” 9Having said this, he stayed in Galilee.

   10However, after his brothers had left for the Feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 11Now at the Feast the Jews were watching for him and asking, “Where is that man?”

   12Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”

   Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” 13But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the Jews.

Jesus Teaches at the Feast
14Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having studied?”

   16Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. 17If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

   20“You are demonpossessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”

   21Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all astonished. 22Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath. 23Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? 24Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.”

Is Jesus the Christ?
25At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn't this the man they are trying to kill? 26Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Christ[b]? 27But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”

   28Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”

   30At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come. 31Still, many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?”

   32The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.

   33Jesus said, “I am with you for only a short time, and then I go to the one who sent me. 34You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”

   35The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 36What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”

   37On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38Whoever believes in me, as[c] the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

   40On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

   41Others said, “He is the Christ.”

   Still others asked, “How can the Christ come from Galilee? 42Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David's family[d] and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” 43Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. 44Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

Unbelief of the Jewish Leaders
45Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn't you bring him in?”

   46“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards declared.

   47“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. 48“Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? 49No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law–there is a curse on them.”

   50Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, 51“Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”

   52They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet[e] does not come out of Galilee.”
53Then each went to his own home.

We went over chapter 7 of John in my bible study lastnight. It was good, being with that group of people. The things we discuss and the comments are sound and not just out there. I'm challenging myself to memorize some of the scripture if not all of it as we finish the book of John.

Man! i'm not a good note taker
Yesterday's sermon was one of the best ones i've heard so far. Pastor Mark laid it out very nicely. Last night we finished the story of the prodigal son. We looked at the elder son whom wasn't too happy about the way his dad was welcoming his prodigal younger brother. As I sat there second row center in between Denisse and Tasha. I thought about Cheryl and Glenn. And I thought abut the painting of 'the return of the prodigal son' by Rembrandt Van Rijn. I love that painting, maybe one day i'll be able to afford the 36x48.
In the painting I love the way the father lays hands on his beaten son. I love the faters hands. There is something significant about his hands. They are both different. One is skinny, femenine type and the other is wide and strong. They remind me of God. The way he is like a tender lamb and also like a fierce lion of Judah.
Well, back to looking at the elder son. We were talking about the spirit of resentment that the elder brother was dealing with. Upset at how the younger brother had wasted everything the father had giving him but yet upon his return he was received with great joy. The elder son was dealing with chronic resentment. Feeding his anger, and feeling of superiority over his younger brother. A lot of times we overlook this in other people. And a lot of times we overlook it in ourselves. We turn into these perpetual ungreatful victims stuck in one place.
Another point that we hit was the elders son chronic complaint. By comparing his life to the young prodigal. Screaming at the father how he had worked his entire life for him, and didn't wastfully spent his money on prostitutes. By doing this the elder son was giving a destructive proposition. He wasn't able to be greatful upon the moment of his brothers return and it made his miserable.
And then we have chronic judgement. He loved the failure of his brother. Grinding it in his face.

I can say that I relate to both brothers. There has been times when I have wastefully lived away from the father, and times in which i've been resentful towards others whom I believed didn't deserve what they got. Thankfully my spending eternity with the almighty doesn not depend on nothing except his grace. Am greatful for that.
I've made the comittment to be like the father. I want to be party central when a prodigal returns, and make them feel welcomed and wanted.

What an adventrous weekend. On friday I helped a friend finish a shade deck that came out very nice and strong at the end. Saturday was long and a bit on the acquard towards the end. Saturday started off by going over to some friends house to do laundray and get started on the enchiladas I cooked for my community fellowship. It was good. It pretty much took me all morning to make the enchiladas and wash my clothes. After doing all that I came home to clean up a bit and go shop for a birthday present for mags. I got her some art stuff. After geeting the present I headed over to the Zavalas to hang out, eat and have some fun. The Zavalas are one of the families I have ministry with in our community here.

Yaris trying to blow out Maggies birthay candles.


Okay I did more pictures of Yaris than any of the other people there. But she kept on following me around posing for me. It was cute.


Some of the boys. Vatos locos por vida ese.


La abuela and la Liz. This lady loves me. I'm suppose to go hang out with her during the morning sometime this week. She wants to have some coffee with me and tell me some stories. I asked her if I could bring my camara and take some black and white pics, she said, 'claro mijo.'


El Jefe. Jaime is the oldest of the men in the family. He is a nice guy.


Mas papas.


After the party I went over to Denisse's apt. We started a bilingual small group for Christian Assembly. The first meeting went well, plenty of good discussion about what God has been putting on peoples hearts who want to be part of the group. I was the only guys there. Which reminds me I gotta get more guy friends. I don't think I have enough. A friend of mine told me part of the reason I have more girlfriends is becuase I'm a bit more mature than most guys my age. I took it as a compliment
Denisse and Naomi




On Sunday, or today. I went to fellowship with my community. These are some awesome people. All whom are committed to living and sharing their lives together in this commmunity.


B-man playing some worship tunes.


Baby Elisa was just happy to be there and to have something to chew on.


Ready to do some hard hat work.


Dans ugly fat head.


The youngest of the Wu clan.


Happy cows come from california. And some from Dan's porch.


Pigs too...


Like I said I have way too many girlfriends and not enough guy friends.

'LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK' by Parker Palmer


"Many leaders have an extroverted personality that makes this shadow hard to see. But extroversion sometimes develops as a way to cope with self-doubt: we plunge into external activity to prove that we are worthy - or simply to evade the question. There is a well-known form of this syndrome, especially among men, in which our identity becomes so dependent on performing some external role that we become depressed, and even die, when that role is taken away.
When we are insecure about our own identities, we create settings that deprive other people of their identities as a way of buttressing our own. This happens all the time in families, where parents who do not like themselves give their children low self-esteem. It happens at work as well: how often I phone a business or professional office and hear, "Dr. Jones's office - this is Nancy speaking." The boss has a title and a last name but the person (usually a woman) who answers the phone has neither, because the boss has decreed that it will be that way.
There are dynamics in all kinds of institutions that deprive the many of their identity so the few can enhance their own, as if identity were a zero-sum game, a win-lose situation. Look into a classroom, for example, where an insecure teacher is forcing students to be passive stenographers of the teacher's store of knowledge, leaving the teacher with more sense of selfhood and the vulnerable students with less. Or look in on a hospital where the doctors turn patients into objects - ''the kidney in Room 410" - as a way of claiming superiority at the very time when vulnerable patients desperately need a sense of self.
Things are not always this way, of course. There are settings and institutions led by people whose identities do not depend on depriving others of theirs. If you are in that kind of family or office or school or hospital, your sense of self is enhanced by leaders who know who they are.
These leaders possess a gift available to all who take an inner journey: the knowledge that identity does not depend on the role we play or the power it gives us over others. It depends only on the simple fact that we are children of God, valued in and for ourselves. When a leader is grounded in that knowledge, what happens in the family, the office, the classroom, the hospital can be life-giving for all concerned.
A second shadow inside many of us is the belief that the universe is a battleground, hostile to human interests. Notice how often we use images of warfare as we go about our work, especially in organizations. We talk about tactics and strategies, allies and enemies, wins and losses, "do or die." If we fail to be fiercely competitive, the imagery suggests, we will surely lose, because the world we live in is essentially a vast combat zone.
Unfortunately, life is full of self-fulfilling prophecies. The tragedy of this inner shadow, our fear of losing a fight, is that it helps create conditions where people feel compelled to live as if they were at war. Yes, the world is competitive, but largely because we make it so. Some of our best institutions, from corporations to change agencies to schools, are learning that there is another way of doing business, a way that is consensual, cooperative, communal: they are fulfilling a different prophecy and creating a different reality.
The gift we receive on the inner journey is the insight that the universe is working together for good. The structure of reality is not the structure of a battle. Reality is not out to get anybody. Yes, there is death, but it is part of the cycle of life, and when we learn to move gracefully with that cycle, a great harmony comes into our lives. The spiritual truth that harmony is more fundamental than warfare in the nature of reality itself could transform this leadership shadow - and transform our institutions as well.
A third shadow common among leaders is "functional atheism," the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen - a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God.
This shadow causes pathology on every level of our lives. It leads us to impose our will on others, stressing our relationships, sometimes to the point of breaking. It often eventuates in burnout, depression, and despair, as we learn that the world will not bend to our will and we become embittered about that fact. Functional atheism is the shadow that drives collective frenzy as well. It explains why the average group can tolerate no more than fifteen seconds of silence: if we are not making noise, we believe, nothing good is happening and something must be dying.
The gift we receive on the inner journey is the knowledge that ours is not the only act in town. Not only are there other acts out there, but some of them are even better than ours, at least occasionally! We learn that we need not carry the whole load but can share it with others, liberating us and empowering them. We learn that sometimes we are free to lay the load down altogether. The great community asks us to do only what we are able and trust the rest to other hands.
A fourth shadow within and among us is fear, especially our fear of the natural chaos of life. Many of us - parents and teachers and CEOs - are deeply devoted to eliminating all remnants of chaos from the world. We want to organize and orchestrate things so thoroughly that messiness will never bubble up around us and threaten to overwhelm us (for "messiness" read dissent, innovation, challenge, and change). In families and churches and corporations, this shadow is projected as rigidity of rules and procedures, creating an ethos that is imprisoning rather than empowering. (Then, of course, the mess we must deal with is the prisoners trying to break out!)
The insight we receive on the inner journey is that chaos is the precondition to creativity: as every creation myth has it, life itself emerged from the void. Even what has been created needs to be returned to chaos from time to time so that it can be regenerated in more vital form. When a leader fears chaos so deeply as to try to eliminate it, the shadow of death will fall across everything that leader approaches - for the ultimate answer to all of life's messiness is death.
My final example of the shadows that leaders project is, paradoxically, the denial of death itself. Though we sometimes kill things off well before their time, we also live in denial of the fact that all things must die in due course. Leaders who participate in this denial often demand that the people around them keep resuscitating things that are no longer alive. Projects and programs that should have been unplugged long ago are kept on life support to accommodate the insecurities of a leader who does not want anything to die on his or her watch.
Within our denial of death lurks fear of another sort: the fear of failure. In most organizations, failure means a pink slip in your box, even if that failure, that "little death," was suffered in the service of high purpose. It is interesting that science, so honored in our culture, seems to have transcended this particular fear. A good scientist does not fear the death of a hypothesis, because that "failure" clarifies the steps that need to be taken toward truth, sometimes more than a hypothesis that succeeds. The best leaders in every setting reward people for taking worthwhile risks even if they are likely to fail. These leaders know that the death of an initiative - if it was tested for good reasons - is always a source of new learning.
The gift we receive on the inner journey is the knowledge that death finally comes to everything - and yet death does not have the final word. By allowing something to die when its time is due, we create the conditions under which new life can emerge. "

And life my friends is a beautiful thing.

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