Best Lemonade in Houston at Irma's Southwest Grill

Irma's Southwest Grill Entrance

After the Men at the Cross event in Houston we had a Victory lunch at Irma's Southwest Grill. All I can say is that it was the best Mexican food I've ever had. Shrimp tacos, enchiladas, Salsa that just makes you want to cry when you have to leave, and the absolute best lemonade in the world. Great atmosphere and just a fun time with the Leadership of MATC and the Houston regional team. Great guys and gals who truly have a heart for the men of Houston.

Irma's Southwest Grill's, now famous to me, lemonade.

Enjoy the pictures. Hopefully I'll get around to getting all the names right at some point. Feel free to jump in there and help.

 Joe White with Jeff, Bruce, and Louie Owners of Irma's Southwest Grill

 Joe White with Kampers and friends at Irma's

As a side note, all you Tim Oliphant, American Gladiator fans might like to know that Tim threw out the beginning pitch at the Springfield Cardinals baseball game last night. Then he competed against the crowd, the dominoes pizza guy, etc. in between innings. I didn't get to go because I was standing in a 3 hour line for getting one of my sons fitted and signed up for football.

The only way I made it through that ordeal was talking to Kamp Dad, Dana Barnett [hope I spell the names right] and his son Brandon. It was great to get to know them. We have such great parents at Kanakuk. Huge fans of what we are doing. It's so encouraging to hear and see from you first hand the impact Kamp has on your kids. In my position at Kanakuk I don't get a lot of time with the kids and parents. So, when God puts me in those situations I always feel blessed.

I've been very busy the last few days and appreciate your patience as I get caught up on my blogging. I love these conversations with you. Thanks for checking back.

This week and last I have had lots of conversations about connectersations that the Director's want to have with you and your kids. I haven't seen the Director's so hungry for time communicating with the kids they met this summer. They clearly miss the Kampers and want the summer to last. One of the ways they hope to share more of the year with you and your kids is through blogs. Watch for them to get started in the next month or so. It's going to fun.


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American Gladiators, Tim Oliphant on stage with Joe White and Bishop Larry Jackson

 

Tim Oliphant is entertained by questions from Joe White 

At this past weekends Houston, Texas Men at the Cross event Kanakuk's very own Tim Oliphant, winner of this year's American Gladiators show took the stage with Joe White and Bishop Larry Jackson.

It happened at 9:45 on Saturday morning. Joe and Bishop Jackson got up and did a little "Who's on first" skit and then Joe talked about it taking a lot of people to make an event like this happen. Joe then invited one of the "video guys" up on stage and it was Tim. Joe and Larry started peppering him with questions. So you do video stuff? You're not a very big guy are you? Tim tells them that he's like 5'8" and 145 pounds. (can't remember the specifics there but that's close) They ask him, "You ever get in any fights?" Tim says well kind of. this goes on for a few rounds of the big guys that Tim's been in a tussle with and ends with him saying that he beat one of of them twice and that he had three of his friends with him and he beat them too. Then they started saying "Prove it." Then Tim played a video montage of scenes from the Gladiator show.

After the video, Tim shared how the American Gladiators experience has shown him how important it is to be prepared. Using the David and Goliath story from the Bible Tim shared that David had spent a life being a shepherd, relying on God and practicing his slingshot skills. Tim commented that the show was physically, emotionally exhausting and that he spent a lot of his time during the taping of the sho on his knees. Getting strength from God. He emphasized that we can't go into life's battles not prepared to battle the evil one and that the way to do that is through a relationship with Jesus Christ through reading his Word and meditation on it.

It was a great segment of the event and I was glad Tim did it. Even though he got hassled by security everytime he showed up at the event! It didn't help that my phone went dead and he couldn't call to get any help! My bad. Sorry Tim. I hope you had a great time. It was awesome.

If you were at the Houston event and have comments or questions for Tim post them here and he'll see them. Tell us what you thought of the Houston Men at the Cross event.

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What is your blog about?

Wordle made from www.insidekanakuk.com. Click to zoom in.

Anne Jackson posted one of these Wordles on her blog the other day and I thought it was a great way to show people what your blog is about. Wordle.com says this about the tool:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Try a Wordle of your own today and post a comment here with a link to it. We'll all check it out.

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Houston Men at the Cross with Joe White

View from were I sat stage side at Men at the Cross - Houston

I got home mid afternoon today (Sunday) from an amazing weekend traveling with Joe White to the Men at the Cross event in Houston, Texas. The event was held at the Toyota Center and approximately 5000 men attended. I've spent time with my family, taken a short nap and watched some Olympics. I have pictures from back stage at the event and stories to tell from the trip. The photo above doesn't say much about the event. Call it a teaser if you will, much like this e-mail. Tomorrow I will try to post first about the things I saw God do at the event.

Other topics on the list:

American Gladiators, Tim Oliphant on stage with Joe White and Bishop Larry Jackson
Men at the Cross speakers for Houston
Meal at Irma's Southwest Grill
3 services at 2nd Baptist of Houston
Brandon Heath Concert
The Kanakuk Booth
Kampers Spotted in Houston
99 Balloons video
Coffee in a Cabinet
Views from the Omni Hotel
Notes on my trip buddy Greg O'Dell.
"Houston has the best restaurants anywhere!" - Doug Goodwin

Seriously, you have got to check in here the next few days.

I love being home with my wife and kids.

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I don't know why this made me laugh

I have an external drive that I use to back up my laptop and it's really best if you remove it from your desktop before you unplug it. So I minimized all my windows only to reveal the cluttered mess in the above photo. I tend to get a little messy when I get really going on a project. Well, I started moving things around, and I couldn't find that hard drive anywhere. I just started laughing and laughing. OK, it is seriously time to do some desktop cleaning. I had to open a new finder window to eject the hard drive. I guess the engineers at apple were thinking of me when they put that little eject button in there.

Can anyone else relate? I think I need a support group :-)

By the way: I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow and won't be blogging unless something comes up. Then I'm at the Men at the Cross event in Houston for the weekend. If I can get wi-fi I'll update from there.

Note to self: download map to Starbucks before leaving.

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New Web Address for Inside Kanakuk

If you attend the Houston Men at the Cross event on Aug. 22nd you might see one of these cards. I'm going to let people that I run into there know that my blog is here and active. I'm going to do my best to cover the event for my readers so that employees, kampers, parents, staff and the world can have a better picture of Joe White's ministry work.

You'll also notice that my blog now has it's own domain. Just put "insidekanakuk.com" or "www.insidekanakuk.com" in your browser's address bar and you'll get back here. Cooler - Easier. All the old links still work.

When the new website rolls out. You'll be able to easily find Inside Kanakuk there along with the other Kanakuk blogs.


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Scary Steps and Powerful Skills

Scary Sketches from Jay

Even resorted to some cut and paste on this one!

I seriously don't know why I'm doing this. Now you are going to know how terrible an artist I am! I've done a lot of graphic design in my days, made a lot of pretty logos, and all that. Yeah that's right, not a single ounce of sketching skill. I do sketches like the one above so that the graphic designers, in this case Jessica, can have a ROUGH idea of how I want a piece laid out, and what content goes on it. I occasionally throw in a little Marketing Director humor just to keep it lively. So this is the first step of a print project here at Kanakuk. That's the scary part.

Not so scary. Great job on these! Upper: Jessica. Lower: Lindsay.

The second part is when the graphic designers take the works of "art" only my mother could love and turn them into real art. Doing that is no small task. Jessica and Lindsay both have some seriously mad skills. Not only can they play Adobe InDesign and PhotoShop like a finely built violin, but they are super smart about what helps you enjoy and get a lot out of the things we send out in the mail. Not only on paper but the web too.

We met twice the end of last week to cover more of the new website and I couldn't be prouder. We may not be the smartest, most experienced web team in the world but there couldn't be a more pleasant group of people to create with. They are passionate about creating a web experience for www.kanakuk.com that will make life faster and more enjoyable for everyone.

The rollout date for the new website is currently Sept. 30th. We might go beta as early as the 15th. At the rollout it will clearly be a work in progress but I think you'll like the new foundation. I promise more screen shots before the 15th. I look forward to getting your input as we move forward.


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2009 Summer Camps at Kanakuk

Graphics for Display booth being used at Men at the Cross events

Next years terms are filling up faster than we thought they would. I'll post some of the stats below, but first a quick reflection on summer 2008.

It's crazy how time flies during the summer. I've been at Kanakuk Kamps for 8 years and every summer goes by faster than the last. Here in the marketing department we are in charge of making sure the photos get taken, posted to the web, and printed, video footage captured and edited, and collect new material for the upcoming year of telling the Kanakuk story.

This summer we had an intern, Adam McClure, from UGA. He was huge fun to have around and a great asset to our team. He had a hand in making sure that photos of kamper's were approved and posted to the website. He was also plugged in to the program at K-1. He stayed there and served in ways I'm sure I don't even know. Thanks Adam for hanging with us and making it a great summer.

My last Facebook message from Adam indicated that he was coming back next summer in some capacity. We love having staff back year after year. They come back, not because of the accomodations, not because of the huge paycheck :-), but because of the community of Christians that is created here. There is so much opportunity for Spiritual growth, for serving God through giving their time and hearts to the Kampers and other staff. In different ways those are some of the things that bring Kampers back too.

During the summer months, enrollment for the following summer usually hovers in the single digits and doesn't really take a big jump until people have had time to get home, get back into the school routines, and begin planning out the coming year. All of us are planning our lives in much shorter spurts and that means summer camp plans too. I know last year my wife and I waited until after Christmas to enroll our kids in Kamp and almost didn't get them in.

This year with some of the changes that Kanakuk has made the enrollment numbers are up considerably for this time of year. That means that some terms are full already. I know that heart of all our Director's yearns for the chance to see the same kids come back next summer. In many cases this is happening. Here are the numbers from today.

2008 Kampers enrolled for 2009: over all 18%, the highest Kamp is K-Kountry at 52%, then K-West at 21%, K-1 at 20%, etc.

Total enrollment is sitting at 23% of next year's available spots with more than 9 months to go!

We are headed towards a return rate of greater than 63%. That's going to make the Director's happy and a lot of kids too. I'm mainly sharing this information for our returning Kamp Families so that they can work now to get enrolled so they don't end up , not getting the spot they want.

More information about the other changes Kanakuk is making will be coming soon to your mail box.


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2008 Summer Music at Kanakuk Kamps

Christian Rap artist Lacrae performing for K-2 Kampers

Music is such a big part of a summer at Kanakuk Kamps. From the worship music at K-Life events to the fun music at the parties those words and tunes are forever a part of Kamper's memories. Over the years our summer theme has been written and performed by some of Christian Music's greats. Michael W. Smith, along with his wife Debbie have written and performed 10+ years worth. Steven Curtis Chapman has contributed, along with Chris Davis and Billy Sprague. The last few years Christian rap artist Lacrae has put the beat in the Kanakuk summer. I'm working on getting some of those songs ready for download on the new www.kanakuk.com. The projected date for that roll-out is Sept. 30.

Some of our Kampers are talented musicians as well. K-2 Kamper, Seth David, is a rapper with some talent. He was gracious enough to lend us one of his songs (Fresh) for use in the Original Clean Team Resource Kit. You can download the mp3 of Fresh at the The Original Clean Team website by registering for the Free Resource Kit. You'll also enjoy the short documentary produced by Tim Oliphant entitled, Unlikely Messenger: The Clean Team Story. One Kanakuk Kamper's mission to escape the party scene and share Christ with those in his school. It's not what you'd expect and the website is a great resource for youth groups and Christian teens.





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Joe White and Kanakuk Staff

This past summer an article was published in the InSite magazine a publication of the CCCA.

Written for others in camping ministry, the article looks a little deeper into how Kanakuk handles our summer staff. The article is well written and the editors at CCCA are great to work with. Kamp Directors Joe White, Trish Helsel, Ward Wiebe and others are quoted in the article.

An online magazine published by CCCA, called Camp Sight is dedicated to providing people with a look at the value of Christian camping through articles from camping leaders and stories of impact from real campers.

Many thanks to Alison Phillips, Editor and writer Ami Neiberger-Miller for their work on it.

If you have questions or comments about the article, Joe White, or anything "Kanakuk" just comment here and we can talk about it.


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