Have you heard about this? Garnett is going to be a host site for this FREE online conference this year. I’m so excited!

Want to join us? Just send me an email or give me a call!

About 10 months ago we moved to Tulsa to work at a new church, live in a new place, meet new people, and see what God has for us as participants in the Certificate in Missional Leadership program. You might remember that the program lasts 10 months…which means we are done. Its been a good 10 months, we have learned a lot, experienced some new things, met new people, seen different ways of doing ministry, and grown in our understanding of ourselves.

It’s kind of hard to sum up 10 months into an email, so we are not really going to try. We do want you to get an idea of what we have been doing though, so we each did a little project that tries to capture a bit of what we have been up to. Beth’s project is a pdf that you can download. Ben’s is a video which can be found here: http://vimeo.com/13713546. The video is about 30 minutes long…be warned!  If you want to get a good idea of what the last 10 months have been like for us these are a great way to find out…or, stop by sometime, we would be glad to take you out to coffee and talk about it.

The big question we have been asked a lot recently is “what’s next?” For now we will be staying in Tulsa. We will both continue to work part time at Garnett Church of Christ. Although at the beginning we were a bit unsure of what our time with Garnett would look like, and even wondered if we’d enjoy worshipping there on Sundays-we are excited to stay involved. We have been blessed by Garnett & were welcomed in right away as members of their family. Beth will also be working for Chris King doing administrative work for CQ Missional. She will be focused on a program called GPS Tulsa (http://www.cqmissional.com/gpstulsa/). Ben will be doing a couple of things, including freelance graphic design and working for Challenge Quest (the “CQ” part of CQ Missional) on their new zip line canopy tour at the Buffalo River in Arkansas (http://www.buffaloriver.com/blog/default.aspx?id=136). For now that’s the next chapter.

We really do want to thank you for the support you have given us over the last year. Your financial support, prayers and encouragement have been a huge blessing to us. We are very thankful for all of the people who are a part of our lives, and are honored to count you among our community.

We are excited about the adventures to come, we will continue to blog at www.benandbethwest.com, and we might send out occasional emails. We would love to keep talking with you!

Thanks again for your involvement in our lives! We will keep you up to date as we continue to work here in Tulsa, or wherever God takes us.

Ben and Beth

We spent the last week of August with some incredible people, in some incredible places.

We had the opportunity to go with a handful of the youth at Garnett to visit Dry Bones Denver. We got to experience the mountains in a whole new way this time around. {And yes, we still left saying, “Why don’t we live here already???”}

The first part of the week was spent backpacking around Arapaho National Forest [Englemann Peak 13,362 feet]. We hiked in on the first day & camped, hiked a little farther the second day & set up camp, summitted the peak the third day and hiked all the way back down the fourth day. It was wonderful to be in such a beautiful place-surrounded by mountain peaks.

And the second part of the trip we spent in downtown Denver. Dry Bones is a pretty unique ministry. They focus on befriending the street kids [homeless youth-ages 12-30ish] of Denver. They provide some meals, and can help people find things they need [a backpack, a sleeping bag, an ID, an apartment, etc.] but that isn’t their focus. Their focus is to befriend the street kids [what they call themselves] & let them know that they are there for them. Part of our time was spent bowling with them, and taking them to a movie. Giving them some opportunities to experience “normal life” for a little bit.

It was a blessing to be around the Dry Bones staff & to see them simply walking around the downtown area & giving the street kids a look in the eye, a smile, and the time of day. And a challenge for us to find ways to interact & love the people we see on the streets each day.

Here are some pictures from our week. We didn’t take many pictures of our time downtown-partly because we were “on the go” the whole time, and partly because we wanted to be sensitive to those who may not want their pictures taken. But if you visit the Dry Bones website you’ll see some of the same faces we saw & will be able to read about (or watch) some of their stories.

With our packs on Day 1:

At the top of Engelmann Peak:

Ben in his element (mountains):

Beth in her element (mountains + french press coffee):

The whole gang:

I celebrated a milestone yesterday. 30 years old.

I sort of freaked out about turning 25. {because 25 is practically 30-or at least that’s what I told myself.} It just feels like the expectation to be more adult-like is there now that my age starts with a “3″.

But I’ve been blessed with 30 really great years-and that is a reason to celebrate. {not freak out.}

And so-that’s what I did!

I bought a fun new dress {thanks to the fabulous Laura}, enjoyed a lazy day at home with Ben, got a haircut & shared hobos for dinner w/ some of our new friends. {complete with chocolate cake baked inside hollowed out oranges-YUM!} And there’s more celebrating to be done! {I’m all for extending the birthday celebrations as long as possible…} 

Freedom Rodriguez is a friend of ours from Siloam Springs. Freedom spent some time in Uganda at an orphanage & has fallen in love with the children there. To help raise awareness & share their stories he has painted over the covers of 100 discard children’s books with faces of the children he met over there. Freedom was here at Cafe Mosaic last week with all 100 books. It’s truly a beautiful project that he’s done…and it’s so much more than simply a “project.” It is his heart, and God’s heart & inspires others to love & care. I think that’s a good thing.

Here’s short word from Freedom about this project:

The desire to paint 100 faces is an expression of the life changing memories I have of my visits to Africa. With this collection, I hope to raise awareness of the needs in Africa and help fund our full-time arts ministry. These faces represent the increasing burning in my heart to serve those in need.

Each painting is done in acrylic on old discarded children’s books. The series represents the millions of orphans that have been discarded or abandoned. Many have been given over to orphanages for the chance of a better life. Nevertheless, these children need to feel and know that they have a story still worth reading about. No matter what they have gone through, God still desires them to live fully and with the purpose God created them for.

Here’s a link to Freedom’s website

Turning 25 sort of freaked me out.

When I turned 25 I remember saying things like, “I’m practically 30!” [To which Ben promptly rolled his eyes.]

And so, 5 years later…as the big 3-0 quickly approaches I keep feeling the need to make some lists. So when I saw this article today, I figured it was a good start.  And I’m trying to appreciate my 30 years, not be all freaked out by turning 30.  This helped.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/features/22216-9-things-to-know-before-you-turn-30

It’s gone fast and we are nearing the end of our time as interns at Garnett Church of Christ and in the CML. So, lots of people (including us!) have been wondering what we will be doing next. We really don’t know exactly, but we have a little bit of a plan.

An experience like we are having with a set ending date is kind of nice, it has been a really good way to transition away from NLR into something that has given us new experiences and new things to think about, without having to commit to a new job or city. We want to have time to process the last nine months when we are done, so we are not going to make plans to move to Africa or something like that (although we would like to visit Uganda sometime).

So, for now the plan is basically to stay around Tulsa. We might be able  to work part time for the church and the event center, which would be great. We like it here, and we can hopefully contribute to what is going on, and it would be some steady income.

Beth will (hopefully) be working with Chris doing admin work for GPS Tulsa. GPS Tulsa is a program that Chris is staring that is targeted to students in Tulsa Achieves. Tulsa Achieves is a program that allows Tulsa student to attend Tulsa Community College for free for two years. Because of this a lot of high school grads stay in Tulsa for college.

GPS Tulsa is designed to be a complement to Tulsa Achieves. Participants will serve at John 3:16 Mission (which will complete there required service hours of Tulsa Achieves). After a day of service they will process the experience so they can learn from it. There will also be a mentoring component to it so students can start figuring out who God created them to be, future vocation, stuff like that. The basic idea is to give students a place to belong, help them change their community, and help them learn how God has uniquely created them. If you know Tulsa people who you think might be interested in this send them our way!

I (Ben) will be trying my hand as a freelance designer. Kind of scary! I have not really been doing serious design for a while, so i feel kind of rusty and behind the curve, but more then that I am not very good at networking, selling myself, and finding jobs. Freelance can be a very up and down business. Ultimately I am not sure where this might lead. I would love to be able to do major project on a contract basis for organizations that i think are doing interesting things.  For example, if there was an organization doing economic development that needed a catalog or video made i would do the project for them.

Another possibility is that I think it would be really interesting to be part of a group of people with a diverse set of skills who are consulting and doing projects for non-profits. So, I might go that direction. There is not a ton of plan yet (im sure that makes our parents happy to hear!). I have wanted to freelance for a long time, and I think I have something to offer organizations that I could work for, and now seems like a good time to see what that it’s like.

We will also probably work some for Challenge Quest, get random jobs if we need to, sell our possessions, that kind of thing.

We have also talked about trying to travel some (anyone want to fund a Ben and Beth world tour? We’ll be sure and send you a postcard…), finding cool hobbies, and listening to lots of podcasts. Those options are on the table also.

So…blogging….

We have been busy! We will do some posts over the next week about some specific stuff, but for now here are a few random things:

Concerts we have hosted in the last month: 4 (Cass Harris, Jared Hard, and Sara Swenson all of whom you should check out)

Art shows we have hosted in the last month: 1 (with various artists, including Austin Penick)

Freelance design projects im working on…and getting paid for: 1 (hey, you have to start with one!)

Random interesting info: here

Morning radio station:  KRMG (but..i have to make this disclaimer, i cannot handle Neal Boortz. He likes to yell…a lot)

Rest of the time radio station: KWGS unless you are Beth..then its 106.1

Side Project: GPS Tulsa

If you recently graduated from college and are looking for something to do you should check out: The CML and LEAD

Productivity today: Low

Years in a row one of us has not been at NLR Sunday of week1 until a few days ago : 9

next week: first day of pottery class

I have a flickr account, but its sort of like my other blog, and this other blog, i dont post to if very often…even though i want to. Although i do have a sort of cool set of pictures i will be uploading soon.

One of the most popular CQ Missional posts: here

Last weeks wedding: Russia

The week before that: Mexico

miles on my bike this week: 0

Ok, thats it. We will start blogging again. promise.

Firday (thats tomorrow!) we are having an concert at Cafe Mosaic at the Green Country Event Center. You should come. Jared Hard will be playing, and we have 5 artists who will be showing their work ranging from painting to pottery. I’m finishing up a video about each artist to show so people will know a bit about their story.

If you want to come here is the info:

Friday, May 28, 2010, 7pm-9pm (its come and go, like a coffee shop right!) at Cafe Mosaic 12000 E. 31st street, tulsa, in the lobby of the Green Country Event Center.

see you there…bring a friend!

I can’t really stop thinking about dinner tonight with these lovely ladies.

I miss them & am really looking forward to catching up tonight.

I’m also looking forward to celebrating the arrival of baby Cadence to this cool family: