Living Rarefied

"When 20 golfers hang out together, is it a gang? No. But when 20 people wearing jerseys hang out, then automatically they have to be up to something"

Interesting quoute eh?

Ethan testing

Ethan testing

I guess people do read this thing, so I hope I am not selling out here, but thought I would use my blog as a way to invite me readers to be a part of the Young Life portion of my life. I'm gonna post a status ticker on the left navigation bar of this blog under "Young Life Golf $ Raised"

Its that time of year again!!!

First off, I want to thank those of you for supporting me and Young Life
last year in the annual Golf Tournament. I am posting this out in hopes that you are willing to sponsor me again or for the first time this year.
This year's golf tournament fundraiser is being held Monday June 19th. Again the goal is to raise money for the local area of Young Life, a non-denominational national Christian organization focused on high school kids. There have been 2 major fundraisers the Minneapolis South Young Life area each year, the Fall Banquet and the Golf Tournament in the spring. This year Young Life partnered with World Vision in a silent/live auction event May 11th at the International Market Square that was a great success!

I am a big supporter of Young Life because of the positive impact they have had on me and the lives and faiths of thousands of teenagers in the Twin Cities area alone. I have just completed my 10th year involved with Young Life at some level, either as a kid, camper, supporter and now leader! We have seen substantial growth in the ministry I am involved with in the last year. We took 10 kids to Frontier Ranch in Buena Vista Colorado, which was more in 1 summer than we had taken in the previous 4 years! God has blessed our ministry again this year with some major additions. We have a new staff leader in charge of our group, Andy Swanda. He's been a blessing to me as he has taken over some of the responsibilities I had, which has enabled me to expand relationships with the students. A few new volunteer leaders have joined us too! My younger sister Alexis joined us last summer after she graduated from college and moved home. Another leader who joined us in the fall is John Hilbelink. John has been a great addition and the students have been very excited and full of energy each week! As we move into this next season of YL, a few more leaders are ready to saddle up, Katie Pretzel and my older sister Leah. We're extremely excited for some new female leaders! Alexis is especially excited!

There is a change in venue this year that we are very excited about, we will be playing at the Edina Country Club. We are looking strong to fill out 28-32 foursomes this year. We are also very excited to start a relationship with ECC and look forward to keeping this tournament in close proximity to the communities we are involved with. Also our hopes with a consistent central location are to be able to partnership with businesses in the area. There are hole sponsorships available as well and I can send you an attached form. If your business or if you know of a business that would be interested in helping our ministry and gaining some exposure at the event, let me know!!

If you are interested in blessing the ministry to students of the Minneapolis South area, please let me know. Last year I was able to raise $4000 for our foursome! If you are interested and willing to, please simply e-mail or post a comment with your response with the $ amount. "otterlei [at] gmail [dot] com" (spelling is to keep spammers from harvesting my email…)

Thank you for the time to read this and your support. If you want more information on Young Life, please let me know.
Ethan

Ethan testing

Saw it last night in a pre-release deal.

Interesting, yet my thoughts aren't fully grounded as I haven't read the book yet. I may now read it for more details. I guess the movie left large chunks of detail out.

I struggle with the big deal everybody is making about this book/movie. Isn't our faith supposed to be founded on the experiences we've had with Jesus? Not seeing him on the big-screen or pages of a fictional book. My faith is grounded on Jesus' love I experience daily. I think that questions are a great way to open yourself up to let Jesus' love pour in. I think even the tough questions that may shake the ground the Church was founded on are good questions for you on a personal level. I don't want to belittle the history of the Church with this post and thats not my point. My problem is that we focus on facts facts facts.

I wonder why we put all of our energy towards a book/story like this to have people "boycott the movie cause we dont want to line Dan Brown's pockets with even more money" Yet we sit and don't even know most of our neighbors names, have no idea about the life of the person behind the Caribou Coffee counter, or go to happy hours with co-workers and talk about nothing and go home with no idea of how they are loving their wife/husband or families and neighbors.

CHALLENGE: meet a neighbor you haven't met. learn their names… I've wanted to meet this couple for some time now, they moved in 2 houses away a year ago. But I have done nothing but wave from a distance, hoping they'd make the first move.. I am going to meet them this weekend…

Ethan Daily, Struggles, testing

1. Apparently there is a loophole in the do-not-call list…  I was informed by a research group who called me yesterday that they had every right to call me because they randomly generated my number and called it.  I was tempted to ask for her home number so I could "randomly generate" it and call her.  Here's the deal, no matter how you dial a number, from a phonebook, throwing grapes at the numbers to see who you dial…  If a number is on the do-not-call list.. You have no right to call a private number!
2. Anybody notice the number of spam comments I get has gone down to maybe 2 a week?  REASON: akismet
   Akismet could be the most amazing addition to my blog since I started blogging.  It sends every comment to their servers to be analyzed and will not return it to me if it is a confirmed spammer.  If it is a new spammer, it will put it into a queue for me to label as spam or not.  I was getting about 40 spam comments a day for the last month and has been so very annoying to manage..  Another reason why you should blog on WordPress software!!!

Ethan testing

What do you think?

Ethan testing

Watched the TV show last night.. Quite interesting.

Also found out that Facebook.com owners are playing a little game of deal or no deal.. In which they said no deal…

THey were offered $750-million US for the company, no deal.  They want $2-billion?  Seeing that MySpace recently sold for about $560-million, Facebook with fewer membership should've said DEAL and taken it…  Another site will be coming down the pipeline which will flood the market again and they wont see an offer that big again.

Ethan testing

I am out of town this weekend to spend some time with some close friends and friends who I want to get closer with.  We were asked what our expectations from the weekend are.  My response was

"Become better equiped to be myself…"

This has been the theme of my last year and a half and I think I still have quite a bit to go.  I truly believe that through conversations, hearing sermons, listening to God, I am just being called out to be me.  Back in December I was called out by God that I am His joy.  And as that sinks in more and more, I am finding myself to be more content with life where I am and where its heading.

This summer I spent about 3 hours a week on Tuesday nights with some guys and we didn't BS around, we talked about us, and things going on with us.  Ironically it showed me that becoming yourself isnt necessarily a "yourself" task.  When fall hit, and our group stopped gathering each week because of scheduling, I found it harder and harder to make progress, as I was alone.  I didn't have a constant group lifting me up each week because they cared and knew what was going on inside…

My next few weeks are going to revolve around this theme.. Am I equiping myself? or Am I not? I want to get in the habit of consciously being aware of this.

Ethan testing

Here is a post from a wise wise man in his young years…

Amazing thoughts, see for yourself.

Letters from Paul about the Olympics

Ethan testing

We are the coldest state in the country!!

Top 10 coldest places to live

Ethan testing