Gotcha!

In case you haven't heard the news, less than a week after our church was broken into and thousands of dollars worth of equipment was stolen, the three kids responsible for the break-in and robbery were caught. 

The story goes something like this:

Last Sunday night, three teenagers broke into our church, taking tons of equipment, some of which was a guitar and an amp. One of our musicians in the worship band, Ray, works at a local guitar store, and only a few days after the robbery the kids tried to pawn the stolen items (not the brightest thieves in the world). Ray noticed a striking similarity between those items and the ones stolen from our church. We checked the serial numbers on the items, and sure enough they were a match. The store had the address of the teens who pawned the items, and they received a visit from the cops. Not only did they confess to the crime, but ALL of the stolen items were found in their apartment and returned to the church! God is good!

To any thieves out there, if you are planning on making a life out of stealing, just don't forget rule #5: YOU WILL GET CAUGHT!

Movie Review: THE INCREDIBLE HULK

A much less anticipated Marvel Comic release than this movie, and for good reason. Perhaps it was the fact that we are still only five years removed from Marvel's last attempt at putting the Hulk on the big screen, but this movie doesn't seem to quite be the blockbuster calibre movie that you might expect from Marvel Comics.

Here's what I liked about the movie:

• Edward Norton never lets me down, and he does a great job playing the role of Bruce Banner in this movie.
• Some classic fight scenes involving grenade launchers, tanks, and a couple (that's right...there are TWO) green monstrosities known as "Hulks."
• A cameo from another Marvel Comic character (I won't spoil the surprise if you haven't seen the movie yet). The combining of the storylines for these two comic book heros could make for an epic movie in the future. 

Here's what I didn't like about this movie:

• There was very little resolution at the end of the movie. Clearly a shameless ploy for Marvel Comics to continue making sequel after sequel after sequel. I'll still go see the ensuing sequels, of course, but a little closure on this particular storyline would have been nice.
• Unlike Ironman, this movie lacked much originality. Nothing surprised me...I could have probably guessed the entire plot from the beginning. 
  

The bottom line: Liked it...didn't love it.

Overall grade: B

Newsflash: Stealing Isn't Cool!

I arrived at St. Mark this morning to find out that we were broken into last night. Some punks smashed one of the windows at the church and proceeded to run off with a TV, video camera, brand spankin' new iMac computer, and the church safe--which luckily was almost completely empty at the time of the break-in. The whole situation left me pondering some things about life...

What possesses someone to take something that's not theirs? How can someone who steals feel like anything less than a complete and utterly pathetic fraud when they make a living off taking things that aren't theirs from other people. And maybe the biggest question of all: WHO STEALS FROM A CHURCH?!?!?

Seriously...

When I was in India, I had $100 stolen out of my wallet. I almost didn't even care about the money (whoever took it most likely needed it more than me), but it left a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach...I felt used and defrauded. That same feeling crept into my stomach today as I walked around the church making a list of all the stolen items. There aren't a whole lot of things in life that I can say I really hate, but stealing is certainly one of those things...

Link Lovin' It

• For great insights on life and ministry, check out Derry's blog.
• If you want your head to explode from lots of big words and great thoughts on church, religion, and philosophy, check out my brother Dave's blog.
• For endless hours of laughter watching funny videos and reading about old men car clubs, check out my buddy Seth's blog.
• To get the skinny on life as an intern in St. Mark Student Ministries, check out Dani's blog.
  

These are some of my favorite people in the blogosphere. Check them out sometime!

Breaking News: AC to the Max Goes International!

So I've always been a pretty globally-minded kind of guy, but my blog only recently decided to hit the international stage.  In the past couple weeks I have experienced a worldwide boom in blog readership.  Thanks to Google Analytics, I'm able to track the countries, states, and even cities where people are reading this blog. Here's a list of the countries where people have visited my blog, in order from most blog hits to least:

1. United States (duh)
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
   
5. Italy
6. Poland
7. Germany
8. Mauritius (island off the eastern coast of Madagascar...I had to look it up, too)
9. Chile
10. Sudan
11. Brazil
12. Costa Rica
13. Argentina
14. Mexico
15. France
16. Macedonia
17. Slovenia

A few random thoughts as I have analyzed the data.  For obvious reasons, my top four countries are English-speaking nations. My blog has been read on every continent except Asia (not counting Antarctica, of course), which interestingly enough is where I have spent more of my world travels than any other place. I suppose I'll have to make an appeal for readership from my friends in China, India, and Bhutan. Western Europe is apparently in love with me, although I've never been there nor posted about that part of the world. I've had readership in one African nation (Sudan)...well...two if you include Mauritius, but I think that is more of an island nation without any continent affiliation.  My readership covers probably 85% of the Americas (I made that statistic up, but that doesn't mean it's not true!), thanks to readers in the big countries like the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

The bottom line...my blog readership is going global! So join in the fun! If you are reading this blog from somewhere outside the U.S., leave me a comment! (Ok, U.S. readers...I won't be ethnodiscriminatory...you can comment, too!)