MO Fast, Mo Roadtrip!!!

Hello, friends!

As my good friend Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson* likes to say, "FINALLY, THE LEONGS ARE COMING BACK TO MISSOURI!!!"

We made a trip out to CoMO and St. Louis at the end of our Sabbatical to see family and friends and such but this will be our first trip back for InterVarsity purposes. It should be a blast. Here's the itinerary:

Monday: Leave for CoMO
Tuesday: Hang out with folk in CoMO (and see if I can get to Jingo's for some spicy beef noodle soup) then head to St. Louis.
Wednesday: I'm leading an MPD training for the MO Fast team on Wednesday and Thursday.
Thursday: More MPD!
Friday: Seeing friends and family
Saturday: Meg is leading an ISM staff training in the morning
Sunday: Visiting one of our partner churches before heading back to Omaha

That's a whole week in the great state of Missouri! I'm really excited about this trip for a few different reasons:

1) It'll be good to see the old staff team again. I've had a few interactions with them here and there but to this level. I'm excited to work those wonderful folk again.
2) It'll be good to do some MPD training! This is honestly one of my favorite parts of my new job. I love breaking down MPD into doable bites of work that actually get staff excited to do the work.
3) It'll be good to see family and friends. Of course, we'll get to hang out with my aunt who lives in St. Louis but we'll also see a few other folk who we haven't seen in quite some time.
4)

So, friends! If you're thinking of us, please be praying for us as we travel. Pray for journey's mercies, good connections, and lots of fun! No blog next week but we'll see you the week after with an update.

Have an excellent day!

~Adam


*Note: Adam has never met Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson but went to high school with his cousin, so we're practically family.

Props to Mid-MO!

Hello, friends!

When I first joined InterVarsity back in 2007 (ah!), I was sent to Columbia, Missouri with a vision and a mission. Our Regional Director at the time took me to breakfast and he told me that if we were going to reach the rest of the state of Missouri, Mizzou was going to have to be the flagship. We had work in St. Louis and were starting work in Kansas City but the rest of the state was empty as far as InterVarsity was concerned. My job was to lay the groundwork and plant the first Mizzou chapter(s) and then spread out from there. It was just a pipe dream at that point but the Mid-MO District was born.

As I got ready to leave CoMO for Omaha, the one thought that continued to nag at me was whether or not I'd done enough to ensure that Mid-MO would survive. We'd hired a few staff and planted a few more chapters but everything felt tenuous. I grappled with the fear that everything I'd spent the past 11 years building would fall once I left town and that I would have failed in my mission.

LORD, forgive me for my pride.

Y'all, Mid-MO is absolutely CRUSHING IT. When I get the updates from Charis, Danny, Sonya, and Solome about the work that they're doing with students and the chapters they are working with, it warms my heart. Why was I worried?! Look at these faces!!! Who wouldn't want to follow these folk?!?!

In all seriousness though, it has been a huge blessing to hear about all the ways that God has continued to move in Mid-MO. From 11 years ago when a punk 22 year old stepped foot on Mizzou's campus for the first time, God has done some amazing work and I know he'll continue to do so. I'm so blessed to have been able to leave Mid-MO in such capable hands. 

#MidMOForever

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam

Riding Solo With The Girl!

Hello, friends!

For the past 5 days, our family has been on a bit of an adventure. Megan's cousin was getting married in California (Congrats, Alex!) so she was going out to the wedding. Given the ages of the kids, we figured that it'd be good for Ezra to go too since he'll actually have memories of what happened. There was no way we were going to have Meg go with both kids by herself, so that left us with two options:

1) All 4 of us go
2) Megan and Ezra go while Thaliea and I stay behind

Given that we were talking about an extra plane ticket (Thaliea would fly free), we would be back to California in about a month, and the wedding was on a boat (I get motion sickness), the choice was obvious: divide and conquer, with me riding solo with the girl.

I now, humbly present to you, a rundown of the past 5 days:

Saturday:
- We drop Megan, Ezra, my in-laws, and Megan's sister's family off at the airport. Thaliea immediately knows that something is wrong because she isn't getting out of the car. Crying commences.
- Thankfully, we kept her up past her normal bedtime so when we get home, she's able to nap.
- In the afternoon, we go to her favorite playground to keep her occupied.
- She has one fit of "MAMA" crying but makes it to dinner.
- A bath, a snack, and a few videos of Megan talking to her calm her down enough for bed.
- The following exchange happens for the first at least a 50 times over the next few days:
     - T: Mama?
     - Me: She's not here
     - T: Guh guh? (Which is "big brother" in Mandarin)
     - Me: He's not here either
     - T: Oh (with a sad look on her face)
- Thankfully, she sleeps through the night but insists on having Elmo (one of Ezra's toys) with her to help her sleep.

Sunday:
- It snows!!! WHY THE SNOW?!
- We go to church. Thaliea does great at childcare.
- I'd set up lunch with a friend of mine so after church we head to the restaurant. Thaliea falls asleep on the way there so lunch is cut VERY short.
- Thaliea wakes up just as I'm pulling back into the house... that nap was NOT long enough.
- The power goes out. THE POWER GOES OUT!
- We go to the Children's museum for a few hours so she can burn off some energy running around indoors. We can't go outside because IT'S STILL SNOWING.

- We come home and the power is still out. We go out to eat since I can't use the microwave, the oven, or open the fridge too many times.
- We come home and have an early bedtime since it's dark and there are no lights. She falls asleep looking at photos of Ezra.
- About 10pm I decide that it's getting too cold for her to stay in the house overnight. I book a hotel.
- She doesn't do well at the hotel but we eventually get to sleep.

Monday:
- Continental breakfast at the hotel then off to daycare.
- After I pick her up from daycare, we head to the mall to walk around.
- We share a quesadilla and a pretzel.
- It's supposed to be bath night but by the time we get home, she's so toast then it's straight to bed.

- Another good night of sleep.

Tuesday:
- I let her sleep in a bit then it's off to daycare.
- After I pick her up, we come home for a dinner of homemade chicken noodle soup and peas.
- The weather is nice so we go for a walk.
- The bath cannot wait... and she does great!
- Jammies, a snack, some more videos of Ezra, and she sleeps like a log.

- Until 4 this morning when she wakes up screaming. What's interesting is that she woke up yelling for me instead of Mama. I'm able to put her back to sleep.

So, here we are on Wednesday. She made it to daycare again fine and I'll be picking her up later. She'll be asleep by the time Megan and Ezra get back to Omaha but she'll have all on Thursday to play together.

All said and done, it's been a pretty good past few days. Thaliea and I have had a lot of fun bonding together and I'd like to think we handled the power outage as well as we could have. Parenting success! =0).

Have an excellent day!

~Adam

Team Time!

Hello, friends!

One of my top goals as Regional Coordinator for Ministry Partnership Development (MPD) is to develop a positive MPD culture in our Region. It is common among staff to keep the MPD part of our ministry lives separate from the campus part, especially from our staff partners. Partnership can be a tricky subject and yet, if we don't talk about it, the harder it is to do. My hope is that in our Region, we'll be able to talk about our MPD in a healthy way, which means doing MPD in community.

The Region includes 4 states, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, so seeing each other in person isn't something we can do all that often. Thankfully, we have the wonders of technology to help in the process...

Welcome to MPD TEAM TIME!!!

My premise is simple: MPD is easier to do when you do it with people. However, not everyone can always be in the same physical space in order to do MPD. The solution is video calls. Every Thursday, I post a link to a video call on our Regional Facebook page. Then anyone who wants to do their MPD "with people" can hop on and see other folk from the Region hard at work. It's a way for us to be a team without having to be in the same place.

So far, I've been doing MPD Team Time for a few weeks now and the results have been great, although not in the way you might think. So far, only one out of state staff has taken advantage of Team Time. That's not great. BUT, what is great is that the IV staff here in Omaha have decided that MPD Team Time is a great opportunity to do MPD together... like actually together... in the same space...

Here's a photo of our lovely MPD Team Time from a few weeks back.

Don't we look happy?!

I'm not sure if we'll do MPD Team Time beyond this semester. We may turn it into something else. The important thing is that I'm looking for new ways for our Region to see MPD as a communal endeavor, not a burden to be taken on alone. 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam

And Now a Note From Meg...

Hello, friends!

I'm honored to have my lovely wife Megan guest blog for me today with one of her Sabbatical reflections. We took Sabbatical together through the first half of 2018. I've posted lots of my thoughts on my Omaha SuperBlog if you want to read those.

Have an excellent day!


We live in a culture of performance, workaholism, materialism, you can do anything you put your mind to, and distraction by technology. It is only natural then to bring these same ideals into ministry life. It then can easily turn into depending on myself to bring forth results in ministry versus depending on God. Many times our hearts can be in the right place, longing to see people know God and follow him, but when the dependence is on ourselves or even someone else to make that happen, that's when trouble happens.

Two and half months ago we came back from a much needed six month Sabbatical. One practice I have been able to take from Sabbatical is beginning my work days with prayer for the ministry. It sounds simple and is something I should have done a long long time ago. It wasn't that I didn't pray for the ministry in the past, but in the craziness of having kids and doing student ministry, there was just always something that felt pressing to do right away. So now as soon as I drop off the kids at daycare, I begin that time with the Lord, praying for international students and their staff across our region. The result? A shifting for me as I begin the work that God has asked me to do with dependence on Him. If anything is going to happen, it is going to have to happen through God's power, not my own. And it does!

~Megan (and Adam too)