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the power of story-change the world

December 12, 2011 in adventure, culture, student ministry, thoughts, travel with Comments Off

the present:hope tour team on the catalyst stage. my pal paul is to my right (he's 5th from R and i'4th with the camera on my helmet).

my friend, paul hurckman has an interesting post on the venture expedition blog about the impact of “story”.  the tension between tell a story in front of literally tens of thousands of people and to just one person.

i find it interesting especially even today, some 12 weeks since riding more than 800 miles with paul and 11 other individuals in the present:hope tour. 

i shared again today about the tour with a small group of senior high young men that i’m mentoring in a local high school.

my sharing with them was less about my personal accomplishment and more about the larger idea of a  willingness to risk to make a difference in the lives of others, even those we may never have met.  it was a great exchange between myself and these 7 young men.  most of these guys are making some unwise decisions about lifestyle choices that are impacting themselves in a negative way ( one of the reasons we’re spending time together).  i began our conversation with the “what’s goin’ on“  video from the post last week with thoughts about another young man, jonah .  it was good to hear my 7 young firends championing jonah’s plight and offering to befriend him.  and then i showed the tour video and a couple other videos i had shot riding on the highway.  those videos were a great springboard into a good conversation about understanding  that all of our lives matter and can leverage and impact others in ways we might not even understand while living it out.

i was on the phone later today with two others and again the impact of 12 days on a bike during the present:hope tour came up.  there are times i find myself wanting to apologize because it seems like all i ever do is talk about the those 803 miles.  yet what it really is about is simply sharing what the weight of those miles– the friendships– the investment from family in friends–and the list goes on — has offered not only to my story in life but literally hundreds of others.

paul notes correctly that the good folks at Venture have yet to receive an application for the 2012 rides…i’m hoping and praying that we can change that.  because as paul says…

…the real power in the Venture story happens when one person takes time to tell another how their life has been transformed by being on a tour.

so here’s my challenge…if you’re a pastor or youthworker  this Kingdom effort called venture expeditions could offer  you and/or one of your students the opportunity to truly benefit the world and discover your soul. check them out.

Stephen Hosmer: A True San Diego Hero!

October 28, 2011 in adventure, thoughts, travel with Comments Off

Stephen Hosmer

yep…another story. here’s some video from an interview that Present:Hope Tour team-mate Stephen Hosmer did with KUSI-TV in San Diego.  Steve has an amazing heart and is an AVID cyclist. He rides a minimum of 2,500 miles a year. Personally he was (and still is!) an INCREDIBLE encourager to those of us on the team who were novices to cycling.

Steve is the Co-CEO of Royale Energy, Inc.  who also was a major underwriter of the Present:Hope Tour.  Steve has an amazing wit (note the picture on the trike) and a servant’s heart.  Every morning on the tour he worked quickly and almost anonymously to assure that each team member’s bike was properly lubricated and had correct tire pressure.  So cool to see his home town of San Diego recognize his accomplishment. So cool too that the story of our 803 mile ride is still offering momentum to the efforts of Venture Expeditions and Convoy of Hope.

Mark Zimmerman at WCRF – Final Present:Hope Tour Chat

October 25, 2011 in adventure, thoughts, travel with Comments Off

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

mark zimmerman and benny

i realized that i hadn’t posted the final conversation i had with my Kingdom ally Mark Zimmerman at WCRF radio 103.3 FM Cleveland.  Mark and I spoke early on Thursday morning as we arrived at the Gwinett Center in northwest Atlanta for the first session of the Catalyst 2011  Conference.  Mark has been a huge encouragement over the years, but especially on this last crazy adventure.

Mark can savor some of the effort the Present:Hope Tour team accomplished as he stepped off back in July to run (& hike) the BT50k @Cuyahoga Valley National Park. He finished the 31.2mi. race, got the tech shirt, the medal, & the car sticker and the”trophy”….a new truck for Love & Hope Children’s Home in El Salvador.  You can read about Mark’s effort here.

I’m hoping that in the coming months i’ll be able to make a return to trip to joplin and tuscaloosa to see how our effort through Convoy of Hope has been leveraged in the rebuilding.

over the past week ABC TV’s Extreme Home Makeover has been on site at 7 homes in joplin offering encouragement by rebuilding.

Pastor Aaron Brown said in an email on Monday:

The Extreme Home Makeover people have flooded the city and the excitement is off the chart.  It’s amazing to see these 7 houses going up.  At the same time the reality is that we have thousands more homes to rebuild.  THOUSANDS!  Joplin is crazy with hope and life.

the kids from the orphanage sit on the truck that Mark's fundraising efforts helped obtain. Mark raised over $10,000.

Like this photo that Mark got from his friends in El Salvador… i’m looking forward to seeing what ABC has done and to hear some stories about how encouraging it is to the process.  Excited that several of the Present:Hope Tour team members, Jay Perske and Brad Godwin and their spouses have been able to be on site and volunteer.

By the way, the effort is still underway to raise monies through the Present:Hope Tour. Todate more than $60,000 has been donated. Our goal is $100,000. You can click on the donate button to the left or text the word PRESENT to 50555

ATG: Bike ride raises awareness

October 24, 2011 in thoughts, travel with Comments Off

this post originally appeared on the front page of the monday, october 24, 2011 edition of the Ashland Times Gazette   BY JIM BREWER T-G Staff Writer

LOUDONVILLE — Tom Roepke is still proudly wearing a wristband bearing the slogan, “Life Wins.”

He was given it by Aaron Brown, pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Joplin, Mo., at the start of an 803-mile, 12-day bicycle adventure across the south designed to bring attention and raise funds for victims of widespread tornadoes.

Brown saw the devastation wrought by the tornado that struck his city in May. Within his church, six parishioners were killed and 99 families lost their homes.

“Imagine Joplin, a city the size of Mansfield, having a portion of it the size of Ashland completely leveled by a massive storm,” Roepke said. “That is how bad it was.”

“Despite all of this tragedy, Aaron gave us encouragement as we started off on our bicycle journey.”

On the journey were 13 people, including four pastors.

“Of course, attention to those hurt by the tornado was our primary mission,” said Roepke, who lives in Ashland. “I am extremely pleased to have raised over $5,200 for them through my efforts, including major donations from the Rotary clubs in both Loudonville and Ashland. Collectively, our entire group as of last Monday had raised over $66,000.

“We were also successful in bringing attention through our tour, as we received coverage by the Weather Channel, and were interviewed in a feature story by Robin Meade of CNN,” he said.

The trip was a big undertaking for Roepke, youth pastor at the New Hope Community Church in Loudonville.

“I had really never ridden in a cross-country bicycle action before,” he said. “Yet by our third day, as we crossed southwestern Missouri, Arkansas and southwestern Tennessee, we actually rode 100 miles in the same day,” he said. “We ended up going 100 miles or more four days in the bicycle crossing from Joplin to Atlanta, Ga., where the trip ended with our participation in the Catalyst ministers conference.”

He also noted that the 19-day trip marked by far the longest time he and his wife, Melinda, a health careers instructor at the Career Center, had been apart in their 32 years of marriage.

“I am grateful for Facebook and Skype for enabling us to keep in touch,” he said.

In addition to witnessing tornado damage in Joplin and equally devastated Tuscaloosa, AL., Roepke set foot in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where Martin Luther King preached, and enjoyed riding on a bike path more than 100 miles long connecting Tuscaloosa and Atlanta.

“We road this bike path, which was beautiful, forever and ever, and then, when it ended, suddenly found ourselves riding across inner-city Atlanta, a change which caused us to make major adjustments,” he said.

He is using the trip and experience “as a way to emphasize to the youth in my ministry how sometime it is necessary for us to forego our comfort level and what we are used to to take a risk to benefit others. The folks in Joplin, who lost so much, stressed to us that ‘Life Wins.’ Just hearing that message was worth the risk and the discomfort I felt.”

The folks in Joplin, he added, have decided to rename Joplin High School, which was leveled by the tornado, Hope High School.

Present:Hope Tour on the Weather Channel

October 11, 2011 in adventure, thoughts, travel with Comments Off

On the Set: Aaron Smith, Me, Paul Hurckman, Deb Go, Jen Carfagno, and Eric Fisher

its been incredible to see the traction that the Present:Hope Tour has gotten post ride. After riding into the Gwinnett Arena in front of the 13,000 + attendees at Catalyst 2011 several media requests came to the team. Yesterday it was Pastor Aaron Brown and Venture Expeditions founder Aaron Smith being on CNN’s HLN Morning Express with Robin Meade. On Saturday it was two live interviews on the Weather Channel. One cool take away from our visit with Jen Carfagnowas the opporutnity the Present:Hope Tour gave to put the need in Joplin and Tuscaloosa back on the news for a while.  And for both of these media stops it was a blessing to have them promote the text to give option.  If you’ve not given yet its simple:  text PRESENT to 50555.

Weather Channel | Present: Hope Tour (Clip 2) from Venture Expeditions on Vimeo.

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