What Would You Do With Barry's Ball?

Marc Ecko bought Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756 Home Run ball at auction for over $756,000. Now he's letting the baseball world vote on what should happen to it. The options are:

1. Bestow It - Send the ball, as is, to Cooperstown so that it can be on display in the Hall of Fame.

2. Brand It - Brand a huge asterisks on the ball, then send it to Cooperstown. That way it will be on display, but will forever be "tainted."

3. Banish It - Put it on a space ship and launch it into outer space, never to be seen again.

I absolutely despise Barry Bonds. He is, in my opinion, a cheater. More importantly, he's a cheater who won't fess up to what he's done, despite it being so incredibly obvious to anyone with at least one working eye. He's made outrageous claims about people choosing to dislike him because he's black. People dislike him because he's a jerk. No one hates Ken Griffey Jr!!!

Having said all that, I still voted to bestow the ball into Cooperstown as is. More than anything I think it honors Hank Aaron to have the ball that FINALLY broke his record on display in The Hall. I also think that despite Barry's cheating, it's still an incredible feat to hit that many homeruns. I've heard countless baseball players say that you can be as strong as you want, but you still have to have speed and a good eye to hit a lot of homeruns. Bonds has both of those, and what he did is to be comended.

Love him or hate him (I choose the latter) Bonds will go down in history as one of the greatest hitters of all time. Being that that's the case, shouldn't his most memorable moment be forever enshrined in baseball's greatest Hall?

Wow, wow, and wow again

God is an amazing God and I have never felt more blessed by Him than I do at this very moment. We were so nervous about leaving Virginia because we LOVED our church family, we LOVED our house, Christina LOVED her job, and we often asked ourselves, "Why are we leaving all this?" Well the last few days God has answered that question. As has been the case in our lives since we've been married, we've wished for it and God has made it happen. We had a very uneventful move to Houston last week and we're settled into our humble little hotel room where we'll call home for the next few weeks. We immediately started house hunting and found one after only two days. The downside was that it was WAY out of our price range. But the owners, eager to sell, agreed to come down to our level and proceed with the transaction. So we close on our new house on October 2nd. Let's just say we could fit three of our old house into our new one. It's HUGE. We've been calling it Gigantor. You can see the church building from the backyard so I can ride my bike to work on most days, and Christina got a job at a hospital about 5-10 minutes away. Amazing.

Today we were overwhelmed with love and support from our new congregation. In class this morning I got to share some of my own life with our new teens (who are AWESOME by the way), then after the sermon Matt Soper, our preacher, called me up to the stage and commissioned me and charged me with the task of leading the teens of this church, but also commissioned and charged the church with supporting me as a Christian man, as a husband, and as a father. Absolutely awesome.

Then after church we went to the gym and had our first potluck. After lunch we went up on the stage and each grade level had a family representing it that presented us with gifts. The gifts ranged from salsa to t-shirts from all the area high schools to tickets to a Texans game in December to toys for the boys. One really cool one was from my youth deacons. It's a Bible that was printed in London during the reign of Queen Victoria, then shipped to America where it was bought by someone named Mary Johnston in Easton, PA. The deacon's presented it to me to symbolize the legacy they hope will be established by our ministry here. Very exciting things.

Needless to say we've got a lot of good stuff happening right now. Levi and Titus seem to be adjusting well on top of everything else. What a blessing this move has been.