i just posted my most recent wedding on joelgutowsky.com. i am truly excited with the way this one turned out! this my first wedding to shoot with my d300 and my 17-55mm 2.8 lens. i am very impressed.

to be honest, sometimes i get down when editing weddings. it takes so long. so much time. i look at the same people, over and over and over again, but then when i am done and prepare my photos to post on the website, to mail, etc…i get really excited. to hear the excitement in the clients voice when they hear that their pictures have been mailed. to get the emails/tweets/facebook comments that are nothing but encouraging…that gives me fire again. that makes me want to pick up my camera and take on the world.

it seems that encouragement just does that for me (i hope it does for everybody). i have received multiple encouraging comments over the past few days and it just makes me in a better mood. it makes me feel better about the work im doing and makes me want to do this work, better.

so here we go. time to get back to work. learning some songs for tonight and then spending the afternoon studying and preparing for discipleship studies with the youth for the next couple of weeks.

here’s to encouragement.

here’s something new i’ve been working with…

i couldn’t possibly be any happier with the pictures. i absolutely love them!!! thank you so much for allowing me to be able to relive the night over and over and over. its truly an amazing gift!

you are welcome kristina.

last sunday we started a series of discussions with the youth group about social justice organizations/non-profits, that do what they do for the sake of redemption and the gospel. we talked last week about To Write Love on Her Arms and God really used renee’s story and the story of her friends being the church to her, to minister to a couple of my students. This week we are talking about Compassion Int’l.

Compassion has a special place in my heart because my wife and i sponsor a boy named Clement, who is from burkina faso. Last week i used a couple of youtube videos for the TWLOHA discussion so i sat down looking for some Compassion Int’l videos for this week. While looking through the videos i found a great one that will be easy to use as illustrations, but while i was watching it i was taken back to the night that kimb and i decided to sponsor Clement.

we were at Andrew Peterson’s, Behold the Lamb of God tour. on a side note, if you have never heard this cd, or seen this show, or have never heard any of Andrew’s music, you have absolutely no idea what you are missing. Back to the story. Bebo Norman was one of the singer/songwriters in the concert and he talked about compassion, his sponsored child, and the joy that it brought him as well as the joy he knew it brought his sponsored child. Kimb turned to me and said these words…i will never forget them…

“we need to sponsor a child. we do not need cable”

now this is the christmas before we got married, just over two months before our wedding day and we were in the process of doing budget stuff seeing how much we would have left over, how much we could spend on certain things for the house, etc and i knew that money was going to be pretty tight. when she told me that we did not need cable, my first thought was, well what about the astros games? what about the rockets games? those are only on cable. i tried to justify in my mind not sponsoring a child simply so we could have cable television. then i felt this weight that was unexplainable. i realized what i was doing and simply turned to kimb and said “you’re right.” so during the intermission, we went down to the lobby and stared into the faces of all the young children in the compassion packets. then we picked up clement’s packet, looked at each other with a smile and knew that we had found the right one. so we signed up. took his packet and went and sat back down in our chairs.

then we begin writing letters to clement, and he writes back. we send extra money for a gift for him, and in the next letter we hear in his words, how excited he is about the gift. for christmas we enclosed more money than usual and asked that it be used to get rice for his family* stay tuned to the end of the post…

so anyway, back to preparing for sunday night…im watching this video about the girl who was a sponsored child from Manilla. she has grown up and through compassion, and by the grace of Jesus Christ has become an amazing woman of God who has made something of herself. A living, breathing, active part of her community and the Kingdom of her God. She now, is in turn, sponsoring her own child through compassion.

when i heard her say that…i lost it. i just started crying right there at my dining room table. I realized that through compassion, we am helping pull Clement out of an impoverished life, and putting him in a place where he and his family can thrive. we are helping pull him and his family out of poverty. we are making sure that in a very relevant way, he is hearing the gospel and is being loved, and fed, cared for, and kept healthy.

Which is exactly what God did for us. through Christ, he saved us from the life that would eventually lead to death.

so yesterday afternoon, at my dining room table, it felt like i was sitting right next to God. it was one of the most silent, yet amazing worship experiences of my life. please, if you have taken the time to read this much of this story, please take a couple extra minutes and visit compassion.com and take the time to sponsor a child.  please.

and i would like you to meet clement. notice the bag of rice at his feet……

…that really make my day end well.

today was just an ordinary wednesday. staff meeting in the morning (and this one was particularly good), coming home for lunch, a game of madden on the lunch break over turkey sandwiches on toasted english muffins, back up to church, make a phone call to a student on the drive, she doesn’t answer so i leave a message, get back to the office, back to studying, birthday cake for an in-office birthday (i love it when these happen. free cake!), back to studying for bible study tonight, put the headphones in, turn on some old school dashboard confessional,…

…and then it happens.

knock, knock, knock.

the student i called had gotten my message and then instead of calling me back, she decided just to come by the office to talk. it was amazing! this student has decided to let me lead her. to let me be her pastor. there are very few things that excite me more than this. we had a great conversation for about an hour and i think it is safe to say that we both left encouraged.

then tonight at bible study. there were a couple times that the looks in my students eyes made me realize that i am doing what God wants me to be doing. Through the eyes of my students, seeing something click…

…these made my night end well.

now i am off to make my wifes lunch for tomorrow, then i get to fall asleep next to the most beautiful girl in the world.

this my friends, this truly makes my night end well.

more of my nephew, simon. i know…he’ awesome.

+ there is something about portland, oregon that i love.
+ there is something about texas that i miss every time i leave.
+ i have not watched much television this week, and i am ok with that.
+ i don’t really like talking about politics. it makes me feel silly. maybe i should care more.
+ though i have been on vacation, i have been working. BUT this working consists of editing pictures…i am ok with this.
+ sometimes i wish i could make a living by simply being a photographer. other times, i want to quit photography b/c it has become work and not much fun.
+ i have two weddings to edit and a children session to edit. all before i edit the 4th of july pictures that i took for fun. i am not ok with this.
+ i need to learn time management better. or i simply need to understand that in order for photography to stay fun, i need to work on my own photography, for me.
+ family is where it’s at. other than God, there is not much else that matters.
+ i really wish that richmond/rosenberg were more cyclist friendly…i would ride my bike everywhere. no joke.
+ i am really, really tired. so i am going to bed. thank you for listening.

stumptown and voodoo donuts. this is good.

kimb and her voodoo donut.

day one of vacation. we successfully arrived in portland where we were met by julia and the ever-so-awesome, simon. we had a great bite to eat for lunch at eugenio’s and are getting settled in at the house. i am glad to have the week off. yay for vacations. stay tuned.

today i was listening to metro station and saw on their schedule that they are going on tour with miley cyrus. i thought that was weird so i posted something about it on twitter. then someone replied saying that they were touring together because one of the guys in metro station is the brother of miley cyrus. i thought to myself “no way!” and had to go figure it out. so here we are ladies and gentlemen…

brother and sister.