But that is where my reflection gives me pause. Rather than sending me into despair over my inadequacy, I’m led to worship God for loving me anyway and covering my faults and failures. Christ is glorified in my weakness. I fall way short of glorifying God in everything I do and to be honest I’m usually not even striving toward that goal. Good thing I can’t save myself. Not to say I don’t need to get better about how I use my time, but I’m comfortable knowing I’m never going to get where I should be and its only by the grace of God that I’ll even improve from where I am today. More importantly, its by God’s grace that I’m going to come up short and that is a not so subtle reminder of how desperately I need him. For that blessing and reminder, I’m eternally grateful.

Maybe the day wasn’t earth shattering, but in its simple functionality there was huge progress. I’m so thankful for Miles and Candice being down here to make I Love Baseball better. Now we just have to pray for more of the same tomorrow and that the changes last long after we are gone.

Watching certain kids behavior get worse instead of better is heartbreaking.  But we don’t do what we do to receive the gratitude, love and respect of our kids. We love them because of the love of Christ that we have already received not earthly Affirmation. It is just a tough pill to swallow when kids you have invested so much in don’t get it, when they don’t return the same love and respect they are receiving. It is frustrating. It hurts. But we keep serving and focus on the process and loving well, knowing that the results are not in our hands but God’s. So what is success? For me, it is serving faithfully. What is success for you?

Please pray for God’s blessing on the work we are doing, but more importantly that love and relationships aren’t neglected in order to get things done. Things will get done in God’s time and in the mean time we can’t compromise or lose sight of the things that really matter.

I proposed last Friday, only 36 hours or so before I would embark on a 3 month journey doing ministry with young men in the Dominican Republic. It had been on mind for a long time, as far back as my trip to the Dominican last fall and to be honest, I just didn’t know what I was waiting on anymore. I was waiting I suppose on the unexpected, something I might of missed, but in reality I knew God had blessed me with an amazing woman and that by God’s grace we had built our relationship on a firm foundation that neither of us really could have planned or imagined. Eventually, any doubts or questions that lingered were overwhelmed by my desire to start living life more fully with the love of my life and being able to share everything with her and my faith that, although we know hard times will comes and issues will rise, our foundation rests in Christ and by his grace we will persevere.

One of biggest fears in the whole process was talking to my family. Talking about feelings and things like this is pretty out of the ordinary for us, but on Friday I took my mom to lunch and shared my plan to propose.

The next step was to talk to Annette’s family. I had taken her father and step-father’s numbers out of her phone earlier in the week, but as I dialed her dad’s number and heard an automated reception for a business, I realized I had taken the wrong number. Shaken but determined to go through with proposing despite any obstacles I pressed on. Why allow a days imperfections to put off a decision that alters the rest of your life?

Annette and I had plans that night to meet a group of friends later that night to celebrate my birthday, my going away and her last day at her old job. Little did she know it also served an excellent opportunity to celebrate our engagement with some of those closest to us. Annette and I had been reading through Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love, and made a date to finish the last chapter before dinner. It seemed like a perfect opportunity and would set the tone for the type of marriage we want to pursue. However, in the confusion of having the wrong phone number I had completely forgotten the book and with the looming deadline of dinner, I didn’t have to time to return home to retrieve it.

So I drove to Annette’s with little plan but to ask her to marry me and improvise the rest. As I entered her apartment, I confessed my forgetfulness but suggested we still head over to the small beach by her apartment before going to dinner. She said we could start a new book and returned to getting ready for dinner. As she straightened her hair, I snatched her phone from next to her asking something about if she had any scrabble games going on her iphone and seized the opportunity to go outside and call her dad. While I was still on the phone with her dad, she came outside and gave me a quizzical look as to why I was on the phone in the car. I thought I was busted, but she hadn’t realized it was her phone that I was on.

We headed to Davis Island Beach, new book in hand, and found a bench to sit and read. The new book wasn’t ideal but our conversation drifted to our relationship and after stalling… and stalling… and stalling… I finally said, “I meant everything we said. And I want to make it official.” “Wha?” she replied with a confused and startled look. I got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me?” She managed a yes before starting to cry uncontrollably.

Last year I spent 5 months in the Dominican Republic serving and ministering to young men in the I Love Baseball program. During my 5 months in the Dominican, I saw our program clothe the naked and feed the hungry. I watched kids quit school and go back because of the work we were doing. I saw our coach love our kids with a father’s love and wisdom and turn a baseball team into a family for kids who may not have one. I saw kids accept Christ and lives changed by the Gospel. For all those reasons and because a group of Dominican teenagers became my family and friends, I am going back, and I feel incredibly blessed that God has provided me with the opportunity to return to Barahona.

I will be leaving May 16th and returning mid to late August. My goal is to raise $7,000 with half of it going towards the cost of my trip, and the other half going towards a vehicle that would provide much needed transportation for not only me this summer but for the future growth of the program. Getting players to and from church, school, games, etc has been one of our greatest obstacles/costs, and for us to be able to provide our staff a way to transport the players would be a huge blessing. I would like to ask you to partner with me through prayer and financial support to reach this goal.

Because of my previous experience, I’m uniquely positioned to not only continue mentoring and serving our young men, but to take steps to develop the program in order to improve our quality and accountability and grow the program in order to reach even more young men. I’ll be leading a team of two other people, a college baseball coach who will focus on developing our baseball program and a young woman who will teach daily English classes. We have a tremendous opportunity this summer to serve and speak into the lives of the young men of I Love Baseball and not only share the Gospel with them but live it with them.

I know supporting others as they have stepped out in faith has been a tremendous blessing to me and I ask you to consider doing the same through either prayer and/or financial support. If you are able to make a commitment to partner with me financially, please reply to this message and either send back a check written to ILB/COTNI Subject Chris Sullivan to 33 S Treasure Dr. Tampa, FL 33609 or online by going to www.cotni.org/opportunities/8 and entering Chris Sullivan (no team code necessary). If you would like to commit to partner with me prayerfully, please reply to this message so I can keep you informed of needs and praises. If you have any questions about my trip or the ILB program please don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d love to share more about the work we are doing.

Thank you for partnering with me.

God bless,

Chris

And that is one of the reasons I loved my two week in New York for the New York City Urban Project (NYCUP). I loved NYCUP. I loved having 8-10 almost complete strangers around all the time growing together, challenging one another and just living and laughing together. Getting to hang out with this group of complete strangers every day was the most fun I have had in a long time. I felt like I was back in college. And it wasn’t just the high points that were memorable. It was all the in between moments when nothing was going on and boredom usually sets in, but we were still laughing, enjoying life and one another’s company.

Over the course of my two weeks in NYC our group of strangers was supporting one another, serving others, pursuing God and living the Gospel. And what could be better than that? I just have to wonder why life can’t look like that all the time.

“He is jealous for me.”

Meditate on that for a while.

Lyrics:
He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by Glory
And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me

Oh how he loves us, so
Oh How he loves us, how he loves us so

We are his portion and he is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes
If grace is an ocean we’re all sinking
So, heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way

He loves us

Then 3 young women, passing through Penn Station on their way to a Saturday night on the town, approached us and asked in southern accents, “Did she just rob him?” We confirmed what they had seen. “Is he alive?” asked the most timid of the three girls. “He is just sleeping,” I replied confidently, although passed out may have been more accurate. “What should we do?” they asked. “Well, I guess we have her outnumbered,” I responded with a still healthy amount of skepticism that 3 young women in heels would be much help if there was trouble.

The five of us, including 3 stereotypical southern sorority girls in heels and ready for a night on the town, proceeded to encircle the woman. One of the girls approached the woman, snatching the bag and saying curtly in her accent, “I believe that doesn’t belong to you.”

We returned victorious to the site of our victim and awoke him to notify him of what had happened. He indifferently returned to sleep. Oh well… The day was saved by this unlikely group of 5 and our 3 heroines disappeared into the city night.