Hello!

It's been a little while since I've last blogged.  Longer than I like actually.  I'll try to keep it up to once a week if I can.

This last week I was out at camp.  It's a Bible camp called Camp Sa-Kee-Sa, way way up north somewhere out in the woods up there.  It's a pretty small camp.  I think between campers and staff and counselors, there was around 80 people total.  And the age ranged from like 6 years old to 17 year old campers I think.  Me and my friend had the cabin with the youngsters.  We had one 6 year old, five 7 year olds, and one 8 year old.  It was quite a bunch to handle!  I love kids though.  They were overall pretty well behaved and they had a lot of fun.  I told an awesome story each night about how Bugs Bunny had a wife (Mrs. Bugs Bunny) and how they both somehow came out of the cartoon and ended up in my fridge eating carrots and I had to somehow try and get them back in the TV into their Loony Toons cartoon show.  It was quite cool actually.. totally making it all up as I go (including saying that rabbits hibernate).  Ha!

Anyway, beside this last week at camp, things have been going very very well.  Pretty amazing actually.  There is one thing in particular though that I want to blog about, in relation to the title of this blog.

I read a blog a week ago by Rick Mckinley titled "Calling our Sons into the Community of Men," and it really made my heart long the same thing.  In the blog, Rick talks about he and a group of older men welcomed Rick's son into the community of men.  It was a commissioning you could say.  They commissioned him into manhood, into masculinity and strength, into adulthood.  You should read it if you haven't.

For me, I have been on a journey for a few years now.  I have learned so much on this journey.  If you knew me when I first started this journey, I think you would agree with me that there has been so much change!  I am not the same person.  I am the same person I suppose in a lot of ways, but in big ways, I am not the same person.  I have learned so much about who I am and I have stepped into a life of living biblical masculinity and strength and confidence and all that good stuff, along with lots of maturing.  I'm still on that journey.

Though I know I am a man, and I know who I am, and I believe I am living the life God wants me to as a man created in His image (and also I'm 21 turning 22 in less than a month), I still long for my mentors and father figures and my father to all lay their hands on me and welcome me into the community of men.  I long for an initiation into manhood.  I long for the people that I look up to to tell me they are proud of me and tell me that I do have what it takes, even though I know I do.  My heart so desires this.  Just like what Rick and those men did with Rick's son as is told in Rick's blog.

I just want to list the first names of the people that I look up to.  The names of those that are my father figures and mentors, and my own father.  There is my father, Richard.  I love you dad!  And then, there is Ryan, Tony, Ben, Bob, and Bruce.  You have all have played a part in God changing my life, and still to this day, you do have a part.  Thank you.  I love you all!

-Joshua