Happy Halloween!!

I hope everyone had a spooky yet safe holiday!
This morning I went to Park Community Church - Near North campus.  They are a "newer" church plant in Chicago that targets mainly the 20 and 30 somethings in the city.  They do it well.  In the past 15-20 years, they've grown from a small congregation in a school to a three campus several thousand member church whose hearts are still for bringing people to Christ and sending out missionaries.  I went to the 9am service since we had Halloween stuff going on that we needed to prep for.  My fantastic Sunday School class from Louisville called me while I was on my way.  A big shout out to CCBC in Louisville - you guys are still closest to my heart!  They were shocked that it was 8:47am and I was on the interstate going to church.  Don't worry, I'll probably aim to go to the 11am service most of the time.  And they have a 5pm service as well - I went to that one the last time and enjoyed it but I feel like I'm not giving God my best if I don't worship in the beginning of the day.  If life gets crazy, I can head to that service, but I'll plan for the 11am.
You can check out Park Community Church here.
Onto Halloween...
I wish I had grown up in Chicago because these kids had MASS amounts of candy!  In Chicago, a lot of the stores give out candy so you don't just go to the neighborhoods, you pick a really busy street (like Milwaukee Ave next to our apt) and you walk up and down it getting candy.

Kevin is a Forest Ranger who will show you all the
wonders of Milwaukee and Jennifer is a cat - Meow!

The Kellys, myself and our friend Hilary passed out hot chocolate and also had a free photo booth for the trick-or-treaters out on Milwaukee.  We were going to make cotton candy, but the machine wouldn't work off of a car battery inverter.  The wattage just wasn't enough, so we tried to make them at the house and walk them down. That didn't really work either as we had hundreds of people coming by and not nearly enough cotton candy.  So we stuck with the hot chocolate.  In the end we made 12 gallons of hot chocolate and passed out between 400-500 cups.  Oh My Gosh! you might say.  Yes!  By the time we got done and came home and unloaded the car and made dinner, we were kinda punch drunk.  We did get about 35 family pictures that we get to take out.  Hopefully we can meet some new people in the neighborhood through this.  (Random - I just heard a cat freaking out or fighting outside the house, it was semi-Monty Python-ish...made me giggle.)
Once cleaned up, we finished off the cotton candy floss in the machine and then Kevin and Jennifer turned their cones into Kazoos.  We ended up singing the Get Smart theme in 3 part harmony.  It was fantastic!!
Long story short - good day.  Some unexpected twists and turns but overall God was very faithful.  Please be in prayer for church planters in Chicago as they follow God's leading and struggle with how to plant churches and how to evaluate what they're doing in the light of how God has told them to lead.  This is a difficult task in this city.
Tomorrow is my first Metra train ride (the train system that goes from the city to the suburbs).  I'll be going up to Arlington Heights to babysit for my cousin again and I'm also going to be registering my car downtown afterwards.  Please be praying that I don't have to have residency to register my car or else I'll be in trouble.  My tags expired today so I can't drive it until I get new tags.  Cross your fingers and say a prayer!