Winning

I believe winning matters. If you know me at all, you know that I am competitive, and I want to win! However, I also believe that winning isn't everything. While watching Cool Running Irving Blizer said something that sums up winning:

"If you aren't enough without it, you'll never be enough with it."

As much as I love to win, this is so true, for two reasons:



1) Winning all the time isn't success.


2) Life is much deeper.



On number 1)

When people train, prepare, and strive for success they are, of course, striving for victory but how many successful people have won at everything they do? I am sure their are a few who seem to win at everything, but the big winners lost a lot before they won. Why would I say this? How else do you learn? How else do you get better? If you have never lost, never failed, and never struggled, you have never challenged yourself to be more and do more. You may win at everything you do, but are you really getting better? Or are you merely maintaining of bare minimum life? I say, if you want to do BIG things you need to fail. You need to LOSE a few! Should you try to lose? NO!!! Never try to lose, do your best and honestly evaluate your mistakes and weaknesses. By pushing yourself to new levels, you can trully reach greatness and and, ultimately, success. Honestly evaluating yourself and suscepting yourself to critismn is tough, but it is very worth it! Most importantly, you can't think of failure as a negative, but as progress, and finally, simply winning cannot be the reason, life is bigger than that.

On number 2)

Life is about so much more than anything you and I can win or be successful at. Think about everything in your life more important than earthly winning and success. At the top belongs God, family, friends, etc. If what you desire to win at comes before things like this you hvae a problem because if you don't win in these areas, winning anywhere else doesn't mattar one bit! Once your priorities are in the correct order you can focus on winning in business, sports, games or anything else you can think of.



Keep striving to win, Keep challenging yourself, Never be afraid to fail but always learn and grow, and most importantly, ALWAYS win in the important areas of life before focusing on the others fun and sometimes necessary parts of life.

Cool Runnings Clip

Camping and Connections

Hey all,

I know it as been awhile since I have posted, sorry. But I have some updates for you about the progress of Living Hope Camping Foundation, Inc.

The mission of Living Hope is to provide summer camp opportunities to underprivileged children and teenagers throughout North Carolina. This is central to the mission of Living Hope and diverging from this mission will only increase overhead and reduce camping scholarships. However, one problem with summer camp is the lack of effective follow-up after camp. I maintain, strongly, that one week of camp can, and does, have a profound affects on many campers lives, but I would be lying if I said the system is perfect. With that in mind I now reveal a new, but consistent with the mission, part of what Living Hope will be, and is, all about:

Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, often says, "The local church is the hope of the world." I really believe this to be true. In fact, I believe the church can help solve many problems facing our world today, and has failed to reach its true life-changing potential. Living Hope will seek to change this by finding passionate volunteers from area churches, particular in our cities, and send our scholarship children to camp with these volunteers (properly background checked). The representatives will attend camp with the kids allowing them to build relationships over this one week. Living Hope will cover the costs of camp for the volunteer.

This one week of camp is only the beginning for both the volunteer and the campers. After camp this volunteer will continue to build relationships with the kids/teens and their families. The ultimate goal being to connect our inner city, unchurched, families to local churches through these volunteers. It is said, and just check this on linkedin.com, that you are only two or three connections away from someone famous, with influence, etc. By connecting these kids, and families with a faithful member of the local church, they will automatically be networked into opportunities for family, career, and spiritual growth. By simply sending kids to camp we will be able to see entire families come to Christ just like in the early church!

As of right now the priority for Living Hope is gaining 501c3 status. Please email livinghopefd@gmail.com if you desire to help Living Hope in anyway. With your help, we can create needed positive change economically, spiritually, and in many cases, provide better family values in our inner cities and beyond.

Check out our new website!