Universal Orlando, originally uploaded by Jason Archer.

About three weeks ago Grace and I went to Orlando Florida to the Overflow Conference. Overflow is a brand new idea for the Free Methodist Church to have their annual conferences all together in one place, rally, worship, and cast vision for the future of the church. Because of all of the traveling I’ve been doing, especially in April, I really wanted to see if I could take Grace with me. I wanted to take her for a few reasons:

1. I wanted her to be able to see the benefits of my new job. She could go with me on a special adventure. And we can afford it.
2. I want to continually cast vision to her about what kind of life we want to live and how we want to live. I want to place her in front of opportunities to find her calling.
3. I needed time to spend with her. I’m wired to multi-task, but with Mick and Grace, I value focused time to have significant conversations without too much noise. Bottom line: I miss that time and needed to hang with my girl.

Wednesday

Our trip started Maust-Like. Favor. (That comment was for you, Joel Maust). We arrived in Detroit to find our flight was overbooked. Because I wasn’t crusty to Elaine, the ticket agent, we not only got two free round trip tickets anywhere in the US, but we also got bumped to first class for both of our flights from DET to Atlanta and ATL to Orlando. Elaine made it a point to affirm to Grace that the way I treated her was instrumental in the hook up. So we flew first class all the way. And it was nice!

We enjoyed the day traveling together, talking, taking pics of Flat Stanley for Micki’s class, and not being in a hurry. When we arrived in Orlando late, I realized that our hotel was going to be a $50 cab ride, $40 van ride, or a $2, 2-hour bus ride. After talking to Micki and her wisdom, she said, “Why don’t you just rent a car? We wound up sweet talking the car rental place and got a car for cheaper than a cab ride. The entire day was an adventure. Fun. Not rushed. Just with Gracie Lou. It was a great day.

Thursday

Thursday we went over to the conference, spent the morning in the penthouse with the Roller family doing tech support, and Grace went with Aunt Yvonne to be a greeter to the more than 1100 people who would arrive.  Dinner was a blessing.  We wound up catching up with Mike Rynan, a missionary to Africa.  We took him out to Buffalo Wild Wings.  It was neat to hear about his family as well as have him talk to Grace about what a missionary’s life looks like.  After we got back, the conference started with an amazing message by Pastor Hector Fernandez.  It was in Spanish with a translator.  The title of the message was, “Passion for Souls”.  It was powerful.  Grace and I took pics and video on the Flip camera.  After the session, we went back to the room, uploaded pics, blogged, and made a video.  The site I helped create is:  www.livethestorytellthestory.com

Friday

Friday was a crazy day.  I knew I was working and let Grace know her job was to be my apprentice.  But I also wanted to see if there were windows to do something fun.  We went to the morning session to take pics and video.  For lunch we snuck out together and had lunch at a cafe outside.  We did some shopping on the strip on International Drive and got ice cream.  It was a nice break.  After the session in the afternoon, we then went to a place Grace was really excited about:  Waterworks.  It was an interactive kids museum with lots of cool stuff to do.  It was a surprise for Grace and fun for me to take here there.  Friday dinner we took Henry and Virginia Wingfield out for dinner.  Great time to spend with great people.  I love those guys.  Friday night was the most powerful service.  It was the ordination service.  It was so moving to see a group of people giving themselves over to the mission.  We blogged, created video, and told that story as well.

Saturday

Saturday morning Grace slept in after staying up late to watch the NBA playoffs with me.  I set up my booth for the Web site and got ready for the Saturday morning closing session with Bishop Roller.  It was great.  After the session, I was able to connect with so many people.  One thing I remarked on as we traveled home was the fact that I had forgotten that I’m from the east.  I had opportunity to reconnect with David Prince, Mac, Katrina, Bob Billings, Lynton and Nancy, Ted Smith, Charlie and Angie, and Chris Hoppe-Spink.  I know I’m forgetting people, but that’s the blessing.  One of the greatest joys for me was to introduce Grace to these people that she didn’t know from different seasons of life.  Katrina from high school mission trips and summer camps.  David and Mac from church planting.  Wingfields and Beverages as well as Pastor Keith from Virginia.  And Ted from my childhood in Batavia and Edgewood.  I hope Grace was able to see how we’re connected and what the Body of Christ looks like.  All of these people had fingerprints on my life as I’m sure I did with them.

As the conference ended, we discovered we had extra time before our flight.  Which we took advantage of.  I took G to Universal City Walk where we had lunch at NBA City, bought her a “special bracelet” as a reward for her hard work, and enjoyed the hot sun.  We were excited to get home late after midnight on Saturday.  We were in beds at 2am tired.  But it was a good tired.  Satisfied.  Know what I’m talking about?  I knew that time was beneficial to serve the Bishops.  I knew it was beneficial for my team to have a win with the Web site and tools to connect people.  But for me the greatest piece was simply time with my girl to invest and cast vision for her life.

More Photos

Check out the Overflow photoset in Flickr.

I just got around to producing a short piece of Grace at her second cross country meet.  It was a perfect example to demonstrate how to use iMovie for my students Monday.  They got a kick out of the video as well as the tool.  I think this was in Sand Creek, but I can’t be for sure.  I do know it was her favorite course.  Notice the first leg her speed at mile .5, and her speed at mile 1.75, the finish line.  She had plenty in the tank!  We’re so proud of her for not just starting, but finishing.  I’ll post some more vids later this month on two other races.

The 100 Pounder

Originally uploaded by Jason Archer

So, by now you’ve probably figured it out: Grace is now blogging. She asked for her own blog but because this is the “Archer Family Blog”, everyone has a voice. Including the newest regular contributor: Grace Archer. You can see on the posts who the author is to know. Right now Gracie is blogging a lot like Twittering, but i’m sure you all will be able to appreciate our diversity and perspectives.

This is day two of our annual “Dad & Daughter Adventure”. We take a week to spend together while Micki is working on one of her one-week intensive courses for her MA in Education. This year G and i are headed to the Big Ticket Festival in Gaylord, MI. We are taking our time by spending one night at the famous (or infamous) Cole Family Cabin. We headed up last night, had BWW in Mt. Pleasant, Ice Cream at Kay’s in Coleman, MI, and read by candlelight at the cabin. It was a pretty awesome day.

Today we got up, had pop tarts and juice for breakfast. Grace was up before me and read, journaled, and played DS. We then went for a pretty long hike in the woods. It was pretty, but got a bit long when we kept getting cut off from the path back by huge areas of water we couldn’t cross. We finally doubled back almost the entire path back ot the cabin, read a bit more, chilled, then packed up and headed to Gaylord. We stopped here at Bears Den Pizza for dinner. The 100 Pounder. 100 pieces of pepperoni. One pound of cheese. We’ve got it saved for lunch tomorrow. We walked around Grayling, hopped in the Escape, and headed to Lewistown, where Paul and Denise Johnson live. That’s where I found some wifi and am typing this post out. Paul and Denise have been friends for years since college and rooming with Denise’s son Jeremy. Now friends with the baby son, Ben. So we got showered off, hunkered down, and now we’re chilling. I’m fighting a caffiene headache (no coffee today), but will snuggle in to read a few more chapters of my book.

Tomorrow we don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re toying with a day trip to Petoskey, Charlevoix, and also Mackinac. G’s eyes lit up when Paul mentioned Mackinac. So I think we may be headed to the bridge. It’s only a little over an hour from us. We’re really up north! Pray for the weather. It looks pretty crummy when the festival starts and we’ve brought a tent. Boo.

As usual, Grace is an amazing girl. She’s a great road trip partner. We’ll swap some stories, she’ll read, and then she’s discovered the second generation iPod with 4000 songs on it, so she’ been the DJ on the stereo. Today I introduced her to DC Talk. Old skewl. She liked some of it. I also got emails from my professors that i can hand in work later, so i’m really freed up to focus on my treasure, my girl, my Grace. I may find some time tomorrow to post, but after that, we’ll be swept into the camping festival vortex. For those of you who read this and pray, please pray for no rain and pray for our time together. It has become one of my favorite times of the year. More photos are in our Flickr site on the sidebar and on Facebook. You can follow us as we find times to post on www.twitter.com/jasonarcher