I’m away from the blog this week while on vacation in Colorado. I’m enjoying what might be called my first actual vacation since starting my assignment as a priest. My parents and I have so far enjoyed the beauty of Colorado Springs and yesterday drove north to Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. Along the way we stopped at the St. Francis Xavier Cabrini shrine in Denver and Camp St. Malo near Estes Park where John Paul II stayed and hiked when he was here in 1993. It may be a potential retreat location for me in the future. As I write today, it is a beautiful morning looking out the window as the sun is rising on the snow-covered Rockies. It’s cold but beautiful. We’re off to do some hiking and chase some elk.

This weekend was a really exciting one for me. One of my many jobs as a priest is serving as the Scout Chaplain for the Archdiocese. I’ve been a scout for 23 years now and have always loved how the Catholic faith and scouting go together so nicely. When the Archbishop appointed me Chaplain for all the scouts I was very excited. I also had a few ideas.

One of those ideas was that I thought we should have an annual event that gathered all of the Catholic scouts together for a big campout. I thought maybe we could have a cooking competition, Mass, and maybe a Christian music concert. I went to the Catholic Committee on Scouting that existed at the time and told them my idea. I told them that I knew that there were wide open fields surrounding the headquarters of the Archdiocese and that I thought it would be great if we could fill those fields with tents and scouts. I think they thought I was crazy.

Eventually we agreed that it was possible, but I was told that events had been done in the past and that I could probably expect about 40 to 50 people. I was a little disappointed, but I thought we could start small and grow the event over the years. So we decided to do it.

I started praying a lot to the Holy Spirit. I wasn’t sure how techno savvy the Spirit is these days (have youever gotten a text message from the Holy Spirit? I’ve never even seen a Tweet from Him), so I also helped Him a little with some Facebook, Google, Web pages, and a lot of networking. The end result was that this small little event went big time really fast. We had over 300 scouts surrounding Savior of the World pastoral center. It didn’t occur to me until later, but if we had wanted to take over the Archdiocese, we actually had a pretty formidable army surrounding the place.

Fortunately for the Archbishop these scouts came not to invade, but to cook and have fun. We had beautiful weather and the day was everything I hoped it would be. Celebrating Mass that evening with all the scouts on the surrounding hill with the sun going down was just perfect. We then had an awesome concert by campfire light and I sat and tried to digest all the BBQ entries I had judged earlier in the day. Meanwhile the lights of scouts camped all around lit up the hill while Cub Scouts chased each other around with flashlights for no apparent reason.

The first annual Holy Smokes was a huge success. I might have had the idea, but it never could have happened without the support of many people, including our great new Scouting Chairman in the Archdiocese, Harold Bradley. Everyone that came said they had an awesome time and will be back next year along with more people. Maybe next year we’ll have a thousand! We better start planning now.

 Check out more pictures on our Facebook group

In honor of the birthday of our Blessed Mother today and the upcoming birthday of the famous Matty Molnar, I thought this video to be a fitting tribute. This video was recorded live at the Mundelein Seminary coffee house night on May 5th, 2005. Matty was tragically killed in a car accident the following September 15th, so I believe that this video represents the last public performance of this famous song that Matty wrote in honor of Mary.

For some reason the camera wanted to focus on me way too much, but at any rate, that’s me singing off key on backup vocals (if you can call it that), former seminarian and now holy husband and man of God Ben Beier on drums, and Fr. Tien Tran on bass. This was a great night at the seminary. I’ll try to post some more videos of the event if people are interested.

Here’s to the Blessed Mother and Matty. Happy Birthday to you both.

As many of you are aware, this past week has marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I confess that I do tend to fit the category of the proverbial “space cadet” and have been watching a lot of old TV coverage and reading a lot of books about the space race lately. In a recently released book I came across this rather interesting quote from one of the people charged with selecting the very first group of astronauts:

“When NASA began looking for astronauts, we spent a long time discussing the psychological requisites necessary for an astronaut, and the result of our discussion was that we ought to look for them among the priests….A young, healthy priest, qualified in engineering, in chemistry, in medicine, in geology, and able to pilot a plane competently” (Rocket Men, Craig Nelson, pp34-5).

I might have to learn a little more in the medicine and geology fields, but as for the rest I think I fit the bill very nicely. If anyone from NASA is out there reading, I recommend revisiting this initial wisdom. To think that if we had started the space program today I could have been one of the first Mercury astronauts! I thought getting my pilot’s license would be as close as I ever got to space, but now I have new hope. Therefore…

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the next decade is out, of landing a priest on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

If you thought “man on the moon” was impressive, just wait until you experience “Mass on the moon”!

Yesterday my parents came to visit me at the parish. We decided to devote the day to Kansas history by going to the Kansas Museum of History here in Topeka. I believe I had been to this museum when I was in grade school, but I don’t remember. For those who did not grow up in Kansas or are otherwise unfamiliar with Kansas lore, here is a picture our state mammal.

 This is of course the great American Bison (scientific name bison bison). This is our state mammal and not our state animal because, as every good Kansan knows, the three-toed box turtle is our state reptile and the honey bee is our state insect. Did you notice the fine depiction of the state flower in the background? The prairie dogs are of course cute, but not official anything’s.

Here is another shot of a buffalo outside with a Kansa Indian from which the name of our great state is taken:

Here is a rare close-up of me with a subspecies of the majestic, yet friendly and petable, state mammal, the bison bison stonis statuis

After our time at the Museum of Kansas history I got to add my contribution to this Tunink family Kansas history “Day O’ Fun”.

Thanks to a very wonderful parishioner I had some very wonderful tickets for the KU game. When I say very wonderful, I can’t emphasize this enough as this picture was taken from my actual seat. I dare say I will never have better seats in Allen Fieldhouse in my life. After so many years of seeing games from the band, this was a real treat. To close out this Kansas History day, I leave you with two of the most important artifacts in Kansas History:

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog and many people have been asking what I’m up to. Well, being a priest has been keeping me busy…but I love it. Yesterday was my “day off” and I was kind of sad because I had to force myself to stay away from the high school so as to “take a break.” I was back at it today, however, and we’ve got a football game with a big cross city rival tonight. That leaves me a few minutes to provide some unique and interesting insights into my present state of affairs.

For this update, I thought would focus on an exciting new leisure time activity I’m working on. I have always loved planes and flying. I recently attended an air show in Kansas City with my dad and saw the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Whenever I get a new computer, the motivating factor is normally because I need better speed for my flight simulator. I have been doing flying lessons on my computer for years now and especially enjoy all the instrument navigation.

Despite all the simulator fun, I always told myself that when I finally got settled down somewhere I would look into actually learning how to fly. Well, I decided that time was now and so I went to the local airport here in Topeka to see about getting my private pilot’s license. It turned out it was going to be at least $7,000 and probably more like $10,000. That just doesn’t work for a priest, so I decided to go back to my computer.

Well, the next weekend I ran into some parishioners who are partners in an airplane. One of them is even a flight instructor and we worked it out so that I could take my first ride in a small plane. Here is a picture of the plane:

Whoops! That’s actually the F-14 Tomcat that I visited at the Combat Air Museum here in Topeka. I got to touch it but not actually fly it. Sorry. Here’s the plane that I actually flew in:

That’s me and my flight instructor, Jay, along with the Piper Comanche that I piloted. When I say I piloted, I do in fact mean that I was the pilot. When we got ready to get in the plane I thought I would be lucky just to sit in the front seat. Instead, Jay told me that I was going to be in the left seat as the pilot. I got to take off, fly around, and even land. Yes, that’s right, I landed the plane on my first time flying. There were dual controls, so Jay assured me he wouldn’t let me crash. Luckily it didn’t come to that and I did my first bit of piloting all by myself. Here are some action shots:

That’s the Kansas River down there

Don’t I look focused?

Here I am aligned for my perfect (well, almost) first landing

This was a wonderful experience and got me excited about flying. Still, the expense is remains a bit of a problem. However, it turns out that Jay is not only a Certified Flight Instructor, but is an advisor for a local Explorer Post of Air Scouts. Being that I’m the chaplain for all the scouts in the Archdiocese, I’ve decided I need to get to know these Air Scouts. I’m going to their ground school each Saturday morning which is great and, eventually, I may get to fly and work on my license. We’ll see. I’m kind of waiting to see where God leads in all this. If He opens a path that will be within a priest’s budget, then this may work. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks to Daric for being my passenger and back seat photographer on my inaugural voyage. I hope there are many more.