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Tonight at XLT, Jason reminded the 350 of us of a headline that ran this weekend: a young couple was found dead near their campsite north of Phoenix. They were shot multiple times in the head. Jason told us that her name is Lisa Gurrieri, and she was in his youth group a few years ago, and he was her confirmation sponsor. I am devastated.

After a year and a half of silence, I talked to my former girlfriend Meredith today. In 25 minutes we talked about college, family, new dates, and new adventures. She really is a special girl. I’ve always known that, and that I’ve loved her through prayer, even when I couldn’t talk to her. I hung up the phone and smiled, happy to reacquaint with a friend. Things aren’t perfect. If they were, then we’d still be together, but God has a plan, and I’m just living it out each day.

Tonight I watched another episode of “The Gauntlet.” I was happy to have Candyce over to support me through it. The plot was pretty fair. I got snapped at and didn’t make everyone a fan, but that’s what happens when you stand for something. They have 24 people to cover in 22 minutes, so it’s always a little victory just to get some camera time. There’s nothing worse than not being on a show that you are on. My favorite scene was me dancing wildly at a bar, right in front of a glowing sign that said, “Good.” I remember that night well. I dragged the camera guy over to shoot me having a good time while being good. All good.

Going on the show was intense and exhilarating. I miss that. When I was on the show, all I wanted to do was be at the beach with Candyce. Is the grass always greener on the other side?

Everyone left once the show was done. It took me two hours to plow through the mountain of mail on my desk. I opened envelopes and wrote checks and organized my life, if just for an evening. I confess that I am excited and bored as a newly-minted adult. I like my four-bedroom house, but it’s so boring to pay a mortgage. It’s fun to polish a pimped-out car, but painful writing the check for the insurance. A top-notch college education is rewarding, and they keep on taking my reward with every check I write to my student loans. I don’t know.

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Mother Teresa said you can do no great things, only small things with great love. I’m under the covers now, the fan spins and my laptop hums as I thunk away on the keys. It’s late and I can’t make sense of tonight, but I do know I’ve written this small journal with love. This weekend I’ll be in New York City. Next weekend I’ll be somewhere else. Until then, it’s just good to be here.

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Here’s a summary of tonight’s episode that I took from another section on the site:

Mission 4: Ice Scream
Everyone on the cast was trying to find out what Challenges we had next. We’d walk around Telluride and talk to locals. We followed the local newspapers. On this morning, the local paper ran an article about a new ice cream shop opening up, and I had a sick feeling it’d be an ice cream eating contest.

Strapped and Slopped

• With the horde of us standing in front of the ice cream shop in downtown, we drew quite a crowd. People tried to get on camera, and the production assistants shooed people away.
• When we walked down the stairs and saw the two boats of ice cream, and was excited and anxious. I don’t particularily like icecream, but I could do it. It sucked because we had two less people.
• Both teams made their strategy, but in the end I knew it would become every man for himself. Every woman for herself.
• Eating the ice cream was sick. I told myself I would not throw up.
• I just kept plowing through the mound of frozen snot.
• I took almost ten minutes to finish off the mess. Road Rules beat us by fifteen seconds.

Politics Shmoliticks:

• The ride back to the house was pretty entertaining. This is a game of skill and athletics, but mostly a game of politics. So everyone was politicking. Why? Everyone was scared because we had yet another challenge where there was no clear winner.
• I don’t remember what was going on with voting, but we’d gotten nowhere. For the second time in three competitions, I was the forced to place my vote. I didn’t like doing that, because I had to put my neck out there. I could be the leader of a revolution, or trigger backlash.
• I like Elka. When I met her a couple years before, I loved spending time with her. She’s easy to like. But, she had an injured knee, so I placed my vote for her. That triggered a backlash. That’s okay though, because that’s what happens in a game like this. I dealt with it.
• Things got messier. Finally, Rachel seemed strong and everyone rushed in for a quick vote. I didn’t feel good about it, but I hadn’t felt that good at any vote.
• Selfishly, I was glad I wasn’t going to the Gauntlet, but I didn’t think Rachel should be the one to go.
• When I lived in New York City, I crashed the RW house that was filming. They were in the last days of their stay, doing photo shoots and interviews. They had a beautiful place! It cost $40,000 a month to rent. It was in a cool part of town and oh was it big.

Hangman, Hang the Man:

• Katie came up again for a vote, and so it was her and Rachel in The Gauntlet.
• It didn’t last too long, maybe a few minutes. Katie couldn’t keep her grip and she fell into the water.
• I was SO HAPPY Rachel won. She’d earned her stay on the team. That’s the redemption of the Gauntlet: if you win, you are a hero.
• That night we went out dancing around town. The bouncer at the night club called out my name. It was Paul, my childhood friend from North Carolina. I hadn’t seen him in years, and here were on the other side of the country. So cool! We used to skateboard when we were in middle school. It was so perfect to be able to talk to him. When you are filming a show like The Gauntlet, you can forget your roots. But Paul told me he was proud of me. That meant everything to me.
• Dancing Matt…that whole situation was funny. I saw the sign that said, “Good” and couldn’t miss the opportunity. I told the cameraman to film me in front of the sign, and I did my thang.
• I didn’t realize Coral and Elka were toasting to my demise, but the two situations made for pretty good television. I don’t hold ill feelings towards either of them. You can’t be like that because no one wins in the end. It’s a game, people play it in different ways. I just kept my head high.

Today is Mother Teresa’s beautification. This means she’s on the way to being canonized a saint. I didn’t realize that this was happening today, which is sucks because I could’ve been happier today if I knew. It’s ironic, really, because I’ve been listening to an audio book about her for four days now.

Mother Teresa is so simple. I am so complicated. She balances me out and makes my aspirations more whole. She always said that it doesn’t matter what good things you do, because if you do it without love, you’ve done nothing. Her simplicity is intoxicating.

Fr. Dale was blessed to call Mother Teresa a friend, and he told us tonight at Mass that she had really ugly feet. They were flat and broad, calloused, dirty, and twisted. How beautiful the feet and hands of a servant.

Tonight on my walk back to my house, I had such a beautiful simplicity about me. I didn’t care about anything but just the joy of walking through a cool fall evening.

Thursday was Pope John Paul II’s 25th anniversary as the pope, and I didn’t realize it till the evening. I felt like I had forgotten a whole day to have sparkles inside of me. Although I didn’t find out that today was Mother Teresa’s day until the sun was setting, I was doing stuff today, and doing it with love. I am working on a couple new websites that I hopefully give women more dignity. Mother Teresa would be proud of me.

I’m struggling with motivation at the studio. I wake up in the morning and I don’t bounce out of bed. It’s easier to snooze because there’s only busy work waiting for me at the studio. We don’t have enough money to launch the new website, so nothing I am doing is that important.

There is no logical reason why God wouldn’t provide us the money we need. The MTV show is bringing a lot of press for Life Teen, and we have a second-rate website to welcome the world. Ugh…it makes me sad just to think about it. Yes, you want to be patient because God has His own plan, but what are we waiting on?

I just finished watching another episode of “The Gauntlet.”; Tonight was musical chairs, but with big rubber balls in a mud pit. It’s a lot more fun to watch the show because you don’t have to deal with the stress of reality. I think the show came out well. The editing has been balanced, which is an answered prayer.

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Here’s a summary I wrote for another section of the website.

Mission 3: Mud Bath
Voting was getting difficult. The past couple challenges didn’t make it clear who was doing well and who was doing poorly. The more difficult it was to vote, the more it fractured out team because no one feels like they should go.

ER:

• A few weeks before we started filming, Trishelle and I met on an airplane. We were both on our way through Pittsburg. I was speaking at a Steubenville Conference in Ohio, and she was on her way to be at a night club in Los Angeles.
• It was good to get to know her, because I hadn’t seen any of her season. We found out that both of us were going to be on The Gauntlet. It felt good to not go into this thing alone.
• It was the most awful news to hear Trishelle got hurt in a mountain bike accident. It was terrible. I prayed hard. We all did.
• The good thing that came out of the accident was it brought out the best in each of us. It wasn’t a game anymore, or about money. We were fragile friends who needed to take care of each other. I saw so much goodness that afternoon. I knew it wasn’t always going to be like that, but it was a joy to come together and help each other out.

Of Mud and Balls:

• I wore my Life Teen shirt because I figured it would get noticed more since everyone else didn’t have on a shirt. Plus, it would get more traction than mud on skin. You can get it here.
• It took a good half hour before we got started because everyone wanted to make sure the rules were fair etc. It’s funny to watch Johnny get irritated. He’s the host, but he also has to deal with us. It’s not like he says his bit then the director runs up to answer questions.
• We got these old school aqua socks to help give us traction in the pit. They were loose so we had to tighten them up with tape from the cameramen.
• You don’t want to be the first person out, so we charged in like mad bulls. It was the closest thing to one of those fights like you see on cartoons. It’s a cloud of mud with arms and legs jutting out, people yelling and swatting. I got popped in the eye by some body/thing. I grabbed a ball and ran to the edge. To be honest, I was pretty excited about my black eye because it’s tough.
• When I got to the edge, someone on my team told me that they held back and waited for a ball to pop out. They grabbed it and walked away. So I tried that the next time.
• Every time I did the same thing and I got a ball. A few more people would go get called out. I’d look around at the mountains and say a quick prayer. Since it was a pasture area, it also smelled like crap.
• Eventually I was the last one on our team. I listened to the three guys on their team and they were working together to make sure I didn’t get the ball. Even if I got one, they would come together to knock me out. I only had a few seconds to think about it, so I decided to stick with my strategy: wait for a ball to get knocked out, and grab it. It didn’t work.
• Aside from the injuries, this challenge was the most fun. It was messy and aggressive, but you still felt like a kid.

Insult and Injury:

• Trischelle was injured and could not compete. That was a compassionate decision because she was injured. But it became a problem because a lot of people saw it as, “Proceed to Go and Collect $200.” Norm was pretty gashed up and so was Adam on the other team, so they needed to go in the hospital. Soon a half-dozen people were piling in to get checked up. It’s hard to tell who was injured and who wasn’t but it was apparent that people wanted to go to the hospital. When the band of brothers showed back up at the house it was pretty hopeless.
• I was shocked that even after kicking butt at the challenge, I was up again to get voted off. I guess since I was on the chopping block the first time, I was going to continue to be a candidate for The Gauntlet. I don’t think it was fair, but I understand this is a game. If I got sent to The Gauntlet, then that means someone else didn’t have to go. So sacrifice me and stay a day.
• Voting was a mess. Some people were not interested in building an objectively strong team, because they knew they wouldn’t be a part of it. I wanted to vote strictly on performance and how a person works as a part of the team. If I did poorly, then I should go. If they win The Gauntlet, then you’ve proven you are a strong player.
• ;I don’t harbor any ill feelings, because it’s a game. If the game were logical and clean, then people probably wouldn’t watch the show, they’d watch the Olympics instead.
• I can’t remember who was going to get voted off, but then out of no where Nathan reminded everyone that Tonya was injured and would not do well. I was proud of him for being logical. Up until that point everyone voted out of fear. Then he comes along and is objective. It wasn’t fair that Tonya was injured in the competition, but injuries are an injured team can’t win.
• So it was good to have an injury, then it was bad. The tables turned and things got messy.
• People flipped out because the cast felt cheated because they had injuries that the production should have prevented. There were rocks in the mud that caused scrapes and cuts. It was difficult to decide which injuries could’ve been prevented, and we all just got frustrated and couldn’t vote.
• The production warned us we had met for too long, and then some cast started yelling at the directors and producer. I can understand being upset with the production, but yelling about it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. But, if they didn’t have the capacity to overreact, then they wouldn’t be on the show to begin with. Production forced us to vote, but gave The Gauntlet goers a night to rest and heal. This put both teams in an awkward situation, because we had a whole night to spend with a person we just sent to the Gauntlet.
• So that night our team spent time nursing Tonya and hyping her up for the Gauntlet the next morning. Meanwhile…
• ;Steve is a cool guy. He’s smart and has done some cool things with his life. I don’t like that he could get voted off. He was older than most of his team, and I don’t think he connected with them. That doesn’t say much about him or his team. The collective conscious of scared competitors is rarely compassionate or logical.

The Gauntlet:

• We shot this in the early morning before our next competition. You can tell because we are all in long sleeves and beanies. Most days in Colorado started off cool and got real hot by the afternoon.
• We hadn’t seen many of the competitions, so “Perfect Fit” was a mystery. The water had still only been in the pool for a week. It was still chilly, but not as cold as “Snake Soup.”
• ;You’ll notice Tonya has white tape on her visor over the Adidas symbol. Later they don’t blur it out once the tape comes off. I guess they got permission to show the logo.
• It was maybe a couple minutes before Steve figured out the puzzle. He’s a real bright guy. It was tough to see Tonya lose because you really do root for your team. Tonya and I had our disagreements, but we reconciled. I wanted her to stay.
• You don’t see us saying goodbye to her at the house because we had to immediately go off to the next competition, the ice cream eating contest. It was an impersonal way to see her off, but there was nothing we could do about it. It was a hug and we hopped in a van.
• That night someone found an online game that was similar to the puzzle that Steve won that morning. Cast members took turns playing the games so we’d be ready. That went on for days.