Words: I am Joshua Horky

Switching Blogs

2008-08-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Mr. Engstrom convinced me to begin a blog with wordpress.org. I had tried unsuccessfully to build a blog with them a couple of times, but I was successful this time because Mr. Engstrom told me how to do it. Mr. Engstrom also told me that the wordpress blogs are much more versitile than others and that I will be able to use my wordpress blog to experiment with css. I guess that I ought to go out and find a book about that so that I can learn about it.

My new blog address, where I intend to place new posts is: http://electronicmessaging.wordpress.com

Wedding in Kirkland

2008-07-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I visited Kirkland for the wedding of a friend with whom I haven't done anything significant in several years, but also to visit my dear sister who has been far, far away with her husband at missionary school.

The wedding seemed to be successful. The ceremony was annotated. This means that the past told us what he was about to do and why it was that he thought he was doing it before he did it.

Then my sister and her husband and me had our pictures taken. He had a nice tripod which we didn't take a picture of, but we did take a picture of the "huge free" sign.

Seaside Church Baptisms 2008

2008-07-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

Seven (7) people were baptized at the Seaside Church baptism in Island Lake Park on Sunday, July 27. The sermon at Seaside Church by bishop Jefro was about baptism (sermon recording, sermon notes).

I had an interesting time at the Schuette's community group on Thursday night because there was a discussion about whether or not people should be allowed to be baptized immediately upon the transmission of a statement of repentance. Three of the seven people who were baptized on Sunday had previously been deterred from baptism by men who thought that the appropriate time for their baptism had not yet, or never would come. On the other hand, one lady at community group knew of several people who were baptized at a summer camp (candy was involved) but had not been known to live as Christians.

My comment was that maybe baptisms should be a bit more public than they generally are because if they were people might be a bit less likely to be baptized just to be baptized. I seem to have changed my mind from what I was thinking at the Tuesday night community group when I said that baptisms didn't need to be public because circumcision wasn't public, but that people should know that they had occured. Perhaps Mars Hill Church has come across the best of both worlds by including video of baptisms on the world wide web. I guess that this blog helps too.

The most interesting thing I heard was that the reasoning that says that new believers should wait and live as Christians for a while before they are baptized is the same reasoning that says that people people who have affection for each other should wait a while and live together to see how they get along before they become married to each other.

Directly above this text is an image of a goose which distracted us all at the front end.

This is an image of Alan telling us all why it is that he was about to baptized.

This is an image of Alan and lead pastor Chris (Swanny) walking into the Island Lake
Directly before.

Directly after.

One down, six to go.

This is an image of Kehly telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

Two down, five to go.
This is an image of Clarissa telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

This is an image of Clarissa being baptized.

This is an image of Paige and her daddy telling the witnesses why she is about to be baptized.

Directly Before

During.Directly after.

Four down, three to go.

This is an image of Olivia telling lead pastor Chris (Swanny) why it is that she was about to baptized.

Five down, two to go.

This is an image of Candice (not Queen of the Ethiopians) telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

Directly After.

Six down, one to go.

Directly after.

Now take a look at lead pastor Chris (Swanny) in this picture and compare it the wedding picture below.
Now you tell me which event is happier.

Worship Pastor Patso's Birthday Celebration 2008

2008-07-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

If I understand right, worship pastor Patso had his birthday celebration on the evening of Saturday, June 5th. Someone whose name I don't remember blogged about this celebration, but forgot to include pictures of worship pastor Patso (worship pastor Patso: Go ahead and remind me in the comment field so that we can all enjoy that incomplete journalism). In an effort to remedy this problem, I have uploaded the following pictures which are not really good for anything except fixing this particular problem (they're not good quality pictures, so I am not proud of them at all):Maybe I am proud of some of them. I think this because some of the pictures that I uploaded do not include worship pastor Patso.

Logos Bible Software

2008-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

I bought my new Bible software during the end of last summer. I like it a lot. This Bible software is called Logos Bible Software, and it runs on the Libronics Digital Library System. When I lived underneath my parent's roof I used version 2, and now I get to use version 3 (level 2), which is even better. Well, maybe I just know how to use it better. I don't have as many language tools as my dad did because I am not good with languages that are not English or the American language, as my mother would call it.

I don't really know how to describe the system in a complete way, so here are five things that I like about it.

The Bible software is not just Bible software. Many different books can be downloaded and plugged into it. For instance, the books that I have plugged into it since my original purchase are: The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, The distinguishing Traits of the Christian Character, and Systematic Theology.
By searching the entire library for a particular biblical passage, any reference in any book in the library that refers to that biblical passage will be found. In this way, the entire library can be used as a Bible commentary.
Lots of books that are plugged into the library system include references to the Bible. By placing my cursor directly on top of these references, the text of these references is instantaneously displayed before my very eyes in the translation of my choosing. This takes much less time than flipping through the paper pages of a book.
A double click of any word in any book opens up the appropriate dictionary. This may be a Bible dictionary or just the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
The whole thing stays on my hard drive, so there are always lots of things to read, even if the computer is not connected to the internet.

Surveying

2008-04-30T19:30:00.001-07:00

I think that my official title at my place of employment is Project Engineer, but I got to go surveying a bit today because I needed an as-built drawing of a site with an accurate bottom elevation for a particular pond that has a significant depth of stormwater in it already. When the official company surveyors did the as-built surveying, they forgot to bring a boat and waders, so my boss found me a boat and I went to the field to help finish the job. On the downside, I couldn't get the boat to go very fast. On the upside, I managed not to tip the boat over (like the previous time that I was in a small boat) and I should have the numbers that I need.

Man Camp 2008 Notes

2008-04-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

This last weekend, I visited Black Lake Bible Camp with some of the men who attend Red Sea Church in Portland Oregon and Seaside Church in Bremerton, Washington.

There was a bit of Bible teaching there (three session) and I took notes. I am providing these notes at the request of those who attended, but neglected to take notes. I am not providing these notes because they are particularly clear, terse, or helpful. Sometimes I just type things out to help me to follow what is being taught and I never look at them again.

Notes are here

Differentiation (as opposed to Integration)

2008-03-09T22:41:00.000-07:00

People have begun to notice and comment regarding the decreasing frequency of my blogging. This decrease in the frequency of my blogging has come about because I realize that the things that I have to say are generally not things that people want to read. That is not anyone's fault but my own, for I am not a prophet of God. If I were a prophet of God, I would have to write the things that no one would want to read regardless of their desires because God who would have appointed me to deliver His messages would not be at fault.

But I have come up with something that may be beneficial to some of you. Here are two Bible verses which I have had several occasions to use recently:

Proverbs 18:1-2

He who separates himself seeks his own desire,

He quarrels against all sound wisdom.

2 A fool does not delight in understanding,

But only in revealing his own mind.

New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (Pr 18:1). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Visiting Mars Hill Church in Seattle yet again

2008-02-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

You know that a city is not a very interesting place to live when the most interesting thing to do during a Sunday afternoon is to travel to another city for a church service (especially after having already attended one church service in said uninteresting city during said Sunday morning). Bremerton is such an uninteresting city and I talked to someone yesterday who told me that after she arrived in Bremerton, but before she began attending Seaside Church, she cried over the dullness of Bremerton. That is why I was standing around talking to Brian and Crystal and we all decided to travel to Mars Hill Church yet again yesterday afternoon. We decided to ride the bus to cut costs. The bus took a very long time to take us where we wanted to go, so we missed the 4:30 service and had to settle for the 6:30 service.

The sermon was about regeneration which I have not studied very much aside from learning Titus 3:5 in AWANA. The sermon reminded me of a book that I read in December of 2007 as I began to benefit from a confrontation regarding my sin which was pushed upon me (the confrontation was pushed upon me, not the sin). The book is called The Distinguishing Traits of the Christian Character (1819) by Gardiner Spring. The book is almost like a lab manual that enables its reader to do science in his or her own mind so that he or she can determine whether or not the uncommon graces of God are at work inside of him or her.

I think that these sorts of things are important to look over so that you can make sure that you are not deceiving yourself and confusing the grace of God with your own wishful thinking (so listen to the sermon and or or read the book).

Pastor Mark talked about three works that Jesus does (in the following particular order):

The work that Jesus does for someone (justification)
The work that Jesus does in someone (regeneration (I think that this drives sanctification))
The work that Jesus does through someone (good works)

A whole list of observations that a person can make about himself or herself to determine whether or not they have been regenerated was pointed out based on scripture. I seem to remember that most of them had something to do with newness (newness of heart, newness of mind, newness of desires, etc.).

So I left Seattle with some ideas that I had not thought of before:

Christianity really doesn't have to be very complicated. All that I really have to do is respond to Jesus appropriately
I have been regenerated, my deepest desires are to worship Jesus and not myself
Seems like there was something else. Perhaps I will be reminded of it and replace this line with it later

Visiting Mars Hill Church in Seattle again

2008-01-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

I was at my new community group location on Tuesday with Allan and Brian and Crystal and we all decided to visit Mars Hill Church during yesterday afternoon. We decided to use the ferry boat that was to leave Bremerton at 3:00 in the afternoon. The easiest way that Brian and I have to get to the ferry boat is to drive to the Seaside Church parking lot and then walk. The question answered by the sermon at Mars Hill Church was, "Why does an all knowing, all loving, and all sovereign God will into creation people He foreknows will suffer eternal condemnation?"

Of course I recommend it along with another sermon about Unlimited Limited Atonement (small audio, large audio, notes).

Yesterday's sermon is available here.

During the sermon, I learned two new words: Monergism and Synergism.

Monergism is the idea that God decides ahead of time who He is going to save and then He saves them unilaterally. God just reaches down and grabs a sinner and says, "sorry, I know you were traveling towards hell as quickly as your little legs would carry you, but I have decided to save you. You'll thank me later."

Synergism is the idea that God extends His arm from heaven to men, and that those who are saved are the people who wisely accept God's help and reach out to Him so that He can lift them up to be with Him.

Appearing to be Normal while Eating

2008-01-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

I did a strange thing today. The strange thing that I did today was that I appeared to be a normal person during my lunch hour. I appeared to be a normal person during my lunch hour by eating formal food like normal people. You may think that normal people do not exist, but the people who make the salt container with the picture of the lady and the umbrella disagree with you.

My apparent normality was made possible by the writing of my dear sister, which is included below. Prior to reading that, please enjoy this picture of me appearing to be a normal person during my lunch hour.

Eating out

Veggie Burritos (Qdoba, Chipotle, Taco del Mar)

When you order the veggie burrito, make sure you say “no beans, no cheese” (possibly more than once). Other than that, you should get a flour tortilla with rice, lettuce, tomatoes (are considered “mild salsa” or “pico de gallo”) and guacamole if you wanted it. And sometimes there are grilled green peppers and onions that can go in as well.

Veggie sub/sandwich (Subway, Georgio’s, Panera)

You need to pick the sub (“I’ll have a veggie sub please”), then you pick the bread (ask for “Italian” or “white”), then you pick the size (6’’ or 12’’) and the kind of cheese (none (duh)). I like to have mine toasted with green peppers and onions and then other stuff added on when it comes out of the toaster, but you can have it anyway you want it (toasted or not—you have to ask if you want it toasted) with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, olives, pickles etc… Pretty much the person making it will ask you what you want, and you just tell them as they are putting it together for you. At the end, you can get oil and vinegar (pretty much the 2 components that make Italian dressing, which I like), mustard (I usually get one stripe of spicy mustard—isn’t really that spicy, but it’s a good flavor), mayonnaise (I usually skip ‘cause I already have the oil and vinegar for moisture and flavor), salt, pepper, parmesan (cheese—no!) or oregano (a spice that’s fine, but I usually skip). The 6’’ veggie sub at Subway works out to be less than $3.50 ‘cause meat is expensive and you’re not having any.

Mexican Rice (Azteca, Tijuana’s, Ixtapa)

Self-explanatory. Doesn’t hurt to clarify/remind “no beans, no cheese” because some restaurants automatically add that to the rice or anything else they happen to be serving. You can also order a burrito—just tell them what you want, or find the veggie one on the menu and modify it to what you want, again “no beans, no cheese” or ask for extra rice to replace the beans. If the burrito comes with red sauce all over it, it’s okay. It’s not spicy, it’s some yummy totally legal tomato stuff that goes on burritos to make them “wet burritos”

Pasta and Marinara sauce (Olive Garden, California Pizza Kitchen)

Pasta is pasta. Angel hair, linguine, spaghetti, cappelini, penne, rotini. All of those are pasta, just in different shapes and sizes. There is almost always one of those (or something of the like) that comes with marinara sauce or pomodoro (read the description—if it has “meat” in the description, don’t order it). “Marinara” is universally (okay, maybe not quite that) known as “tomato pasta sauce with no meat”. Ask if it comes with cheese, or say “no parmesan” so they don’t bring it to you with cheese all over it.

Baked potato (Wendy’s)

Order the “Sour cream and chive baked potato”. The sour cream comes packaged separate from the potato. You can trade your sour cream back for some margarine, or just ask for margarine and throw the sour cream away.

Steak Fries and Salad (Red Robin)

I don’t know why they’re called steak fries. Maybe because they are so big. I don’t believe it’s more than $3 for a bottomless basket of fries. Maybe they aren’t called steak fries on the menu at Red Robin. I think they might not even be by themselves on the menu (apart from coming with burgers), but I was there last week and asked for either a basket of fries, or a side of fries, and they brought them to me, and when I finished them, they refilled them again. They also have a decent side/garden salad, but you have to ask for no cheese. I don’t care too much for their Italian dressing, but it’s better than eating no dressing at all. They put tortilla chip pieces on their salads, and I like that.

Beer

2007-12-26T12:17:00.000-08:00

I had Brandon as my roommate for one year when I lived near Washington State University in Pullman Washington. Brandon had to take technical writing class in order to finish earning his Bachelor of Science degree and he wrote about beer for his final project. I understand that his writing about beer was well accepted and that his teacher was willing to put his or her points where his or her mouth was so that Brandon's grades were quite good.

Brandon was quite generous and has provided the digital copies of his work to me. He has also given me permission to publish his work here for your enjoyment.

The Pullman/Moscow Beer Handbook

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my current community group leader and Seaside Church's newest elder for inviting me to his residence to drink beer with his family on the evening of December 23 of this year after he learned that I was sitting at home all by myself.

Picture #2

2007-12-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of the Engstrom family which visited me on the evening of Sunday, November 4th, 2007. I am including it here because when I visited my neighbors a little while back (probably on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007) they asked me about the family that visited me which they noticed because of all of the child noises. I also include it because people have been accessing my blog and spending time on it because they were performing Google searches for Mr. Engstrom. I figure that more mentions of him means more traffic and since I don't have to pay for traffic, it can't be bad.

Mr. and Mrs. Engstrom have hosted a number of Seaside Church events at their home during this past summer and Mr. Engstrom has often taken the trouble to be sure that I am fed one way or the other. During one event this fall, I decided to return the favor and I was very surprised at how quickly he jumped for it. It has been observed that in many churches, the members are just waiting around to turn down any and every invitation that is extended to them (perhaps this is for the purpose of appearing self-sufficient) but I haven't run into that too much at Seaside Church.

Picture #1

2007-12-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

I have just decided that I could probably get a whole lot of fun blogging done by uploading pictures and then typing about them. Here you go:

I took this picture at the Bible Study Methods class that Bishop Jefro teaches. The black writing on the right was copied by myself, although Joey read most of it to me. This picture was taken inside of the house that Seaside Church began to rent for office space because the Seaside Church office was being pushed away from the previously existing Seaside Church building by many many children. Fortunately, the landscape between said house and the Seaside Church building is conducive to controlled access between these buildings.

Those of us who attended this particular class session (11/7/07) learned that walking in the light is strongly related to confessing sins.

I don't always attend this class because sometimes I am busy serving the Seaside Church musicians instead. Now if I could just learn to do that cheerfully, I'd be all set. Well, maybe.

Not feeling good about myself

2007-11-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, November 17th, I finished reading the first book that I have finished reading in a long time because I had stayed home from work for a couple of days prior to that due to an illness. You might think that I would have gotten around to reading this book as soon as I had nothing better to do, but when it comes to non-biblical books, I generally don't get around to reading much until there is almost nothing else to do.

I had been borrowing this book called Humility: True Greatness from my community group leader for a long time, but I got around to reading it after listening to a sermon about joy in humility by pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. That sermon can be accessed by clicking here.

When I started reading the book at my community group leader's home a long time ago, I got through a couple of chapters and I thought to myself, "This isn't so impressive. I could have written this because it is not rocket science," but I didn't get around to even remembering that until I was almost finished with reading the book this last time because I was so busy with thinking of my own problems and about how I don't seem to be as mature as I used to seem to be, even from my own perspective.

So if you are looking for a book that is guaranteed to not make you feel good about yourself, there you go.

October 31st, 2007

2007-11-09T12:24:00.000-08:00

Because my church's Halloween costume party and under attended concert were held before October 31st, I had no particular plans for the use of my time after work on October 31st. As I was about to leave work, I decided to buy myself some skittles because I like skittles and I didn't get to eat any skittles at said Halloween costume party. I drove to Target in Sliverdale and bought some skittles. I also bought a copy of the Firefly TV-show on digital video disk because it was only $25 and I had already downloaded it all from the internet. I also drove to the library, but then I drove home.

As I was walking near my apartment building I saw one of my neighbors (I'll call him #5) entering the apartment of one of my other neighbors (I'll call her #10). #5 was dressed for the occasion and as I saw him, I began to think to myself about how Jesus got invited to parties and had a good time. I then proceeded to think to myself about how I never get invited to anything (exaggerating slightly). After that, I did some thought processing about how I must not have been like Jesus and about how being like Jesus would be preferable to my then current state because sometime after I entered my apartment, I prayed, telling Jesus that if he wanted to invite me to a party that night, it would be alright with me.

Not long after that, #5 & #10 arrived at my door (the one labeled #8) and invited me to the bar with them because they were going to attend a costume party. Being the really sharp person that I always have been, I decided that God's will was for me to go to the bar with them, so I thanked them and waited for the right time and put on my black Johhny Cash clothes and walked to the bar and drank my first Guinness which was not incredibly good. I think that they were surprised to see me I stayed for an hour or so and told the first part of this story that I have been typing and I left and I walked home without being run over.

I had forgotten how eating too many skittles makes me feel hung over well into the morning after.

Covenant Theology 2

2007-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I just found out that my recent blogging about covenant theology is little more than a display of my own ignorance about covenant theology. I used title Covenant Theology as kind of a joke because I didn't even realize that anything that I was writing about could actually be related to the baptism of infants. I was wrong.

I have been referred to a great big book that was first published in eight (8) volumes on twenty-eight-hundred-eighty (2880) pages. I have located it at the local comedy (community) college library and maybe, just maybe, I will have something less ignorant to type about it later. By the way, isn't amazing how many different books have Systematic Theology as a title?

If you happen to be one of those people who understands these things already, please forgive my previous oversimplification.

Candy Partying

2007-10-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

The October 31st of 2007 (and all future years) is being approached by us in our single speed time machines which we call our bodies. Seaside Church is planning to have a costume party on the 27th of this month instead of a candy party, but I have decided to publish my Candy Party Memo from last year again because it went over so well last year. Bleep, I even had a young, unmarried woman compliment it! Let's see what happens this year.

I plan to make an effort to get some more costume party information for this years event so that we can all see your costume and take your picture and never see it again. Bleep bleep, maybe there'll even be candy!

Covenant Theology

2007-10-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

I attended the missional community group at my neighbor's home last night. For some reason the people who attended began to talk about covenants. The text was Amos chapter 3 and the word covenant does not appear in Amos, except in chapter 1, so I am not exactly sure why the people who attended began to talk about covenants, but I think that it had something to do with the fact that God had made a covenant with Israel and Israel is mentioned in the first several verses of Amos 3.

So I jumped in and recalled some knowledge that I had picked up from a sermon that I had listened to three (3) or four (4) years earlier which included an explanation about how eternal security works so well because there exists a covenant between God the Father and God the Son of which the other children of God are the beneficiaries. I was asked to blog about this this week. Hence, this writing.

The community group leader read to us from a Systematic Theology book and from Hebrews 8 & 9 and from Galatians 3 and from Jeremiah 31 & 32 about how the covenant which God made with Abraham is the same covenant that all of God's children are involved in now (the one that says that God counts faith in Jesus as the righteousness required to live in His presence as His friends), but since the time of Abraham, Jesus has fulfilled the human end of the covenant so that the covenant is effectively between God the Father and God the Son. This is convenient because a covenant that required something of men would surely fail. This makes me suspect that the mosaic covenant was rigged.

But I do plan to contact the person who delivered that one sermon all of those years ago and find out what is the reasoning for thinking that there is a particular covenant between God the Father and God the Son. I it isn't too hard to say that there must have been an informal covenant (binding agreement) between them to bring salvation to men through an acceptable vicarious sacrifice because that is what happened.

I have included my sermon notes from all of those years ago here. Note particularly the large paragraph on page 1.

Football

2007-09-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

Now I have been to three football games during my lifetime. All of the football games that I have been to were high school football games. The first football game that I traveled to was in Sultan, Washington. I went there and watched my friend Lane Barnhill lose. I went to another game last year at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds, hoping to see Central Kitsap play, but I attended on the wrong day.

Last night I decided to attend another high school football game and I traveled with the family of one of the coaches so that I would be sure to choose the correct time and place.

We got to see Real Deal Mark Keel do one of his jobs. You can see his back in this picture. The back of his jacket has an orange triangle on it. The team members associated with Central Kitsap High School were wearing the orange shirts. I think that the Central Kitsap High School quarterback did not get sacked during this play.

Some of the people pictured here are some of the people with whom I traveled to the high school football game.

Here is an image of Real Deal Mark Keel's wife.

I was told to take pictures of a particular young lady doing junior cheer leading during halftime. I didn't do a very good job. One of the pictures that I took is pictured directly below this text.
Perhaps a more interesting picture of the same subjects is directly below this text.No one sitting around me was feeling very enthused during the minutes one either side of halftime. I wonder if that was my fault. I guess that I'll include another baby picture for you, and then some more football pictures.
The Central Kitsap Cougars did not allow those out of town Lion people to score any touchdowns.

Of all of the times that I attended football games this was the first time during which the team that I attended to see smashed the other team. The score was 21 points - 3 points. Don't confuse points with watermelons or other things.

Even better Judgement

2007-09-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

A reasonable person might think that the last post was quite enough. Bishop Jefro has probably been thinking to himself that he doesn't ever want to make root beer again except perhaps for his own personal use and that Joshua should have just shut up and been grateful for it.

I am sure that all of you noticed that I was trying really hard to be annoyed with the comments that became attached to my last blogging post. I really wish that I hadn't tried so hard to be annoyed with these comments, particularly those from the church leadership because I have learned that at least two church leaders have had to have discussions about me and that must have required time. That time is time that could have spent on the mission or on resting or being refreshed by my joy and progress in the faith (if I had chosen to have joy or progress in the faith). But I didn't. I was too busy trying to create and maintain confusion regarding the alleged mixing of children and alcohol at a Seaside Church event.

I hope that all of you will forgive the foolishness which I typed into the last blog post. I will likely re-write it and do away with the document as it exists now. If you particularly like it for some reason, please save it to your hard drive now becayse for me to have where it is is embarassing.

My Weird Church

2007-09-09T16:06:00.001-07:00

This morning I decided to act in accordance with my better judgment and submit to the wishes expressed in the comments of the official elder and the unofficial elder both of whom dared to tell me what I should write. I used to think that I was slow to anger. I used to think that I could live with authority. That was before I met people who actually use authority.

So, let it be known that it is the expressed desire of the Seaside Church leadership that all of you who read this blog post know that none of the bottles pictured herein did contain alcohol at the time during which these pictures were taken.

Now, if I could just find some way to get around those biblical commands to be subject to spiritual authority so that I can do whatever the hell I want.

Today there was a baptism at which three people became baptized. Lots of us decided to travel to Tom Engstrom's house (pictured below). That person doing the cooking in that picture up there told me yesterday that by watching a movie called The Blues Brothers I could learn what would be required to build a culturally relevant church for black men (and their families).

Tom Engstrom had some very uncomfortable surgery performed upon his body last week. For some reason, he decided to be hospitable anyway. Please note the beer bottle in Mr. Tom Engstrom's hand. This beer bottle is kind of like the beer bottle which is pictured in the picture above it.

This is a picture of Tom Engstrom's backyard.

Here is an image of some kid with another beer bottle.

I figure that as long as I am making people happy, I had can make Crystal happy by removing this picture also.

Here is a picture of two of the people who were about to be baptized who were also having their picture taken while holding beer bottles.

Here is a picture of the person who was baptized first. Inconveniently, I don't seem to have an image of this person holding a beer bottle. Conveniently, there seemed to be a number of beer bottles such that each person present seemed to be able to empty one all by himself or herself. I didn't even hear any mothers saying, No Billy, you only get ONE!

This is an image of the person who was baptized second. It is also an image of the newly installed elder whose name is Eric Schuette and who is also my community group leader. I think that he is the only elder of Seaside Church who plans on attending any one community group consistently.

This is an image of the person who was baptized third.

Here are some other pictures that seem to have come out well:

MS Office 2007 vs. MS Office 2003

2007-09-03T21:01:00.001-07:00

Today I uninstalled Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student trial version so that it neither runs nor is installed upon my new computer. I did this because ever since I got used to Microsoft Office 2003 Professional on my first computer, I felt like Microsoft had kind of arrived as far as the program doing what it was supposed to and managing to do lots of things for me without doing them only halfway and without doing a whole load of things that I never want. It doesn't try to be smarter than it really is, but it makes things easier than they were in previous versions.

Even so, I gave Office 2007 a try for ~three (3) weeks and I have not been favorably impressed. I don't know what is to be gained by doing away with the traditional menu bar, and the substitute seem to arbitrary for me. Maybe I would like it better if I took a class. But I don't want to take a class because that would require time and money.

I came home from my little trip to a portion of the east side of the Pacific Ocean, during which I had a fair amount of time to think because I didn't bring very many audio compact discs with me and because radio reception is not good way over there, and I thought to myself that I should make sure that Microsoft Office 2003 will function on top of the Windows Vista platform. So I did, and I also found out that there is a Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. This pack is available for free download from Microsoft and allows said Microsoft Office programs of some previous versions of said programs to view, edit, and save their respective files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.

I haven't tried it yet, but this download was the thing that convinced me to switch back to Microsoft Office 2003 Professional.

Practicing

2007-09-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Do you like the way I manage to have so many pictures become parts of my Words blog? A number of people have told me that they like the pictures and that the words are just not interesting enough for them. Oh well. As I looked at the pictures from Adam's wedding, I realized that I had forgotten that I have a camera that can take halfway decent pictures when it is used outside during the daytime (local time of course), so I have been using it a bit more than I had been before that time.

I traveled to a portion of the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean. I guess that a more orthodox way of saying that would be I traveled to a portion of the west coast of Washington State. I was hoping (unrealistically) to meet someone there, but I ran out of energy with which to look for him when I arrived there hungry (my own fault) and then rain began to fall with intensity that seemed to be ever increasing (nothing that I could have done about that). Seeing the ocean was nice, but it involved a lot of driving. I began to think of all sorts of things that I could have done instead, but the activity did beat sitting at home with my own degenerative thoughts. I need to find a place that is very conducive to spiritual discipline other than my own home when it is in good order. Have you any ideas?

as I was driving along, I remembered a portion of a book that I had previously (as opposed to futuristically) which indicated that anytime that men are on road trips with women and they are driving, they need to stop every half hour. So just to practice (just in case I ever find myself driving in such a situation) I decided to stop twice -- once on my way to said ocean, and once on my way back home from said ocean. I took pictures of the location of my second stop because it was kind of interesting. The body of water pictured in said pictures is called Lake Crescent.

This is an image of the Illuminate 2 which has yet to fail me.

Work Pictures

2007-08-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my shoes and my blue jeans and my shoelaces which match my bluejeans. I selected the shoelaces at Target where there was minimal lighting because said Target store was not being provided with electricity. I was able to go shopping that morning because my place of employment was not being provided with electricity either. Fortunately, my home was being provided with electricity, so I sat at home for most of the rest of that day.

This is an image of me and the piece of watermelon which I ate yesterday afternoon. It tasted kind of nice and I didn't spill too much of it on the drawings or on the desk.

More Visitors

2007-08-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

I matched my all time high of five (5) visitors again this evening. I had a very nice time because Eric and Abby and Avery and Emily and Halsey came to visit me and eat my food and share their food with me. Eric is my community group leader and he came directly from his football coaching to his family's home where his family honored him by waiting so that they could all travel to my home together.

The older children seemed to be cranky and hungry because the energy that used to be within them had been depleted during their afternoon at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds, but that hunger and crankiness seemed to vanish during the meal.

So while I was eating and after my guests had finished eating, their was some conversing. Some of that conversing went something like this:

Emily: Mommy, why doesn't Joshua have a wife?
Abby: Why don't you ask Mr. Horky? Ask Mr. Horky.
Emily: says nothing. Is again prompted by her mother
Abby: Go ahead and ask him Lilly, it's nothing to be embarrassed about
Me: (not yet knowing what Emily's question is) It's over there (pointing toward the bathroom)
Emily: That's not what I was going to ask.
Abby: Say, "Mr." (waits) "Joshua" (waits) "why" (waits) "don't" (waits) "you" (waits) "have"...
Emily: ... a wife?
Me: Because I'm picky and the women whom I pick are picky and there are conflicts in the synthesis of our pickiness.

Alright, that last line didn't really come out quite that well, but I was happy to hear such a question from a little girl who just walked into my home for the first time to eat a meal.

After dinner we took some pictures and watched some football and music videos on my two notebook computers and Halsey fell asleep while I held him and then it was time to leave. Oh. Eric didn't take long to discover that I haven't read nearly all of the books on my bookshelf.

This is a picture of Eric holding Halsey while sitting in the chair that Avery says looks as though Halsey pooped green or yellow or some such color all over it.

This is a picture of Emily realizing that she really is still hungry and wants to eat even more dinner.

This is a picture of Abby (not to be confused with Abby herself).

This is a picture of all of my guests staring at other pictures which are being displayed by my computers.

This is a picture of baby Halsey who began to sleep numerous times during the evening.

Thank you for viewing these mediocre quality pictures.

Adam & Liumi become married 1

2007-08-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

I attended a wedding today. Today was a nice day as far as the weather goes. I've included some pictures in this post. A couple of them are pictures of me having my picture taken. I think that I need some more practice with that. Oh well.

This is an image of me and the man who became married at the event which I attended today.

This is an image of me and the woman who became married at the event which I attended today.
This is an image of the first champaign that I have ever consumed. I consumed it during this afternoon.

This is an image of my community group leader providing for the needs of his family before the wedding began, but after the wedding was supposed to have begun. My community group leader attended the same wedding event that I attended this afternoon.

Blogging after the Jazz Event

2007-08-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Last night's jazz event has ended. I found out that the feedback was caused by the lead musician on purpose, so I don't feel so bad about it anymore. I was given some pictures of the event, but I don't like any of them very much, so I left them out of the blog. Not much money was made for the chairs, but I guess that that beats losing money to caterers and musicians.

I managed to not give the lead musician such a bad time that he never wants to come back. I know this because the man who ran the show told me that the lead musician wants to help with advertisements next time. Free advertising is always nice. Now if we could just make money while we get people to advertise (I never did understand those beer shirts).

I found out that root beer bottles that have root beer inside of them are not supposed to be shaken up.

Blogging from the Jazz Event 4

2007-08-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Well, Real Deal Mark Keel has arrived with his wife and begun to eat. The saxophone player has become a flute player. I didn't know that flutes were part of jazz music, but now I know that flutes (or at least this one) are a part of jazz music. Oh, that song has ended and now she has become a saxophone player again.

Blogging from the Jazz Event 3

2007-08-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well the dinner part is over and the desert part has begun. I know this because the dinner serving dishes have been removed from the food distribution area and the deserts have been moved from my left to the food distribution area. Conveniently for all of these people, I am a phenyleketonuric and I am not able to eat the deserts in a healthy way, so there are some deserts left for the attenders of this event. Isn't that nice?

I wonder what will happen next.

Blogging from the Jazz Event 2

2007-08-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Well, the 1st root beer was good and people have arrived and the live music has started, but I haven't seen anyone checking tickets.

I think I mentioned in the pre-event post that the proceeds from this event are to be spent upon chairs for church, so if any of you would like to get up from your computers to Seaside Church directly across the street from Evergreen Park here in Bremerton just to drop some money off for us here, please do because someone's rear end will appreciate the purchase(s) resulting from your donation(s). An even better plan would be for you to show up at said church on Sunday morning and hand over said money.

The man in charge just told me that the tickets got axed.

Oh, and I just had some feedback through the guitar channel. Perhaps that is because I have never heard that guitar before I didn't get to set it up ahead of time, or maybe it is because I jacked the slider as far away from me as I could move it without moving myself or the board. I suppose that I should know better. Oh well, at least I didn't let it become very developed.

Blogging from the Jazz Event 1

2007-08-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

I arrived at this event before I had planned to because I was called at home about one half hour before I had planned to leave said house. I was told that the musicians were ready to do a sound track and play background music and so on. I tried to leave said house immediately but was unable to do so because of the magazine saleswoman who was trying to win personality points for a contest because the reward for the contest was $1000. It sounded a lot like the program that I was told about my another sales woman on the Wednesday before. I disappointed them both.

When I arrived here, the band leader asked me when I wanted to have the sound check. I thought that he was in a hurry and unhappy about me not arriving as early as him so I answered, "in about forty seconds." I entered the building and began to turn things on and he followed me and told me that we should wait for a band member and perform the sound check half of an hour later.

We finally made it through a sound check without his band and argued about the best way for him to make a recording with his MD recorder. Then I was offered a root beer and dug out my computer, and I'll probably be blogging about this little event as the slow parts come.

Jazz Event at Seaside Church

2007-08-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

On Friday, August 17th, I get to do some sound mixing for a jazz event. Well, perhaps my volunteer will be doing it instead of me, but neither of us has ever mixed jazz before and neither of us has ever mixed anything that anyone has paid money to listen to, but maybe it will go well anyway. Please note that the date on the poster shown below is wrong. Oh, and there will be alcohol. I mention that because I have recently learned that knowledge of the presence of alcohol seems to make people interested, even in church events. So consider yourself invited if you are old enough to legally consume alcohol and enjoy jazz music without disturbing the people around you. Oh yes, the profit is to be spent on new chairs so that the next event can be made even more classy and comfortable.

Clarity of mind

2007-08-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

I helped a business in Poulsbo move after work on Wednesday and this moving took four hours and the job still wasn't done at the end of those four hours and I became quite tired because I am a paper pushing, mouse clicking civil engineer who doesn't generally visit the field even once a week.

I returned to my home after I was all through and cleaned myself off and climbed into my twin-sized bed and fell asleep after a while. Then, after a while longer, I woke up again and then after some more time had gone by, I thought to myself, "my body is quite tired, but my head is quite clear. My head was not clear like this before talking to worship pastor Patso on Tuesday." Then I remembered how the NIV reads in 1 Peter 4:8.

The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.

So we now know about one of the things that can be done with a clear mind.

Of course we can think of things to do to acquire or maintain a clear mind like:

Confessing our sins
Not becoming drunk
Eating our breakfasts
Sleeping when we're supposed to so that we can be awake when we're supposed to
Many, many other things which you may choose to type about in the comment field

1 Peter 4:7 indicates that doing these little things can help us to deal with the end times.

From my secretary to all of you

2007-07-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

My secretary (who is not really my secretary) set her doggy on my desk today while I was trying to do work. She then took a picture of me with her doggy. Aside from the evidence of the goo on the lens, I like the picture, so I have placed it here. Note the new-to-me 19" flat screen monitor that I get to use. It is much nicer than monitor that I used to use at work. Also note the large array of project boxes.

After I finished working, I drove to Kingston and used the ferry boat to transport me to Edmonds so that I could travel to my dear sister's house in Monroe. She will be leaving for missionary school in a week or so. She is pictured here playing a word game with my brother.

We finished off the day with the not-so-great Charolett's web movie in Lake Tye Park and Apples to Apples and ice cream. I never have a good time sleeping at my dear sister's house and that is why I am blogging right now.

Sitting in a room, big and dark

2007-07-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a local movie theater and received a student (or military) discount for the first or second time in my life even though I am no longer a student and I have never been a part of the United States military. The movie which watched was recommended by Trevor and was called Transformers. I had no idea what the transformers movie was about because I was not allowed to play with transformers or read about transformers as a child because my mother determined that she had better things to do than to determine whether or not the somewhat ugly looking toys were related to anything good. It had its problems, but was quite fun. Even more fun than the Spider Man 3 movie. The person who gave me the unexpected discount at the movie theater was a lady and most of the men whom I know would probably have advised me to pay a bit of attention. But none of them were there to remind me, so I don't even remember anything about what her name is or what she looks like. Oh well.

Having more movies that I want to see, in a theater than I can justify spending money to see is unusual for me. I am not used to more than two interesting movies being built in a year.

Curbing your disappointment

2007-07-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, worship pastor Patso informed me that the rate at which I have been posting updates to this blog has been disappointing of late. Having disappointed leadership is not good, so I am typing this to offset that disappointment in a desirable direction.

Unfortunately, I do not seem to have sufficient imagination or inclination to type a real post or to finish any of those posts which are in my drafts folder, so I am left with referring you to something that you have never seen before (most likely).

I am referring you to blog writings that were written by the wife of my good friend Brandon. Brandon and his wife are more liberal than I am, but we are still friends because they seem to love Jesus.

Loving Jesus is one of the subjects of the writing to which I am about to refer you. The lady typed about a song called, My Jesus, I love Thee. The song has a chorus and this chorus ends with the words, If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, tis now. I have wondered a number of times, "What makes the vocalists think that they love Jesus any more during the last chorus than during the first chorus? Is it just the singing of the song? Perhaps we should get the whole world to sing this song so that everyone will have some love for Jesus." Brandon's wife wrote better and more interesting things about this song than these. You may read them by clicking here.

This lady also wrote a bit about patriotism while I was in church this week. You may read it by clicking here.

Oh yes, this same lady also wrote the gag tract which I posted earlier.

New people igniting dry humor with fireworks

2007-07-10T21:27:00.001-07:00

Have you ever been in a church or at the meeting of a special interest group and had your buddy take hold of your shoulder while earnestly whispering in your ear, Friend, look over there! It's a new person! If this has ever happened to you, you probably responded by turning your head in the same direction that your buddy had been pointing and you expected to see someone who had been born only the day before. But of course, you were disappointed because there before you, seemingly at the end of the finger of his or her introducer was someone who had clearly not been born yesterday, or had he? You never know, because some people are born twice.

I finally got around to taking a picture of a person whom I met upon the day directly after the day upon which he was born the first time. His name is Halsey. Please gaze upon this picture which contains an image of himself. The same picture also includes an image of another person named Joel whom I met once at church and have spoken with several times at community group.

I have included that little bit of dry humor because I need to explain the difference that exists between dry humor and wet humor by contrasting them.

I had community group at my house last week and only two people showed up and both of them were women (they were still women when I saw them this evening as well). One of them brought a whole load of food because we were expecting a lot of people who decided to not come. We read through a lot of scripture verses about the day of the Lord and how disastrous it will be for many people (all of those who do not trust in the Lord). We prayed. We ate food. One these women left. The other woman invited me to watch fireworks in Poulsbo with her and yet another woman. I'll call this other woman Lady C.

I think that fireworks on the 3rd of July is a really good plan because it enables people to have a good time staying up late before a vacation morning which can then be used for what could normally be called excessive sleeping, but would normally just be called sleeping in. This leaves the evening of the 4th of July free for going to bed at a prudent hour so that work can be done well during the 5th of July. I don't know why I didn't think of it. It works just like New Years Eve and New Years Day!

Lady C was still busy working when I arrived with one of the first two women. I'll call this woman Lady A (Just in case you were wondering about Lady B, be informed that she departed and left my home directly after the community group event ended and was hidden from my sight until Sunday). So Lady A explained to me a bit about power ballards whilst I explained to her a bit about how to wipe compact discs without damaging them excessively even though lady A kept going into and out of the place of employment of Lady C to see if she had yet completed her labors over which she had presumably been laboring laboriously.

At l e n g t h these labors were complete (or maybe quiting time finally arrived, I don't really know which) and we picked up chairs from the place of employment (perhaps I should say from a place of employment for she has a couple) of Lady C and sat upon them in various locations about the parking lot from which we expected to see fireworks. After some discussion we found a place near a kid who needed to be told to not tackle bushes. This location was mere feet away from a fence which surrounded a large stormwater detention pond, so I got to spend a while explaining to ladies A & C about why stormwater detention ponds are built. Lady C related to myself and to Lady A one of her own experiences which she experienced while employed by an engineering company in California and how she quit over a conflict between her own wardrobe and the dress code of said company. It was quite enlightening for me. Then some people shared some wet humor.

My mother raised me to avoid wet humor entirely, so I stuck to dry humor, which leaves me many more options than wet humor because everybody knows that all wet humor is about the same thing, but dry humor includes endless variations.

Several pictures were taken by a 2.1 Megapixel camera that had a battery that quickly became depleted.

The fireworks were not very impressive in any way. They could not be heard very well from my location.

I was transported back to my home without incident.

Ladies A & C were very nice to put up with me for part of their evenings, and to request this report.

Traveling to Mars Hill Church

2007-07-02T16:39:00.000-07:00

I went to Mars Hill Church yesterday for the first time in 364 days. Mars Hill Church is the flagship of the Acts 29 network. I figured that I had been away so long that I could justify going again when Tim asked me if I wanted to go on Thursday. Tim is my volunteer at church. I used to think that I was the A/V lead, but I learned from a piece of church literature yesterday that I can probably get by with calling myself a service producer.

Tim and I finished up with our one (1) service at Seaside Church and decided that we wanted to show up for the 1700 service and joked that we would attend both the 1700 service and the 1900 service. I offered to build lunch for Tim, but he had family to visit, so we agreed to meet at the ferry terminal at 1500. I went home and ate something and drove back to Seaside Church for parking and walked approximately one mile to the ferry boat. I arrived as the gate was opening so that I could board the ferry boat. Tim and Tim's sister joined me after I had decided that I would make the trip all by myself if Tim didn't show himself. We managed to get along during the ferry boat ride to Seattle and we discussed how I could save approximately $500/month on housing.

We arrived in Seattle and found the bus stop. Tim and Tim's sister decided to buy coffee and managed to finish just in time to hurry across the street and into the bus before it departed.

I have not traveled on very many buses. I traveled on a bus in Seattle with my friend Darin Brill when I visited him in Seattle once, but he had to tell me exactly what to do and what not to do. I rode a bus in Pullman Washington once, but I had instructions on the amateur radio and from other passengers. I think that the only other times during which I rode a bus were long ago when I was quite young and I was following my mother around because I was not allowed to chose to do otherwise.

I looked like I didn't know what I was doing when I tried to begin the bus trip by paying at the beginning of a trip that originated in the ride-free zone. Then I insisted that we get off one stop too soon and we had to walk across the 15th Avenue bridge. I have included a picture of Tim and Tim's sister traveling across the 15th Avenue bridge because of my mistake while carrying some of my stuff so that I could take a picture of them walking across the 15th Avenue bridge because of my mistake. None of the cars smashed themselves into any of us.

We arrived at Mars Hill Church Ballard in just enough time for me to greet my friend Darin Brill and to utilize the facilities and to be one minute early. I mean, we arrived in just enough time for my friend Darin Brill to greet me (because he was in charge of all of the greeters).

1 Timothy 2:8

2007-06-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I should be putting this on the dead man blog, and perhaps I will after I verify my citations. I will be quoting a pastor regarding a subject about which I have not heard him speak in a number of years and I have recently received rebuke for misquoting people. So there may be some revisions

This little part of my blog is about the application of this verse here:

I Timothy 2:8
I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing. (NIV)

Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. (NASB)

Although there are many ways in which to worship God, to worship God in a way other than the way which He has established as acceptable is not necessarily recommended.

To "worship" God in a way contrary to the way which He has established has been condemned and is still dangerous. E.g. Leviticus 10

In the application of the scriptural text which is above, these two ways of worship are mutually exclusive (although I suppose that worship of God that is an afront to God may not really be worship of Him at all, but only something else, i.e. an afront to God)

Acceptable: Raising your hands in worship to Jesus while trusting God to restore all things and also bring His judgment with speed and finality
Condemned: Raising your hands in "worship" to Jesus while dissatisfied because of His foreign and/or domestic policy (think about Jonah)

This was pointed out to me by Pastor Dale Swanson of Reaching Men Ministries and other such things who was once an interim pastor at Sky Valley Bible Church which I attended immediately prior to moving myself to Pullman Washington. I remember that on more than one occasion he indicated from the pulpit that during worship services some of us acted even more uptightly than a bunch of baptists [in a bar]. There were a number of people there who likely would have been members of the frozen chosen society had there been a local chapter. But in pointing out an application of the above passage, he asserted that the reason that so few people in that congregation raised their hands during worship services was that the majority of the people there were angry with other people and didn't want God's mercy for those other people.

When I heard this, I thought to myself, "that sounds about right." Because of this warning (coupled with my anger towards some people) and the fact that I had grown up in that particular church, I never raised my hands during a worship service before December 6th of 2005.

I find the above scripture to be inconvenient because there is much aggravation to be had in the church and I have noticed that I have to do spiritual discipline if I am going to be able to get along with the people with whom I minister. So I have found that I can go to church and waste my time by not worshiping Jesus appropriately because of my anger, or I can trust God to take care of the things that I am angry about.

This can be difficult because I have a tendency to invent things to be angry about when there is nothing to make me angry. I forget that God is more interested in changing me to become more like Him than He is changing the whole rest of the world so that I will like it (--Danielle Deniet). On the other hand, this has nothing to do with failing to resist evil in its various forms.

Competition and Community Group

2007-06-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

Well Crystal finally put up her new blog. It is much more interesting than I thought that it would be because it is not primarily about the thing that I thought that it would primarily be about. I thought she was just going to use it to make fun of my blog, but she quickly became bored with that and started blogging about herself and about Jesus, both of whom are more interesting than making fun of my blog. You can read about all of those things at http://thisgirlspointofview.blogspot.com/

I had community group at my house for the first time last night. Four people besides myself came. The people who attended had all sorts of questions to ask me like, Why is your apartment not furnished? and Why are only two of the light bulbs in your chandelier shining? I don't really have a good answer concerning my chandelier except that it keeps the energy consumption and heat down and I have not been lacking light, but I was able to win somebody over concerning the lack of sufficient furnishings in my apartment.

We did get around to re-reading the texts from which the sermon had been preached and to asking ourselves questions about how the different parts fit together and we all seemed to be able to bring ourselves into agreement with what we understood God to be saying. One major point was that we should not waste time on trying to figure out how the end times are going to work because no matter how they work, they will be disastrous for many people without Jesus, whose death and resurrection are the primary points of the gospel. These two extremes (wasting time on times and dates and the primary points of the gospel) are assigned values in 1 Cor 15 (note verse three and verse 35).

Then prayer time came and went and then everybody left. Oh yes, someone brought cake too. Oh, and I felt strange when one attendee thanked me for my hospitality because he is an active part of the United States military, without which my hospitality would not be possible. It was kind of funny, almost like when we give God the money and other things which He gave to us previously.

My mistake

2007-06-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I received some negative comments about my blog on Sunday. Crystal told me that she really didn't say that my empty bun was a veggie burger. Crystal was really trying to inform me that I could fill my empty bun with something called a veggie burger. I neglected her kind message to me and missed out on the veggie burger as well as the pleasure of quoting her correctly the first time on my blog.

Crystal has threatened to start her own blog at http://ibloginspiteofjoshua.blogspot.com, but it has yet to appear. If it does appear, I will have my first real opposition and I am sure that my site traffic will increase a lot. Perhaps I should make more mistakes. But if there are mistakes that I should make, are those really mistakes at all?

Father's Day 2007 (or visiting SVBC) part 2

2007-06-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Right, so I played Age of Empires 2 with my little brother. We lost the first game, but we made things easy on ourselves and won the second game. My mother built mashed potatoes for me and I ate them at the dinning room table with mom and dad and little brother and other little brother. We ate late so that my brothers were made to prepare for sleeping immediately following the meal.

Dad and I watched a movie on VHS. This movie was called John Q. about a man who put up a violent front to save his son's life after his company sold his insurance out from under him. The movie made me realize that I have no idea what being a father is like. I went to sleep after that and managed to wake up in time to ride with my father to church.

I even woke up in time to load my father's recording equipment into the little car which my mother had kindly emptied the night before. I have included a picture of my father with his recording equipment.

This was to be the first time that I attended Sky Valley Bible Church in six months, but I knew that a fair amount of the format there had changed. Sky Valley Bible Church meets in a high school and has been in the habit of using the seats which are at multiple elevations (those at the back are higher than those at the front), but Sky Valley Bible Church leadership really likes to talk about and think about being a family and they also like to make themselves feel like they are a family, so they decided to use an electric motor to move the elevated seats on one end of the room to make room to set up a multitude of seats at the finished floor elevation instead. This seems to make everyone feel more like a family than did the former format. I noticed that the music sounds substantially better within this new format than it did within the previous format. This may be because of the new electric piano and the increased skill of some musicians.

The sermon was about Father's day and the text was from Psalm 86. I have no idea what the pastor was trying to say because I wasn't listening at all, but was wondering how long his sermon would last. It wasn't even that long, but I began to wonder even before the service began. Oh yes, he quoted a bit of secular research regarding the importance of fathers and said something like, If you haven't been a father to your children, start now. I am sure that there was something more biblically based in there somewhere, but again, I wasn't listening.

I spent the rest of the afternoon by taking a nap and visiting my brother's new horse and by eating a piece of dutch apple pie from Burger King because that is where my dad likes to go to eat food away from home.

I left my parent's house at about 2130 because a late dinner and arrived at my own home before midnight. I didn't even wreck the Illuminate 2.

I wish that I had a more grateful heart regarding my father because he has been an enormous blessing to me. Actually, I could stand to have a fair amount of who I am reconfigured entirely. Maybe I will get around to typing how I came about this little bit of information about myself later.

Community Group 1

2007-06-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

One of the meetings of my Missional Community Group took place last night.

I have included the picture of an instant of this meeting on the left there not because it makes me look good (clearly), but because it is the only picture that I was able to have taken last night; my batteries only had enough energy for one picture and my backups had been sitting around for far too long to be worth anything.

The beer in the blue cup was the first beer from a can which I had ever consumed, and I did not find it positively impressive, but it was a gift which was offered to me by a military man directly after he learned that I had finished with my engineering exam. I felt very uncultured after I had begun to pour the can of beer into the blue cup which I had been using for dihydrogen monoxide because Crystal decided to tell me that there was too much foam on the top of the beer which I had poured into the blue cup and that I was supposed to tip the blue cup while pouring. I was later informed that I was not supposed to pour the beer into the blue glass at all. Isn't it convenient that people in the beer drinking community are so pleased to share the correct cultural protocols?

My whole community group seemed to be on a mission to rejoice with me, even though I wasn't bent upon rejoicing.

Hostess: When you found out that you passed, did you jump up and down?
Me (not wanting to think long enough to remember that I did jump up and down): I don't remember.
Hostess: I would have jumped up and down.

I got to eat oreos and potato chips and a hot dog bun. Crystal told me that the hot dog bun is called a veggie bun or something like that when it is empty. I can't imagine why it is called that.

Please note that Real Deal Mark Keel (pictured) is not the military man whom I mentioned above.

Father's Day 2007 (or visiting SVBC) part 1

2007-06-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my dad on the day before father's day. I arrived at 1500 because I had been busy listening to pastor Dale Swanson preach about relating to women for four hours in a little tiny baptist church in Bremerton which took me forever to find. Listening to him was most interesting because most of it was stuff that I have heard from the Acts 29 Network, but with different illustrations. There is to be another such event in August, and I think that I know of some other people who would benefit from it.

Upon my arrival at my father's house, my father and my little brother continued building an additional sling for their trebuchet and took it out to the lawn for testing. They now have two slings: one for golf balls and one for tennis balls. The trebuchet seems to work well. I caught the tennis ball which was hurled by the trebuchet as a result of my first attempt.

After testing the trebuchet, I went inside and prepared to play Age of Empires II with said brother while my mother and other brother returned home. So of course I had to postpone the game a few minutes to unload my mother's car and to make sure that my mother knew that I had noticed her and regarded her presence because no one likes to be ignored.

This reminds me of the only time that I went to a Bible Quiz meet in Cranbrook British Columbia because upon the somewhat late arrival of myself and my teammates, those hosting the meet met us all (~30 quizzers and coaches) and gave us a welcome and told us exactly where to put our stuff, how we could help them to get the meet started quickly, and passed around the please spend money here type gifts from the mayor of the city (that letter has got to be one of the only letter that I have ever received from a politician that doesn't say vote for me).

All of that is to say, if you live with someone whom you love, you may be able to show it by deferring whatever you have been doing to the unloading of his/her vessel or the lightening of his/her load as he/she enters your residence. Similar ideas can be used in other places on people who are not living with you.

FE/EIT

2007-06-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

I passed the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which is also called the Engineer In Training Exam!

I had to take this exam twice. I do not particularly think that I did any better the second time than I did the first time, but during my second examination, I did manage to accurately indicate which module of the exam I was going to take in the afternoon so that my exam key was graded correctly.

Now that I have finished with this exam, I won't have to explain the last paragraph to any employers ever again! Isn't this nice? Praise Jesus!

I am not completely helpless

2007-06-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

I am taking a little break from blogging about spiritual things. I may never cease to be amazed (from time to time) at how much aggravation there is to be had inside of Jesus' church, just among those who are committed to the one mission. I must remember what Pastor Dale Swanson once said, which was to the effect of, "If you knew that tomorrow morning, one of your Christian brothers or sisters was going to be found dead, hanging on a streetlight downtown, you wouldn't care which church you went to. You wouldn't care if they spoke in tongues or not, you wouldn't care if they baptized their babies... you would just be glad to be with a brother who loved Jesus and believed the Bible. I don't think that having the ability to be choosy and seemingly independent means that I should be so. But I am taking a break from that (now where's that seat belt?).

The reason that I can say that I am not completely helpless is:

You guessed it! Yesterday, I sewed my own button onto my own pants with my own needle and my own thread all by myself after I realized that the original thread was failing. I even used thread that matched the pants. My employer's wife informed me that I should have done it her way, and not just the way that I was instructed to do it by the internet, but it seems to be working.

Civil Engineering

2007-06-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

I have been working as a civil engineer for more than a year now and I have decided to share with you some of the things that I have learned during that time.

Always use some sort of interface between your body and a manhole cover when moving the manhole cover. I am sure that you all remember reading about how I got my finger stuck directly beneath a manhole cover.
When topographical maps created from data gathered by your company's survey team conflicts with the opinion of a property owner who says "your survey doesn't show how the land really is," believe the survey. One property owner entered the office of my company because he claimed that my design assumed that water would flow uphill. He dragged myself and my boss out to his property where he had to apologize for his ignorance which he had forced upon us in arrogance. He brought us flowers later that day. Job 38:2
Sometimes people invent problems. Like Professor Hill in The Music Man musical, people call engineers to tell them things like, "Oh we've got trouble, yes, we're in terrible, terrible trouble. We've got trouble and that starts with T and stands for Tank. The tank you designed is full of water! I visited the site along with a county inspector and a county engineer who immediately determined with me that the tank would begin to drain immediately following the installation of a tank outlet (which was included in my design). My boss's wife said that it was a good thing that they sent pokerface (that's me) for the site visit because my boss would have died laughing if he had been there.
Don't change your analysis just to please a client. I recently analyzed an existing detention system to determine whether or not it would be sufficient to mitigate the increased runoff that would be expected to flow from a newly planned development. I determined that one part of that system needed to be expanded. Because this expansion would cost money, I had multiple people calling me and telling me that I was wrong and that I had missed something and that this would have to be discussed with my boss and so on. Just last week, the most persistent of those people admitted that he wrong and all but apologized for questioning my work.
When a man and a woman disagree regarding the location of a property corner, the woman is right. I don't know how this works and it has never been shown to me, but my boss tells me that women remember these things best.
Never back the company truck off of the stabilized construction entrance.

Spiritual blogging (unmarried this weekend?)

2007-05-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

I just blogged about more spiritual things (just what you all have always wanted to read).

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2007/05/being-single-on-saturdays.html

Bishop Jefro

2007-05-19T18:20:00.000-07:00

I will be blogging about worship pastor Patso again soon because I wound up at his house again last night, even though he didn't invite me to his house and I did not plan to visit his house.

I can't seem to remember exactly how I did it, but on Sunday evening, I talked bishop Jefro into allowing me to invite myself over to his house anytime that I wanted to. On Wednesday, I tried to invite myself over to his house, and we decided that I could visit his house on Friday evening.

So on Friday, I climbed aboard the Illuminate 2 and traveled along the same road that my dad lived on years ago to visit bishop Jefro. I was five minutes early so I decided to sit in my car on the side of the road, near the outside edge of a bend in the road and wondered whether or not any cars would fly off of the road into the Illuminate 2. I decided that I should stop wondering about that.

At the appointed time, I was received into bishop Jefro's home and the television was turned off and bishop Jefro and his wife began to tell me all about their cat and their local library and how repulsive bishop Jefro used to be to his wife before they were married and they fed me an orange and a sweet potato and brown sugar and butter substitute. Then I watched them feed their son and prepare their son for bed because their son is not yet one year old and needs help with these things. Oh, they told me about their cat too.

I was asked about how I got to Seaside Church from Pullman, and they didn't want to hear about how I got into my little car and drove, so I had to tell them which church I used in Pullman and which house I lived in and which website I used to learn about Seaside Church and what I didn't like about the other churches that I tried in the area. I didn't mention Dale Swanson to both of them, but I have realized that he is probably the person who prepared me most for typical Acts 29 events like the one I had last night at worship pastor Patso's house.

In as much as most of the women who attend Seaside Church had gone away to learn about sabbathing, but bishop Jefro's wife was unable to do that for various reasons, bishop Jefro then decided to take me to worship pastor Patso's house to meet with men who were exploiting the absence of their wives in various ways.

Worship pastor Patso part 1

2007-05-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

It is kind of funny that the people with the authority and the responsibility at the church that I attend are the three people with the comical nicknames: Lead Pastor Swanny, Bishop Jefro, and worship pastor Patso. Worship pastor Patso canceled a meeting tonight and told me to spend the extra time blogging and reminded me that he hadn't read any blogs about himself recently. He must have recently read the proverb that says, "let another praise you and not your own mouth" recently, because he had the wisdom to avoid blogging about himself. So here we go.

Here is a picture of worship pastor Patso sitting to the left of "Real Deal" Mark Keel. "Real Deal" Mark Keel was sitting directly between worship pastor Patso's little green car and the camera that took this picture during the time that this picture was being taken.

Worship pastor Patso does his ministry in an unusual way. I have observed that most worship pastors get things done by doing the things that need to be done all by themselves because that is one of the ways to be sure that things get done (see the end of my blog called What I did last night). One of the responsibilities of worship pastor Patso is seeing that the congregation at Seaside Church is led in worshiping Jesus with songs on Sunday mornings, but instead of doing this himself, worship pastor Patso has been able to find musicians whom he has directed to perform this task and the tasks related to it so that he can perform more pastoral tasks like premarital counseling and less deaconatorial tasks like tuning his own guitar.

I have been imagining in my own mind that you who have read the last paragraph are thinking to yourselves, "What good is a worship pastor who can't lead worship music," so I guess that I should say that worship pastor Patso used to lead most of the worship music at Seaside Church and still does lead worship music from time to time when the other musicians are otherwise engaged.

Not too long after I sent my resume to the elders of Seaside Church in an electronic message, the subject line of which read, Put me to work. I was assigned to the Audio/video (mostly audio) team which is also under worship pastor Patso. At the time, Seaside Church was running only one service and I was expected to arrive at the facility two hours ahead of said service. My first remark to worship pastor Patso was something like, "What in the world are we going to do for two whole hours?" and worship pastor Patso told me that he thought that I had chosen a strange way to begin a ministry with someone. I should probably not begin any dates that way because it might be the beginning of my ministry to my wife, and that would be a strange way to start.

My dear sister's visit part 2

2007-05-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

Jocelyn and Brian and I finished off that day by eating birthday cake and watching an old movie called Ivanhoe. Well, it is only as old as I am. Oh, we also squeezed in some prayer for the problems of those other people. Then Jocelyn and Brian did some of something that would generally be called roughhousing. It is convenient that no one was living in the apartment that is directly below the apartment in which I live while they were doing that. Oh well, I guess that that is what being married is for. At least I got birthday cake.

Jocelyn and Brian had to sleep in a while after their roughhousing, so I left for church without them, but they arrived on time and met most of my acquaintances there. They had a nice time talking to the church planter and listening to the sermon, which was a recording regarding the minor book of prophecy called Hosea.

We only stayed for one service so that we could leave and eat French Fries at Fritz Fry House, but it was closed, so we took pictures outside of it.

There is a fountain outside of Fritz Fry House.

This is a picture of me and of my dear sister. Brian took this picture, but perhaps he would not have if he had been able to tell what was going on. Imagine that you're trying to use a strange new camera to take a picture of your wife, you push a button, and all of a sudden, you see this image of another man kissing her which is displayed in your viewfinder and you can't make it go away. Doesn't that sound pleasant?

This is a picture of Brian and my dear sister. Just a reminder: Brian is that man to who my dear sister is married. I took this picture. Pictures similar to this picture are available from the blog of my dear sister and the man to whom she is married.

I have included these two pictures to illustrate the difference between the relationship that I have with my dear sister and the relationship that Brian has with my dear sister.

I have included these two pictures for another reason too. To point out that I can take better pictures than Brian can (You've got to admit that the picture that I took is better than the picture that he took)!

Since Fritz Fry house was closed (probably because the owner was in church), we went home and ate pancakes and such and listened to music and Brian left and forgot his shirt and Jocelyn left and forgot some stuff in my shower.

Maybe I'll remember something else about this later.

My dear sister's visit part 1

2007-05-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

Because of the twenty fifth anniversary of my birthday and because my dear sister and that man to whom she is married will soon travel far away for a long time, she recently came to visit me for nearly a day with that man to whom she is married.

These people brought me birthday cake and ice cream and fruit juice and carrots and cookies and other nice things.

We started off our visit by going for a little walk to the beach where I briefly floated my Frisbee disk in Dyes Inlet. We walked to an abandoned restaurant called the Sandpiper which once ripped off my parents during one of their premarital dates. They were gracious because they wanted to make room for the vengeance of God and they later saw it burning up. It has since been rebuilt, but does not seem to be having much success right now. Perhaps it has been cursed by God. We had our picture taken while we were sitting in front of it. We then had a great time talking about the problems of other people that we know (further evidence that problems are likely to be noticed by everyone except their possessors).

After we arrived back at my home, my dear sister voluntarily complimented the cleanliness of my bathroom (brag, brag), particularly the floor and the toilet!

We went to visit my community group leader's/neighbor's new baby who had been born the day before. The picture of him that was transmitted to me directly following his birth made his head look larger than it actually was.

So there's part 1. Compare it to Brian's version here.

Blogging Elsewhere

2007-04-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, I blogged again on my church's blog. This time I blogged about killing in the old testament.

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2007/04/thou-shalt-kill.html

Impending Blessings or Impending Judgement

2007-04-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

After I sat through the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam on Saturday, I found that I was nearer to Monroe where I used to live than usual, so I decided to travel there and attend the Quinceañera of the adopted daughter of the pastor of the church in Monroe that I attended when I lived in Monroe. It was the second birthday party of a teenage woman that I can remember ever attending.

As everyone else (or seemingly so) was busy dancing, I was standing and sipping my punch and talking to the father of a high schooler about the advantages of comedy colleges for science majors. My friend of a number of years entered and I congratulated her because of her recent marriage engagement:

Me: lady'sname! Congratulations upon your impending marriage!

Lady: Thank you Joshua! But you make it sound like such a bad thing. I think that you have just associated my upcoming wedding with doom, gloom, and destruction.

Me: I did wonder if that use of 'impending' was appropriate--

Lady: No, I don't think that it is.

Me: --So I looked it up in an on-line dictionary to find out and the only example in the first definition was 'impending marriage!'

Another source in the on-line dictionary indicates that impending is a good word to use for describing the day of God's judgment because it is impending just like 2 Peter 3 says. The sweet thing about the impending day of the judgment of God is that many people have actually had the judgment that was to be applied to them diverted.

Pancakes

2007-04-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

I built the first pancake that I can remember ever building today. I built it because Luke and I decided that Luke should visit me for breakfast this morning. I told him that I could provide him with some protein in the form of chicken noodle soup (kind of like I built with my stir fry on Tuesday night), but he told me that he doesn't like to eat chicken noodle soup for breakfast and that pancakes are much more acceptable. I realized that his visit was an opportunity for me to learn to build some food that I am not supposed to eat and yet not waste it. Both of these pancakes turned out well so that Luke was able to eat them. Even though I forgot to buy margarine and syrup last night when I was purchasing the pancake mix, the pancakes were edible because of the jam that I found in my cupboard since then. Maybe someday I will bother to build pancakes without a pre-packaged mix. In the meantime, I am debating whether or not it is worth my time and money to learn to build protein-laden food even when there is no one to eat it (thus wasting the cost of the food and the nutritional value of the food, but gaining knowledge for myself). What do you think? I will probably make that decision after my engineering exam.

My first Acts 29 Resurrection Sunday

2007-04-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

The alcohol that I consumed on Sunday was located at Mike's house and had been built previously (i.e. prior to being consumed by myself) by the lead pastor of Seaside Church. I had never had such an easy time with getting a beer (this one was an ale) down before then.

Mike had just finished leading one of the three (or so) bands at Seaside Church during the Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday services and pushed me and a bunch of people through a fair amount of work that we all wanted to do. I didn't find myself thinking about anything explicitly ultra-spiritual except for the rebellious attitude that rises to my head so that I realize its presence every time that I am told to do something that I wasn't about to do regardless of the opinions of others. When this happens I can't very well say to myself, I'll do it because I want to, not because you told me to.

Oops. That last paragraph probably made you think that Mike wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do anyway, but that is not the case. I may blog about this later.

The good part of the whole thing is that after all of the bullets had been bitten, the result was appreciated a lot and I got a better idea of what the sound system can do after working with it for four days straight. One church member commented that some of the music was the best music that she had ever heard in church or elsewhere, and a number of others indicated that the services were spiritually beneficial to them!

Let me also point out that he Good Friday service did not include commentary. Just about every other Good Friday service that I have ever attended (e.g. the ones at other churches) included quite a number of little interpretive readings that were placed in the program between songs and scripture readings and I always thought that they were stupid because many of them seemed quite distracting and a number of them seemed unbiblical. The Good Friday service at Seaside Church went like this:

Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song

NewsFox (not Fox News)

2007-04-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

I consumed alcohol again on Sunday and I intend to continue my habit of blogging about each instance of my own alcohol consumption, but Bishop Jefro wanted me to point out a particular plug in to you: NewsFox. NewsFox is a plug in for Mozilla Firefox which will run through a list of feeds that a user provides and reports back to said user, indicating which feeds have been updated since the previous run through of said list. If there has been no previous run through (e.g. as at the first time that this plug in is run on a particular system), all available content is marked as unread.

The advantage to the whole thing is that users don't ever have to spend whole minutes at a time by visiting their favorite blogs, only to find that they have not been updated.

Oh, do you know how sometimes a blog posting that was posted last night does not appear at the top of the blog page so that you may be ignorant of its existence for as long as the entirety of eternity future? This little plug in can find those too.

Once again, at least half of the elders at Seaside Church recommend NewsFox because it will allow you to become a better steward(ess) of the time that has been given to you while you keep up with all of the activities of your fellow missionaries and with those of those other people on the mission field.

CFIs & XDLs

2007-04-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

I stayed home from work yesterday because I needed to study for the FE or the EIT (Fundamentals of Engineering exam or Engineer In Training exam). I probably haven't mentioned it in a while, but for your benefit (or your boredom) I can be redundant: I am a civil engineer who has yet to take the first real step toward becoming a professional. I used a lot of the time during which I was awake yesterday by reading my transportation engineering book and doing example problems. I am quite happy about the understanding that came to me regarding particular topics that I had not managed to understand as a result of my study of them for the first time or the second time or the third time. I started off with vehicle performance and moved onto vertical curves and sort of skipped over horizontal curves and read about pavement design, levels of service, cues, etc.

Today, while my boss was looking at some of my work (because he is a professional engineer with a stamp and I am not so that I have not), I opened a civil engineering magazine and read an article about reducing congestion at intersections (yes, the kind related to transportation engineering). This article had been written all about a particular engineering solution called a continuous flow intersection. When I first saw the phrase, I thought that the article must have been written about roundabouts (you know, those approximately horizontal rings of pavement onto which and off of which vehicles turn right, but never left). I was wrong.

The CFI (which has also been called a crossover displaced left-turn intersection) is something that I wish that I had invented, and I should have thought of it sometime, but I was always too lazy to concentrate on solving such a problem because I assumed that if such a solution existed, the Washington State Department of Transportation would have thought of it long ago. It turns out that I would not have been the first to imagine such a solution since the CFI was conceived a good twenty years ago, but coming up with a similar idea independently would have been nice.

I suppose that I should let you know what the idea is: http://www.abmb.com/cfi.html

I have read that this solution has only been built at about fifty intersections in the world and that most of those are in Mexico. Take a look at the animations at the above URL and tell me if you don't think that a couple of the traffic lights shouldn't be replaced with yield signs. Perhaps someone should invent a conditional yield signal.

Phenylketonuria

2007-03-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Don't scroll down to look for a picture of a smashed can in this blog posting because it isn't there. I didn't smash this can because I didn't open it and everyone knows that difficult it is to smash a sealed can. The reason that I did not open it for easy access to its contents is that my interest in its contents was not sufficient because I am a Phenylketonuric. I took this picture of this can so that I could point out to you that my name has been written on it. See, right there above the website address: Phenylketonuric which had may as well be my name because there are only fifty or so of us in the state and fifty of anything is fewer people than the number of people who are named Joshua and who live in this state. So now I am likely to have people calling me by this name. Oh well, can't say I didn't ask for it (but I didn't say please).

I took this picture while lying down on the Seaside Church parking lot and pointing the camera to the west directly after the second service.

Oh, you probably want to know what a phenylketonuric is. A pheylketonuric is a person who is allergic to Phenylalanine. Phenylalanine is an amino acid. Amino acids are the building of protein. Since I am such phenylketonuric, I avoid all protein except that which has been processed so that the said amino acid has been removed. This often appears odd to people who are ignorant of the reasoning behind it. Fortunately, I have nearly always had a dear sister in the same condition to help me out.

My dear sister has told me that one of the good parts (I don't think that she said best) parts of her honeymoon was not having to pack any food or even think about what she was going to eat because her new husband knew exactly what she would want to eat. This brings me to the the most valuable part of this posting: instructions for people whose VIPs have complicated diets:

Find out what the name of the condition is and then research it yourself. It will show that you have been paying attention to the lady and that you really can't think of anything better to think about than what is good for the person to whom the name of that condition applies.
Don't say "Poor you, I could never live like that!"
Don't ask the same questions about it over and over again.
Don't say how sorry you are to not have any food appropriate for your VIP and then forget the next time and talk on and on about how sorry you are yet again.
Don't make a point of mentioning it to all of your friends when you are telling them about your new VIP. This will only force them to answer the same questions over and over again while listening to the same insensitive comments.
Don't be like a relative of mine and say "that vegetarian pizza looks like dog food."

Can I hear an "Amen" sister?

MCG Sequim

2007-03-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

I did some things that were fun for me to do on Sunday. I got to church on time and all that, but during the second service, I got to be part of the congregation and read the words which were displayed on the screen and thought about them and sang them, which I hadn't done in months. I was able to do this because one of my volunteers told me that he was ready to take the new sound mixing board and so I let him, and I only had to remind him of a couple of things. I am happy about this not only because it helps the spiritual component of my life and thus improves the whole thing, but also because it means that eventually, I'll be able to go and do other things like visit Coram Deo Church where I am told that the audio/visual team needs help and like visit Alathia Community Church in Issaquah where some friends of mine have helped to build another Acts 29 church.

Pastor Chris preached from the end of Philippians 2 about how Timothy had a genuine interest in the wellfair of the church and how conern for Seaside Church consumes every one of his waking minutes and many of his non-waking minutes. He painted a bleak picture and also said that it was hoped that all of the men in the church would become qualified for the responsibilities (of which there was quite a list, even applied to each attender). Maybe when the church body grows some more there will have to be a teaching pastor and a shepherding pastor or something like that.

I had the Seaside Church executive assistant over for dinner which was too short because of the Sequim MCG.

I hurried over to my community group leader's house to borrow a book for the MCG and rushed over to the lead pastors house only to be later than I was supposed to be, but earlier than Luke and Jamie (Jamie is pregnant, so they can't really be late).

I drove with Luke and Jamie. As we drove up to the appropriate exit from highway 101, we looked up the hill to the south and saw a cute little development. It made me think of a song that I started to sing, which you can listen to by clicking here. Then we drove into that development and began the MCG.

Just in case you didn't read the candy party memo, I guess that I had better state here that MCG means Missional Community Group.

I was kind of excited about this MCG because I was told that Adam would be attending. Adam lived in a house called The Embassy before I did. He seems to have been a part of the ultra smart, ultra gracious group Christians that lived there before I did. The people in this group care deeply about thinking God's thoughts after Him and not much about coming up with their own new philosophies or perspectives. This may be why he is interested in helping to build a new Acts 29 church. Oh, that reminds me: The new church in Sequim is to be an Acts 29 church (as opposed to an Acts 30 church) because Acts 29 is a really long chapter and we don't know when it is going to end.

Maybe sometime I will blog about the content of the meeting and the trip home.

Chris S (lead pastor)

2007-03-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

Chris S is the lead pastor of Seaside Church and he does use an IBM compatible computer. Yay. I could say a bunch of little things like this, but I guess that I said that I would be typing about the conversations that I have had with the men at Seaside Church.

Chris S got around to talking to me for the first time directly before he began to preach about money from Galatians chapter 6. He asked me if I had met anybody yet. I pointed out a number of men whom I had met in the previous few minutes and then added, "who knows, maybe I'll be allowed to meet a woman in a week or two." He responded by saying something like, "just so long as you have a goal." I guess that that conversation was kind of about something.

Then there was the time that I finally showed up on two Sundays in a row (or a column or a diagonal or a rank or a file) and pointed that out. I finally had to become aggressive at a certain point because I didn't want to have the same sort of role at Seaside Church as I had at the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman in Pullman Washington during my college years (i.e. being a do nothing for a couple years and then being assigned to doing something that I wasn't any good at after that) so I sent him and the other elder my customized resume with a customized cover letter (is there any other kind of cover letter for a resume?) in an electronic message. The subject line of the electronic message read, "put me to work." The execution of this idea worked even better than a really really well engineered and manufactured product delivered in a properly padded parcel. I recommend this course of action to everyone, although I guess that it may not actually work at a great big large church like Mars Hill Church in Seattle, but if you're just sitting around waiting for someone to ask you to do just what you've always wanted to do in a church, stop waiting and point yourself out to the leadership.

The problem with conversations that are actually about something is that I cant' always repeat them, so I'll just tell you what these conversations were about. I have actually conversed with Chris S about designated giving, the practice of respect for elders, women, sin, expiation, and I am in the middle of an electronic discussion with him about whether or not husbands are supposed to "help" (that word is important) their wives (clearly husbands are to love their wives, and this can look like help, but is it really?)

Average Birthday

2007-03-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

I realize that all of you who have VIPs are swamped because of anniversaries and birthdays and trying to be in two places at once during major holidays and other such things, but since I have no VIP, I have a tendency to think of things for other people to do.

One such thing is the average birthday spreadsheet which I built around the time of a house meeting of the Embassy in Pullman because there were eight of us and the child we were sponsoring wanted to know how old his sponsor was.

I very quickly realized that my creation could be used for romantic purposes, i.e. some sharp guy could input his birthday and that of his VIP and receive the output and use it as excuse for some sort of celebration with said VIP.

It works like this: The computer looks at the current date and then looks at the first input date and determines the number of days between them. It does this same thing for the second input date. These two numbers are added together and divided by the number of input dates (which must be specified by the user). This number of days is subtracted from the current date and the resultant date is the average birthday.

Just what you always wanted, right?

Download the file by clicking here.

Click

2007-03-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

Some time has past since I realized that I have had conversations with a lot of men at Seaside Church. The conversations about which I am typing were conversations that were actually about something. I have noticed that when I go to a church or a college group or something like that, I generally wind up talking to one or two people the whole time and determining that everyone else is comparatively boring (which is probably not really the way that they are), but that hasn't happened to me at Seaside Church. I haven't exactly determined why this is, but it might have something to do with being assigned to a leader for ministry and spiritual growth with whom I do not naturally get along so that I often have to force myself into self restraint for the purpose of godly behavior. This excludes rebellion.

So I am going to make a list of these people and maybe I'll accidentally leave some out.

Chris S (lead pastor)
Chris C (my former community group leader)
Eric (my community group leader)
Mark (Real Deal with a truck that can outrun my body)
Steve
Zach
Russ (killer good drummer)
Mike (been hiding that voice for much to long)
Jeremy (executive assistant)
Jeff (bishop)
Pat (worship pastor)
JD
Josh G. (church planter)
Luke (teaching finance class)
Luke
Matt
Alan

Perhaps I'll go through this list and write about the conversations that I have had with people when I run out of things to blog about.

I'm so brilliant that it hurts to look at me

2007-03-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

My friend Brandon about whom I have written before got himself a blog from blogger, apart from that thing called Myspace. He told me on Saturday that blogs are just for the documentation of one's own brilliance. Unfortunately for him, his blog doesn't really document his own brilliance. On the bright side, it does document my own brilliance! So let me point it out to you. After all, Proverbs 27:2 does say, "Let another praise you" and that is just what I am doing.

http://hisblogisanawesomeblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/intro-blog.html

Acts 29 or 30?

2007-03-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

I went to my first all church prayer meeting at Seaside Church on Wednesday and learned that the plan is to start a new church in Sequim or Port Angeles. I learned that Seaside Church is a place of rest for me and other people, and that if we deserve a rest, other people do too. The text was from Joshua chapter 1. Oh yes, and the Hood Canal was considered analogous to the Jordan River and all of us at Seaside Church were considered analogous to the tribes to whom God gave land on the east side of the Jordan River. This church is to be planted out of Seaside Church, so I wonder if this church will be considered an Acts 29 church or an Acts 30 church. Oh well, I am looking forward to it because I have never before been part of a church plant that has not been planted out of discontent, and neither has my father. I guess that I don't know that I will be a big part of this church plant, since my ministry at Seaside Church doesn't seem to be going away, but it is still kind of fun to think about.

My first Acts 29 retreat for men 2

2007-03-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning the first thing I said was, "That depends on how fast you eat," or something like that because someone in the room in which I slept was asking someone else, "how long does breakfast last."

I was able to find food to eat for breakfast and to eat it, but not in time to finish building a power point presentation for the morning worship song set and set up the projector, so all of the attendees has to wait while the computer was rebooted. The computer had an apple on the front of it and it has a touch pad mouse that is not terribly sensative and it seemed to slow me down. After some time and "help" from people who volunteered their advice, we finally made it work. The first teaching time was from Romans chapter six about four things:

Know
Consider yourself (i.e. apply knowledge to yourself)
Turn from
Turn toward(s)

If you didn't go, don't expect to understand this, I have placed it here as a reminder to people who attended, but may have forgotten already. This teaching was followed by a meditation time (considering the power and provision of God (which are known) with respect to ourselves and how we can turn from them and toward obedience to Jesus) which was of appropriate length. This was followed by a sharing time about the meditation time and the determinations made during it. This time was too short because of the lunch thereafter.

During the afternoon I played frisbee golf and ultimate frisbee! I lost both games, but I don't remember previously having the pleasure of playing both of those games on the same day. I guess I learned that Frisbee is bigger in Portland than on the Kitsap Peninsula, but still not as big as it is in Pullman. I think this because I had to play frisbee golf with men from Red Sea Church, and only one other person from Seaside Church played ultimate frisbee with us.

I got my act together on the power point presentation for the evening worship song set so that there was no significant delay at the front end. The last teaching was about a number of things, some of which have been included below:

Knowing that you are a warrior
Knowing your enemies: The world, the flesh, the Devil
Knowing your weapons
Knowing your brothers

This was followed by another sharing time in groups made up of whole churches. Seaside Church got done before Red Sea Church got done. I learned some interesting things there which I won't share with you because you may not have been there. If you were there, you probably remember them. If you want to find out about these things, show up next year.

Ryan found another way back to Bremerton to hang out with his parents for a bit. Pat rode back with me on Sunday morning and decided (temporarily) that my driving had improved markedly. We entered the Seaside Church building and set up for the first service, and we did it all apart from our lead pastor (gotta love compitent and qualified elders and elder candidates and church planters).

Can Smashing (or my first Acts 29 retreat for men 1)

2007-02-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

These are pictures of a can that I smashed a few minutes ago inside of my own home. I took a picture of this can and then I smashed it and then I took another picture of it so that I would have pictures with which to illustrate this blog entry.

I went to Black Lake Bible Camp last weekend and while I was there, I lost four games of chess to Alex from Red Sea Church in Portland Oregon. I did not win any games of chess, but for every game of chess that I lost, I smashed a soda can with my two hands. The integrity of the can failed due to excessive compression. I have no doubt that some people think that I did so out of frustration, kind of like a particular young lady must have assumed when she saw me smash such a can directly after she told me that no, I was not to be allowed to ask her parents if I was to be allowed to ask her if I could go out with her. In actuality, I just smash these cans because I can (what a pun!). I figured out that I could do it while I was living at the Embassy.

Fortunately, these four chess games and smashed cans were not the high points of my weekend.

The drive from my parents house in Monroe which I had been visiting because of a stormwater product seminar and the birthday of my younger brother was exceptionally lengthy (with respect to time, not distance) because of the high traffic load with which interstate five was burdened. The unpleasantness of the excessive duration was offset by the pleasantness of the company of Ryan from Mars Hill Church in Seattle who used to be the worship leader (as opposed to worship pastor) at Seaside Church in Bremerton. I had a nice time conversing with him about Jesus, church, music, simple theology, and of course, traffic. I managed to input bad data to my computer mapping program, so we were ten blocks off of our target at the end, but Ryan was wise and asked directions and got us there before the electrical system of the Illuminate 2 became overloaded by the frequency modulator transmitter, the frequency modulator receiver, the electrical inverter, the audio amplifier, the cabin and forward lights and the engine's demand for spark while we were driving around slowly and looking for the camp site. We did arrive before 1900 when I was told that the gate would be locked and a nearsighted guard would be posted with a shotgun.

After I parked the Illuminate 2, I unloaded and joined the music worship team (provided by Seaside Church) in the chapel area and soon found that there was lots of power available and every reason to use it. The music sounded good, and I got to use a graphic equalizer that had controls for even more than three bands! Dinner was good, but the chess games were not so fun. At least I didn't throw my chess pieces all over the room.

Pithy terseness

2007-02-18T20:31:00.000-08:00

During the meeting of my community group on Tuesday, the topic of God's specific will came up and I managed to get a word in edgewise which met with some resistance. I didn't back down and transmitted an aggressive little electronic message to the group about it the next day.

It sort of sums up a bit of what I learned from the Discovering God book by Henry Blackaby, but the references were pointed out to me by David Andrews who was the "leader" of the house at which I once lived in Pullman. These references were pointed out to him by someone else, but I pulled them out of the house meeting documents that I had built so that I could include them in the electronic message about which I am typing.

I have received so much good feedback about this electronic message that I have decided to include its text below:

Subject: Getting started on God's will

God's will for your life is God's will applied to your life.

1 Thess 4:1-12
Romans 12:2
Ephesians 5:17
1 Thess 5:16-18

I am Joshua

More Alcohol

2007-02-06T12:53:00.000-08:00

On Monday night the Seaside Church elder candidate who is my community group leader picked me up in the Illuminate 3 and drove me to the Bremerton waterfront to a place called Frtiz European Fryhouse where I consumed some beer with many other men of said local church body. I blogged about that previous time upon which I consumed alcohol with my community group leader, so he told me that I needed to do it again this time. So here you go Eric:

Fritz European Fryhouse is owned by Andy who also attends Seaside Church. We have all been told that the group won't be back unless Andy's tithe check increases in magnitude as a result of these monthly Monday night meetings. I really don't think that beer is my thing, but I ordered the third of my life and got it down anyway. I think that soda would have been more fun.

The spiritual discipline of the month was evangelism. The leader indicated that a fascinating question to ask people would be, "If you knew that I was a Christian, which hyporisies could you point out as a result of your observations of the way that I live my life?" or something like that.

I'm leaving the comment field here open for all you non-Christian people who know me to answer that question. If you need to say any bad words, perhaps you should just say them to my face or send me an electronic message.

Superbowl Sunday

2007-02-05T17:48:00.000-08:00

The Seaside Church building seemed quite empty to me yesterday, but two services were held in it on that day anyway. I became kind of excited because of the talk about another church being planted out of Seaside Church! No one seems to know where this church is to be planted or who the leader will be, but I have been told that we don't want to just sit around and make Seaside Church look shiny.

I spent yesterday afternoon sleeping and then walking to my community group leader's house and giving all of the parents there a hard time about how I got to take a nap and they didn't. I was probably less than gracious, but I did offer to take care of the three sons of a married couple in their own home (i.e. married to each other) so that they could take a nice nap in my apartment. The husband said that that seemed to be too good to be true. I'll see if he takes me up on it. Observing all the little kids there was at least as fun as watching the super bowl, a good third of which I missed (o dear).

Oh, on the way home from the Seaside Church building I used my debit card for the second time ever. I bought fuel this time. I didn't even have to type in my personal information number. That just makes me feel ultra-secure. I tried it last week, but at that time I seemed to be incapable of interpreting the instructional illustration correctly, so I inserted the card incorrectly and could not make the card reader function. This reminds me of the Luther movie, There is but one proper interpretation of Scripture, and of my favorite way to twist that saying: There is but one proper interpretation of the cookbook: That which your mother has established.

Tonight I'm off to drink beer at spiritual disciplines class with the elders of the church. Maybe my parents are right to be worried about Mars Hill Church and the Acts 29 Network, but I am not worried yet.

Funny comments

2007-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

During the meeting time of the community group that I attend, I received a request to include my comments in the main part of my blog so that they can be seen by all of my visitors who don't want to press their mouse buttons just to see them. I received this request from my community group leader who likes to post his comments twice. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to do that. If you know about this, please comment and I will make sure that everyone sees it (but only if you really do know and communicate it well).

So one day while I was attending that very same community group, a man who was sitting to my right said of his fiance who was present, "I never did any dating before I met her." To which I responded, "Really? I didn't do any dating before I met her either!" What a coincidence.

Addition: So then the hostess tried to clean up my mess by asking, "Joshua, have you done any dating since you met his fiance?" I had to respond with something like, "Well no, but that is beside the point."

Seaside Church building

2007-01-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

I had a killer good time at the Seaside Church Building yesterday. There were probably a few reasons for this. I'll try to guess what they were:

Being in less sin than I was in the week before
The ("symbolic") baptism during the second service
The wedding during the second service
Getting a new volunteer for the ministry team that I lead (50% increase!)
Sunshine
The irony of listening to the first sermon of my community group leader who used to not want to sit through sermons
Patting myself on the back for remembering to change my cellular telephone ringer mode to vibrate so that it didn't ring loudly when the worship pastor called it during the prayer of the lead pastor to give me instructions regarding the unrehearsed baptism ceremony
Two FULL services (if we keep this up, we'll have to go to three services, or plant another church or something)!

There you go: a few (which is eight (1 Peter 3:20 (NKJV))).

Distinguishing one big word from several others

2007-01-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

A couple nights ago, I decided to lay in bed and listen to the eleventh sermon in the Mars Hill Church Christ on the Cross/Atonement series. This sermon is about expiation, which is what Jesus can do so that sins are exported and souls are cleansed, so that Christians don't have to walk around with all the effects of their forgiven sin inside of them. Early in the next morning, I added another verse to the stack that Mark Driscoll had presented and came up with a more clear (for me) way of understanding one component of how expiation works alongside propitiation and redemption.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

This is redemption.

James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

This is expiation! I am sure that expiation can also be related to many other verses, some of which were mentioned in the aforementioned sermon. Maybe I should make a list.

Oh well, I decided to listen to that sermon and even to bring that up here because God forced me to be rid of some sin this week.

Further evidence of my poor driving skills

2007-01-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

I got my company truck stuck on Wednesday. I was backing up to leave and I drove the truck right off of the stabilized construction entrance so that all four wheels of this dinky little two wheel drive pickup sank into the mud. My only excuse is that I later determined that the soil sample that I took from the site showed that the soil is worthless as far as drainage is concerned. The great thing about construction sites is that they have big machines that can pull really hard and that rarely slip so that my company truck didn't have to be stuck very long (just long enough for me to take these pictures for you).

illuminate_commander@hotmail.com

2007-01-14T17:29:00.000-08:00

I thought that you might like to look at some pictures of the Illuminate. When I saw Star Trek III for the first time, I decided that I needed to name my car. I was going to call it a roadster, but then I found out that roadsters have open cockpits and bench seats. The final (corny) idea was to call it the L.L. (Lord's Limousine) Illuminate, but that first part sounded corny and didn't really go well as an electronic message address (which still works, by the way), so I haven't mentioned it in a long time.

Here is a picture of the Illuminate 1 after it got smashed.

The Illuminate 1 is a 1998 Ford Taurus that I purchased for $10,300 out the door in September of 2000. I hadn't always been expecting to get such a nice first car. One afternoon, my dad told me that I needed to and visit my grandfather who lived very near my home. I asked my dad if he was sure because, "I already did some work for him today and he could have talked to me then." My dad told me that he was sure, so I walked over and my grandfather offered me $5000, promising to provide it as soon as I knew which car I wanted.

I wrecked it in my first at-fault accident as I was determining a route away from Mars Hill Church in Seattle on June 26th of the year 2005. I had taken an acquaintance to hear Mark Driscoll preach from Genesis 38 about how God is able to save even those people who are so bad that they themselves know that they are bad and deserve His judgment. Unfortunately, my acquaintance was not such a person. After the service, I failed to yield the right of way and was smashed there on the starboard side, just forward of the door.

So used the Illuminate 1 during all of Junior College and for most of my time at the university. It depreciated at only ~10% and I received $4700 from the insurance company.

Here is a picture of the Illuminate 2 which I purchased in December of 2005 because I knew that I would be wanting to go to job interviews and perhaps dating/courting (whatever you want to call it) and I did not want to be late like some of the rides that I had had during the previous five months without the Illuminate 1. I decided to go without the car for those five months because I didn't really think that I needed it and I thought that I could save money. Walking and later biking the three miles to work and back every day that summer was good, and I really didn't need a car at school, since I lived so close to campus. Also, I had recently determined that I probably wouldn't have a girlfriend (what I would now call a VIP) anytime near that time.

In as much as imitation is said to be good flattery, I am including a picture of my community group leader's car, which he calls the "Turbo Taurus (Illuminate 3)."

Today

2007-01-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

Since late in the afternoon of Friday, 5th (fifth) day of this January, I have been inspired (or inaudibly commanded) by God to set myself up to be hospitable for reasons that I have made up because of my ignorance of the real reason. Somehow or other, on Friday, I came up with this great idea: I can easily set my self up to provide protein to my guests. I am a phenyleketonuric. This means that I am allergic to phenylalanine which is an amino acid. I understand that amino acids are building blocks for protein, so I must take care to ensure the exclusion of protein from my diet. Consequently, I am quite ignorant of the proper methodology that is commonly applied to the preparation of protein-laden foods. All of that is to say that when I realized I could add protein to my meals through things as simple as cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and boxes of Macaroni & Cheese, I thought to myself, "Why didn't I think of this earlier? It is so simple!" So I went out and purchased such things. Amazing are the problems that a man can solve if he puts his mind to their solution, but I wasn't even thinking about this problem when the solution came to me!

This morning I woke up sometime a bit before 5:30 and I determined that I was likely to be visited today by at least a couple of particular people, so I rose and began to clean my home. Fortunately, I had already purchase everything that I would need for the stir-fry two days ago when I thought that I was supposed to, and of course the protein food was still remaining.

So I got all set up and went to church and my ministry there went quite well, perhaps better than ever before. I even got around to talking to a person with whom I had not previously managed to converse, but the particular people about whom I was thinking did not show up and I did not think that these people had sufficient information to just show up at my home, so I decided to invite the drummer and his wife to my home and the whole meal (even the protein) went over quite well. The picture below illustrates our activities:

Eating
Chess playing (un-timed)
Chess playing (timed)
Video watching (on computer)

Don't you wish that you had been there?

I wonder if my cooking skills are being built up to the point of actual hospitality or if they are just to be used for the purpose of facilitating fellowship.

I still seem to be having difficulty with blessing my neighbors in any way other than prayer. I don't mind leaving the women alone because they could lead me straight into trouble, but I am sort of bugged by the fact that I can't seem to make any kind of connection with the single man who lives next door. I'll read your suggestions about this if you type them for me.

Really Fast

2007-01-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

If you have ever left my presence and any particular informal setting at the same time, you have probably heard me say, "Drive really fast!" If you're like most people, you made what my mother and dear sister (not the one that is married) call a mental footnote and you thought to yourself, "Joshua must drive like a maniac." If you actually take the trouble to ask me what I mean, I will probably tell you that what I really mean is, "Be sure that you drive faster than I can run," thereby telling you that I think that I can run really fast. The reality is that I do not know that I have ever quite run a six-minute mile (isn't it the four minute mile that lots of people can run?), but I like to think that I can run really fast anyway. Perhaps I should go to some trouble to determine whether or not I can run a five-minute mile (after some training).

But back to the driving. I have recently discovered that I am a poor driver. I had previously been under the false impression that I was a good driver because of some people's praise (those who thought otherwise were ignorant) and because of the fact that I had been in so many collisions that were not my fault. But one night, not too long ago, I found myself sitting on a four-lane road with my left hand (or left foot) turn signal on. Presently, a vehicle approached the front of the Illuminate 2 and stopped ~15 feet off of its nose. I then figured out that I was not in the center lane (because there was no center lane), but in one of the lanes that was supposed to be utilized for travel in the direction that I did not want to go. I moved back to the side of the road corresponding to the direction that I wanted to go (more or less) and turned left a bit further down the road. I continued to drive along to my worship pastor's house, and as I did, I determined that good drivers don't get themselves into situations like the one I just described and that I must not have been a good driver since I got myself into such a situation.

I find these things quite convenient:

My worship pastor has been trying to convince me that I am a poor driver ever since his first trip in the Illuminate 2 which was to the Red Sea Church in Portland.
My worship pastor is a professional driver
My worship pastor has offered to help me improve my driving skills

Let me tell you about how I finally accepted my worship pastor's help: A couple of weeks later, I was at his home again and I was told to make a list of my list of strengths and a list of my weaknesses as a prospective husband. In as much as I began with the strengths list, and in as much as I was having such a good time with it, and in as much as I don't like thinking of my weaknesses as much as I like thinking about my strengths, my strengths list was much longer than my weaknesses list. Even so, bad driving was at the top of my weaknesses list because I remembered at that moment that my mother had also told me that I should learn to drive in such a way that a woman riding with me would begin to think of herself as precious cargo.

Wouldn't you know that at the end of the meeting, my worship pastor informed me that the next meeting time would be spent on discussion regarding the termination of the items on the weakness list and that he would be willing to help me to put an end to my bad driving and that he could have begun to do so during our trip from Portland to Silverdale if I had been willing to listen. So I took, several days to think about it and determined that I would have to accept his help.

I am a bit annoyed because I still don't think of myself as a poor driver, or even a person who can learn anything about driving from my worship pastor, but if I am going to be at all committed to truth, I have to look at the logical conclusion that the facts are pointing to: I am a poor driver.

Also annoying is my tendency to try to explain away all of my problems, which my instructor observes. I can totally see myself moving backwards and becoming an ignoramus regarding my own problems.

Have you ever noticed that the last person to notice his own problems is the person who possesses these same problems? No, I don't mean his wife.

I realized this when I was still a teenager, so obviously, I won't have any problems left after I terminate this last one.

Ignoramus.

End/Beginning of Year Activities

2007-01-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

I have noticed that my most recent blog postings seem to be rather mundane. They probably are not very interesting to people who are not very interested in me. Before this I have managed to type about things that are of some interest even to people who do not know me so that they think to themselves that I might be a bit interesting as well. For some reason I have not recently been able to relate what I have been experiencing to particular philosophies or to truth in general. Well, either that or I am unwilling to type them here for the whole world to read. I hope that this is because I am busy doing what I think that I am supposed to be doing and not because I am becoming hardened by sin so that I can not pay attention to what is going on inside of me anymore. If you think that this is the case, do tell (me, not everyone else--yet)!

On Saturday and Sunday I visited with Brandon and Virgiliana (the lady with the name that I really like) in Duvall at Brandon's parent's house. We talked about some of the things that I have been unwilling to blog about. We talked to Brandon's mother about politics. At least none of them believe that the United States Government blew up the World Trade Center in New York City, New York with pre-installed explosives. On Saturday we went on a little hike in a park in Carnation. We ate food that was bad for us at a place called Small Fries. Then we viewed Snoqualmie falls from the lower viewing area which I did not realize was available. To access this lower viewing area, pedestrians must pass by a building in which are several hydro-electric generators. Some water is diverted from the falls to make these hydro-electric generators do their job. We went shopping and bought food and Brandon built a stir-fry for me. Then Virgiliana realized that she had become ill. We tried to watch the Walk the Line movie about Johnny Cash, but someone had turned the sub woofer up a lot and then lost the remote control for the sound system so that we could not make the movie sound very nice, so decided to not watch the movie after we had tried to make it work for a long time. Then I entered the Illuminate 2 and drove home. Oh yes, we prayed for Virgiliana to cease being ill and for a couple of other things.

On Sunday I did my normal church work. I was glad to see some good progress being made in the training aspect. I was invited to three different parties, so I chose one and had a good time with it. I began to play chess with this one guy and because of his threats, I decided that a draw would be the best ending (that and the fact that I did not think that I could win). That was kind of fun.

On Monday I got to wake up at a decent hour and travel to the home of my mother's parents for a visit with them and with my brother-in-law and with my parents and with all of their children except one. My mother's parents fed us all quite well and gave me a nice shirt. Those of us who are not ladies put together a carport which was made out of metal pipes and a tarp and fasteners. We all had a nice time talking together, but my mother's parents thought that the whole thing was too short, perhaps because in the past, we have come for more days at a time. I left at 3:00 pm in anticipation of another meeting which didn't happen, but everyone else was leaving then and I have plenty to do. I made sure to get lots of sleep on Monday night.

Christmas 3

2006-12-28T19:33:00.000-08:00

Visiting my dear sister's home -- the one that her husband prepared for her to join him in this past summer -- is always pleasant because so many things inside of it are as they should be. It is inspiring!

My dear sister's home has a floor area on the order of 450 square feet, yet she was better able to host her eight Christmas guests on Christmas day than were our nearby relatives who's home has a floor area on the order of 3000 square feet (and greater ceiling height).

Amazing is the cumulative force of all of the correct relationships between the people and things inside of that home. If you have experienced such a thing, you probably know what it is that I have been describing. If not, perhaps you'll know it when you see it.

On Tuesday I did go for a walk with my mother and I did pack up all of my things and I did drive from my parent's home to my own in Silverdale while listening to #2 in the atonement/Christ on the Cross series by pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church. There's nothing like that sermon to make me want to run to Jesus (at least not that I can think of right now). I did arrive home safely.

Maybe next time I'll talk about my driving.

Christmas 2

2006-12-28T19:15:00.000-08:00

On Monday I arose later than I had in a long time and after a while we all went off to Denny's for our Christmas breakfast. There was quite a line, but my dear sister and her husband did most of the waiting for the rest of us. I had a good old time sitting next to one of my dear sisters and talking on and on and enjoying the fact that we both have the same diet and didn't have to listen to people talking on and on about how terrible it must be to be as oppressed as I am and so on. The only problem with the whole meal that I can think of was how rude and obnoxious I was to my dad who was trying to make sure that I got something to eat.

But I did get something to eat and I did get around getting my father's forgiveness a day or two later. The rest of the celebration was spent at my dear sister's house. My gifts went over very well and I believe that I can use all of the things that I received (except the drill press which my dad just wanted to get out of his garage), particularly the new pants that fit me (I have may never have been so happy about receiving new clothes in my whole life). Then we all played a game which was somewhat similar to Apples to Apples (which I did not win) and then I took a nap and then we all watched a movie which I did not want to watch called Ice Princess. It was actually not boring (probably because the star was a young woman). It made me think thankful thoughts about how my parents managed to control any worldly desire they may have had about having their children fulfill their parent's dreams for them. I did bring myself to wonder whether or not this might be an issue that Disney took to the extreme, i.e. maybe it is alright for parents to inspire their children and push them to do certain things. After this was all over, we loaded up the gifts and drove home.

Christmas 1

2006-12-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

I got out of worship practice without trying and the wireless internet signal that I use at home is back, so I have decided to type something here.

I left Sliverdale (Silverdale) on Friday the 23rd of December. I left a bit after 8 pm because I wanted to avoid the worst of the traffic. I succeeded for the most part, but I was slowed down by a convoy of cherry picker trucks around the junction of 520 and 405. I am glad that they were out fixing power connections though.

I arrived at my parents home around ten thirty and did some talking to my dad about various things, kinda like I did when I visited him for the thanksgiving holiday. He was positively impressed with some of the writing that I had done along those lines (no, I don't mean the thanksgiving blogging).

I spent most of the next day with my friend whom many people would label as ultra-conservative. We didn't do a whole lot, but he convinced me to give Christmas gifts to members of my family instead of going with my interpretation of Proverbs 22:16. Oh yes, we did do something: we got all muddy by successfully trying to fix a water pipe for his apartment building because he is the landlord. So that was Saturday.

On Christmas Eve Sunday I got up during the morning and took my shower before church, and as I was exiting the shower or shortly thereafter, I realized how little affection I have for a whole bunch the saints at my home church. Of course, I think that this is a bad thing because of the first chapter of Philippians 1, but I did have my dad pray about it on the way and I think that I managed to not bite anyone's head off while I was in the church building. At any rate, I don't remember finding myself being judgmental about particular things that people did in the past (these things aren't usually even sinful, so I know that I am just trying to make myself feel like I am better than them (evil!)) so that is something.

After church I accompanied my dad to his mother's apartment and we visited with her for much longer than expected to. There was some discussion about where the Christmas celebration would be held the following day. I am told that this discussion had been going on for some time. I think that the basic idea was that everyone except my grandmother had decided that the bulk of the celebrating would be done at my dear sister's home, but that my grandmother was still sure that it should be done at her own home, even though this majority was supposed to have been explained to her numerous times. So someone (I actually don't know who) must have got the idea that we should show up at her apartment on Christmas Eve in an effort to make her feel better. The problem was that she was quite tired and didn't really want to see us all right just then. Even so, my dad and my grandmother and I all waited around for the rest of my family to be show up with cookies and such. I didn't know about all of this when I walked in the door and I was quite hungry the whole time and then all there was to eat were candy and M&Ms.

There was also the UNO game which had all sorts of new rules that I didn't like and I began to behave in accordance what Paul Adams told me is passive-aggressiveness by drawing many, many cards from the draw pile whenever I was made to draw. I did this in an effort to make people feel bad, but it didn't work. I did finally manage to decide to control myself and learn the new rules and play the game right. I wonder if that had anything to do with the sermon which was about self control. I don't remember thinking about the sermon very much that afternoon.

Lots of exciting things to not talk about

2006-12-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

You'd think that since so many exciting things have been happening to me, I would be able to type about them. Well, I guess that you probably wouldn't think that since I haven't typed any of them for you to know about. I guess that I will just tell you about my visit from my friend Brandon who visited me on Saturday and Sunday. Please note that this is not the Brandon who visited me several months ago and was married to Virgiliana (I still think that Virgiliana is a killer good name!).

Brandon and I used the same room for sleeping during a particular school year in Pullman when both of us were undergraduate students at Washington State University. After Brandon was recognized by a particular person at Seaside Church and he found out that I had managed to live near Brandon for a whole school year, he told me that his respect for me had increased, as though I had just gone to war in Iraq with a contentious woman as my close companion.

What this Seaside Church attender didn't know is that the reason that I met Brandon was this: I was attending a Christian college group for the first time and I offended his roommate so much that he became weary of speaking with me and referred me to Brandon. All three of us can get along great these days, but I was the person who couldn't experience anything marginally unpleasant without exclaiming, "Sue!" I had been living by myself for a school year before I moved into Brandon's room and I needed to learn how to come home from school and think about someone besides myself (I could write a blog entry just about that). Brandon could see that I needed a lot of help, and that is why he decided to put me in his room as opposed to someone else's.

My, wasn't that fun? Let me also mention that if cleanliness is next to godliness, I don't want any part of it because godliness is a unit. Why in the world would you want to go doing things outside of godliness (that just sounds evil)? If you have godliness you should be content with it and enjoy the profit (1 Cor 6:6).

So Brandon and I ate dinner and watched Pride and Prejudice because it is a killer good movie and he hadn't seen it yet and then we walked to the park in the freezing weather and had two fights (the latter of which I won!) and we read 1 Timothy and we read 2 Timothy and we prayed and we slept (in separate rooms). Oh, I forgot to type that we walked back from the park in the freezing weather?

I had some pictures taken at church, but they look quite lame, so let me refer you to this old picture.

Spiritual blog #1

2006-12-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

My spiritual posting on my church's pastor's blog.

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2006/12/while-thy-servant-was-doing-his-own.html

Messages

2006-12-04T17:50:00.000-08:00

On Friday I decided to leave work a whole half-hour early. I was glad that I did so because as I was driving home, my cellular telephone informed me that someone was trying to call me and I decided to answer it even though I didn't know who was trying to call me. Sometimes the people who call my cellular telephone are hoping to communicate with the person who posessed my cellular telephone before my grandparents purchased it from at a garage sale and gave it to me for my birthday. The text messages that they send me are kind funny:

"hey babe I miss u i wish i could b there to watch moview with u and charles"

"Hey wuts us bey go sorry i was such a jerk but the only reason i was being puff was because well u were being very rude as well for no apparent reason an"

"d i was just trying to defend my self i think we could be nicer to each other"

"y arnt u talkin back to me"

"this is chris if u couldn't figure that out"

I think that some poor teenager had her cellular telephone confinscated by her parents who sold it because of her (possibly worthless) friends wouldn't leave her alone. Oh well. I think that talking to these people and telling them that the cellular telephone is now all mine is kind of fun.

I was actually being called by Alan from Seaside Church who was calling to invite me to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Pacific Science Center which is in Seattle. It seems that Luke and Jamie from Seaside Church had purchased tickets from Jamie's employer or something like that, and were unable to use them because of a schedule conflict.

So on Saturday I drove to Alan's house and we boarded a ferry and traveled to Seattle for the display which was difficult to see because only dim lights could be shone on the documents, and then intermittently.

Unfortunately, I have never been to utilize the hebrew language in any direct way. A lot of the writing wa quite faint and may have been difficult to see, even in good light, but there was a big long peice of psalms with perhaps five entirely intact columns which was nice to see, and the annotations beside the artifacts were quite well done so that people who had enough time could figure out which verses of english text corresponded to a particular line on the scrolls.

If you are entierly ignorant about the Dead Sea Scrolls as was a lady whom I met in Junior college who had determined that the Bible had been corrupted by the Catholic Church in the middle ages so that we could never know what God wanted to tell us, please go and find out about them. I won't pretend to be smart enough to tell you all about them, but I am telling you, "It is worth your time."

I got syndicated

2006-12-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

Well, sort of. Alright, not really. But I did get invited to type into one of the blogs that my pastor uses, which is also linked to my church's cultural links page. I started it out with links to several of the posts which I built for this blog.

Because of this new blog, it is likely that my future blogging which turns out to be directly related to spiritual things will be appear at:

http://www.wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com

Plug plug plug

2006-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday I received a telephone call that I never expected to receive. This call came from a pastor of Adult Ministries in Pullman who is named Ceasar Paul. Strangly enough, I worked under him as a children's church teacher at the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman which I attended for three years while I also attended Washington State University.

The reason for his call was inquiry regarding my employment, spiritual development, general well being, etc. I am still suprised that a pastor of a medium-sized church which, last I checked, was short on leadership, in a busy university town where people are coming and going all of the time, had time to make sure that I hadn't forgotten about Jesus even though he had no particular reason to think that he would ever do ministry with me again.

So let me go ahead and advertise for this local church body thusly:

It is most convenient that WSU, which was the only University that I wanted to go to (for reasons pertaining to my major, the amount of money that I wanted to spend, location, etc.) was the only University that would accept me (by the time that I got around to applying to universities, the University of Washington wasn't even looking undergraduate engineer's applications). All of that is to say that I didn't go to a bunch of different Universities and visit churches and rank them. All that I could really do regarding my spiritual leadership was to pray. And I did pray because I had heard enough stories about people attending colleges, even "Christian" colleges and falling away from godly behavior and spiritual disciplines and fellowship with Jesus for various reasons. These reasons included not having a decent church to attend.

God did answered my prayer just the way that I wanted Him to (it must have been a good thing to pray for huh?). The man who was the pastor at my local church body in Monroe at the time told me which church to visit first and I was able to determine immediately that I did not need to go church shopping. I found out later that the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman is not the only local church body in Pullman that seems to work, so there is no excuse for college students in Pullman who somehow manage to forget about Jesus while they are there.

Oh, let me brag about the Senior pastor there for a minute (Lead pastor for you Acts 29 people) who is truly a pastor's pastor--both in practice and in qualifications. You may have heard Pastor Mark Driscoll tell the story of Porno Boy Vs. Hebrew Man toward the beginning of a sermon series from 1st Corinthians which was called Christians Gone Wild. I don't know exactly which Porno Boy Pastor Mark was talking about, but I do know which pastor he was talking about, and it is just amazing to me that this hyper-educated (both in science and in theology) person has whatever it takes to run around and teach loads of Bible studies to biblical ignoramuses, many of whom can't see their own ignorance (particularly some of those King James only people).

So don't skip church when you're in Pullman. Oh, and look for the Foundations for Marriage class on Tuesdays @ One Way books.

Oh, let me also say that having an elder of my church sitting just a few rows away from me during my graduation, decorated so that everyone could see that his academic acheivments were quite extensive was quite a pleasant suprise for me. I think that Christians should be everywhere.

Thanksgiving 4 (shortness)

2006-11-27T17:31:00.000-08:00

I am quite thankful (to Jesus) that I get to work for a company that let me leave work two hours early today because of the blizzard that fell upon Poulsbo suddenly so that I could avoid wrecking or being stuck at work all night.

Thanksgiving 3 (lengthiness)

2006-11-27T17:09:00.000-08:00

On Saturday the 25th of November, I observed some more of my father's work, which he pointed out to me. After this I took my brother to my church's other annual thanksgiving season event: The Cranberry Sauce Bowl.

The Cranberry Sauce Bowl is a soccer event which is generally set up for kids who are not often called children. It usually takes place at a city park. This year the city park fields were closed because of unusually high amounts of precipitation and saturated soils, so the game was held on the land of a family of church members who lived on relatively well-drained soil. I usually play the whole game through, but this time I only played for two points because I wanted to converse with my dear sister during the whole rest of the time. I am speaking of the dear sister who was became married this summer. She had just returned that morning from a visit with the family of her new husband. His family lives in Colorado. I have been told that this family is still duly (i.e. positively and with great magnitude) impressed with my dear sister. My dear sister told me that being married to her new husband is better for her than not being married to her new husband. She also told me that sex is heavenly, so I am quite happy for her. We discussed the topic which I discussed with my dad so late into the night and she cut the hairs on the top of my head so that they became shorter than they were before she began to cut them.

On Sunday morning, I arose at about five and loaded the Illuminate 2 and drove back to Bummertown just in time for work in the Seaside Church building. I had no idea that I would be driving in snow which slowed me down and impared my vision so that I read a roadsign incorrectly and took a wrong exit. I was somewhat distressed about the increased possibility of wrecking, but somehow, I arrived safely.

I suppose that that is the end of my thanksgiving trip story.

Thanksgiving 2 (lengthiness)

2006-11-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

This post contains a description of the activities in which I participated this last thanksgiving weekend.

I left work on Wednesday about 1/2 hour early and drove to my home in Sliverdale (Silverdale). I was quite tired because of a critical mistake that I had made the night before (running/walking ~4.5 miles to my community group in the dark, the cold, and the rain), so I went to sleep for a couple of hours. While I was sleeping, traffic conditions in the region of the road trip I had planned improved as multiple cars became reached their destinations.

Let me warn you: A bed is like a time machine; you climb into a bed and close your eyes at one time, and when you open them, you find that you have traveled in to the future! If you don't believe me, check your alarm clock at the beginning and end of your next bed rest. You will find that I am right, so be careful with your bed.

When I awoke, I cleaned my dishes and loaded the Illuminate 2 and drove it down to Bummertown (Bremerton) and loaded it with fuel. Then I travelled in it through Gag Harbor (Gig Harbor) to Monroe where my parents and my sister and my other sister and my brother and my other brother live. I determined that my car traveled ~30 miles for every gallon of gasoline that it had burned and I was quite happy about that.

Upon my arrival, my mother and brothers were in bed, but I talked to my dad about how in the world God might give me a wife. I won't tell you much about that conversation because I am annoyed by men who think that they know who they are supposed to marry when they really don't (did you hear the story about the lady who was approached by five or so different men, each of whom told her that God's will for her was to marry him (thereby implying that anything else would be disobedience)?). I will tell you that my father and I do not seem to conflict regarding what I should be doing regarding this matter. Oh, let me tell you a funny little thing that my dad said to me years ago: "You've gotta get married sometime--If you're gonna get married."

The next morning I arose at seven or so and ran about a mile in a loop (no particular destination). To run in daylight and without much traffic was nice. Upon my return I ate something and played multiplayer video games with my younger brothers until my dad wanted to show me the pictures of some work that he had been doing. During this computer time (for my dad's pictures and music and videos are inside of his computer) I noticed that the time of the meal was drawing neigh, I decided to begin housecleaning, for my mother had been working on housecleaning and the meal since the beginning of the day. The housecleaning was not completed even as my father's mother arrived from Monroe. We were joined by three other ladies from the same town for eating. After the meal, I drove my grandmother home and spent the rest of the evening doing visiting with my family and staying up way too late continuing to talk to my dad because we weren't through with the exciting topic of the night before.

Upon Friday morning I arose at seven or so again because I am used to rising at six. I remember that a particular church event took place on this day. It is an annual event called the "Pizza Bowl Split." It costs thirteen dollars. It involves eating normal pizza, which I can not do because I am a phenyleketonuric, and it involves bowling, which can be fun if I am with people whom I really like and who like bowling. It also involves helping children have fun, which I am not generally good at unless I actually know a fair amount about the children who need to have the fun. I have been to numerous children's camps and other children's activites and I always find that I am most helpful doing support work, especially technical work, or utilitarian setup/demo work (as opposed to decorating, cooking, craft time setup, etc.). So instead of going bowling and eating with my brothers (who weren't going because of reasons of their own), I decided to spend the time with my mother who was driving around the cities in which the Pizza Bowl Split took place because she carries the church credit card. Um, that means that I was traveling with my mother because of her company and conversation, not because of the church credit card. During this trip I found out that neither Target nor Mervyn's carry cheap slacks in my size.

This activity took longer than I expected it to, but I have found that I can bestow honor upon my parents by considering their activities worthy of my observation and consideration, so I consider that time as well-spent.

I believe it was upon Friday night that I watched Walk the Line with my father and oldest brother.

Thanksgiving 1

2006-11-23T20:22:00.000-08:00

My worship pastor has a consistent tendency to include somewhat rhetorical questions with the list of worship songs which are to be played in church. I have included several of these questions below:

"Do we have anything to be thankful for, I know it sounds trite, but when was the last time you truly felt thankful? Is it because you've nothing to be thankful for, or are we all still lying on the grocery store floor blue in the face to get our way? God loves a grateful heart."

I have included this one because quite a number of us have seen children who fail to respond well to the goodness of their parents, and we think to ourselves, "The ungrateful little whelp, after all that is done for him! I am glad that I don't throw temper tantrums like that."

But you've got to think:

2 Peter 3 says that people somehow manage to forget the previous judgements of God so that they can say that God is slow in bringing the judgement which is hanging over them, even though God is being patient for their benefit. So if you are not a Christian and you know that God is calling you to humility and gratitude for the sacrifice of Jesus, go to those both of those places--at once!

On the other hand, if you are God's child, do not be ungrateful by denying God's:

Wisdom--by telling Him that you know what you need better than He does
Power--by assuming that you don't have what you think you need because He can't give you what you think you need
Love--by thinking that God is withholding good gifts from you because He wants to punish you for sin or to see you suffer (Hebrews 12 indicates that suffering is discipline which is to result in your sanctification, not punishment for sin which has already been laid upon Jesus).

Additionally, it occurs to me that anything less than gratitude toward God is idolatry, which is evil. God has described idolatry as adultery for the purpose of showing us how evil it is.

The Integration of Choice and Election (simplified)

2006-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

I used to be quite confused because I couldn't understand how anyone could be to blame for failing to choose Jesus (which the scripture clearly teaches) while at the same time God receives glory for being gracious and choosing the people whom He is going to save, excluding all others (which the scripture also clearly teaches).

During my first year at Washington State University, a calvanist minister came to the house that I later moved into and admitted that we all get to choose Jesus or Satan, sin and death! Now is when you are all supposed to draw your breath in quickly because of your suprise. After he said that, I began to think of this little line of reasoning, and before long it was finished.

I know that this line of reasoning is quite simplified and that is has been torn apart by sharp people like James (whom I haven't had the pleasure of speaking to in some time) and Warren, but I don't remember how they did it. Perhaps they will comment.

It works like this: We all must choose. Choosing Jesus brings glory, honor and immortality. Choosing pride, sin, or anything else brings well... Satan, sin and death in Hell.

Now a believer might read this and think to himself, "Well then, why doesn't everyone just choose Jesus right away?"

Inconveniently, this choice is not a free choice because all of the people who are making this choice now are influenced by sin which has been programmed to preserve itself by the one who knows that Jesus will smash sin if He is chosen (Yes, I know that He will smash it later anyway). So the sin inside of people is a serious impediment to logical decision making -- so much so that the choices which are made can be predicted correctly in every instance. I.e. because of the sin that is in them, people will always choose pride, self, Satan, sin, death, anything but Jesus. But Jesus is not to blame because Jesus did not choose Satan, sin, or death or anything else for anyone (alright, He did choose death for Himself once, but not for anyone else).

Conveniently, Jesus has decided to be nice to some people whom He chose beforehand. These people are sometimes called the elect. Jesus opens the eyes of these people so that they can see reality (kinda like the eyes of Elisha's servant were opened) and they are given wisdom to know where pride and sin and so on will take them. Then they choose Jesus and they are translated to the kingdom of light.

How it is that Jesus is able to save people is another topic.

Helmsman Strategies

2006-11-16T21:14:00.000-08:00

I typed most of this entry several days ago and hesitated to publish it because it sort of assumes that I know things about driving that other people do not know, but Chris from Seaside told me this morning that he thought that I should publish it, so here it is.

Although my driving has a number of critics (e.g. Josh from the UCBin Pullman, Pat from Seaside Church, Chris from Seaside), I have been informed that I have had the benefit of a superior driver's education class (i.e. superior to the driver's education classes of those complimenting mine). For this reason, I would like to share several driving tips with you:

When driving at night, avoid directly into headlights which are attached to cars which are traveling toward you. Instead look directly at the white line to your right. Try to keep your car just to the left of it. Of course, if you are tailgating the car which is in front of you, be sure to pay attention to its brake lights too. Oh, and watch out for traffic control signals and signs.
When waiting at the front of a queue in a left had turn lane, keep the all the wheels and tires of your car pointing straight ahead of you. Restrain yourself so that you do not point the steering wheels to the left until after you have already driven the car into the intersection. This increases the distance between your path and the car parked in the left hand (or left foot, for that matter) turn lane of the street you wish to enter. This can also keep you out of the path of the oncoming traffic to your left if you are rear ended.
If your car is covered with snow or ice, be sure to clean this ice and snow off of the transparent surfaces so that you do not become the next lazy, yet destructive person to smash into a pedestrian because he was unable to see out his car window.

Of course, this leads to the following obvious question: Where is your favorite speed bump, and what makes your favorite speed bump your favorite speed bump?

Which Button Should I Push?

2006-11-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

The other day I was walking by a lady who works in the same building that I work in. She was staring at her computer and speaking out loud, "Which button should I push?"

In as much as I am always trying to be funny (kinda like now) I seized the opportunity thusly:

"Well, if you want to be married, you should probably push the big button marked 'COMMIT.'"

"Oh, and if you are a conservative or a pro-lifer, you should probably not push the big red button marked 'ABORT.'"

I suppose that I should have ommitted that last conditional.

Go therefore and do likewise... After you have read all of my other blog entries.

Churchbuildingdock

2006-10-30T18:59:00.000-08:00

Chris Swan: Notice that this blog posting's title is not "Churchdock," which sounds better than, "Churchbuildingdock."

On Friday the 28th of October I drove the Illuminate 2 all of the way to Red Sea Church in Portland. I have been told that Portland is the least churched city in the United States of America. This means that the church building corresponding to Red Sea Church has a large part of its mission ahead of it, although it has been in dire need of a refit.

I became the least part of this refit which took place on the date mentioned above. ~70 men of the Acts 29 network spent ~400 man-hours on this building which had appeared as yet another part of a disfunctional neighborhood.

Upon my arrival I was quite pleased to hear that one of the men who was a pastor of mine at the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman while I was in Pullman was in attendance with the elders of Alathia Community Church which began with them in Issaquah Washington. He reminded me that I was the only college student who came into his church and immediately asked for a docrinal statment, remarking that this was beautiful for him to observe. I had not realized what an impression I had made.

To see so many men working on so many different parts of a semi-symmetrical structure with multiple levels made me think of the battle-damaged Enterprise starship getting fixed up in spacedock for another mission, hence the title of this blog posting. These parts included

Painting of many rooms with multiple ladders and multiple paint colors in each room
Construction of two counter tops with framing and sheetrock
Construction and wiring of one sound booth with a platform, framing, and sheetrock
Installation of eight ceiling fans utilizing one one man lift
Much landscaping
Much demolition of visually archaic furnature
Demolition of crack shack (quite common in this neighborhood)
Plumbing for new sinks (with new counter tops) in four restrooms
A fair amount of pressure washing
Other things

Seeing the success of the mission, which was almost without conflict through the submission and proper reception of instruction that must have taken place, made the accompanying aggrivation seem small.

Even so I have determined that I am quite happy that I have an engineering job which does not require any skill regarding paint. I spent most of my time there doing interior painting while standing on a ladder. I am not particularly proud of my work, for it was slow and its results were often sub-par, although they did improve. I don't know why the leader pointed that job out as "unskilled."

On the bright side, the Illuminate 2 managed another 350 wreck-free miles, dispite my allegedly poor handling, which a spiritual superior has had the effrontery to point out; it must be quite bad, but I am yet unconvinced. The man paid me an extra 25% for the drive, most likely this was a tip for not wrecking. What do you think?

Gag Tract

2006-10-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

The wife of one of my better friends wrote this tract, which utilizes St Anselm's ontological argument. I realize that this represents a rather poor and ineffective evangelism methodology which should never be practiced, but I think that it is quite funny. Don't feel bad if you don't understand it the first time through; I didn't even realize that the tract was making fun of itself until just recently.

This file was set up to be printed and folded, so you may want to begin reading with the far right hand column on the second page and then continue on to the far left column of the first page.

Gag Tract

Candy Party Memo

2006-10-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

Seaside Church in Bremerton which I have been attending for a little while now has N missional community groups (where N is some integer greater than 2). The missional community group which I attend is called north. The Seaside Church north missional community group has decided to hold an outreach event called a Harvest Party on October 31st. I was asked to build the draft for a flyer. My draft has been rejected, but I was advised to post it here for your viewing pleasure.

Candy Party Memo

Getting By Without (various things)

2006-09-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

This week and probably next week, I will be getting by without my laptop computer power supply.

Last week and the week before that, I got by without my cellular telephone.

The week or two before that I got by without my cellular telephone battery charger and received the last call that I needed to take an hour or so before all of the usable energy was drained from the battery.

Aside from the observation that I seem to be getting very good at forgetting about various things and leaving them at my parent's home in Monroe, I have also observed that getting by without things that I am used to having is an interesting mental excersize for me because it forces me to come up with new solutions to my problems which require equipment.

I suppose that the most outstanding example of this from my own life would be last year from June to December when I had decided to do without my car because I had just wrecked it. After all, work was less than four miles away from home and I really didn't need my car at Washington State University. So for a while, I just walked to work and back, but then I discovered a bicycle that my dad had purchased at a garage sale for $5. This bicycle was in pretty lame shape, but it sure made getting to work quicker and easier than walking did. I had a great time while rolling it down the bumpy hill driving it really fast. One Sunday I pedalled it to Woodinville and back (40 miles round trip). I was amazed by how a bicycle could add efficiency to my transportation system through the conservation of linear momentum so that it made up for it's own weight, even when being pedalled uphill. My dad told me that I would be suprised at the increased efficiency that could be bestowed upon me by a bicycle that fit me and was in good condition. I don't know if I will ever get around to finding out about that though.

Oh well, this week I am having a great time getting plenty of sleep and reading the Bible because I am not busy playing video games and watching DVDs from the local library. You should try it sometime.

Funniness

2006-09-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

One of my readers told me Sunday morning that my last posting was funny and that his reaction to it prompted a reaction from those around him so that he had to explain his own. I then remembered how my friend Brandon always (often) says that some of my funniest moments come about when I am not trying to be funny. Come to think of it, I think that Paul Adams said that too. Perhaps they are right. I didn't build this blog in attempt to be funny, but it seems to have turned out that way. So in an effort to avoid continuing as the laughing stock of my friends and acquaintances, I will type out this next story which I think is funny, but maybe you will all think that it is profound and take me seriously:

On Wednesday, I failed to look carefully at a topographical map and determined that I needed to go to the field to perform a downstream analysis. This means that I needed to go observe the drainage path of stormwater from a particular peice of land to Port Orchard. If I had looked carefully at the topographical map, I would have seen that the peice of land was quite near a closed depression, even though it is also quite near Port Orchard and I would avoided much trouble and spared the expenditure of some company money. At least it was on my way home.

I got out there to about the place where the land was and started following the ditch adjacent to it. In as much as I did not realize that I was in a closed depression, I was having a hard time deciding how that water in the wetlands several hundred feet downstream from the land was to cross the road. I don't always feel good when I realize that my thoughts are disconnected from the way that things are. I did find several catch basins which I opened and looked into, but they seemed to be draining in the wrong direction.

I had left the catch basin opening tool at the office, foolishly not thinking that I would need it because I had anticipated open ditches, so I was using my bare hands to do the job and I was gettin them all dirty. This was all very well and good for the type 30 catch basins, but then I ran across a type 1 or type 2 catch basin which had a 48" lid and which I thought was for a sewer, but it did say "drain" on it, so I decided to open it.

It had only three small round holes in it near the rim, about ninety degrees apart. I tried to open it with my index fingers, but I had to use my middle fingers to get it off. I looked down into it to make my observation and was careful not to fall in because I was all by myself. When I put the lid back on, I used my index fingers again and carefully lowered the cover back into place on the frame, with the tip of my left index finger smashed between the manhole cover and the frame upon which it was to rest. I tried to lift that end up again, but I was unable. Some people had just walked by, so I asked for their help, but they were really unhelpful. They were about to try something that didn't seem to be very smart to me and that I thought would inflict futher damage upon my poor finger, when I managed to yank my finger out. My finger still has several blood blisters in it and some of its nerves do not seem to be working quite right.

So there is my funny story. Everyone and my place of employment had a good laugh over it and it caused my boss to remember several other stories involving similar situations.

To me, the most interesting part was wondering what sort of people were going respond to me after I called for help. I wonder if you ever thought that Jesus would smash you if you asked Him for help. I wonder if you thought that asking Jesus for help would be useless because you have always seen Him pictured as a wimp without capabilities.

Oh well. I am quite glad to be unstuck.

Must I be a Leader?

2006-08-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

I was just listening to a sermon about spiritual gifts, during which the preacher loudly proclaimed that people are not leaders without followers. I heard him say that and I thought to myself, "I must not have the spiritual gift of leadership."

So the sermon ended, I finished my video game and there was an electronic message waiting for me, directing me to this page.

Perhaps I am a leader after all. Why don't you go ahead and comment on that (just click on the radial button labled anonymous if you have no acceptable digital identity)?

Ammendment: Here is another new blog, one which may or may not have anything to do with me.