The Most Excellent Way

2012...

2012-01-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

2012 is nearly one month down already and life has brought so many changes!

Of course we have Inez. She is a wonderful, quiet baby. Unfortunately for Mommy, her hardest times are right at bed time. For some reason she doesn't go to sleep very well at this time of day. Daddy isn't much help because she just gets more upset if I am holding her and not Mommy. Any other part of the day she is great for Daddy.

As far as work, it it looking like it is going to be another crazy year. I don't think I will work as many hours as last year, but it will certainly be very fast paced and a lot of work. Maybe every business is like this; I just have to think that if someone were to watch a day of mine, they wouldn't believe how many directions I get pulled in one day, day after day. I am excited to implement new processes and organization to help us (IT) through this craziness. (would be hard to explain on a blog!) We have also FINALLY been approved for a much larger budget this year, which will give us the ability to fix all of our problems. Some day, we will be able to take a vacation and not hear from work, or sleep through a night and not hear from work, and enjoy a weekend and not hear from work, and work at a steady pace without getting the fire hose out.

I have been buying and selling as a new attempt to make some side money. Some of it works out, some doesn't, but I always at least break even. Right now I am buying laptops as cheap as I can find them to resell them for a little profit but a fair price. I just got a really nice laptop in yesterday and it is already sold, with others interested! Last week I bought a really nice drill set at Home Depot and got a second one to sell on ebay. It had some interest but never sold, so I took it back. At least I tried! One of these days I will find my nitch.

...and speaking of laptops, I found out that my particular laptop has three different screens, and I had the lamest one. So I upgraded it today - what a difference! Now it is just lamer, not lamest.

I don't know if you would call it lucky or not so much; the new couch we got had a crooked leg and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it outside of drilling a new hole for the leg. After a few calls to the reseller, they finally offered us 50% credit if we would keep it...and this was after we bought it for 40% off. So a $1300 (plue $180 shipping) couch cost us around $400! I'll just drill that new hole. :) Being we saved all that money, we are just going to buy another couch!

Got an offer to do some consulting work for Aerocet. It is not going to be a lot of work by the sounds of it, which is perfect for a father of five, but maybe enough to get rid of some of my side-jobs. We'll see if it works out or not, I don't know if they liked my price. Have to make it worth working weekends and nights a long way from home though...

I guess I took the new year's resolution seriously. I made a three step commitment to get my health straightened out being I didn't do so well on my wellness exam. First, I had to stop drinking pop (well, I started this before my exam). It has been two or three months now and I have succeeded - no more pop addiction! In fact, I tried a little bit of Pepsi tonight being someone got us some with a dinner they brought over and it didn't even taste good to me. Step two was going to be a much harder addiction to break - the food addiction. I knew I had a problem, and this is why I failed my health exam. I can go without pop and tv and video games, but NOT food! Going out to eat is my favorite thing to do - Second Avenue, Hydra, Tomato Street, Chinese, pop corn! I started this step by just eating healthier...subway got old fast. Terah got me an oil popper for popcorn and I use 1/4 the amount of butter, so that was another win. I went to some various restuarants looking for healthier food, (Spuds) but the one I found that was amazing was the Pie Hut! Soup, an incredible sandwich, and a piece of pie for $9. Amazing home-cooked food, not deep fried! Then...the BIG test. I went on a strict "diet"; I have never tortured myself like this in my life. I found out just how much I really was addicted to food when I took it away. The first five days was absolute torture - every smell, every sight, every thought...food! After that, the body adjusted and I no longer crave food! Now a small salad or fruit is enough to fill me up for an entire day - seriously! Of course I am not going to do this crazy diet much longer, but I have actually loosed another addiction! Now that I can get through a day without thinking about food, I can easily establish a healthy diet. Terah and I talked about just doing a dinner at lunch and then not eating in the evening - that should keep the pounds off! And after steps one and two, I have lost 15lbs so far. I am still working on step two (a better diet), but it is going very well so far. Step three will also be very hard for me...exercise. I hate exercise. Let's just get rid of the snow so I can work outside. This is what I need to get my heart healthy though, that is very important. My desk job is going to be the end of me.

Those are all the changes I have time to write about tonight...

Blah blogging

2012-01-15T21:03:00.000-08:00

I don't even know why I blog anymore...is anyone out there? Quiet house, probably should read or play music, but if I go to bed it means I have to go to work when I wake up...so here I am.

Updates...

Got a new couch this week...it had a bad leg; I guess you shouldn't order furniture on the internet sight unseen. Hopefully they will take care of it. This is the one Terah sold her new phone to pay for...looks nice other than a bent leg.
Got a new baby the week before, how neat is that?
Getting a new drill tomorrow - on a big sale. I am thinking about buying a second one to sell it on ebay and double my money! That's pretty neat!
Really want to do a lot of music this year, guitar and piano. I see why Dad didn't play much when we were little though...
All of the guys I work with (ALL of them) are incredible. They can do anything. They are super smart in the IT world, they build (yes, build) and maintain their own cars, they do their own construction, electrical, hunt, everything. What have I been doing my whole life? Why am I such a loser??? The only thing I have to offer is playing guitar...so that is why I decided to do more music this year, apparently that is the gift that God wanted me to use.
I'm losing focus, I think I worked too much last year. I am usually pretty motivated toward Bible studies and music, working outside, getting things done. I am pretty worthless these days, wishing I had a TV to watch football or an xbox like the old days. I gotta get myself out of this rut! Everyone seems to be noticing it more than me. Not a mid-life crisis, I think the last year was just a little more than I realized. A good diet and exercise should get my butt in gear again...and prayer in the mornings.
Did some job related work from home yesterday that had to be done on the weekend. For the most part, I didn't have to babysit, it was a lot of click and wait, but it was most of the day. Unfortunately, something went wrong at the end of the day and I had to go in to fix it late last night. Argh.
Been doing much better on my diet - no soda, and even if it is not a "healthy" diet, it is far better than what I was eating a few months ago. I feel much better! Shooting to lose 10 more pounds, but I think that will take some "work"...we'll see how that goes.
The big CES show was in Las Vegas this last week...what's coming in the electronics world? Tons of tablest, mostly Droid, but everyone is making them. Tons of TVs that will do some cool stuff, with internet connections and even cloud services. Even the computer manufacturers are getting into the TV business. And one TV showcased at only 4mm thick. There is a new line of laptops - ultrabooks. They will be much thinner, but still run with high performance hardware. PCs and old laptops will be a thing of the past pretty soon. With tablets, ultrabooks, cell phones, and windows 8, the computer world is in for a big change this year. I am all for it, the tablets and thin laptops are awesome!
That's about all I can take right now...

Vacationing

2011-12-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

Didn't get to use my vacation all year with all the work I was doing, so I am using nearly all of it in the last three of four months of the year. That is a great time with all of the holidays anyway.

It has been really hard for me to stay home a few of the nights with problems at work. It was difficult for me to sit back and let the guys handle it, but they were great to take care of the problems and let me take the time off.

I will be taking next week off too...and Tuesday, if there are no surprises before then, we will meet our little girl! I think we have nearly decided her name will be Ines. (Not sure on the spelling) I like it alright, and Terah loves it, so that at least gets us out of our long discussions over the "other" name. :)

Christmas came and went and seems like forever ago already...especially with all of the Christmas decorations put away already. We wanted to get it all out of the way before the baby shows up....and the couch. :) We spent some money a month ago to buy another couch. It is so hard to have company over with no where to sit...it should be here any day.

Verizon turned on 4G last week and came out with their new phone, the Nexus, at the same time. It is unbelievable, but with that combo, I couldn't resist and I moved from AT&T to Verizon. Two bars of 4G at my house and I can probably average 11mb downloads! They have been having issues the last few days though...hmmm. So at no cost to the company, actually, most likely a $100 gain or so, I will sell my AT&T phone on ebay and we are settled. Now I have to figure out how to move Terah to Verizon...

I got Terah a Kindle for Christmas. It was funny how spur of the moment it was. I have never been interested in the least, but I got an email one morning at work and decided it would be a great Christmas gift...and affordable. After doing the research, the Kindle Fire (their new tablet) is quite the let down for a Kindle user who likes to read books, and a let down for a tablet user as it is slow, heavy, and several other issues. The only good thing about it is that it is the most affordable tablet you can buy. So I went with the older model (although not old), and I was quite impressed with it. I had know idea how awesome they are for book reading...we'll see what Terah says. Everyone that I asked about it said they put their books away when they go their Kindle, it was just amazing.

Apparently we don't spend very much money on our kids for Christmas, I have always thought it was a lot, but not as much as others from what I hear. This year we were kinda last minute shopping, just too much going on with pregnancy and other things, so we made a trip in and bought them their favorite things mostly in one day...leapster games, legos, cars, cooking stuff, etc. I agree with Terah, it sucks to spend your money on all of this "commercialized" stuff, but it is so much fun to spoil the kids! And they have loved it...Daddy has been playing with them all week. We have built just about everything with legos (cars II, transformers, star wars, houses, truck, boat, animals, airplanes...).

We are still playing Puerto Rico on a regular basis; just bought another PR game for really cheap as mine is getting so worn the pieces are not even legible. I think I have logged over 130 games now! Chad is still on top, Lance is sliding quickly, and I have recently made some huge gains on Chad, and most likely passed Lance up. Andrew and Jerad are new comers now, so we are never short of players anymore. Cameron is also a regular.

Our company Christmas dinner was pretty cool this year. We had a sick kid, so I just took Adah with me this year, the twins went to Awana, and Terah stayed home with the sick kid. I loved that they were able to give John Ambrose a standing ovation, he will not be here much longer. He is retired, but had worked there for over 30 years!

I know there are people who don't like Facebook, even in my own family. However, the thing I love the most is how it connects everyone. I have about 330 friends now, and the majority of them I would never call, never hear from, never see...but I keep in touch because of Facebook. This week my long, lost cousins on my mom's side found us. I haven't seen them in probably over 20 years! I don't think Terah has ever met them. That is pretty cool!

Here are some technology tips for you:

If you are buying a "smart phone", on Verizon, get the Galaxy Nexus. This simply is the best phone on the market (for now). With AT&T, get the Galaxy S II - by far the best phone on the AT&T side. They are incredible phones made by Samsung...both Droids. Yes, the iPhone has just lost its ground...no longer the best phone out there. And the Droids just keep getting better with hardware especially, but they have just released their new OS which has really improved their messy software.

If you are buying a tablet, iPads are certainly the best selling and very nice, but after all of my research, I would definitely go with the ASUS Transformer Prime. It has a quad core precessor and amazing video with a droid OS, and much cheaper than the iPad. It is $150 to buy the keyboard/dock with it, but that would be a worth while purchase as you would no longer use your computer for anything...I love tablets!

Laptops and computers are going to become a much less sought after item in the near future. I can't wait for the tablets to take over, they are awesome! However, let me know if you want to buy a laptop on a low budget, that is where I do well for you. Otherwise, just go to Costco. :)

I'm sure my next post will have some baby pics! If you don't see them in the next week...just wait longer.

Short Update

2011-12-15T20:56:00.000-08:00

No one really does much in blogland these days. Ok, so maybe they do and I just haven't noticed. I miss my family blog though...where did my wife go? At any rate, my blogging has also not been so frequent. Some day I will get back to using this for my scriptural studies and thoughts, but I continually get myself into trouble, so I have kept quiet for a while now. I even turned down giving a message at church a few weeks ago. Long story short, I have shrunk to a place of inferiority (?); feeling like a fool. The deeper I get into scriptures, the more I love it, and the more I feel inadequate to teach it. And quite honestly, this year has been rough. Bible study lasted through May or June, but work stole my life this year.

I got my results back from my wellness checkup and passed everything except cholesterol. Apparently my gluttony has consequences...ugh. Now that I am off pop, I have to start eating healthy or pay for it in the near future. I have six months to shape up before the next test.

Work has been so awesome! One of the hardest years, but ending well. I really can't believe the difference...9 or 10 really hard months, but the hard work is paying off. We haven't had after hours, weekends, or crazy busy days in a couple of months now. We still have a lot to do to finish everything we want to do, but we have "stabilized" the patient as my coworker would say.

We really need that baby to come this year, but I guess God knows what we need. If it waits until January, our deductible ($2000) starts over, and we also lose our tax break. Bad timing!

That's about it for now. Looking forward to vacation in a week, and maybe a baby at the same time!

What a week!

2011-12-06T20:51:00.001-08:00

It's been a strange week already.

I dared play the piano for the first time ever at church. I had to find some easy songs to rush through on Sunday morning with the group and just couldn't find a good way to play one of them on guitar, so I tried the piano instead!

We spent 13 hours at church Sunday, had a great time with the play. It seemed like everyone was getting really tired through the 2nd play, it was not quite as lively as the first, but they did a really good job! I think they had a blast performing it; maybe "The Grinch" next year. :) I thouroughly enjoyed my part sitting in the back running the media, a perfect fit for a geek.

We took everyone home feeling great, but got to bed and nothing happened. Usually a person would fall asleep, especially after a long day like that, I was awake the entire night. I only have two explanations. 1. I have been off pop for three weeks now, and due to the length of the day at church, I chugged down a liter of Mt Dew earlier in the afternoon...maybe my body was on hyperdrive with all of that caffeine? 2. Spiritual warfare. I had some pretty crazy things happen all night. I am not sure I should even say because you will think I am crazy...maybe I am. I would close my eyes and be in the same place, but a different "dimension". This happened to me when I was a teenager (not going into that story). I was hearing a voice trying to tell me something; I thought it was God, but it was just out of my comprehension to understand. At one point "God" showed me a picture with a word on top of it; it wasn't a word I had ever seen before and I didn't know what it meant, but that is what he was showing me so I was trying to understand. I heard a voice a few times, and I was SO close to it and trying so hard to grasp it, but just couldn't quite get close enough. Then at another point, I heard Adah crying for me. (still in this dimension, but in the same setting, middle of the night, everyone in bed) I went upstairs and the girl's door was open, but the room was dark; I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the door open. Then I heard Jude cry for me just behind me in the boy's room; same thing, door cracked open and dark. I knew they were in trouble, but I was stuck! I could see the doorways to their rooms but I couldn't move to help them. And just like in my experience when I was a teenager, I tried with all of my might to break out of the "vision" and wake up to reality so I could go check on them. I finally snapped out of it and was laying in my bed, no sounds from the kids.

As the night went on, in reality, I didn't sleep at all, and Jude and Adah were both waking up during the night. Morning finally came and I called in sick for work. My blood pressure was pretty high, and I finally fell asleep for about two or three hours at 9am. I told Terah about a couple of things, but she didn't let me finish, so she didn't know about Jude and Adah. Later that day, I told her about the "vision" and that I wouldn't be surprised to see them have problems of a spiritual nature now. Terah said that Adah had been looking at something really strange during lunch, she kept looking over at it. Gwyn even asked her, "What do you keep looking at Adah?"

Then came night #2. Jude woke up three or four times. If someone wakes up, it will be him, he is a very troubled kid at night, but it was very excessive this night. Adah also woke up a bunch as well as Gwyn getting sick. Pretty much, Terah and I had about the crummiest sleep ever, and the entire time I did sleep I was having some very bad dreams. So that was two nights of next to no sleep for me.

I decided I would go to work anyway. As the day went on, I felt my blood pressure getting worse and I was really not feeling good, so I finally had it checked....157/104, yikes! I decided to go to urgent care since no one else would take a walk in, and they weren't concerned at all. I guess that is not a dangerous level for someone my age. So here I am now, hoping for some sleep tonight. I do feel like my blood pressure has dropped a little, so there is hope. Jude has already woken up tonight, so this may be a long night. The poor guy is scared to death of his dreams. He cried tonight because he and Camden forgot to pray that he wouldn't have scary dreams.

That has been my week so far...I'm sure there will be more fun to come. Gwyn got sick, Jude has a cold, Mommy is having a lot of contractions, Daddy is going "crazy" and seeing things, and no one around here knows how to sleep!

I have a wellness checkup Thursday that was scheduled last week, so hopefully I can get a better perspective on this blood pressure problem.

Did you know?

2011-11-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

I bought myself a refurb laptop for $240 on an auction site, and watched the same exact laptop sell a week later for $430. I know a good deal when I see it!
I am the only person that has no scripts in the Christmas play, but I am in every scene. I am the media guy that has 75+ sound effects to drop. I am going to screw it all up!
We do a lot of praying in IT. It is very clear that God has favor on our "company"; we have made it out of some incredibly bad situations this year.
You know I am a freak, but did you really know?
*I have to wash my hands before I eat anything.
*When washing dishes first I rinse them, then scrub the sink, then fill with clean water and grab a new wrag to wash the dishes, and then start all over if the water gets dirty (no floaties!). Terah's Dad taught me how to clean. :)
*I look at the stack of washed dishes on the counter and turn all the spoons upside down so the water doesn't collect and create a nice little pool for the bacteria.
*I don't put anything away unless it is completely dry
*I check every glass, plate, bowl, and silverware before using
*Never eat off anyone's plate, they don't eat off of my plate
*Sometimes Terah can take a sip
*I don't do community food (especially bags of chips - the kids love these!)
*Despite the freakshow, I still eat out a lot (because my sin of gluttony is much greater than my other sins), but I see everything - the waitress putting the other plate of food on top of mine, the cook with no hairnet or gloves, the cook outside smoking with his apron on, the cook coming out of the bathroom with his apron on, the waitress' finger in my food, the waitress handling my food after cleaning tables or handling money, the little fuzz on my fries, the funny texture in that bite...I could keep going if this is entertaining.
I had over 700 texts on the last cell phone bill - not much compared to most, but a lot for me
I am no longer drinking Pepsi!
I weigh more now than I have my entire life - welcome to old, married, and lots of kids kinda life
We let two more people go at work today ):
We will probably see the worst of the economic problems around 2013, possibly 50% job loss, money not worth anything (buy silver and gold), interest rates raised high (pay off cars and credit cards), people walking away from their homes (save, don't pay ahead, sell and rent if you can). ....According to a group that has so far "predicted" our present circumstances.
I am three hours past my bed time

Vacation!

2011-11-21T17:55:00.000-08:00

Taking the week off! Everyone thinks I'm always on vacation, but for one, I have a lot of vacation because I have been at "company" (I never use their name) so long. For two, I was working so many hours all year, I could take off a day or two a week and not have to worry about using vacation time, so everyone thought I was always on vacation.

It was a great day with the kids; I don't usually get that much time with them. What a spoiled bunch.

We did our first piano and guitar lesson; Jude and Gwyn both know their notes now. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly they learned; maybe this will be easier than I thought!

We waited until after lunch to go play in the snow since we were getting so much new snow today. Three to four hours of crazy fun with the kids! We did another big sledding ramp on the hill, made a big snowman, and slid down the sled hill on our bellies. It will all be ruined after the next two days of rain. ):

Only one casualty on the sled hill...

Camden rolled the middle all by himself; took everything I had to lift it up...

Almost finished...our "scaresnow".

Maybe this will keep the deer away?

We didn't get the whole family done, but we had a lot of fun!

We had a guest speaker at church Sunday. I am not sure I have seen anyone quote scripture like that before! It seemed he had memorized the entire Bible, never had to open his Bible...just quoted entire passages. Very inspiring!

I got Terah a new cell phone for Christmas this year since her two year contract was up. It is quite a nice phone, but when she heard she could make over $600 on ebay if I sold it, she no longer cared about the phone. She happened to find her favorite couch for 40% off and now I have a phone to sell so we can purchase a couch. :) Her end of the bargain is that we get to have more company over with more seating available now. I think she was probably just thinking more kids...

Well, from what I am told, I have one of the most difficult car problems to figure out. My battery dies every day...and it's not the stereo draining it as I had thought. It is getting very frustrating. It would cost a lot to have someone take the time to try and figure it out, so I am going to try a few things myself while I am on vacation.

Our trip to Spokane last week for some heart tests on the baby was all the same news they told us here in Sandpoint - the baby should be just fine.

Terah is in her hard stage of pregnancy, very tired and uncomfortable all of the time. But we are excited to have baby join our family in a very short amount of time. I think we are leaning towards "Ellinore" (Nora), but there are a couple of other names hanging out there. She will never get her favorite name, and I will never get mine. :) She mentioned "Ivory" this week...I have to admit, I do like their soap!

I watch a site that sells refurbished Dell laptops (older models), and when the right one comes, I grab it. I have probably purchased 30 of them for friends and family, and over 100 of them for work - so I know a good deal when I see it. I bought one for Terah earlier this year, but she never used it, so I sold it. I happened to find another really good deal last week, so I bought it for me! :) There is a certain model that has problems with the video card, so we are seeing a couple of them blow up on us at work - and unfortunately Heidi's also. Sounds like Ryan's boss had the same thing happen, so I may do an operation to revive that laptop.

Supposed to take a wellness exam this year if I don't want my insurance premiums to go up - they are going up every year now. The good news is, if you score bad on your exam, you can still pass if you commit to changing your health habits. I am VERY unhealthy. I have committed to try and do better while on my vacation...get off pop, try to exercise and eat better. The blood sugar and EKG will be sure to fail, possibly the blood pressure, and who knows about my cholesterol. All I know is, my body is telling me it is not going to make it much longer if I don't give it some respect. My BIGGEST problem is, ok, so I can't trim it down to just one problem. My biggest problems are that I work at a desk job, I don't get any exercise, I am a glutton, and I LOVE Pepsi - is that so bad? I would be glad to eat healthier and even exercise, but do I really have to give up Pepsi??? I am not looking forward to this...

Might be headed into some more change at work...just when things were getting good again. It will only affect me basically (that's great!), but I can't say what it is yet. If "company" doesn't approve something, it may be yet another long year for me.

Update

2011-11-13T20:48:00.001-08:00

Although it was another 60+ hour week at work, it was a good week. We have some major power issues in the server room though and lost partial power today, so I am anxiously awaiting to see if they can get a bunch of servers back online. I am doing my best not to go in this time as I worked 6 days last week and took a vacation day tomorrow. Hope they figure it out quickly!

Tomorrow we are going to Sacred Heart all day to do some extensive testing on the baby's heart, being it has the irregular heartbeat. The doctors think she will be fine, but maybe for insurance sake they have to send us to Spokane to be sure. They should be able to tell us if there is a serious problem or if she is going to be fine, the tests they do are amazing. If for some reason it is serious, I don't think they will do anything except be prepared to deal with it at birth, and she would probably have to be born in Spokane. Sounds like she will be fine though. We haven't had a healthy kid yet, unique problems with each! Camden wore a helmet, Jude had extreme eczema with infected skin, Gwyn had a couple of eye surgeries to no avail, and Adah had her problems with her legs - low muscle mass. So it would not be normal for us to have a healthy kid anyway. Ya know, life goes on, and the kids are just fine. We love our family and we love our lives together. God has certainly blessed us with wonderful kids!

I really don't have much to update other than that, just hoping all goes well at work so I don't have to go in tonight.

I am still very excited about discipling our kids, and very proud of Terah's efforts to invest in them; she is doing an amazing job! They are worth every bit of effort, but Daddy just has to get past the end of work day syndrome and keep in mind how important that little amount of time is that I have with them. I just can't wait to see Christ formed in them at a young age. It is the battle of our lives, and Mommy and Daddy have to do their part to protect and instruct them. I wish there was some way to open our eyes to this fight for our souls; we only seem to see the battle of our physical bodies, so we end up fighting the wrong battles! And when it comes down to it, (can't recall the scripture) it is a battle of the sinful nature vs the spirit. He who lives by the spirit will live!

I miss teaching Bible study, and as soon as we quit meeting, we lost contact with the new couple at church...so that is disappointing. That is probably the biggest reason I keep doing it; somewhere, somehow, God uses it to change people's lives and keep us in fellowship. However, we are in a new phase of life. Work killed me this year, and we have our fifth child nearly hear. The kids have drastically changed this year; I don't remember them ever "needing" Daddy this much, and maybe it has something to do with working so much and being gone. So I am trying to focus on the family now, and maybe once that is firmly established, then we can think about where God might have us minister in addition. It is an exciting change, but it's not always easy to stay focused or sacrifice my own ambitions to make sure that the family is taken care of, physical and spiritual needs both. It is exciting to think about...

Well, they got things back up at work, so I am going to go to bed - big day tomorrow.

Things you may not know

2011-11-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

Skillet, We As Human, and ThirstyPerfect are my kind of music!

We are the highest point on the loop road, downhill both ways from our house - we always get snow when no one else does. (Doesn't help being right behind the mountain)

Vanilla icecream with FROZEN huckleberries on top and Dad's popcorn with a cold pepsi are my two favorite deserts.

Hydra's shrimp linguine is the best!

Yes, I am a glutton - and I am getting hungry talking about it.

Sunday's 18 hour shift may be the longest of the year, but not by much...it's been a long year! :) I have done a couple of 24 hour shifts in the past when things got really bad.

I let my attitude get bad at work this year, but no more. Yes, it has been a rough year, but next year will be better! It is still the great company I love to work for. The "new" guy started in the middle of our problems and he says it has the greatest Christian influence he has ever seen in the workplace.

I may have to hunt next year, have a couple of offers for some great hunting opportunities. I think I will go hunting for some sheds in January above my house, probably find some great moose racks!

Only a matter of time until Israel attacks Iran - they have no choice, one nuke on Israel would wipe them out.

I think computers are going to be much different in the coming years. Data will be online, and we will be using touchscreens.

Our 18 hour day on Sunday made our network lightning fast! I will do some before/after pictures some day maybe.

No greater joy!

2011-10-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

Over the years I have come to a point where I just don't want to pray a prayer of salvation with the kids. I don't want to teach them that they are saved by praying a special prayer...so Terah and I pray for their faith and disciple them as we go. Now we "observe" to see if Christ be formed in them. If only we could really know as parents! Remember how you would hear a proud parent in church say "my child put their faith in Christ and asked Jesus into their heart last night!"? I am certainly not saying they were not saved, that is not what I am getting at, it very well could be a profession of saving faith. I think that it is risky telling your kids or anyone that they are saved because they prayed this way, but my point is quite the opposite. I am actually saying this may be one of those proud moments for Terah and I! It is hard to know for sure when you can't just say your child prayed a prayer and then declare them saved. So I say this carefully and prayerfully, but I do believe that Jude has come to a saving faith!!! His desires lean toward the spiritual, his actions indicate an obedient heart, his comprehension of scriptures is amazing, his attitude is revealing good character, and most of all, his prayers show the Holy Spirit's work in his life. I don't know how a five year old could pray the way he does otherwise. They are simple words of course - he is only five, but what he prays is how we all ought to be praying, and he is not repeating anything we have taught him. I just can't think of anything more important than the salvation of our kids, so this is one of the greatest moments to celebrate! Of course we need to be steadfast as Job in pleading with God for their souls, but I am in awe of what God is doing in this boy's life.

I wanted to share this good news! And we should all commit to go before God each day for all of these kids...

Rest

2011-10-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, an entire weekend with nothing but a two minute phone call that was work related, and an extremely quiet day at work today...I feel like I have just been on vacation! Just enjoying a relaxing night at home with absolutely nothing on the agenda. I probably should head to bed, it is already 830. Yes, that is my bed time, but I am enjoying this relaxing evening listening to my playlist and I don't want it to end. ):

I made a terrible discovery yesterday, I have a ton of vacation left to use up! Nearly 1/3 of the rest of the year I will be on vacation. :)

I really don't have anything to post about, literally just loving this quiet moment.

Believe it or not, the guys have moved on from PR (Peurto Rico) and started a new game - Dominion. I don't like it nearly so much, but I enjoy playing with the fellas, so I bought two sets of this game. If my wife would have spoken up sooner, I could have gotten five sets on ebay for the same price, doh! So I found another game, San Juan - the next Peurto Rico, for $27 on ebay. Looks like a side-job will pay for most of these games.

Still getting used to this new schedule. It has been every-other day so far, only because it is nearly impossible to get to bed at 830 every night, too much going on.

So far I have not been lost with my twin being gone for three weeks. I found new lunch partners while he has been away. I really have no desire to travel in Europe, so my feelings of disappointment is mostly because I feel badly that he can't enjoy it as much without me there with him. :)

Jude's prayers are inspiring even to Daddy, almost as if someone is giving him words to speak. There is really no way for us to know as parents of their salvation other than watching their lives to see fruit, to see Christ forming in them. A "confession" is meaningless without fruit, faith in Christ is the only way of salvation, and saving faith has fruit. We must pray for them every day, the battle for their souls is waging. There is nothing more important than their souls, but we spend more time teaching them to hunt and play games than we do training them to live through this life to get to the next. I want to teach my kids to shoot guns and fish and play sports, but I hope that above all I will disciple them in a way that God will work powerfully in their lives and the enemy does not have a hold on them. Prayer and discipleship, but I suppose that doesn't mean all will be well - we will have to entrust them to God.

Listening to the new We As Human - they are touring with Disciple, Manafest, and Skillet. Doesn't get much bigger than that in the Christian Rock world, right out of Sandpoint, Idaho!

So long for tonight...

2011-10-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

We are on a new schedule, trying anyway. We are going to bed around 8pm now when the day allows, so the kids go to bed sooner. This makes it easy to get up early and start our day, and Daddy gets to spend a little time with the family before he heads to work. The kids seem to like it, so we will see how it goes.

I don't remember the last day I didn't work - at least a little bit; this is getting old. I could cry some more about it, but I guess that doesn't really make sense or help any. I am truly inspired by a "new" lady we hired from the Seattle plant we shut down. I don't know her all that well, and most of my inspiration is from her facebook. It didn't take long to realize she was a Christian, and conversation is not necessary. She is one of those rare people where you really see something different, the joy and peace. She works long days and has a lot on her plate, but every day she has a smile on her face and I see a post on facebook like "I'm going to make this a good day..." or "I am so blessed with a great job and a great family". It is refreshing to see someone who is in the grind right next to me and it doesn't even phase her; she is counting her blessings and she knows where they came from. Now I really feel like a selfish brat crying about my job.

On the brighter side, the new guy we picked up earlier this year is helping us turn things around at work so we don't have to work as much in the future. And outside of work, he has a lot of contacts from his past jobs around town, so he does a lot of side business. And this is not your "fixing a friend's computer", this is big money business. He said he has picked up a really good job that he will only do if me and my other coworker will join him. I didn't have to think about it - "I'm in!"

That is about it, I am past my bedtime by 15 minutes. I am excited to start this new schedule with the entire family; I think our days will be much easier to get through starting it off on the right foot. I am really proud of our little prayer warriors; they are amazing kids!

If you want to pray for "Daddy", just pray that I can lead this family even with long hours of work. Pray that work is "successful", I am worried that the day is going to come when we can't get out of the mess we are in. Every day is a new adventure in the IT world and somehow we are making it through each one without a bad loss (Thank you Lord!!!).

But...if you are praying, even more so, pray for Terah and baby, pray for Wanda, Cindy, and Heidi. Pray that the kids learn to love Jesus...(and Mommy and Daddy).

Good night!

Early morning update

2011-10-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Got up at 6am this morning to get a project started at work. It shouldn't be too hard if all goes well. The first few hours will be "monitoring" for about three hours, then the real work begins.

Later today a few guys will be getting together at Chris's to game for a little bit, a bday party for the boyz! :) Unfortunately, there won't be very many of us going, there are a lot of people out of town.

The kids have started Awana finally and of course they are loving it. Daddy is loving it, dinner out every Friday with the wife - my favorite hobby! :) Yes, one of my biggest weaknesses, I am a glutton. That is being serious...

Work was a little better. I did work a lot of hours and of course working today, but it was at least enjoyable and they let me have part of Thursday off. I worked Wednesday evening and Thursday morning from home, then took the rest of the day off...

...and went golfing!!! First time in months, maybe the 5th of the year, usually around 12x by now. First time at a real golf course too! First 9 was like I had never played before, back 9 was one of the best rounds I have ever had, so that was a good way to end the year! It was awesome weather, and we had the entire course to ourselves! I am going to try and take my boyz some time next week if I can.

Terah and I like to watch movies if we can find anything good. The new Brad Pitt movie is weird, not going to recommend it. There are NO bad parts and no language that I can recall. It does have a lot of "God" in some form (Catholics). But it is plain WEIRD. Weird video shooting, lots of creation video like you would see in a documentary, and very hard to follow. And like most movies, a very tough relationship between Dad and Son...sad. Good acting, but hard to pay attention with the moving cameras.

We are doing our first "real" recall that I know of where the FDA is involved. We sent some product out the door with no lables on it and it has egg in it which is an allergen. The FDA is putting out a national notice, but not going to hit the national media as far as we know. It is food service items, so it could be dangerous if they use the product. Had it been retail, they probably would not use the product as there is no label - but who knows what the foodservice customers do with it in the back kitchens.

September will probably be the worst month of the year for the company financially. Not sure if that means more layoffs. The good news is they are projecting a good end to the year. We are going to have to pass a physical to keep our insurance premiums from climbing yet again - another $60 a month. No I don't want ObamaCare, but let's fix what we do have, the only thing it is good for now is the major catastrophes. Otherwise, I could do better putting money away myself.

Lots of wolf stories now that it is hunting season - a few kills this year already. We have our own wolf story that continues to develope form Wolf People that live up above us: http://www.bonnercountydailybee.com/news/local/article_bbb282be-f3cf-11e0-ae04-001cc4c002e0.html

Drove by a bad accident yesterday in Sagle as they were extracting the body from the car. It was still there three hours later. There was a high-speed chase the other night past our house after a domestic dispute that ended somewhere over by Heidi and Jay's where he went off the road and shot himself. Apparently he took a shot at a car near Wolf People on his way by...? Looking for more details. http://www.bonnercountydailybee.com/news/local/article_f4302a30-f562-11e0-8911-001cc4c03286.html

Stuck in a rut

2011-10-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

I'm in a work, eat, sleep mode and I can't seem to escape.

This year just doesn't seem to get better, maybe worse actually. I seem to be working my life away while going to bed earlier and earlier all of the time.

While everyone else is thankful for a job (especially after we laid off so many people), I still find myself struggling having a job because I work so much. It's not even scheduled, so it is impossible to plan or enjoy the time I do have away from work. It may be a long day at work, it may be a normal day and then more work at home. Or it may be a weekend, or a middle of the night call, or all of them combined.

Yes, I really am thankful for the job, but it is really taking its toll this year. Another year like this one and I will be wondering if it is worth it.

I started going to bed at 830 with the kids, then 800, and now even as early as 730. I am getting addicted to sleep! In fact, I am past my bed time right now.

I tried to come home an hour early today to get the car fixed before I had to continue working from home. As soon as I got home, I started taking the stereo out of the Yukon because it is draining the battery every day. Before I had a chance to jump the battery and get the Yukon back up and running, Microsoft support called and I had to go inside and get back to my real job. Three hours later, I go back outside to finish what I had started, and guess what? My car battery is also now dead! I have two dead cars sitting in the parking lot. If it was last week, I probably wouldn't have taken it so well, but today I was able to laugh about it - it was pretty funny. I don't have to walk to work tomorrow, Chad came and jumped me, then I jumped the other car and finished pulling the stereo out.

We had a fun day at the church Saturday playing football and lots of games with the kids. There were a lot of new families! Then we had the annual Thanksgiving feast for the huge family on Terah's side Sunday (done early in the year before the snowbirds leave for Arizona), followed by some old country gospel music I grew up hearing when I was a little guy. Dad's group got back together after about twenty years and did a few songs...

Well, it's been a rough year, but we have a great family with a new member coming to see us in a couple of months. How can I complain? Maybe a little activity would do me some good to get me out of this rut though.

Vacationing

2011-09-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

Made it back from the Lowell trip - as expected, a very rough week. Dave and I worked anywhere from 12-17 hour days trying to get everything completed over there. I left Saturday as I had vacation scheduled for this week, but he stayed back a few more days to finish things up. The network over there got a big make-over, I imagine it is going to run 100x better now.

The layoffs are done. There are a bunch of line workers (temp employees) that were laid off that I don't know number of, but the count on everyone else in the three plants is close to 40. Some of the layoffs were good and needed, some were leaving us wondering "what?". I talked to one guy who understood the situation very well and was one who warned of some of the big problems, but was not listened to. He understands being laid-off, but does not understand why the people who led us to this place are still there. It is true, it is ultimately one man who did this to the company, very unfortunate.

This will be my first vacation of the year - I did take a week off while Terah was in Africa, but that was not exactly vacation. This will be the first week off with the entire family anyway. I have three weeks to use up before the end of the year or I lose it. Last year they didn't tell us the new policy until January 1st and they took everyone's vacation. That was the first time I had ever felt robbed by the company...pretty lame. I do love the place, but it has lost a lot of integrity over the last two years...

Day two of vacation. Got some tree cutting and yard work done yesterday while it was nice out, and did a bunch of maintenance inside while it was raining today.

Gotta find some time to get the church website going, just wiped it out and installed the latest software, now I need to get it set up for use - will be nice when it is done, just not sure when I will finish it.

Supposed to be nice the rest of the week, maybe a day of golf coming. Let's just say I saved a lot of money this year...

I think it's time for some ice-cream!

"The Titanic"

2011-09-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a bummer week. Work has hit all-time lows. I have been there for over 15 years and have never seen things come to this point before. They have done a workforce reduction between the three plants (mostly Sandpoint) of over 30 people now - and this number is probably much bigger if you count temps and line workers. I knew it was coming, but I had no idea to what degree. Ironically, I have been in Michigan while all of this is happening, and I actually feel fortunate about that. I don't want to share many details about the reduction, just enough to give a perspective from somewhere in the middle of it all and how we got to this point. I hear things from most of the way up to all the way down the chain, so I have a pretty good perspective on it I think.

It all started a couple of years ago, the economy was in really bad shape, we had to raise prices like crazy to keep up with the rising cost of fuel and commodities to make our product. The economy took a huge dive which brought fuel prices back down as the economy couldn't handle the high price on petroleum any longer. We didn't lower our prices though and we started to make a profit on our product for once! It was the best year we have ever had. In my estimation, it seemed to have created a false sense of success, and this was the beginning of "the vision" to make us great (lack of details intentional). Over the next two years, this vision grew the company extremely fast in every area. We started jumping into exciting new lines of business outside of our core business. We started getting huge contracts with customers. We made big plans partnering with the bank for expansion. We bought out and shut down another plant and purchased a new facility to start huge production in the south. We got a paved parking lot! We restructured our office staff and hired tons of new employees - I had so much computer equipment coming in at one time I couldn't remember who was getting what or what I had even ordered, it was the most stressful time I have ever had at work, drowning from the extreme growth. At first it was very exciting to hear all of this great stuff - we were doing it, we were growing REALLY fast! We resembled the Titanic, it was unbelievable - then the icebergs showed up. One by one, every venture that we took on began to blow up. Every problem you could possibly imagine. Here is where I could insert a million details that would just blow your mind, but this is not the place for that kind of information, and probably not for me to talk about anyway.

Long-story short. We have had every venture fail, we have faced a bad economy and rising costs, we have made decisions that have cost the company millions of dollars, and now we are looking at record sales with record losses. This is extremely serious, requiring some very difficult decisions to get out of this mess. The first thing they did was cut costs and spending everywhere possible. Then they haulted nearly 200 projects and ended hundreds of skus in our production. And finally they began their workforce reduction and we are in our third reorg this year. Every department was required to reduce head-count this week, no one left out. So yes, this means even good, faithful employees were facing job-cuts.

I hear what the people are saying, and I have said it myself. I hear what management is saying and see what they are doing, and unfortunately they don't have a choice. They led us down the wrong road, and it cost a lot of families this week - that is a fact. I love this company; it is very hard to see this happen. I know this is not what the owners had in mind and I know they are grieving over this more than all of us. (And they were not responsible for any of this) We will come out of it and be great again, but today is a hard lesson learned, and my heart breaks for all of those families. There are rumors flying, but be assured, this is not the case of bad-guys vs good-guys, this is not the case of hurting employees intentionally or making plans for the company's good in spite of them. It is simply that bad decisions were made with such serious consequences that there was no other alternative to the actions that have been taken. It is a shame that it came to this; it could have been avoided had they paid attention to the "warnings", had they not made some of those decisions. The company will be better for it tomorrow, but it will take a long time to build back their credibility and integrity. I will do my part to help build it back up as long as I am there; I don't want to see this great company stay this way. There will always be good times and bad times, but as a man of integrity once told me (who also happens to own this company), "Lyle, it is our responsibility to live by faith."

Midnight and Weekend Oil

2011-09-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

Thought I would do a short update while I am sitting here finishing music up for the morning.

There is a lot going on at work, which means not much going on anywhere else for me. It really has been a tough year. To put it into perspective how much I have worked this year, I still have most of my vacation left and have to use it by the end of the year or lose it, I have only golfed about 1/4 the amount I did last year, I worked outside for a week or two at the beginning of the year and have barely touched it since - I have not done ANYTHING this year.

Ok, so we did manage to do one thing. Last week was our anniversary, so we headed up to Glacier for a mini-vacation. We stayed in a yurt that Rodd and Megan recommended. It was a great place and VERY affordable ($45 a night, and they gave us a discount), but too close to the highway (noise). It was a bummer to get sick the day before we left, so I was pretty sick most of the weekend and spent a lot of time in the bathroom. ): I felt so good the day we were leaving that I drug everyone back up the mountain for one more hike, and it was well worth it - we found a small trail all of the kids and prego Mommy could do that was very private and beautiful. I guess Lance got pretty sick this weekend with the same "crap" I had (pun intended), sorry man!

Now I am getting ready to take off on another trip, this time for work. Headed to our Michigan plant until Saturday. It will be a lot of work and some very long days. I guess I am getting used to it though. Put in some long days this week and worked the weekend, and was called in the middle of the night last night. It has been a rough week.

There is nothing but bad news right now at work. I am thankful for my job no matter how hard it gets, but it is certainly not good times right now. I have been assured that the situation is very serious and worse than 2008 when we went through a similar thing. I have to be careful how much I say, but in the end, it is unfortunate that we have come to this place and will now see some tough times ahead of us when it could have been avoided with better management. I think they will come out of it, but not without some drastic measures that are very unfortunate.

Looking forward to music in the morning, I have been out the last two weeks, and probably again next week. It will be refreshing to join the team again!

I guess that is it for now, I need to go spend some time with my wife now that the kids are in bed. Too much working and a trip around the corner - "Where did Daddy go? He is never here anymore!" ):

A very special story

2011-09-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

http://blogcasts.blogspot.com/2011/09/something-special.html

Doom, gloom and blessings!

2011-09-03T01:16:00.001-07:00

What have we done to our thriving nation?

Terah and I got married in 2000, our first "home" was a two bedroom apartment above some storage units. We had no furniture, just a bed and a small Shopko style table and loud neighbors with thin walls. We all shared the washer and dryer! I worked nights, and she worked part-time days. We lived in this apartment for two years, paying about $500 a month. The landlord loved us. Then we found a small house out in the "country" that we just loved, next to where I had spent my entire life growing up. It was private and cozy for the same amount of money, and another great landlord. We also lived here for two years. Like so many people who are set on the American Dream (which is not bad in and of itself, another subject matter), we wanted our own home. During these four years of working nights, I was also going to college and finally trade school where I was able to get certified in the technology field. My wife picked up a book one day called "The Power of a Praying Wife", the chapter that day described how important it was to pray for the man's job, and so she did. Just an hour or two later, I called her from work and said, "You will never believe what just happened! Someone has asked me to work in the IT department!" So that was the beginning of my work in IT. And after one of the toughest seasons of work in my entire life, working LONG days and weekends in my new IT career, Terah and I finally decided to look for a house of our own. The market was very affordable in today's standards, but we were very scared of jumping into a payment that would nearly double our rent. We jumped out in faith and found a small house in town that was the first of many being built in a new subdivision. This was the end of 2004. (The year is important to recognize as it is a great example of what has happened to our economy in a few short years) We purchased our first home for 130k. Once we settled in, Terah finally got her wish and Daddy agreed it was time to begin our family. Over the course of the next two years, we had three kids and our home increased greatly in value. Unknown to me at the time, and quite frankly, I didn't really care, there was something very significant going on with real estate, banking, and loans. We found we didn't really like living in town once the subdivision grew to have a lot of neighbors and no privacy, but we had no plans to move out anytime soon. Then, one morning at work I received an email of a property listing in our dream location. I wasn't looking for property at all, but I opened this email for some reason and once opened I knew this was for us! It was so perfect that we literally viewed it, made an offer, offer accepted within a matter of a couple of days! How would we be able to afford a property payment and a house payment though? Terah no longer worked, and we had three kids now! I did what I will never do again (hopefully); I took out a 2nd loan against our house that had increased so much in value and used this to pay for the property. The 2nd loan added another $400 a month on a 1% interest I believe to ensure it was not a variable interest rate. The only reason I would make a big move like that was knowing that I would immediately sell our house to build on the property and this 2nd loan would soon be gone. So we quickly put our house on the market and it sold within a week or two ending in a bidding war. The amazing thing is that we nearly doubled the money we paid for it two and a half years prior. And this is the point I am getting to. Long-story made short, we moved in with my parents for 9 months while we built our dream home in our dream location. We paid a large chunk of it with the money we made on the first home, and we have lived here happily ever after for the last four years or so.

All this to show something very interesting. While our first home was very affordable, real estate was booming out of control in other states and would soon hit Idaho. What much of America did not know is that the Clinton administration and possibly the Bush administration were pushing Fanny May and Freddie Mack to purchase billions of dollars worth of home equities from banks all over the US. And I believe banks were encouraged to hand money to people without much qualifications. It started in places like California where the real estate was already more than anyone could afford, so the banks offered interest only loans with variable interest rates after five years. It was the only way people could afford a home! Then Idaho caught up to the real estate boom and as we experienced, properties values doubled in just a couple of years. I remember and am very thankful for our mortgage agent, he said that banks were handing these loans out left and right, but he refused. He said he wouldn't sleep at night knowing they would probably lose their home in five years. Wow, what foresight! Or maybe I should say, what common sense!

Then it happened. Immediately after we sold our first home, everything crashed overnight. There is a good chance we would not have sold our home at the value we did if we had even waited weeks. And so began the start of a failing economy around 2007. With oil hitting record numbers and all of these interest only loans hitting year five, things quickly headed south. People were losing their homes left and right, and the cost of fuel was causing businesses to cut way back. It was a very fast downward spiral, people homeless and jobless, and wall street hitting lows we had not seen since the great depression. It continued to spiral out of control - no one was buying real estate (mostly losing it), so the construction industry died almost immediately. And of course the next thing to go was the logging industry and mills.

What now? We were at the end of the Bush era and the beginning of "change", the Obama administration. The government thought it best to push out $700 billion to stimulate the dying economy. If I remember right, this was the second large stimulus (TARP) they pushed out followed by massive bailouts to big firms such as AIG ($85 billion!), Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, and the auto industries. Then the federal reserve continued to lower interest rates (which are at historic lows today) and print more money. They were band aids to a wound that would soon be infected. While the Bush administration set a record adding a huge amount to the country's deficit with the war on terror, the Obama administration made it look like small beans in just a couple of years doubling the national debt. We have never seen money spending like this in the history of the world - except maybe on a smaller level. Japan went through this same sort of economic slump years ago and took similar actions to fix their economy.

So here we are today. America was hopeful we made it through the depression of 2008. Unfortunately, it is as volatile as ever. Confidence is very low, and wall street has been a roller coaster, mostly headed downward. People are still losing their homes in record numbers and jobs are still the primary concern today. When taking a drive you will see for sale signs everywhere, and many being sold by banks. There are so many problems compounding from actions taken over the prior 10 years, it will take at least that to recover from it. We recently faced America's first default on paying a record deficit and received a lowered credit rating for the first time in our history which added to an already very weak economy. And just today, the feds have began litigation against 17 banks across America to try and get some of the money back from all of the defaulting loans that were sold to Fanny Mae and Freddie Mack. The estimate is that they were sold over $900 billion in loans. Filing law suits with these banks will just hurt confidence in our banking systems even more so. Bank of America recently dove 30% in value!

It has been extremely difficult times for many over the last couple of years; we all have friends and family fighting to keep their homes and their jobs, or finding any kind of work at all. In the end, I have written of a lot of doom and gloom in this post. That is not my nature; I am just interested in these things and it is certainly interesting to watch it all unfold. Sure I miss details and I don't know the entire story. What I do know is this - I trust in the Lord, creator of all that we see, and I trust his promise to take care of me no matter what this economy does. They can take my home, my job, my money, but I will always have everything I need (Matthew 6). The Lord is in control and faithful beyond our comprehension! When I look back over the years, at the present, and into the future, it may get a lot worse. But through it all, God's faithfulness to me and my family is evidenced over and over, and I am a truly blessed child of God!

Shampoop

2011-08-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

I posted a video for a few of you without Facebook accounts - but I accidentally put it on my other blog!
http://blogcasts.blogspot.com/

Fading flames

2011-08-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post on a refurbished laptop that I bought for Terah. It is really nice! We are just not sure we want to keep it because it is not necessarily a high priority, just a really nice laptop for a good price. So if anyone is interested in buying our desktop computer or our laptop, let me know - we will decide some day which one we want to keep. :)

The flame is nearly out, Daddy is burned out. I'm looking at September in a couple of days, and until this last week or so I really didn't realize the year had escaped me. I have allowed the year to fly by mostly wasted and unnoticed. I tried to figure out what was going on as I really have done nothing all year, so how did I get to September? I finally realized that I have been working so much this year that it has literally stolen my life away. Of course I could have done something about it, but by the time I figured it out, I found myself sitting here burned out in a classic way - crashing on the couch eating potato chips. When I normally spend as much time as I can outside working, all I have done all year is virtually nothing at all. Even if I wasn't working, I had no motivation to do what I normally love to do. I am very sad that I let this happen, what a wasted summer! Now I am looking at the remaining months of the year planning all of my vacation because I forgot to take it...I literally didn't realize how fast the days were going. I didn't realize how bad work was getting. I feel like I have robbed my family - coming home and crashing rather than having quality time or getting things done. That is so frustrating! My boss had a chat with me today. Even though he has not been at work much for various reasons, he apparently is aware of what has been going on. Long story short, he noticed I had a lot on my plate and he wanted to make plans to put some of the load on others. Wow, that would be great!

Unfortunately, I called off the Haiti trip tonight. I know I would LOVE it, and I already have my passport for it. Of course I have a million excuses not to go, but now I will always wonder. I have always been the guy ready to leave everything and go, and was so proud of Terah for going to Africa hoping she would come home ready to move overseas. I can't help but think I am making a bad decision. ):

I'm also going to stop small group for a season once Truth Project is finished. This is not a decision I take lightly and would only do at God's prompting. I have always felt small groups are critical to people's discipleship and even salvation. My whole family is "saved" because of a Bible study. We heard testimonies all weekend at church about this type of experience. Terah didn't even have to talk to me about this decision, it is the right thing to do with an increasing burden to disciple our kids. They are growing up so fast, and they are starving for Daddy's "fathership". There are times when I feel burdens I know are from God (like Terah's trip to Africa), and this is one of those times. I get home from work and my boys are "hungry" for time with Daddy. It feels like an experience you would expect from a mother, where you just know your part - I am confident it is now time to invest in the kids, something Terah has faithfully reminded me of, but now I know it is time. I would regret it if I let them get to their teens without any discipleship. It is going to require me getting off the couch and putting the potato chips down though. We'll do some fun stuff, but mostly I want to instruct them and pray for them. I hope God will use me in such a way their faith will move mountains - before they grow up and get "real" like the rest of us. :) Right now is the time to take advantage of the faith of a child. I love their prayers! They pray as if God will answer all of their requests - what a concept!

We had our church's 50th anniversary this weekend! It was amazing to see all of those old faces! We missed so many though - I personally would have loved to have seen the Jensens; they were a huge part in all of our lives and we all miss them so much! It was a full house and an amazing time of fellowship - especially Sunday. I sure love that little church - so many good memories, such a blessing to be there. There have been some regrets throughout the years, but God is faithful and our little church is such sweet fellowship! I really can't believe the men and women of God that have come out of that little body; it was awesome to hear all of the testimonies!

If you have a facebook account, you really need to check out the video of Adah I just posted - hilarious!

I suppose that is it for now...

NEW BLOGCAST

2011-08-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

I started this blog "The Most Excellent Way" with intentions of using it for spiritual and Biblical postings. I have been meaning for some time to create another blog where I could post everything else. I have finally done that. This blog will remain personal, and hopefully get back to Biblical, but my news and technology posts have to go - they are poluting my site! So here is my new BLOGCAST!

Interesting...

2011-08-19T13:43:00.001-07:00

Interesting stuff...

1. Google is buying Motorola. This will give them a huge edge in the cell phone/tablet market. It will probably hurt Apple the most. The talk is "Will Microsoft step up to the plate?" That would most likely mean they buy out Nokia who they already partner with. Ironically or not so much, Google's credit rating dropped with the purchase of Motorola. Motorola's stocks have come down in value, which is probably the cause of this, and also the reason Google has jumped in to buy them while they are down.

2. HP is throwing in the towel. The #1 consumer computer in the world, but their phones and tablets are losing big and they are even thinking of selling their low profit personal computer business and investing in the more lucrative corporate server, software, and services business. I would hate to see them go that far - Dude, I guess you get a Dell, the next most widely sold computer. HPs stocks took a dive (-20%) on the news they were selling out their market in the pc world. They were the worst performer by far on the DOW today.

3. Wallstreet is still really struggling. I have been expecting this, so I personally think it will keep falling down as bad or worse than 2008. Gold is gaining buy the hour! The economy is certainly not in good shape. We are just going to keep hearing more stories like HP and Bank of America who has had stocks tank over the last couple of weeks and expects to have massive job cuts over the next two months. Europe's economy is also a big player in the DOW's performance, but the jobs and economic confidence seem to be the big players in its downward spiral. I plan to put all of my 401k funds back in to agressive once it hits pretty low (IF).

4. CNBC did a survey on the most hated jobs in America. Of the top 10, 5 of them were technology jobs, with #1 being the Director of IT. The reasons for hating their job was working after hours, not being appreciated, working with "ignorant" people, everyone hates the IT dept, and working with old and failing equipment because they don't give you a budget to buy good equipment. The first and the last describe my job perfectly. As a friend pointed out on this subject, it is bitter-sweet, love-hate. Love the field of work, but it is not easy. This year has been a testament to that - this week for that matter. Worked late Monday night, I was sick yesterday, but still put in three hours working until midnight last night, then a long day today, and working again on Sunday. Some day I need to log all of this after-hours labor, it would probably shock me. I guess I should look for a different line of work since the statistics show I hate my job. :)

Weekend Update

2011-08-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

It was a pretty uneventful week - intentionally. I cancelled all of my plans this week and stayed home with the family. Seems the older the kids get, the harder it is for me to be away (in a good way that is). Funny how there was no obvious transition, it just seemed to naturally happen - I guess that is how God made us.

Our yard is pretty ugly these days. There is so much to do and it is my favorite thing to work on, but I have been reluctant to put any money into it, so it has not been doing so well. I have barely put any time into it compared to last year either. It doesn't help that I am just feeding the deer with all of these nice flowers and trees, so frustrating!

I bought a bunch of parts for the car to give it a little tune-up, but I didn't have any tools to install them! Story of my life...

Wall street has been a mess. The DOW going up and down, not just day to day, but all throughout each day. The reading I have been doing says it is similar to what happened before the last recession. I think it may be time to jump on the silver bandwaggon. Of course, I would not keep it, just sell it after it makes a good profit - maybe enough to pay for the upcoming hospital bills! :)

I have been looking through family photos tonight; it really doesn't seem that long ago, but some of the best memories. Dating Terah 15 years ago - I had hair, was 25 lbs lighter, Tess was 4, Beaux was a little guy, Terah was gorgeous as always, Shelby was a little girl! (11 or 12?) I wish I had digital copies of some of these pictures! Adah looks just like her momma, but not as much as Jude looks like his daddy. Jim and Wanda's 25th, my graduation (Weird! The girl I liked and two girl "friends" in the same picture right when I started dating Terah who was not in the picture), Ryan and Crystal's wedding, Chad and Shelby's wedding, my grandparent's 50th. Some of them were my camera, some were passed on to me. Mom always did a good job taking photos, then passing a copy on to each of the kids - awesome memories! I just can't beleive I am talking about something so far in the past when it feels like yesterday. It doesn't seem very long until my kids will be making the same memories...

Quick note

2011-08-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

I have made mention of Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill - I do like his preaching. I have listened to a lot of his stuff now. I have heard good from many people about him, Ryan has also been listening to a lot of his stuff. Just wanted to add, there are a few messages where he gets a little "offensive" to a conservative ear. He would not last long preaching in our church in a couple of them. I just wanted to mention that being I have praised his teaching. I am not 100% with him, but I do still like his teaching. There you have it...I'm still listening to the 48 podcasts I downloaded!

Follow Up...

2011-08-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

I thought it was interesting to post some huge changes in our culture due to technology. Of course there are many more than just what I mentioned. I certainly don't disagree with any comments made about it, I am simply pointing out what is happening. On the flip side, this may be my calling. I had lunch with Bruce earlier this year to discuss the mission field. He said organizations would love to send someone with my resume to the mission field. I had never really thought about it like that, I would love to be able to minister in the technology field. It is simply amazing what you can do these days. As simple as having a church website up where a new guy showed up to church this Sunday because he found us on the web (true story), to going overseas to set up entire networks for schools. I manage cell phones at work, so right before Terah took off for Africa, I made sure she had what she needed to communicate with me. She ended up being the only one in the entire group that had a way to call home!

While I agree to the comments, there is a way to take advantage of the technology and use it for good! The key is not in the technology, but in the heart as with everything. What kingdom are we seeking?

Lance made an interesting comment about technology and war. There is war going on around the clock in cyberspace! The biggest theft in history of some of the most confidential information in the world just took place this year. Hackers stole unmeasureable amounts of data from all over the world - the UN, the Pentagon, Olympics, on and on...all fingers pointing to China. Who knows what is going to happen now. The way the US and Israel sent a worm into Iran's nuclear facility to reprogram the PLCs that run the nuclear facility was simply unbelievable. No bombs, no invasions - just an undetectable "virus" that set Iran at least a year backwards in their advancements of nuclear weapons. But it won't be the last of this warfare. The US has talked about this for a very long time - how much of a threat it is if enemies were to shut down our power grids and so on.

To change the subject a little now...

We are living in some historical times in many ways. The nation's economy may be as bad as we have ever seen it. I have been expecting the market to crash big anytime, and after last week I began to wonder - is this it? Then over the weekend the US credit rating was lowered for the first time in its history and today was a very bad day for the world's economy, let alone the US economy. We will see if it continues in a downfall or if it can sustain itself, but the continual spending of money to keep our economy going has finally reached its limits and debt has become too great. Fingers are pointing everywhere - democrats, republicans, the president, Standard and Poor, the Senate, even the Tea Parties. The Obama administration is busy blaming the people that made the debt ceiling comprimise so difficult, which then caused the decision to lower our credit rating. They don't seem to care to discuss how we ever got in so much debt! The whitehouse was warned over and over and did too little, too late. Only time will tell now, but I do believe it will be a while before we see our economy strong again. I am by no means a doom and gloom guy, but this is reality. This will certainly not recover overnight.

A little irony for you - the day after I posted about technology changes, I found my 4x4 post with my internet canopy laying on the ground, snapped in half. What?! No Internet!!! Probably some moose thought it would make a good scratching post. We are back up today, I am not so lost being disconnected from everything - thought I had better post again so you all know I am ok. ;)

I woke up early today to try and begin some needed prayer time, but as soon as I woke up (530), I was called into work. You crafty devil you! I have been listening to some awesome podcasts - just my style of preaching (Mark Driscoll - Mars Hill). We had an older fella preaching at church this week also - it was awesome to see how much he loves the Lord. These guys inspire me! It is good to see men who love the Lord so much. I am inspired to begin discipling the family, to begin praying for wisdom at work so the Lord can bring success in a way that glorifies him, and also for blessings that would allow me to pass an inheritance down to my kids. I am not very educated on this scripturally, but the little I was hearing sounded good. It is not an easy world though. How far do you go, how hard do you work to leave this inheritance for your children's children? Hmmm. This one will take more studying.

I love studying, love to teach, but sometimes I am ready to step back and stay quiet. I get so caught up in the gospels and all of these podcasts I hear. I get very passionate about these hard teachings of Jesus'. The hard part is, I seem to either be a fool and alone, or a radical and alone. Sometimes I really do say things I should not, or don't say them as clearly as I should have. But many times it is exactly what I believe, and exactly what the scriptures say and I still feel like a fool. I don't think it would be right to stay silent just because it is controversial or uncomfortable, but I am constantly doubting myself. Need more prayer and studying, and definitely more Holy Spirit!

Technology - the paradigm shift

2011-08-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

(All views expressed are solely my own opinions and thoughts, take them "as is")

There has been some major paradigm shifts happening over the last couple of years due to technology. If you aren't advancing your business in some cases, you will sink! Many industries have made this mistake and paid dearly.

1. Netflix and Redbox have ended the days of video rentals and put the rental stores out of business. And after just a couple of years of this shift we are already seeing another big shift - Netflix is raising their prices and changing their subscriptions in such a way that they will lose millions of customers (including me). Walmart is jumping in the streaming business now as a big player with vudu and no subscriptions, just pay as you go. And hulu.com is also moving up in the world offering free streaming of movies and tv shows as long as you don't mind advertisements (otherwise you pay). Many people are choosing to shut off their satellite, especially now that all of these new TVs have Netflix and other apps built in! In my best estimate, Redbox will be out of business also if they don't change their business to streaming. Gone are the days of dvds - streaming is becoming more and more available (except in North Idaho of course where you find the slowest internet in the nation).

2. In much the same way, recording enterprises are losing tons of money. They thought they were losing with pirating (and they are), now they are losing because no one buys cds! Everything can be purchased through iTunes - just buy your favorite songs for $.99, you don't have to purchase the entire album. Download them directly to your iPod, iPhone, Droid, computer, xbox, wii, playstation, TV! Even better, just use Pandora or Last FM and many other streaming apps and stream your favorite music everywhere you go. I recently purchased two stereos for my cars, why? CDs are a pain and never work. Now I simply plug my phone into the stereo and either play my favorite playlist, or stream my favorite tunes with Pandora. So you can also say good-bye to satellite radio, drop your Sirius account and stream for free!

3. Along the same shift in technology as the two examples above - Borders is going out of business and shutting down all of their stores. Why? To start with, I need only say "Amazon". I think what may have driven the nail in is everyone buying iPads and Kindles (admittedly, that is my assumption). You can now download books to your devices and read them at your leisure everywhere you go. I have even read a few books on my iPhone! There will always be hardcopy book lovers like my wife (until I buy her an iPad that is), but with Borders closing their doors, it is obvious that things are changing drastically. When I prepare my devotions, I am using digital Bible references as the search pulls the information up instantly!

4. My wife didn't know where her phone was today and the boys had my phone, so I couldn't call it to help her find it. Within seconds, I pulled up my Google account on my laptop, hit the "call" button, dialed her phone number and her phone began ringing. Wow! Say good-bye to long-distance, get a Google account.

5. We are even seeing some great advances in the corporate environment. One being what they call "Unified Messaging". This would be difficult to explain. Basically, your "presence" is everywhere you go and is known at all times to all of your colleagues. You can be reached at anytime if you choose to be by many different means - phone, email, instant messaging. It all works together. You can listen to your voicemail from your inbox, you can answer your phone from your computer, you can instant message from your cell phone - on and on.

6. Another advancement in the corporate IT world is virtualization. This is really cool! You buy one BIG server, install a host operating system, then the fun begins - you start building virtual guest servers on top of this server. The end user can't tell any difference, still accessing data and resources as normal, but in IT you are dealing with one piece of hardware and paying for power to one box, but running possibly 10 servers on that one box! It gets better! You can assign harddrive space, cpu, and memory allocations dynamically to these different guest servers as needed! We recently ran out of diskspace on one of our virtual servers, so I simply configured the settings and added 100GB - no added hardware, no downtime, all virtual settings! If you have some catastrophic failure of a virtual machine, no worries, just restore the last snapshot you took and you are back up. (of course it is not that simple when you need the latest data restored, but it is that simple when you need the server up and running!)

7. Cell phones! Say good-bye to your land-lines if you have not already done so. This has been a huge shift in today's culture. I still remember waiting for the neighbors to get off the line so I could make a phone call on a rotary phone (what is that? my kids say). Unfortunately, I think Frontier invested in a dying business when they bought out Verizon's land-lines - I could be wrong. Verizon has recognized the paradigm shift and they have invested heavily into the wireless technologies. Wow, this technology is impossible to keep up with. New phones and technologies are coming out every month. Some people are set in their ways and refuse to "get with the now", which is fine, but it doesn't take long to realize how too convenient this becomes. My wife is a perfect example. We dropped our land line and got her a cell phone at little more cost so I could reach her even when she was not at home. This didn't work so well for the first year and a half; she was not so good with her cell phone. Then, I got her one of these "new" phones (iPhone) and now I can email her, text her, or call her to reach her. This doesn't fix the problem of her leaving her phone in various locations, but it does help a lot. Three ways of communication, and a lot more features on her phone which makes it more likely that she has it with her at all times and I will reach her. There are so many more examples - having turn by turn directions everywhere you go. Losing your phone is not a problem, just jump on your online account from any computer and it will show you exactly where your phone is. Within seconds, you can be calling your local restaurant to make a reservation for your arrival in 20 minutes - yes, say good-bye to your phone books as well! The apps are endless - tune your guitar (or play a guitar for that matter!), play games, watch movies, stream music, read books, or if you are like me you watch the PGA tour while the wife is inside shopping at Target. On the new iPhones and iPads, you have "Facetime". You can do video calls! One of my favorites - I have downloaded hundreds of podcasts for my listening pleasure to and from work. And of course there is texting. No need to even comment here, some people would not be able to survive on a plan that only had 2000 texts a month. In the IT realm, we have software that will alert our phones when servers go down, when they get too hot, when someone enters the server room. We usually know there is a problem before someone calls our phones to tell us about it.

8. Facebook - I included this because it really is a culture change. Facebook, email, instant messaging, texting, and blogs have done away with endless phone calls to your friends. Of course if you are stuck in the past, you think this has really ruined society and no one knows how to communicate or be personal anymore. I am not sure I would argue this, but one thing I will say that this new technology has done - it has made us more connected then we have ever been. Like I said before, there is texting, email, blogs, etc, but Facebook has really taken this to a new level. I have connected with hundreds of people I would not have otherwise. I can see their various comments, activities, pictures, status whether I like it or not. I know more about them now than I ever would have. To make it worse, I see it everywhere I go because I have one of those fancy phones that keeps me connected 24/7. This is not always good, I admit.

***Yes there is more. I will not even get everything, these are just some of the technology changes off the top of my head. I am not even going to get into cameras and photography!

9. INTERNET - this may well be the biggest cause of all the changes we are seeing today. The ".com" world changed everything many years ago, then Yahoo and Google opened our eyes to a world of information at our fingertips. Google is an IT guy's best friend! I have heard it said recently that Google has made us dummer. We don't have to know anything anymore, just search for the answer on Google. But now with increasing bandwidth and information overload, the way we access this information is changing by the day. As stated before, with the latest cell phones, we have access to this information everywhere we go. Consider this though - until recently, you have not had the bandwidth to support all of this new stuff. Now that bandwidth is increasing (faster internet speeds to your home and to your cell phone), you are able to watch movies, stream music, access emails, watch youtube, download books - and one of my favorites streaming March Madness! It is this kind of access that has put the movie stores, the book stores, and music industries in a downward spiral. And it is just going to increase. You may or may not realize what is on the horizon. As I stated before, Verizon is investing billions into their wireless technology, as is AT&T. In the very near future, you will begin to see the new "4G" networks going up. If you live in a metropolitan area, this is not as good of news as it is for the rest of us. Yes it is good for everyone who does everything from their high-tech cell phones, but now for those of us in the rural and beautiful landscapes of America, we will finally have high-speed internet like we have never seen before. Yes, the wireless internet your cell phone uses will now replace your home internet! If you are lucky, you might get 6mb download speeds in Sandpoint. They are boasting up to 20mb+ with this new 4G! In fact, a friend of mine is currently installing AT&Ts 4G in Sandpoint...hmmm.

10. Ok, so I will stop at ten technological advances. And for this one I will not pull a Steve Jobs and keep this technology a big secret. Computers are constantly changing. I will soon have a six core processor in my computer and some day add a third screen. However, this is not the latest technology I am referring to in this last description of advancements. I am sharing my next innovation of a computer. It is much more cost effective, and much easier to upgrade or repair. We call it "TheBox". As you can see, I have gutted a computer and simply set it on a cardboard box - all the airflow it will ever need now. I may need to upgrade to a bigger cardboard box, but that upgrade is most likely going to be free - now that is technology I can afford!

It's a crazy world out there, and if you come from the big corporations, you are expected to be present 24/7, and it IS possible. I am writing this from various locations in my house - the couch, the kitchen while I make popcorn, quite possibly finishing up on my hammock outside. At any moment I can access everything I need to at work to maintain our systems and keep our users productive. For now, I think I will enjoy my popcorn and technology, and stream a movie for my lovely wife and I to enjoy together.

My name is Lyle Beck, and I approve of this post.

Late night update

2011-08-04T22:42:00.001-07:00

Nearly Friday already - where did the week go?

I am pretty motivated most weeks, but this week has been really blah. Just want to go home and lay down and be lazy, but that is not really an option.

Wallstreet has had a terrible week! I have been waiting for the next big one, maybe it has begun? No, I'm not doom and gloom, but MANY people have forecasted the big crash, and this week it has taken a HUGE dip.

Working on music for Sunday. We had a bunch of requests from people for a special guest that is speaking. I guess that is fine...

Work is better, but we could really use another person - it's not going to slow down. The new guy is pretty stressed; we have just worked this way for years, so I guess I don't notice it as much.

I have been listening to a lot of Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill in Seattle. There are a couple of hundred thousand churches in the US and they are in the top 40 largest. Of course that is not really how you find a good church, but his podcasts are awesome! Today I listened to the "disciple" as that is what I was teaching in small group. He repeated over and over and over "Don't give up!!!" Then I listened to another message on the "narrow gate" - this was excellent! He told some cool stories of Haiti and how revival is sweeping the country in their devestation. Most living in tents with absolutely nothing, but the church is growing like crazy. He was there when thousands were gathered and they found a 12 year old boy on the street singing praises, so they brought him in front of the multitudes to lead worship and it was the most amazing thing. That is the worship I long to see in the church! He continued to a point of how they are the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, they have nothing, yet they will be first in God's kingdom. We are the richest nation, we are the strongest, the most successful, the first...and we will be last in his kingdom. Hmm...of course there is more to the story.

Just finishing up some work and my battery is dieing, so I guess I am done.

Weekly Update

2011-07-23T08:22:00.001-07:00

I only update my blog about once a week these days. To tell you the truth, it is not really something I am all that interested in these days. I started the blog as a post for studies, but I have run out of time to post those things anymore. I still like to share thoughts though...

We started up small group last night now that camp is over for us. We are going through the Truth Project for the summer during the busy months. I am not a fan of videos, I like to study strait out of the word, but the Truth Project is one of the best studies I have ever seen. Last night we had a pretty new group there, including a new family that just moved up from Texas and began getting involved in our church recently I guess. It was a good discussion - looking forward to the rest of the series with this group!

Got up at 430am to do some more work in our Michigan plant. It was a two phase project. Phase I came up in less than a minute (nice!), phase II on the other hand gave us a lot of problems. We finally came to a resolution and got it going though. I need to remote in one more time this weekend late at night to make one last change over there on a different project.

The new guy and I seem to have common goals at work and work pretty good together. He comes from Seattle and took a low paying job to work with us as he said the $$$, stress, and fast pace just wasn't worth it. Unfortunately, he is finding himself pretty busy here also. We both commented how in our line of work, it is sometimes just not worth it. How different would life be if we just worked a simple 9-5 job and lived a simple life. In the end, I am thankful for such a good job though. There are hard times, and there are good times. This is where God has provided and taken care of me for now.

Looking forward to the weekend! We only had one relaxing evening at home this week, so today will be a nice day to get some work done. I even made it out golfing earlier this week. I haven't been out much, so I didn't play well, but I managed to get a few more drives over 300 with the new driver!

So long for now...

Good morning ya'll

2011-07-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

It is actually the start of a new day now, just past midnight. Need to kill a little time before my "new" responsibilities at work continue on all hours of the day. Last night I was up until 1am working with Frontier to fix a T1 line coming into Litehouse...really, I just sat at my computer (on my couch) and waited for them to call me when they were done and made sure nothing went down as a result of their work - not so bad this time. Went in a little late this morning, came home a little late. Our new guy implemented a new policy throughout the organization that unfortunately caused some problems, so I was there until it was fixed. It wasn't his fault, just part of the IT world. He got it fixed and we are better off now. We all have tough luck like that, just hurts a little worse when it affects everyone (like me taking the phones down earlier this week). Currently, I am just hanging out until about 145am so I can begin my work in our Michigan plant. It is something that really needs to get done, and this opportunity couldn't be passed up...but 145am!

It was a great week! Our music at Teen Camp this week was such an incredible experience to be a part of! I wish I could have been more involved than just with the music, but it is pretty awesome to think that 20 years ago I was sitting in the seats listening to this new "praise and worship" stuff and God grabbed a hold of me and changed me forever...and now I am the one playing the music desiring that God will do the same for those teens. It blows me away how God puts his church together, how he completes his will for us.

Last night was the last evening of camp, so a few of us decided to stick around for a little while after the music. At the end of the night, two kids gave their life to the Lord, about 20 others stood up to repent, about 25 more stood up as a testimony that they had done the same earlier in the week. I know that unfortunately, many of them may not amount to much (parable of the seed), but praise God that some seed landed in the good soil! And I praise God that one of them was me 20 years ago!

I could really use an AMP right now, I have another hour to go before I start work, then at least an hour or two after that to get it done - and I am nodding off already. I decided not to drink any more AMP this week (have been getting hooked). I stopped drinking so much pop because I like AMP so much! :) My blood pressure is doing good these days, but I think my blood-sugar is getting messed up, so I have stayed away from AMP for the last couple of days and I'm starting to feel normal again.

You forget about some of the most encouraging verses sometimes, but someone reminded me of a great one this week:

Philippians 2: 1-5

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.

Short week!

2011-07-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

Worked tons of hours last week beginning on Sunday, so I took a few days off with a holiday followed by a vacation day, and boom - 6 days off with one vacation day. Well, 5 1/2. Now a three day work week this week!

Working hard on music for camp which starts on Sunday! Five days...it has been a lot of fun in the past, but having the worship team doing it this year makes a pretty big difference - we have played together forever, so it is coming together really well...very excited!!! Our young fella (19) on the drums is joining us again; we put a mic in front of him and he just took off. Can't wait! If you guys don't have anything to do, come worship with us in the evenings - Sun-Thurs 8pm.

Work is GREAT this week! (for me that is) I was getting fried working long hours, this week has been so much better now that the big project is out of the way. Now I am LITERALLY getting fried though, the air conditioner keeps shutting down - 92 in my office!!! Trying not to say anything bad about work anymore (publicly), some day it will bite me. Yes, it has seen some big changes in the last two weeks, some not so good, but that is all I am going to say - I deleted my last post on it...found out someone at work was reading it. Oops. :)

Terah is starting to do a little better with her pregnancy stuff, and Daddy is starting to get a little more excited about the baby. It never kicks in for me until she starts showing a lot more. I'm glad Terah wants a lot of kids, they really are a blessing. When you have as many as we do and as young as they are, it seems like you are always getting after them, but we really do enjoy them. I miss them a lot on music days as it is a couple of days before I see them.

That's about it...ok then...see ya...

Hammocking

2011-06-26T17:25:00.000-07:00

Laying out on the hammock finishing up the biggest IT project of my career. Trying to fix one last problem. It has been a tough day, but it is nearly finished, and one of those projects that are really nice to get rid of, and really nice to have on your resume.

Had to make it my last week for a couple of months teaching Bible study; there is a lot of music coming down the pipe for the next two months. Cameron and Katie have offered to host it, so that is nice.

I probably should be checking my blood pressure these days. It takes a lot to get me stressed, but I can't imagine getting any busier. Tons of hours at work, lots of side-jobs, lots of family events, lots of work outside in the yard (this actually is good on the stress though, good exercise!). I don't mind long hours at work, it is the hours where you are fighting the entire time to get your tasks done that are killer - like today working with a guy in Michigan trying to get him to get connected to the internet for over an hour and a half just to make a simple change. Once we finally got that far, I was not able to get into the equipment to make the chanage - that was about as frustrated as I have ever been at work. If that guy was any closer I would have pummled him, and it wasn't even his fault.

We have nearly finished another section of landscaping despite all the rainy days and no time to keep working on it.

Seems my golf has ended for a while after only three times out. Just can't seem to fit it in. Maybe I will use a vacation day here and there...

Well, not getting this thing figured out, may be time to head back in...argh. ):

FULL

2011-06-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

That describes things in so many ways right now. I am very FULL from my birthday dinner at t he Brazilian Steakhouse in CDA. That was a cool experience. You get your all you can eat salad bar with lots of yummy stuff, but if you know better, you save room for the all you can eat meat they bring out to your table until you can't eat anymore. Different kinds of steak, chicken, pork, and a few extra things. If I rated this better than Wolf Lodge it would only be because you get to eat as much as you want of all the different varieties of food - and it's all pretty good. The guys love the meat, and the ladies love the salad bar.

It is a FULL weekend. Costco on Thursday night. Birthday party Friday night. Golf and birthday dinner today. Tomorrow is a FULL Father's Day from Cocolalla to CDA.

It was not the best day of golf for me as far as score goes, and unfortunately, Priest River was doing a tournament, so we had to go to Sandpoint to golf and the boyz couldn't golf there, so they just rode on the cart with Daddy. They did have fun, but they would have loved to swing the clubs more. I think fishing is next on the list. I did get to try the "new" driver out. To my surprise, it was awesome! I hit two balls 325+ yards; that is by far the farthest I have ever hit.

I know, you don't like to hear this stuff, but I have been listening to a lot of messages on the radical demands of a disciple the last two weeks, so I of course have a lot of thoughts going through my head all day now. I've been thinking about my day today - the golfing, the house work, cleaning the car, the awesome dinner, on and on....what does it mean? If I was really honest about it - it has been a day full of "endulging" myself, nothing invested in the kingdom. Funny thing is, even as I write that, I don't think we really care. This American Dream thing is pretty cool. We will find out some day how foolish we really are. It is all passing away, nothing coming with us, a bad investment. It is very hard to understand though if we have not tasted the goodness of God. It is hard to understand being neck deep in the American Dream.

I keep falling asleep on the couch, guess I better get to bed.

Weekly update

2011-06-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

Everyone is in bed, so I thought I would do an update...

I treated myself to a three day weekend and enjoyed it thoroughly. The first four days of last week I racked in almost 50 hours at work; it was not a fun week. So I asked for Friday off and spent a lot of time over the weekend working in the yard, which is my favorite thing to do.

Thursday night however, I finally got Lance back on the golf course. He is already hooked worse than I am. For being out two years, he did really well. It has been really difficult to hit the course this year. Between work and weather; it is just not a good year for golf.

This is the best I can do to find a "before" picture of the yard:

We got a dump truck load of dirt Friday morning and by the end of the day it looked like this:

Then I planted a few things

For now, a snowball bush, hydranga, white (?) fir, lilacs, and a lily
...with more coming from Grandma's

We are also going to get a colorful tree to put here,
we want to use it as a barrier of privacy for the back yard.
Came up short on fabric though.

Friday night after all of this work and Camden's art show, I had the boyz over to do some late night PR. Ryan joined us this time, that was fun. Lance has regained his lead back being Chad was not there to defend it. Cameron had a very good night, his first time taking the night!

We took a drive to Spokane Saturday.
There was another score on craigslist that I wanted to pick up.
Lance bought my putter and old driver being they went with his set of clubs so well, so I picked up a used driver for myself.
It also gave us a good reason to stop and see Gami!

Saturday evening we went up to Terah's family and did the annual fire pit with hot dogs and marshmallows - one of my favorite pasttimes. Terah has been pretty sick with this pregnancy, so we have not been doing much in the evenings (other than me working all of the time).

This week is not starting any better. As soon as I left work I had to go back. Then as soon as I got home, I had to remote in again and work all evening. Not to mention going in yesterday after church to reboot a couple of servers and working late last night to fix our backups. We'll give it a little more time, but so far the changes are going just as I expected...but no one is "hearing". Bad things are going to happen soon, I just can't keep up.

I'm so glad I got Terah's iPhone. We downgraded her voiceplan and added a data plan for the same price we were paying. Believe it or not, I will be much more connected with her now. I was thinking of moving us to Verizon at Christmas, but now they are installing 4G (AT&T!) in Sandpoint. How can I jump ship now?

Birthday Girl aftermath

2011-06-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen $5k worth of used iPhones?

So much to be proud of, our little girl is getting so big. She has grown up so much this year, and is so much fun. She is really close to walking without any problems - before her second birthday! She had the greatest two-year-old birthday party ever; we kept celebrating even after she went to bed. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the family all day; I think we need to do that every weekend. :) Now we are have the aftermath though...

I am finally blaming my illness on allergies...the pollen is all over my car, no wonder it hit so hard Saturday.

Got an iPhone (refurbished) for Terah, ran out of time to set it up. I guess some people sleep, no one supports cell phones this late. Now the kids can play on Mommy's phone! :)

I don't do PR graphs anymore, but I do still keep track of stats. As of last night, Chad has taken the #1 spot from Lance. He probably won't hold it long though, I plan on taking him soon.

My buddy's sister flew in from LA this weekend to interview for a job at litehouse, got to meet her today. Then Thursday, my sister is interviewing for the same job -wow!

I am not complaining, but work is not getting any easier. Even with the new guy, it is just not working for me. I am still doing two people's jobs. Today was 14 hours, who knows about he rest of the week. I have to work this weekend and probably the next weekend. The new guy actually could take a huge load of work off of my back, so I am going to push for that.

Disciple continued...

2011-06-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

For Bible study this week I had planned to move on to the next portion of scripture where Jesus demands high standards to be a disciple, but I felt the need to come back to the same text we studied last week. We read in Luke 14 the three requirements Jesus speaks to the crowd about if they truly want to follow him and be his disciple.

1. Superior love - if a man does not hate his father, mother, son, daughter, even himself, he cannot be my disciple.
2. Exclusive devotion - if a man does not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple
3. Total loss - anyone who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple

This is just the beginning of many scripture like this. Last week we focused a lot on the question "are the believer and disciple two different people?" I believe most of us would never have asked this, I think we just assumed the believer and disciple to be the same. While John McArthur and a couple of other respectable people believe they are different people, I have to agree with the other side who believe Jesus puts the line in the sand where "you are with me fully, or not at all". To believe they are different people softens this scripture, makes different levels of Christianity, and is quite confusing for obvious reasons. I have found no scriptures that support this idea. I think part of the reason behind this is that they would say many of the things Christ spoke were directed to the disciples themselves, not to us. This was directed to the crowd of people following Christ though, and even spoken to the disciples would still have application to us as followers of Christ. I think the other reason we may see this is that we have to deal with this and other scriptures, there is no getting around it. For some, these other interpretations may be the only way to deal with this and make it fit our present day church.

The reason I felt compelled to come back to this scripture is that there is another important question to ask. "Are you willing to come to Jesus on his terms?" Honestly, I have read this scripture so many times I can almost quote it from memory, but there are not many of us who really stop to ask what it is implying to us. It is so easy to breeze over and not consider the implications of it.

Back to Christ's terms for us. I am still grasping this myself, but hear me out and see what you think. When you begin, it is very easy to look at this as a checklist - I must do these three things to be a disciple. We like to operate this way as Christians. The rich young ruler wanted a checklist to inherit eternal life, Jesus struck him at the heart and he went away sad. Yes, Jesus gives these requirements to be a disciple, but it is interesting how it comes together...

1. Supreme love - The greatest command is supreme love, to love God with our entire being, no exceptions (heart, mind, and soul). Do you chase after Christ? Does he consume your thoughts? Is he your greatest desire? What/who you love most will consume your time, energy, and love. If Christ is not your greatest affection and goal, then you have some serious things to consider. I have come to the conclusion that by ourself, it is impossible to do this. There is no one righteous, no one who seeks after God, no one who understands. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. We are not capable of loving God as this is commanded, in fact, we will not seek God. When we read we cannot love our father, mother, son, daughter, etc more than God, we are thinking in human terms here. I don't believe we understand what this is saying, I don't believe we understand the love he is talking about. Hang tight...hope this gets clearer.

2. Exclusive devotion - ...must take up our cross and follow. What does it mean to take up your cross and follow? I have heard the extremes on both ends - one explains their troubles, their trials, their illness as the cross they have to bare. I don't really think this is what Jesus was talking about, pretty sure it is not actually. I have heard the other end explaining the cross as an instrument of death and torture and this is what is expected. Two extremes, I don't really follow either, although I think that the truth behind this statement could include these things. Trying to keep it simple, I asked what is the cross to Christ? He gave his life that we might live. This entire idea of a disciple is to imitate Christ, and this taking up our cross is part of imitating Christ. We are to die to self that we might live. Other similar scriptures say we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him. This "deny yourself" is the second most used phrase Jesus spoke. Other scriptures say to lose your life to find it; we must die to live. This is key in my thinking - I believe this idea of denying yourself and taking up your cross to follow Christ is exactly what happens to a person who puts their faith in Christ. We die to ourself and live in Christ. We are now a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come. Paul puts it perfectly in Galatians 2:20 - "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me". We are dead, the old man is dead, now Christ lives in us. Ah!!! Now that is making sense. And this idea of supreme love should also make sense - Christ is loving through us! I am now loving Christ supremely as he lives in me and we are now also loving everyone around us as we should.

3. Total Loss - ...anyone who does not give everything he has cannot be my disciple. Pretty black and white, no way to make this sound easy. While I don't necessarily believe we are going to sell everything to get to heaven, I think it would be difficult to be fully devoted to Christ and keep much of what we have. In fact, it is clear all over that we cannot grasp on to anything in the world. Matthew 6 and Luke 12 tell us not to seek treasure on earth, but to seek first his kingdom and righteousness and to sell all we have and give it to the poor. Hebrews 10 speaks of the persecuted believers who joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property and imprisonment and persecution for the sake of Christ, because they saw better and lasting possessions ahead. Hebrews 11 speaks of Moses leaving all of the pleasures and riches of Egypt to be disgraced for the sake of Christ, looking ahead to his reward. Paul puts it so well again - "What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ". Jesus himself describes the kingdom of heaven in the same way, like a farmer who finds treasure and buries it in a field, then sells everything he has to get that treasure. This I believe is the idea of losing your life to find it, giving everything you have for the sake of Christ. It is all meaningless down here, "garbage" as Paul puts it. If we could just see a glimpse the glory ahead, maybe we would not grasp so tightly down here. C.S. Lewis says "we are far too easily pleased". We are so easily caught up in pleasures and comfort down here that we fall short of the glory ahead. All this said, we really are not "losing everything", we are gaining Christ which is far better than anything. We ought to think of it as a wise investment. The point is though, that to gain Christ, we must first let go. Christ does not want us to bring anything, but leave it all behind.

In conclusion, Christ gives us some tough requirements, and we cannot do it on our own, only by dieing to self and Christ living in us. And this idea of a disciple is to imitate Christ himself who has already set the example - he loves supremely, he is fully devoted and will never leave or forsake us, and he has already given everything for our sake. Now we give everything in return for his sake.

Have you ever come to Christ on his terms?

Disciple or Believer?

2011-05-28T22:41:00.000-07:00

A question we asked at small group.

"Is there a difference between a disciple and a believer?"

I know of three very upstanding preachers who believe that a believer and a disciple are not the same person, John McArthur being one of them. I do not know the details of why they believe this, but assuming they believe a disciple is someone who has committed to follow Christ at a higher standard of sacrificial living than a believer. I told everyone to consider their teaching over mine while we are discussing it as they are far more knowledgable than I, but certainly have an open mind as we do study.

This question is important to answer though - I think. If you believe the same as McAuthur, you will be "ok" I guess. However, if you believe there is no difference between a believer and a disciple, then this certainly has huge implications of radical change in our lives because of what Jesus teaches about a disciple.

I struggle with the idea that the believer and disciple are separate. I'll try to explain...

First, a disciple in simplest definition, is someone who follows, someone who imitates.

Jesus demands huge sacrifice of disciples.
"Take up your cross or you cannot be my disciple."
"Hate your life or you cannot be my disciple."
"Give up everything you have, or you cannot be my disciple."

There are many, many more similar statements that Jesus makes that we will be studying, all ending with three phrases:
"...you cannot be my disciple"
"...you are not worthy of me"
"...you are not fit for the kingdom of heaven"

All this to say, if disciples and believers are the same person, there are radical implications. Whether you believe they are the same person or not, both agree that a disciple has a very high standard of sacrificial living.

A few reasons why I struggle with the idea they are not the same person -

*It doesn't make sense to me
*Paul tells us all to be imitators of Christ
*Jesus says to a man, "Come follow me" - the call of a disciple is it not? The man says, first let me say good-bye to my family. In summary Jesus basically tells him, leave everything for my sake or you are not fit for the kingdom. While this is next week's study, my first thought is telling me that a disciple that does not live up to this standard is not fit for the kingdom, so how could a "believer" be ok at a lesser standard?
*Before Jesus assended, he says "Go and make disciples to the ends of the earth, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded..." In another passage he says something similar, "go and preach the gospel to every nation, and those who believe will be saved..." These seem oddly similar to me, and would seem to make the believer and disciple the same person.
*While a disciple has these high standards set for him, we as believers are given the similar instructions all throughout scripture.

I realize these are not black and white reasons, but it just is not logical to me that these two people are not the same. More specifically, when Jesus sets out these hard requirements of a disciple, I don't see how we can exclude ourselves from these passages. Whether we leave everything we have to follow Christ or we raise a family and have a job and follow Christ, I believe we are all under the same obligation to be FULLY DEVOTED TO GOD no matter the cost. Which in my mind has radical implications for me of sacrificial living according to the scriptures.

We will be continuing this study...

Tornado season

2011-05-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Home sick today, maybe tomorrow. Had this crud since Friday, but seems to hit harder as the days go by.

I have spent a lot of time looking at tornados - can you believe all of the devestation this year? There was a few that ripped through the mid-east ealier this year, then just after that the gigantic tornado that tore up Tuscaloosa, Alabama along with a few more tornados all the way to South Carolina at the same time. I believe the death toll there was eighty-something. Videos of that tornado are unbelievable! There have been some pretty bad ones in the last week now. Minneapolis had one (Saturday?) that didn't do too much damage, then Sunday Joplin Missouri was leveled by an EF5 tornado. It is already the deadliest tornado on record and they have not even found everyone yet - 122 dead, over 1500 missing! Now another series of tornados (5) hit around Oklahoma City today with more to come - one in the same place as the biggest tornado on record from 1999. One of those tornados was grounded for over 50 miles! This is not unheard of, but certainly very rare. It was mostly rural areas today, so there was not a huge amount of destruction as in Joplin over the weekend.

All of these storms got me interested in studying the tornados, so I watched a season of Storm Chasers on Netflix - very cool. I will never live in the Texas panhandle, or Oklahoma, or Kansas. :) "The tornado alley" The warm fronts from Mexico and the Gulf colliding with the cooler systems in the north with some precipitation added and you have a tornado. They say Dallas is a prime location to some day see a "super-tornado", bigger than anything we have ever seen. If it were to happen, that would be disaster like we have never seen.

I remember being in the tornado in Sagle a couple of years ago right by the fire-station (witnessed by a state trooper). It blew part of the roof off of the station. We were driving by right as it was happening - I couldn't see anything through the dust cloud, the wind was the worst I have ever experienced, a tree branch flew from out of nowhere and hit our windshield and cracked it at which point I just floored it and got out of there as fast as I could. Trees were falling like crazy behind us. That was literally the scariest few minutes of my life, and this storm was NOTHING compared to the ones in the mid-west. I can't imagine the power of those big ones. An EF5 can get over 300mph winds!

With all of this going on and all of the flooding from the Mississippi and elsewhere, I guess I can't complain too much about our longest cold season on history. I can handle a heftier heat bill if I don't have to worry about my house being blown away or buried by water.

iPhone fun

2011-05-14T20:51:00.000-07:00

This new iPhone takes awesome video, this was a lot of fun. :)

(Except the quality goes to poo when you stream it on blogger)

A bad week with a happy ending

2011-05-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

Anyone notice problems with blogger? I lost an entire post, and when they restored it, it lost the comments. That sounds like a database problem with bad backups.

So glad this week is done - steadily got worse by the day, but ended so good!

Didn't think it would get much worse than Monday at work, Tuesday was not good, but Wednesday was really bad. Then Thursday....my project made it all the way up the chain at litehouse, all the way up the chain at Qwest, and even to a Utah government somebody. Basically, I was not going home until that project was completed. That was 930pm. The project was getting our Hurricane plant in Utah up and running on a circuit to Sandpoint and getting them connected to our network. It was extremely stressful until about 430pm, then I started to relax...no more phone ringing off the hook, no more management emails, just on my own getting the job done. It felt so good to have sweet success at the end of the day. The sad part is, probably not one person at Litehouse has any clue what I did to get the job done...network guys are so underrated! I am proud of myself though, that is all that matters. :)

Today was day 5 of a bad week, but all the apps guys were back, so that helped a little bit. Chris was still gone so it was still a crazy day, but I closed up a lot of loose ends and left at 3pm to enjoy the rest of the evening with the family....

...we had so much fun at Silverwood! We were given two free tickets for an evening at Silverwood for "handicap" people. And Chad likes to pull out his card sometimes, so he took his family also! :) It will be the only time we get a deal like this because of Adah's condition she "had". And because Adah was under two years old, we got a third in free, so you can't pass that deal up! The kids had SO much fun, it was "the best day of their life" as Jude put it.

The train ride, right after ice-cream obviously

My beautiful girls

So much fun with cousins

Adah was just too small to do anything

But Mommy was crazy enough to try and put her on a helicopter

....that didn't last long

Caging the kids up

It is so much more fun at Silverwood when you put the kids on the rides instead of yourself!

They are up there somewhere

Tried and tried to get her to look at me, but she knew I had a camera...

hmmm, what should I do?

"See the puppy Adah?!"

Ah, that worked!

She was a little mad at me though when I didn't actually have a puppy...

I think this is my favorite picture...

This guy is all about FUN

This guy wanted to have fun, but the ride looks so scary

Day three

2011-05-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

Day 3 in IT......flying solo.

It was the hardest day yet. Another high pressure race to put the fires out. I don't mind doing this a week at a time, but I would most likely not survive if this was my day-to-day job. My job is already like this by nature, but this week is an extreme of that extreme. It finally slowed down at 2pm and I got to eat my lunch. I am feeling pretty good right now, I must admit. When work gets this bad, I start getting high blood pressure and get this feeling of anxiety. I think I handle it very well and get the job done, but it still takes its toll. The reason I feel so good though is that I got exercise tonight on the golf course - I was running up and down the fairways to keep up with the cart - I feel so good! I will have to remember that golfing is good for my blood-pressure! :)

So my biggest project at work, which is taking a lot of time to move forward, has gone almost as high as it can go up the ladder at work. In fact, they mentioned trying to get some people in the Utah state government involved to help push this along. So I sent out an email to managers three levels up (ya, I'm at the bottom of the food chain!) to update them on the project. Then my direct supervisor emailed the entire group and said this is a hard project by nature, the people are very difficult to work with, and it takes a lot of time, just the nature of this kind of project. He told them the best thing that can be done is to have me continue what I am already doing. Wow, thanks!

That being said, I'm sure it means I will be working this weekend to get this project completed. I can't wait until this one is done, it may be the biggest single change we have ever done at one time.

We will soon have three new people in IT!

So this has become my favorite picture ever...my beautiful wife, doing a beautiful thing. I don't mean to make it a big deal, but seriously, I am so proud of her for going on this trip. This photo really captures it for me...

Oh ya, if you don't know, #5 is on the way! There is a 50% greater chance now for her to have twins now that she has already had twins, so who knows, maybe we will catch up to Craig and Heather! :)

A day in IT

2011-05-10T20:10:00.001-07:00

Just to give you an idea of what it is like in the IT world. This week is extra special because I am the only IT staff this week - everyone else is traveling. Not my first rodeo, but I certainly don't enjoy these weeks.

70 helpdesk tickets in two days - this does not even count how many people just walk in or call in with problems, this would add probably another 30% or better.

Phone ringing off the hook. Being my supervisor left, my colleague moved in to my office, one of the first things he said was "Man, your phone rings non-stop!"

Then there are certain people at litehouse that you help despite what your workload is; if they approach you, you help them. If they call you, you help them. So I have done a lot of that in the last week - rebuilt three of their computers and did an offsite call at their house also, and spent hours on the phone supporting "them", have two more offsite calls to do this week for "them". I love them all, they are extraordinary people that I have the highest respect for, just spend a lot of my time supporting them. :)

First day on my own:

A random set of 16 phones kept dieing on me throughout the morning. I kept resetting the card - turns out, someone was unplugging their phone moving it around and it was shorting the phone system

I was brave enough to take a lunch and leave the building - actually, I was doing the offsite call to "their" house. While I was out, our ERP system went down hard - this is the system that nearly EVERY employee at litehouse touches and does their work in. I am not the ERP guy, that is Megan and Gregory who were on flights to San Antonio. When in doubt - reboot!

Lost access to one of our systems over in Seattle, so had to get that up and running.

Then there was half of those 70 helpdesk tickets to manage

Then there was the new plant in Utah to stay on top of - have to bring up the new network and phone lines asap.

Then there is my job and my supervisor's job (who left) to keep up with also.

Anyway, this does not tell a story very well, but you get the point. I guess you could say if you can't manage more than 5 things at a time, you don't belong in IT. I do pretty good multitasking really, but the week I will be having this week is still really hard for me.

Update

2011-05-07T09:23:00.001-07:00

Hmm, will have to make the best of rain I guess. Time to put out some grass seed and fertilizer.

Installed a new stereo in the car, but need to fix some wiring or replace the amp. I didn't realize how much I missed having music in the car, I have thoroughly enjoyed it this week! The stereo is awesome - cd, mp3, auxillary, and usb for flash drives and media devices -with iPod controls! All for $60. I am going to install a second one in the Yukon today. :)

Lost my battle at work. I fought hard, but there is a point where it starts causing problems and it's better to just shut up. I am disappointed they chose the way the did, but I knew all along that is how it would be.

Bible study has been going very well. We have been going through the parables and having some great discussions. I never realized how many parables there were speaking of the theme "the kingdom of heaven is like". It is quite interesting! Last night we ended on the idea of Jesus saying "I was giving you the kingdom (the Jews), and now I am giving it to everyone else".

A couple of hard weeks of work left. Next week is going to be one of the worst of the year probably. We are short-handed with five IT staff to run the three plants, and I will be the SINGLE IT guy next week. Since my supervisor left, I am already trying to keep up with two jobs, now I have to cover all five. We will have three more new people by the end of the month though.

Such a nice day on Sunday we had to do a BBQ. I hope Terah and I can do a little better at staying close to church families, but it is hard as you kinda just have to rotate to stay close to everyone - and really hard 'cause we have so much family and so many family get-togethers for birthdays and holidays.

Skipped PR last Friday, but played a couple of short games Sunday. Then did our weekly games last night after Bible study. Long story short, I NEVER win anymore. I fully understand the game, but I NEVER win. And unless Lance is there, Chad seems to win them all. He won four out of six last night. Cameron is getting pretty good! I am not going to stop playing, but have ceased to figure out how to win the game. We have all agreed that it is because I stopped being competitive and mean. When I was "mean", I won all of the time. I decided to just have fun without being so competitive and haven't been winning since. However, I think Cameron may have figured out my plaguing problem of not being able to win - he was telling Jeff how it is last night at Bible study, "It's really quite funny, I don't understand it. Lance and Chad gang up on Lyle every single game and he doesn't even win, EVER. It's the strangest thing!" Need I say more! :) While that is no excuse, I still need to figure out how to win, it does make sense as to why it is so hard for me to win.

Waiting for golf season!

Waiting for the next open door of ministry, as in maybe a long trip. Still thinking about Haiti in November!

Wish I could write some songs, have a lot of tunes, no writing or singing abilities, pretty frustrating.

Saturday!

2011-04-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

This update could be quick........
...
...
...work...work...work.

That is what my week was. Yesterday started with a call at 452am and I finally started my weekend at 630pm, just in time for Bible study.

We did have a good Bible study, parables are fun to discuss, and Cameron is quite the thinker. That is why we do this though, good times.

Once our Utah facility is up, work will actually slow down a lot more. We managed to get there network up this week, all of their computers shipped, and their phone system programmed yesterday. Monday morning starts at 530am. ): I am getting tired. We are interviewing for one more job in IT, 3 new people by the end of May - we need it!

Today is not going to be a work day though - unless there is an emergency call anyway. So I am going to go enjoy some sunshine before it is gone. Tomorrow should be nice! Are we doing a BBQ???

Update

2011-04-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I really don't have time to post...

It has been really nice having Terah back. It has been a bummer that work has been really rough, so I have not really seen Terah all that much - and she slept half of the week away last week!

Work is going to kill me over the next two weeks, but I am excited to get it past me - the stuff I am doing over the next two weeks is about as tough as it gets, and the kind of experience that can pay very well if you don't live in North Idaho. It is going to be some LONG days, nights, and weekends for a little bit. A lot of work to get done in a very short amount of time, and we are very understaffed for the next month.

We are having some major growing pains right now at work. It depends who you talk to about it - some are very doom and gloom, some are optimistic. I don't like doom and gloom. We certainly have made some mistakes and have our challenges, but it is awesome that we are getting record sales! We REALLY need our new plant to get up and running - we are all feeling the pain right now.

I did finally talk to my new boss about a few things that were bothering me - we'll see what happens.

Chris (younger than me) and I are pretty much running the entire network for three facilities now - a lot of responsibility for such young guys if I do say so myself.

Scored big on Craigslist today! I found a Ping G15 driver last week that I have been looking for for two years. It was half price still in the wrapping, I was too late! Last night I found two putters (Ping and Odyssey) that were barely used. They sell for $100+ each and I got them for $40 each. I knew Dad would buy one of them, so I got them both - and I was right, I didn't even have to ask Dad if he wanted one.

We opted not to get a dishwasher - Terah bought the kids school instead. Good choice, we will get a dishwasher some day. :)

It was a fun Easter with the family Sunday. It was so nice to have good weather! Then today I woke up to 3" of snow - and it kept snowing for hours. Terah thought we had about 6" of snow!!! And nothing at the other end of the lake or even just down the road from us. I swear, we are right above the snow line that you see on the mountain side; we get dumped on right behind this mountain. Most of it was melted by the time I got home at least, but it took some of our small trees down with it.

Terah and I would like to get people involve in supporting some ministries in Africa. A little bit goes a very long way down there.

Really struggling with "church" these days. I love our church and love being there. but the whole "American" church thing is getting harder and harder for me. The more I think about God's holiness, the more I struggle with our idea of "worship". That is all I have time for...maybe more later.

Day 13 - London to Cocolalla

2011-04-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

Our FINAL day of the journey!

Mommy left at about 330am our time from London on an eleven hour flight to Dallas. It was going to be twenty-four hours of traveling before she made it to home-sweet-home!

The homefront was quite the scene. It was the hardest day of the entire two weeks. All of the kids were so "difficult". I decided we would all take a nap so we could get rested up for the long night at the airport, so we all slept a couple of hours. The final hours before we left were craziness. The kids were literally, hitting the walls - they were so excited to go get Mommy. I had to figure out ways to pass the time and contain their excitement before someone got hurt, it was not an easy task.

There was a lot of family at the airport waiting for the girls to arrive. It was better than I had imagined seeing a mother reunited with her kids. The older kids all of a sudden got bashful, but certainly loved having Mommy back. Adah was mad at Mommy, she ignored her and didn't want Mommy to hold her. But that did not last long. She was very happy to see Mommy when we reached our destination - home. And this morning was what Mommy had been waiting for - to wake up to the words "Mommy!" (not the snow though!). It was the very first time Adah had called for Mommy the entire journey, she remembered Mommy was back.

The ride home was filled with story after story. I will let Terah post and tell you about her journeys. The need is overwhelming no doubt. I hope that this is just the beginning of many ways to do something about it!

WE ARE SO HAPPY MOMMY IS HOME!!!

Day 12 - Cocolalla to Uganda to London

2011-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

I was too busy to post Day 12!

Mommy safely made it to the airport and on a plane to London, she is so excited to come home, and we are so excited she is coming home! (Sounds like the riots on Friday could have been pretty dangerous with a couple of people getting shot. They walked right by my wife while I was on the phone with her - thank you Lord for keeping them safe!) They all got a good night of rest and are currently in the middle of a flight to Dallas. They had a 24 hour layover in London, so plenty of time to rest and no desire to do any sight-seeing. I guess the people in London are the rudest peole in the world.

Work went pretty good (Friday). My supervisor has been doing a lot of training with me, Thursday we went over virtualizing servers. There are a couple of different scenarios for doing this - this particular scenario was taking a stand alone server and converting it to a "virtual" server that would now run on top of a big server box. This server host was beefy enough to run many virtual servers on it. The users and network do not see them any differently then a real server, but administering them is so much easier and you are only paying for powering one box instead of all of the individual boxes. After learning this, I virtualized three servers onto one box that night, and three more to go.

A lot of people sick this week. Usually there are about five people each week that don't show to Bible study, but we are still pretty full. This week, only three people came! Somehow magically, they still show up for PR afterwards. :) We played PR until three in the morning! Chad and Lance pretty much won everything, but Chad was the one that was hard to beat this time. The kids let me sleep this morning and we are ALL going to take a nap today so we can stay up all night to pick Terah up. The plane doesn't come in until midnight. Anyone is welcome to come, I heard through the grapevine there is going to be a big group of people there...? You are certainly welcome to be there if you would like; I will just be glad to have my wife and Mommy back.

Lastly, I just want to say a huge "Thank You" to everyone! How can I possibly remember everything you have done??? If you supported us financially, I can only assume and guess who you are, but thank you so, so much! It was a very exspensive trip that would never have happened without your support. [What is not surprising at all - our tax return has carried us from year to year, and this year we could not use it to build our savings being we used it for our trip. It was a huge step of faith to do this trip. Right after Terah left for her trip, something unexpected happened. God blessed me with a promotion at work and a good bonus...why do I doubt?!!] Many, many of you kept giving us food, and offered to help whenever needed. Many of you took my kids for a day or two when needed. All of you prayed. I want to say a very special "Thank You" to Tess. She probably would have given a lot of $$$ if she had it, but she did what was needed even more - she played "Mommy" all week so I could go to work. There is so much more than that though...I came home to a clean house every day and dinner in the oven. The kids had school, had baths, and on and on. Yesterday, I didn't have to do anything for Bible study, the bathrooms were spotless, dishes done, and even my bed was made! She certainly made life at home without Mommy so much easier. And if she didn't have enough of my place, she came back for Bible study. :)

Thank you all so much! Now we anxiously await Mommy's return, so exciting!

Day 11 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Terah should be bording the plane home in a couple of hours! There will be a 24 hour layover in London (bummer), and I think they are probably too tired to do some site-seeing, but I hope they get to enjoy it. I know a lot of that time will be the middle of the night though.

Hopefully they are safe at the airport now. Terah called first thing this morning saying they were stuck at their "home" with protests going on. I have been following it as much as possible in the local news, and so far it has not been too serious. The locals have been "walking to work" protesting high fuel and food prices, but the government sees this as dangerous, so police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the protestors expecting it to be violent. Today's protest there were 48 injured, but doesn't look like it got too violent. The scary part was when Terah called me from her room as the noise was getting louder and louder then faded as they walked right by the house she was in. The locals told the group to stay in the building as rioters could possibly kill white people. As far as I know, everyone is safe!

My dailies are pretty much done, and some extras getting ready for Bible study and Terah's return. Terah's birthday present also came today! My present came today too...we found out we will be getting a bonus next week! It has been pretty much stated that it will be the last one of the year though. ): I talked to my "leaving" supervisor today about my "issues" at work. It felt good to finally get it off my chest and I probably will just turn the cheek and take it even though he thought I should take it up higher, but I certainly have figured out where I stand in the food chain there.

We had a department lunch today at the Hydra - I tried to catch my water glass I tipped over and knocked over the Pepsi glass in the process as well. It was a big mess!

Not much else to update...lots of chores and working from home tonight.

Day 10 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

It feels so good to say "Day 10", but Terah is still 3 full days away. She will be headed home soon, but it will be a LONG journey home. We all miss her so much, especially Daddy. Sounds like the group is ready to come home. They have had at least three babies die from pneumonia in the last few days by the sounds of it. They have had some tough situations in the group I guess too. Terah said that they walked past a dead body laying in the middle of the street yesterday and no one seemed to care. In two weeks time she has seen more death and suffering than I have in my life-time...we just can't comprehend what is happening in these places. On a brighter note, Terah said she heard three guys from our church were going to Uganda in June! :) I told her I had know idea what she was talking about except that Jeromy, Lance, and I thought it would be cool. Turns out, Jeromy had emailed the church to inquire about it, and all of a sudden we are on the list - Terah found out before we did! :) I'll just say, we will all go if God leads us to. I know that God will open the doors wide if we will obey, so we will see what happens. A friend from work told me today that he would like to go with us to Africa - so that makes four of us!

Today has been the hardest day yet. It wasn't terrible, but when I have a bad day, Terah is the one I lean on. Wednesdays are long days for me...run, run, run until I get home at about 10pm. (Thank you Grammy and Tess for watching the kids for me today!!!)

I just don't know what to do. I am so blessed with my family, my job, everything God has provided...but, there is a situation at work that I am really upset about and I just can't shake it. I don't know if I should just get it off my chest or let it go. Anyone else would probably think I am being stupid, but it is hard for me to see it that way being there for fifteen years and feeling like they just took advantage of "nice, quiet Lyle - he will never notice". I certainly could be seeing things way wrong and I got what I should have, but it all played out exactly as I thought it would, and I am just supposed to play along...

Day 9 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe just Cocolalla today. I have been spending a lot of time with my supervisor training to take his job, and I forgot to have my cell with me around the time that Terah always calls. I missed her call today! ): So no updates unless you want to take a look at Linny's blog which most of you keep an eye on I think. Terah may call me in the next couple of hours when she wakes up I guess.

We did send out a prayer request about some demonstrations in Kampala with rising food and fuel prices. The girls were going to stay out of the city if anything happened. The only thing I could find online was that it was a one-day thing and they arrested the "leader" and used tear gas on the people, but no violence or injuries of any kind that I could see.

So today was a lot of training. The good news is, I think I can manage what I have learned so far. The bad news is, I am only 1/4 of the way through training, there are some pretty advanced systems yet to learn.

Lance is dead set on going to Africa in June, or Haiti in November if he has to wait that long. So...he got his passport renewed today, and I got mine ordered! I may or may not go anywhere, depends on what comes of Terah's trip, but I will be ready!

Tess has been a life-saver. She not only has watched the kids, but she has had dinner in the oven, cleaned the house, done the dishes...

Just finished your computer Heidi - too late to bring it over though, the kids are headed to bed. Let me know what you want to do. (Yes, I did call your home phone several times, but it was busy at the time)

Day 8 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-11T20:36:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it has been eight days already, that means we are getting closer to the end! It is deceiving though, since they leave Africa and travel backwards in time. The main thing is, hopefully she is going to be here midnight Saturday (12am Sunday to be exact) Things are going good still.

I am ready to go, I really need to get involved! So I am sitting here thinking how incredible it would be if our little body in Cocolalla worked together to send people out throughout the year. If we all made the committment to live with a little less so we could give and/or go and these kids could have a chance to live and be loved. I think we all were thinking, "what could possibly happen in two weeks?" - well, we are about to find out how much has happened. Terah said "you can't even imagine all of the things we have seen over here." Today they found a deformed baby in the toilet, things like this happen EVERY day there. If you haven't, you need to keep up on the team leader's blog, she updates usually once a day. http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/ I have come to admire her passion for these kids! This one family that is making trips over several times a year is making a HUGE difference, and she is taking others (like our wives) along with them and now their lives have been radically changed and their hearts have been broken. What do you guys think? Can we figure out ways to send more people over? The next available trip will be the guys going in June - you should go!!! I will help raise money!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Not much to update on today. It was back to work. I will be spending the next two weeks learning all of my supervisor's responsibilities. Thank you Tess for watching the kids!!! The kids were very good tonight, and I even had time to clean a little, rake half the back yard, and clean up half the garbage heap our nice neighbor dogs like to leave for me. I like how Ryan said it Sunday - we chase after this American dream, we buy our house, then we are tied down with never-ending responsibility. Now we are busy cleaning, mowing, fixing, whatever...instead of investing our time in the kingdom. So I guess we could not only find ways to live with less, but we could also find ways to free up more time. :)

Heidi, I think I will finish your computer tomorrow.

Day 7 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY wherever you are!

Who would have thought I would not get to celebrate my wife's 30th birthday with her. And using her exact words, "don't take this wrong, but you will never be able to top the birthday I just had over here in Uganda, sorry." I am so proud of you Terah, yes because you are over in Africa loving people who have nothing, but more than anything because you chose to walk through the doors God directed you to and opened for you. With opposition of friends and family, leaving your kids and comfort, going out of your box completely, despite any problems that arose, you remained faithful in obedience. (Of course we recognize that all of the support in prayers, finances, and moral support from friends and family was HUGE in getting her there) The first day I talked to you in London, you had me wondering if I should have let you go. Then God quickly reminded me he sent you over, not me. Here I am seven days later listening to someone who has had a life-changing experience and I wish so badly that I could have been there by your side. Of course, this does not even begin to speak of our wife and mother at home. But what a milestone for your 30th year celebration - I truly would not have wanted it any other way! You are receiving more joy and fulfillment than I could have ever given you. I can't wait for you to come home to us and share what God has done in your life over these two weeks! We love you so much! Happy birthday!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Today Daddy got the kids ready for church and we did our Sunday rituals. (Thanks for the help Crystal and Tessa) On the way home from church, Mommy called! She was just going to bed, but it was the most information I had received from her yet. She was truly a different person today. God has done some amazing things in the hearts of these ladies that have traveled over there. Terah said they went to church and it was the most amazing thing she had ever experienced. Following church they went to her favorite place yet, I think it was a place that has become a the home of many street kids. Then back at base, they had a little birthday celebration for Terah; she said it was so sweet. Terah was so excited; there were so many incredible experiences. She told me I really need to go back with Linny's (the team leader) husband in June and meet all of the people, and see what they are doing over there. She said she has fallen in love with a little boy named "Jude", but it is impossible to "connect" with any of them as they are always just crawling all over you starving for attention. Sounds like they may not be going to the kid's prison, some concerns have come up I guess. So Terah mentioned a couple of them may talk to some people over there about the adoption process. It was so good to hear her voice today; she seemed overwhelmed with some amazing experiences!

Where were we? We were getting home from church. We had a party without Terah today! Lance bought some pizza for the bachelors, so we hung out for a few hours after church. Thanks Lance - you have always been very giving! The kids have done really well. Today has been Adah's toughest day, I think I better let her sleep a little longer tonight. I am really struggling with the work - back to the grind tomorrow. And hearing Terah so excited about Africa makes it even harder for me to want to go back. Maybe change is coming?!! :)

Day 6 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

Daddy stayed up way to late (2am) hoping they would show the wedding in Africa online so I could see what is going on over there and hopefully see my long-lost wife. I knew better though, live video streaming is not easy, and they never got it to work. ): So I was pretty tired today. I mostly did laundry, dishes, baths for the kids (two for Adah since she pooped in the bathtub), then quiet time. Terah called and said they rounded up 300 kids from the slums to dress up and attend the wedding. I guess there were some fights to break up, but she absolutely LOVES those kids. She is taking lots of pictures!!! After seeing how they live over there and how her group has been treated like "royalty", Terah says she is going to feel so guilty coming back to the US living how we live. After quiet time, I packed up the kids and we went to my boss' farewell party. The kids had a lot of fun. Once we got home and ready for bed, we called Mommy. This call was very special though. In Africa, it is the next morning and Mommy was just getting up - when she answered we all said "Happy Birthday Mommy!" Today (in Africa) it is Terah's 30th birthday! She really did not want a big party, so she flew to Africa just so I couldn't throw a party for her. It was such a special call, the kids got to talk to Mommy this time, and even Adah said "Hi Momma, wuv you, bye-bye Momma". I know that was very hard for Mommy, but at the same time probably the best part of her week, bitter-sweet. I think Mommy and Daddy both cried. Her "today" sounds like it will be another eye-opener. Word-of-mouth tells me they are going to a children's prison - yes, that is what it is (was). The police would take the kids off the street and lock them in this "prison" and leave them there. The extend of their care from my understanding is next to nothing, just left to die. One of these mission organizations found this place and took it over and turned it into a place to care for those kids - this is where the group is going today I guess. Unfortunately, it sounds like they are just creating more prisons in different areas. I am getting the picture that kids are worth nothing over there, except to sell them or buy them as beggars and other terrible things. My details may be a little off, but probably not much. We will certainly know soon when they come home. I just read this - posted by one of the ladies with Terah in Uganda. How can you not hear their cries? How much have I wasted my life over here? http://3trucksand2hairbows.blogspot.com/2011/04/with-heavy-heart.html

Day 5 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

Vacation is officially over for Daddy. I spent the morning cleaning as fast as I could for Bible study tonight, then quickly got the kids ready to go stay with Grandma for the afternoon while I went back to work (thank you Grandma!!!). I feel like I am doing pretty good with a clean house and all of the fun activities, and all the meals. Then I think, "I still haven't touched the laundry, I have only cooked one dinner, a lot of my dishes have been paper plates, and have only managed to squeeze one day of school in." So looks can be deceiving. Terah called me again today; it was good to hear from her. She said she IS getting lots of pictures and she LOVES the street kids. Sounds like they are more popular than movie stars over there. As we speak they are delivering all of those suitcases full of clothes to these street kids and dressing them for the big wedding in two hours - which I guess can be watched online! I think I will try to stay up 'til midnight to watch it, maybe I will see Terah?! So back to work. They had pre-arranged for me to be there today because they wanted me to meet a new guy considering a job offer as I would be working a lot with him. So I went in, which is good because I have a ton of work to do after being off for four days...but turns out I didn't get much time with the new guy. With my supervisor leaving in a few weeks, my new managers did meet with me while I was there and officially "promoted" me today to take his place. It all happened almost exactly as I had thought it would. I really don't want to get off vacation, I want to be in Africa to tell you the truth, maybe it's time to turn a page. Went to Mom's for dinner (thank you!!!), then barely made it home for Bible study, Tess beat me there. Bruce is taking us through the parables - going to be awesome! It is a while 'til the wedding in Africa streams tonight, so I guess I will jump on and get some work done while I can. Another big day tomorrow - sorry Heidi, I am really struggling getting your computer completed. Looks like I have not received one package though. I will have to check it out. If you happen to be up late at night, you may as well check out the wedding all of our ladies are at in Africa...sounds pretty cool . http://www.ustream.tv/channel/david-and-abby-s-wedding

Day 4 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

Day out on the farm!

The kids slept in a little as we were out late last night, so we hurried up with breakfast and ran into town to get some groceries. We got lunch out of the way and picked Grandma and Grandpa up to go to the farm! I had initially planned to make a round trip from Spokane to Deer Park and see Terah's grandpa in the hospital and Gami, but I came down with a cold this week, so I decided we had better stay away from the two grandparents who don't need my cold right now going in and out of the hospital. The kids had a blast, they got to feed the goats and chickens, and play on the farm. And as always if you go to the farm, we enjoyed barbequed hamburgers for dinner.

These little goats chased Jude around all over, they loved him.

Adah's favorite part was feeding the chickens.

...and who wouldn't love feeding the little goats?

So we only spent a few minutes at home today.

The days are going fast, only nine more days until Mommy comes home!

She is doing great. The orphanage they are at has about 60 kids, three years and younger. She said they are climbing all over you, starving for attention. They are SO busy, getting up early, staying up late, working a lot. It is not what she expected, never any details in short calls though...

We have a busy weekend coming up to finish the week out, then back to work for Daddy. I am quite certain April will be the hardest month of the year in this household. Between the trip to Africa, work situations, and other things including Easter and music...I just need to take one day at a time, that is my gift! It is also a curse though, I have no sight for tomorrow, I live in the now - life is so much easier that way!

And the now is telling me it is time for bed...

Day 3 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

It was a nice day. Terah called me at 1am (11am her time) and let me know they made it to Uganda! That was pretty much it. ): $3.50 a minute, can't spend a lot of time on the phone. The kids and I spent the morning together and after lunch I dropped them off with Aunt Heidi - thank you so much Aunt Heidi! Then I paid a few bills and my taxes on the way home and finally returned some extra wood that I didn't use on my bed project. Surprislingly (or not so suprising) I found another donation in my mailbox, I just smiled and said, "Thank you Lord". It is not like we are hurting, but it is just amazing to see how God provides, so amazing - it never gets old! I spent the afternoon working on music...oh well. Then off to prayer meeting and music practice. I am so comforted that so many people are praying constantly for the three (19) ladies in Africa. I realize you guys are sick of this, but it is the biggest thing on my heart, so you will just have to ignore my blog for a couple of weeks. :) There is a great update on the team leader's blog (http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2011/04/uganda-update-1.html) if you have not read it yet. (How sad!!!) Today was so much better for me, I was really struggling yesterday. Then I was quickly reminded that God called her, and she was obedient. Good or bad, safe or not, God's will is right where she needs to be whether I like it or not. Today, I was ok with that, but it helped that she sounded so much better on the phone this morning. So that is it for today. I wish I had more to share, but I probably won't hear from Terah for days at a time. I can't wait to hear more, I looked all day for an update, but did not find one until now. ...just got a call from Terah, wow! She sure isn't very informative. She is doing good, but I have no clue what she is doing or has done. Three and a half minutes is only long enough to say the kids are doing good and the weather sucks, then I am out another $12 for those minutes. She did say she is glad that she went...I guess that is good news. :)

Day 2 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

We are really missing Mommy. ;(

She was supposed to call me just after midnight when they landed in London. I tried calling her at 4am, tried calling at 7am, and then called AT&T support to make sure her phone was working over there. Then I called Jeromy and he had not heard from Stacy. Then I called the River Church and they had not heard from anyone. I finally went to British Airway's website and found that the flight had made it, sigh. The team leader's husband finally called me and said he had seen that the flight had arrived, and as I was on the phone with him, Terah called!!! It seems Terah is the only one in the group with any communication.

I had a couple of short conversations with her while she was in London. She had left her cell phone in the bag that was in a locker while they were going around London site-seeing. She said it was very exspensive, and very pretty. When they came back to the airport, they got their first briefing of what they will be doing on arrival in Uganda. I am not sure what to think, Terah would not give me any details except that she was not sure she would be able to make it through the next eight days. I know they were all very exhausted as they were not able to sleep on the long flight over because it was really rough turbulance. Sounds like they have a lot of work ahead of them, and maybe it is not going to be the best of circumstances, I can only make assumptions though.

They should be arriving in Uganda about 10pm our time, 8am their time.

If you want to follow their journey, the best way to keep up to date will be the team-leader's blog, she will be updating daily most likely and even managed to post while at the airport: http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/

Today was pretty good - we kept the house clean, did school, did baths, and managed to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Adah is walking everywhere!

It has been a rough couple of weeks. Very bad timing for Terah and Scott to leave at the same time, but God knows best and has perfect timing for all of this. I will have two weeks to spend as much time as possible training with Scott to learn his responsibilities. One of those weeks, Terah is still gone, and the other week Chris at work will be gone (that is really bad news for me). Oh well, I don't mind hard work, and I don't mind being super-Dad for two weeks, but it is really hard for me to have Terah across the globe from me, and it is going to be hard adapting to work without a close friend I have worked with for the last eight years. More than anything, I just hope Terah is ok; she has stepped into a really tough situation and I feel responsible, but I guess it is never easy to follow Christ and never will be. She is truly amazing...pray for the group though, I am really burdened for them.

This morning I woke up at 4am to call Terah and got out of bed to go to the living room so I wouldn't wake Terah up with my phone call. I got half way to the living room, disappointed because she didn't answer her phone, and because I realized she was not actually in bed, but half way across the world. Ya, I'm pretty pathetic when I am tired. :)

Wherever when you read this Mommy, we love you and can't stop thinking about you. I am praying for you constantly and hope that you are ok. I know God will give you the strength you need for the task at hand. Stay strong and love them lots! Please call me or email me to let me know you are ok. Call me anytime you need to!

Day 1 - Cocolalla to Uganda

2011-04-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

The day started very early, try 230am! We drove the girls to the airport and dropped them off, with 8 EXTRA suitcases full of clothes to deliver to the orphans in Africa. That is awesome, because that is just our three ladies, there are 15 other ladies taking just as many suitcases. They flew out about 630 to Denver and continued to Dallas from there. After having breakfast with Jeromy, I made it home about 730am just in time for the kids to wake up. Thank you Tess for helping out so much! On the way home from the airport, I was thinking about how terrible it was going to be without Terah - how much I was going to miss her, and then I just couldn't hold back a smile thinking about the ladies loving those orphans. This is truly the heart of God to love the hurting, the hungry, the poor, the orphans. In the background I was hearing the music "no weeping, no hurt or pain, no suffering, no darkness, no sick or pain. One day all this suffering will all be gone and we will have joy that never fades, another reason to sacrifice all to take Christ's love to everyone around us, as they may not have another chance to have this eternal hope. God's ways are so much higher than we can understand, but just glimpses of his love are enough to change your life radically. Being it IS Jude and Gwyn's 5th birthday today, I took them to Walmart to let them spend their birthday money, then we got some ice-cream cones! While we were out, I got a call that they think Terah's grandpa may have had a heart attack this weekend while he was in the hospital. Terah was getting ready to board her final flight of the day leaving from Dallas to London, so I told her the news before she took off. There was a problem with Kaylee's passport once they got to Dallas and they weren't going to let her fly. Her passport was going to expire in less than six months and many countries don't allow that. I knew that little detail, but I never thought to say anything to Kaylee as I assumed hers was not already ten years old and ready to expire. That means she got it when she was about nine years old - I would not have known that! They did approve her flying afterall as Uganda does not care about that, so all is well again. I was barely functioning by the time we got home from the ice-cream treats. I had already been up for almost 12 hours and it was only lunch itme. Adah took a nice long nap, and I got about an hour of sleep while the others had quiet time. Too many phone calls interrupting my sleep though, so I will make sure to sleep good tonight if the kids let me. We ended the night at Grandpa and Grandma's house to watch the big championship game - my favorite game of the year. It was probably the most boring one I have ever watched unfortunately. Thanks for the pizza Mom and Dad! Now just jotting down the notes from our little adventure from Cocolalla to Uganda. Mommy should be landing in London in a few hours and I am expecting a call from her. Hopefully they slept long enough on the flight to enjoy their sight-seeing in London. That is the latest...

Quite the day...

2011-03-31T22:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a day. I didn't sleep much last night, so that was a bad way to begin the day. Maybe I am a charismatic at heart, maybe I have been working with Scott (my supervisor) too long. On the way to work I was overwhelmed with a need for God's touch. I am not sure whether it was a need to worship or a need to pray, or both, but the burden was great and I was a mess all day. I made it to work and had some chats with Scott as we often do. God has really been working in his life lately; it is amazing to see where his heart is now. (More later) We chatted more about this trip to Africa; he was amazed at the spiritual warfare going on and committed to be in constant prayer over it. It really is true. About a month ago, I had a heavy burden to pray for Terah, that night I had that dream of the Africans, and felt God's revelation to me later that day that this was about spiritual warfare. God was telling me what was coming and it was going to be my burden to pray for Terah, for her protection. Well, it is here, the battle has already begun. The group of ladies going to Africa have been emailing back and forth (I think 18 of them). In the last week or so, 4 ladies have had close friends or family die, others dealing with illness, one whose best friend is having brain surgery next week and chemo treatment, and the leader of this group, the pastor's wife, says that one of the worst things that could happen to a church has happened to their church. There is truly a battle waging with this group. It is a reminder to be in constant prayer. Right after this, I get a call that Terah's grandpa being taken to the hospital for about five days with breathing problems. After hearing everything above, I was quite worried even if it was not serious. ): After discussing all of this, my supervisor decides to have another closed door chat with me. Then he lays it out "I'm leaving litehouse in three weeks". I really couldn't believe it. I have spent the last 8 years sitting side-by-side with him, never worked with anyone so closely in my life. I have spent more time with him than anyone really. One of my closest friends and a great mentor. God has used him greatly to help me see things out of my little box of faith, and helped me realize that I can't put God in my little box, I can't understand his ways, and I can't limit God. It was my supervisor God used over the years to encourage me to seek after God. He brought out the penticostal in me, if you could ever say that. Well, he is making a good decision in leaving litehouse....unfortunately. He wants to be with his kids, and he found a higher paying job in Nebraska where they live and he can try to put his family back together. He also wants to sell his place in Montana so he can invest some money helping the poor in a third world country somewhere. His son is the one who is heading up the trip to Haiti later this year. God used his son to really show him love for these people. Scott has never had a heart for this type of thing, but because of his son having a heart to serve in New Orleans and Haiti over the last couple of years, Scott is now on board and wants to get involved financially if not in person. It is a really cool story. He was against his son going to New Orleans and basically thought that is the worst place in the world you could go. His son went against Scott's wishes saying "they need God's love too". He came back a different person, and Scott was moved by it. Then his son went to Haiti and came back saying "God, I'll leave everything if you want me to GO". Now he is heading up another trip to Haiti, and even his wife is going along this time, who at first was totally against it. All the while he faced a lot of criticism from friends and family, but he is ready to leave his job as soon as God says "it's time". It is amazing to see God change lives! I am meeting with him soon to set up a date for him to share his testimony at our church. So Scott is leaving, and he said he will do everything he can to take care of me before and after he leaves. He wants me to go with him, but that just isn't going to happen. He said he would have turned the job down if it forced him to leave while Terah was in Africa; he didn't want to mess that up - so he left it in God's hands, and the company was ok with him staying at litehouse longer. He said many other things, some that I can't share, but it is just a constant reminder that as "we" obediently walk blindly in faith, directly into the storm, trusting God to do the BIG things that only he can do, GOD ALWAYS COMES THROUGH. I truly can't wait to see what is about to happen in the next four weeks! The day ended at the hospital in Spokane, visiting Terah's grandpa. He seemed to be doing really good.

A couple of birthday parties to do this weekend, then we pack and pray!

I really just want to encourage everyone, let's put everything (schedules, demands, routines, tv) aside for a little while and just seek after God. There is a battle waging, and I am afraid that if we are not on our knees, we will not fare so well. Let's hold each other up in prayer, let's seek hard after God, then let's walk obediently and watch God do amazing things!

Let's worship

2011-03-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

I'm in one of those moods. Amazing contentment, loving this last week spent with the family, no side-jobs, no Bible study to prepare, REALLY craving worship. I actually got the guitars out to play, but it is not very easy to do at home with kids. It kills me that I can't sing, so I play and always give up because I can't sing. I really want to do a "Good Friday Worship", but I think we will be too busy with Easter to pull it off. We really need to make it work! It is easy to just sing songs without much thought of God's glory, but sometimes worship just wants to explode out of us. This is the worship I want to share with others. He is the Lord God Almighty - that says it all for me. He speaks and all of creation trembles and obeys. There is no one to fear except God himself, the one who can condemn the soul of a man to his eternal destiny, good or bad. And there is no one else worthy of praise. We need to worship him because he is holy, because he is God Almighty.

2011-03-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

The trip is getting SO close. I am not worried in the least for Daddy and the kids, but I am already feeling the anxiety of being so far away from my wife. It is a faith builder for me like I had not anticipated - she will be in the Lord's hands, I no longer have control (like I ever did). I am so happy she is going though. My hope is that this begins a new life for us. Maybe in adoption, maybe in overseas ministry, maybe both!

We will be cancelling Bible study this week being we have a big birthday weekend for the twins, but when we continue next week, Bruce is going to take the lead for four weeks!

Music has been encouraging lately. I struggle organizing it every week and making practices, but I sure love being at church on Sunday and love the music ministry! It is great to see so many people coming regularly - both veterans and new comers! It would be awesome to have more Bible study groups though. It is so great to meet together, such and encouragement.

We played PR a couple of times this last week...it was finally my turn to win a few! Lance and Ryan have been snubbing us.

Going to lunch with someone this week to discuss Haiti in November. I may or may not go, but I will certainly help get others involved if nothing else. Also meeting with some guys from camp for lunch another day this week to discuss doing music at teen camp. Yay!

Glad last week is over, it was a rough one.

Well, I guess if your season is ended in the big March Madness tournament, you take the family out to Olive Garden for dinner. Recognize him?

Any ideas for me and the kids the next two weeks? I think we will do something fun the day Mommy leaves since it is the twins birthday - help take their minds off of Mommy going bye-bye. I think I will take them to see Grandpa and Gami. Not sure what else we will do. We have plenty of food though! Wow, the church stocked us up pretty good!

Anyone remember Cry Manna? Sure miss their music! Sure miss seeing them live - maybe the best band I have ever seen.

Had a good weekend with my wife!!! I can't do shopping, but we had a lot of time with just us to visit, that was very refreshing.

Just thinking

2011-03-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

Was looking through a book with Adah and thought, "I think I have heard this story before" - then found the writing "to Lyle on his first birthday - 1979".
Work? Ya, everyone knows what busy is at litehouse. Probably most of the office staff works longer hours than I do these days with all of the growth we are going through. However, covering three jobs this week is killing me. Enough said...
Craigslist is so bad for me. I find so many good deals that are so hard to pass up. For some reason, I can't seem to sell much though.
Just about done moving all of the cell phone accounts to Verizon. Interesting - nearly everyone that went to a Droid is begging for their iPhone back. Hmmm. We got a demo thunderbolt in today - 4G + HUGE screen! Too bad it's a droid.
These longer days and the melting snow have me itching for summer so I can get back outside and work.
March madness - best time of the year! I had our internet provider bump us up for a month so I can watch the games at home being we don't have TV. :)
Played some PR at Matt and Heather's Sunday. Heather caught on very fast and actually won 1 out of 2 games.
Adah has not been herself the last two weeks - and Mommy and Daddy are so tired!
Opportunities all over when you open your eyes - Africa in June, Haiti in November, Mexico in January, and one of the litehouse owners said he would even let me know the about their trips to places like Dominican Republic and Africa to install water filter systems. Wish we could afford to do them all! Short trips or not, there are so many people that need God's love in close proximity. Ravi Zacharais calls it "presence in proximity" or "apologetics with a touch". Meaning, it is one thing to talk about it, it is one thing to give money, it is one thing to pray, but when people feel your touch and see your eyes and God's love through you in person, it is life-changing. Sure, you may spend thousands to leave for two weeks, but what is that worth if one soul is saved for eternity? And even better, what if that one soul saved another soul? Or what if that one soul was the next Billy Graham? Think about it...$$$ well invested I would say. Listened to Ravi again today, he encouraged people to live with a little less to help the poor. Over 7 million people living under poverty levels, most in Asia. Even the poorest of us are overwhelmed with luxury. It is so hard to grasp without seeing it though, because I still look at craigslist daily for my next score!
Skipped the last two weeks of Bible study with sickness, not surprising I guess. Never fails when you try to get a good thing going. Bruce is going to lead us in April while Terah is out - yeah!

So sad...

2011-03-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

An article on Foxnews homepage today, happens to be about children on the streets of Kampala, Uganda - possibly some Terah, Kaylee, and Stacy will be meeting in a couple of weeks...

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/12/ugandan-children-rented-out-to-earn-money-by-begging-on-streets/?test=latestnews

Thoughts for Thursday

2011-03-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

Quite the ham these days!

I think her not walking makes it really hard to believe she is so big already.

I was walking around the house with her in my arms,

I turned and looked at her and this is what she was doing to me!

So she did it one more time so I could take a picture. :)

Singing with the big kids about a BIG God.

After spending all that time making a bed,

Terah paints it and beats it up so it looks 50 years old.

I guess now you won't be able to tell what a bad carpenter I am.

It looks really good - good job Terah!

No Bible study...

...some how we got the flu bug in the house!

That is ok, we would have had to wing it this week.

Made the first two orders of Verizon cell phones today.

Lots of iPhones and a few Droids.

Probably ordered around 35 phones in the last couple of weeks.

I created a workflow that emails each person as their phone is ordered with directions on how to activate their phone.

I didn't want to get stuck activating 40 phones! :)

Did I mention the old iPhones sell on ebay for over $250 in working condition?!

Very excited about music this week.

We had a great practice.

It is not very often we have most of the group,

lately it has been Lanny and sons.

Chad won't be singing this week, but since everyone thinks I am in charge,

I promoted Chad.

[Can you promote a volunteer?]

He will now be leading our services on Sunday morning.

He does really good at leading the worship, a gift I definitely don't have.

Terah got her passport today!

I don't think she has heard anything on whether there is still a problem with the flight or not,

but I am quite certain it will all work out.

Less than a month to go.

Leaving on the twins birthday, gone on her 30th birthday.

It's ok Mommy, you are doing the right thing.

Any recommendations on Bibles?

I want to get Terah a new Bible first.

I was thinking of getting the same one Jim and Kourtney got -

MacAurthor study Bible, genuine leather.

I am torn myself.

I grew up on NIV, those are all of the scriptures I have memorized.

But I want NAS, I think that may be the most literal translation.

There is a paralell Bible out there that will give you four different translations in one,

that sounds awesome.

But then there is the fact that I have study guides and Biblegateway.com,

so a lot of the time, I don't use my NIV.

Sometimes we make it too complicated and we just need to open the book and start reading!

Lazy, lazy.

I am a lot more motivated in the summer time!

I should be fixing my podcasts - something happened with this new phone and I can't seem to get any of my podcasts to work. Now I have to listen to music driving to work - lame! :)

I suppose that is enough for this late night.

"Until you realize the debt of your sin, you will never understand the depth of his love"

Inspired by - "she loves much, because she has been forgiven much" - Jesus

One pathetic L.O.S.E.R

2011-03-06T19:58:00.001-08:00

Pretty sucky night of PR.

If your name is Lyle.

Lance was unbeatable, back on top.

Started great and went downhill after that...

...the entire night.

Lance took 5 out of 7!

I could produce and ship like crazy,

I could get money faster than Bill Gates.

It didn't help.

Latest Project

2011-03-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

I think the doll house and the kitchen shelves were the last big projects I tackled. Terah has me knocking out the next one on her list now. This one has definitely taken me out of my comfort level though. I must say, if I had a place to work other than the landing at the top of the stairs, this project probably would have been ten times easier and more enjoyable. Now that it is nearly finished it is much more rewarding. The second bed will be a lot easier and a lot cheaper since I have a lot of the tools now. Hoping I can find a jigsaw for the next bed. I think Terah was hoping to get that one done soon also, but this one was about 2x the cost we had anticipated.

Friday night lights

2011-03-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

I got home from work to a great sight, Adah took her first steps today! She doesn't like it though, so I was only able to capture it one time. Her favorite thing is to walk with Daddy while I hold her hand, so it really upsets her when we try to make her walk without offering a hand. She was VERY upset with Mommy, but Mommy knows best and "pushed" her 'til she walked.

[Notice the high quality of video on the new iPhone! I suppose after the blogger renders it it won't be such good quality, but it is incredible the difference!]

Then we had Bible study. I really LOVE Bible study. I am going to struggle leading it, but the burden to keep people meeting together is more important. We must not forsake the gathering of the saints as some are in the habit of doing (Hebrews 10:23-24), but encourage each other, spurring each other on toward love and good deeds, all the more as the day approaches. We may still be a far cry from what this was talking about, but we are headed in the right direction, and we will pray that God works mightily as we seek him together.

It was Ryan's birthday today, he is closing in on 40! That may not seem so old except that that is my brother, and that makes me feel old. To celebrate, the bros had a long night of PR following Bible study. Ryan had a pretty good night, and even took 1 of 5 games. Lance and I each took two games, but he did so well in game 4 that I was unable to take the night in total points.

Game 1 really should not have counted, we tried some new things which really did not allow us to do our normal strategies, so the game was not even close to what it would have been normally. So I guess that means I actually took the night with the most wins! :) That game 4 still allowed Lance to stay ahead in points though. I crunch the numbers, so I'm sure I can figure out a way to manipulate them and put myself on top.

Out-sourcing

2011-03-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

Waiting for India - I'm probably the first guy at litehouse to out-source his work to India. Trouble is, they are 12 1/2 hours ahead of me. We are finding it hard to get connected. Hoping he will connect tonight.
We had a 14 year-old come drum with us tonight. He was very excited, and I'm sure he will be working hard at practicing now that he has played with us. Lance was pretty good helping him out, the rest of us don't have a clue what to tell him. Hope he gets better so he can join us on Sundays!
Had a meeting with my supervisor today. I told him I was really struggling getting my projects done. Not because my time is wasted, but because my time is not managed well. Two problems - I don't prioritize and get the most important things done, and I get interrupted all day or I'm in meetings. So what happened after this meeting? I had another meeting to get to, and as soon as we got out of that meeting I went strait to work to try and finish up a project only to be interrupted five times over the course of an hour. At least my supervisor got to see it happen right after I told him what I was struggling with. It took me two hours to finish up a very small amount of work on a project. This is my day at work. My new responsibilities are "projects", and I don't have an overwhelming amount of projects, but it is overwhelming when I can't get to them. Yesterday I logged one whole hour of actual project work. Today was not much better.
Just about ready to put together the girls' first of two beds. Terah has patiently been waiting for me to get it done. I sometimes enjoy these projects, but this one is a little out of my comfort zone. So far I think it is turning out ok, but I have not put it together yet, it could be a disaster too. I did get a miter saw out of it (used, but very cool!). I'll probably buy a used jigsaw for the next bed.
Looking forward to Bible study this week; it is such a joy to get with other believers and seek the Lord together. Prayer meeting was good tonight. There are not many people there, but it is always uplifting!
Things are still moving forward with Africa. People are SO generous! We sent off the first big payment for the international ticket today, someone bought Terah's ticket to Texas last week, many other donated a bunch of money and other things to raise money. It is so incredible to see how God works!!! I am so excited for these ladies, but I am afraid of the moment Terah leaves. I think that will be the hardest part for me. I can't wait to see why God has called them to do this! I think they are convinced that there is someone waiting for them to bring them home - that would be just fine with me.
Did I tell you I got a new iPhone? It is really nice! Recommend to anyone. I need to find an old one that I can send with Terah to Africa so she can call me over the internet. We have been selling our old iPhones on ebay at work - they are going like hotcakes. We are making good money on them!
No India tonight, so I am going to bed

Sunday

2011-02-27T20:48:00.001-08:00

Now that Bible study has started again, we are going to try and do a better job opening up our home. When Adah was born, we got out of the habit. It has always been our goal to stay connected with people, but I have really become a hermit the last year or two. Bible study really broke down that barrier, it was a great time. Today we had some friends and family over and had a nice visit...along with a little PR. We actually invited quite a few people, but most were already busy. It was a nice time though!

Here are the scores for tonight - new guy takes his first night, but only three of us, and only two games...

Friday Night

2011-02-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

We had our first Bible study of the year tonight, I am very excited about it. I am with Lance, the times are changing and I believe God is beginning to move in the church again! I can't wait to see what comes of this group and what happens in the "church" in the near future.

Meanwhile, while there are people dying for their faith in other countries...

...we managed to get a few games of Puerto Rico in after our study. Doesn't that just seem wrong??? So as usual, I may as well post the scores. After a long drout, Chad is back in the lead this week.

Seriously though. I had to ask the question myself as I couldn't believe what I was seeing. What is it that is so amazing that causes people to risk their lives sneaking around house to house in Asia and other parts of the world. What are they so hungry for that they even risk their family's lives? We would be "crazy" to do that over here! I actually know the answer to that question though, how about this question - Why is it that we struggle to get anyone to prayer meetings or Bible studies in the U.S.? How is it that it only takes a football game to cause us to skip out on church?

Ironic, we have as much of God as we want at any time we want, at absolutely no risk of our physical well-being, and we only want it when it is convenient - an hour a week on Sunday morning?

Of course, I am not thinking of names in my mind, I am generalizing the American church. If you thought I was thinking of you, then maybe you are in denial. :) Just kidding.

This is something we ought to consider though. Do we seek after God at all? Or is God's faithfulness good enough for us, we don't really have any desire to be faithful ourselves?

Let's get in the game, let's fight the battle - there is no time to ignore it any longer. The war is waging, and to choose to ignore it is to lose the battle. Let's give God the devotion he deserves as God Almighty. Instead of devoting our lives to TV and games (like Puerto Rico! :), let's become kingdom seekers!

I know you get sick of this from me, but you know I won't shut up. Seriously, because this is serious. The cares of this world must end, we can't serve two masters - we will be devoted to one and hate the other, or serve one and despise the other. Which will we choose? You know what I am talking about, where does your devotion lie? God or family? God or me? God or stuff? God or money? God or false God? You get the picture. Don't look at me like that, I am just speaking the hard truth, and I am as guilty as anyone. Will we change?

It's coming!

2011-02-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

I feel like I am on overload, but I just keep finding more stuff. Tell you what, I really love my iphone (in fact, I am getting a new one tomorrow - that is not the reason for the title to this post however). I am able to listen to sermon after sermon on my phone going to work and back. Now I am downloading books on my phone and reading them - an iPad would be really cool! While this is probably what I will be doing from now on (downloading books), I still read a lot of hard copies also. Right now I am reading three different books - two hard copies, one downloaded.

This is the reason for my title "It's coming" -

Things are getting very interesting around here - at least in my mind. I have finally realized that God has been leading me all the while he has also been leading Terah to Africa. It started back in December when over and over God said "get ready, you are going". So I told that to Terah and not too much later, she was going. Then the last couple of weeks God has really been burdening my heart to be praying for Terah while she is in Africa (serious prayer) and to help prepare/disciple her for the trip. Now another "burden" has come - Monday, my heart was heavy, I truly felt an incredible urgency to began praying fervantly again for my family with Bible study beginning and this trip to Africa getting underway. The spiritual battles are coming! That is when I wrote the last post about spiritual warfare and feeling the urgency to pray. So Monday night I spent a lot of time reading and praying in this regard. I went to bed around midnight and had a strange dream that night. I woke up confused and a little worried. I will spare the details if I can - Terah and I were on a beach, two boats paddled in, each with two African women in them. On the shore was three very tall African men, and I knew they were "evil" as I could feel it. We both had our backs turned to them, but as I could feel their intentions of evil, I somehow knew what was happening. Terah was standing behind me and I whipped around throwing her behind me right before the African man in front grabbed Terah. His arms were reached out nearly grabbing her intending to take her. I woke up and immediately thought, uh-oh! Am I sending my wife into harms way to Africa? Is someone going to hurt her? I prayed about it and didn't tell her the dream as I didn't want to worry her. On the way home from work later that day, I began thinking about it again and all of a sudden I understood what it meant. I had spent that entire day before the dream burdened to pray as if spiritual warfare was about to kick into high gear. I realized that this dream was not telling of man trying to harm Terah, but that as she is going to Africa, Satan is going to come for her (maybe that is not so comforting either). This was God again telling me that it is very important that I protect her while she is in Africa - realizing it is not me who protects her, but this is yet another call to not only prepare her for what's ahead, but to pray for her constantly as she is there. I know without a doubt that God is telling me to cover her in prayer, and I guess it would not hurt to share this burden with you guys so you can also pray for the group as they are there.

I have heard it said that Satan comes when we open a door for him to come, but I know this is not true, at least this is not the only thing that causes Satan to break in. Yes, that does happen, but I am convinced that the enemy will show up to disrupt something great and powerful, to tear down the righteous as he did with Job, and as we experienced ourselves having spiritual attacks on our kids during a time of fervantly seeking God. I am fully convinced that this is what is going on now, God is preparing us for a battle, and telling us we will need to be on our knees fighting - this is going to be a serious battle! It is hard to convey to you on a blog post how serious I believe this is. On the other hand, this is very exciting! When Satan is at work, you know that God is at greater work, and we know we are on the right side!

Just thinking...

2011-02-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to the coming days! I think it will require a season of prayer though, the enemy is certain to make his appearance. The sermon Sunday was very encouraging, and I wish I could put an even bolder emphasis on the importance of seeking after God with our entire being, with the promise that we will find him! And what rich blessings will come from finding God!

Our battle is not against flesh and blood as I was reminded today listening to a story of a four year old who was victim of things of the spiritual realms. How often we forget where the battle really lies, so distracted by both the worries and lusts of this world. Satan prowls around seeking whom he will devour. And you can be certain it is not only a fall of our sinful nature that opens the door to Satan, but he was there before you fell, tempting you into your wickedness. And he will be there all the more as you seek after God, doing everything he can to keep you from finding God. I am reading a book (started over three times now) of an old writer from centuries ago I believe. He writes in length of the spiritual battle we face. There are some great insites he gives. "Satan and your old nature will lie down together, but sin and grace never will. Sin will lust upon grace, grace will draw the sword on sin." You can be sure that where our sinful nature eats to its contentment, Satan is right there. But as grace abounds, Christ's love quenches the love of sin and Satan finds himself powerless. Our attempts to conquer sin may hold it in check for a time, but unless Christ's love replaces our love of sin, we will never be victors - at some point our lust will rise up in us once again. We have two nations within us, one of earthly nature, and one of heavenly nature. And the battle we fight will not end in a day, it will go on to the end. As in war, battle is not against the horse, but the rider. We do not fight man (flesh), but Satan (principalities) who is riding on man's back.
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We are starting Bible study again on Friday. I want so bad for this to be a time of praying for each other, lifting each other up, encouraging each other, seeking after God with fervency, reading the word and being transformed. The church is missing so much today because we do not seek after God with urgency. Bible study is a great time to seek with urgency. There will also be people coming that may not know the Lord, so if this is a way for them to come to Christ, that would be beyond exciting!
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I was reading in Romans again and chapter 4 had some interesting things jump out. It says "to the man who does not work, but trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith will be credited as righteousness." I could not have said it better. The whole picture of salvation is simply believing in God who has saved the sinner. This is faith - not anything (work) that I have done, but simply trusting God who has made me "right". God did the justifying, I did nothing. Then it continues: "Blessed are they who are forgiven, whose sins are covered and will never be counted against him." That is such an incredible thing, to never have to worry about the sin as it has already been dealt with on the cross and it will never be held against my account.

Finally, it continues in vs 20-21 saying Abraham did not waiver, he was "fully persuaded" (faith!) that God had the power to do what he said he would do. Jesus was constantly telling people, including the disciples, "O you of little faith". They simply were not persuaded that God could do as he said. How much does that resemble my faith? Jesus presents some incredible promises that are hard to believe - the moving of mountains, walking on water - that's what faith can do! What would happen if the church were fully persuaded of God's promises? I'm thinking I probably don't believe them myself, because if I were convinced they were true, I probably would not be wasting my time chasing after the things I do.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

If only we could taste a little of God's goodness, how hard we would chase after God. As Bruce pointed out Sunday, it is a valid reason to be discontented - we ought to hunger more and more for God. The more we hunger though, the more we will find satisfaction! Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied!

Don't see this every day

2011-02-18T09:05:00.001-08:00

Tuesday's

2011-02-15T22:26:00.001-08:00

It was another good night of Puerto Rico.

The women all had a meeting at church, so a few of us guys

brought the kids over and played a couple of games of PR.

The new guy at church come over and had a pretty good night.

Chad is going to have to come up with a new strategy however.

He dominated for quite some time, but has struggled a lot this last week.

Lance and I have been neck and neck for the last week, tonight we tied.

On to the meaningful stuff...

First, I am blown away at people's generosity to support Terah

in her trip to Africa. As the pastor always puts it,

God has a bigger shovel then all of us. There is nothing he can't provide for.

That makes it easy to step out in faith and trust God,

and the most important thing is to obey.

It is awesome that so many are so supportive and excited with us!

We do understand some concerns others have.

What good is it really to go for two weeks?

"You aren't going to change anything or anybody" as one told me this week.

Well, again - obedience is the important thing.

God has specifically called Terah to this trip,

and it was done in such a way that there is absolutely no doubting it,

so now we are watching God put it together, and it is amazing!

We really don't know what is going to come of this,

but stepping out in faith is when miracles happen, when God does amazing things,

so I am excited to say the least!

I can't wait for it to come and go.

I know it will be a life-changer for me as well as Terah, so I can't wait.

I also want it to go though,

because it will be the worst two weeks of my life being without Terah.

I am going to miss her so much!

I have left her so many times, but it is so much different when she is leaving me.

Bitter-sweet. ):

If I can hold my tongue...probably not.

You guys know me better than that. :)

I am a little disappointed...

I don't care that some have concerns with this trip, especially family.

Understandable, I am ok with that.

The disappointing part is that this has really opened my eyes to how little we really care.

We just don't care about the poor and suffering people in third world countries.

Yes, the church is very important, and yes, the family is important too.

But what about the poor and the orphans who are dying powerless to help themselves?

Does anyone care anymore that there are billions of people going to HELL????

Yes, this is VERY serious!!! Yes, I can't believe I am saying this!

Is it really true that we don't care???

I am guilty too, but I feel compassion like never before to help these people,

and why is there so much resistance from "Christians" to do it???

We CANNOT ignore their cry. God hears those cries,

and brings judgment on those who ignore them.

Scripturally, if we are indeed Christians, this is who we are - we love!

We love the lost, we love the poor, we love the orphans and widows,

we love each other, we love our enemies, we love our brothers.

The church CANNOT ignore them, any of them.

This does not even begin to speak to taking the gospel to all the nations.

Have we become so comfortable in our seats that our ministry does

not reach outside of our church body?

I know I have just inserted my foot.

My mouth is a size 12 now.

I know that God doesn't call everyone overseas.

I know that I have done NOTHING that I speak of.

However, I have become well aware now through this trip just how far

we have really come from having compassion for the poor and the lost.

Maybe this American Dream thing has really distracted us from God's kingdom -

I have only been concerned about mine.

I truly hope these three girls come back with a new vision for all of us!

I am really sorry if this offends anyone.

I am as guilty and convicted as I speak to anyone.

Let's pray hard for these girls, really.

They are following God's lead,

and probably we will all be changed in the process,

Lord willing.

Bible study

2011-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

Looks like Friday nights will be back on the schedule, but I think we will try to keep it at our house this time. I am really burdened to get it going - it is so important for us to meet together, to disciple each other, to bring the new families into our body, to invite the unsaved.

I just need to find a little more grace while teaching. I am very passionate about some teachings in the Bible, but it is very difficult to present some of them without sounding harsh. And whether you have been in a study in the past or reading my blogs, you will have to forgive me for always being so passionate about some of these things. I probably won't stop being passionate, but I am certainly not always right, and I certainly could figure out a better way to communicate things. Often times I struggle with pride also. You will just have to bear with me and pray that the truth is taught, because I don't intend on stopping the "preaching", just hope to improve it both in presentation and truth. I am doing the best I can to learn, but it is a long road of building faith, so you please be patient with me. Mostly, I just want the word of God to transform us, it is not me that will do anything, but the word of God. That is why I don't shut up - I will never be right all of the time, but it is always good for us to fill ourselves with scriptures, and we will sharpen each other.

Let's get more Bible studies going! We could use at least two or three!!!

Peurto Rico

2011-02-12T13:12:00.000-08:00

As Lance mentioned, the brothers have found a hobby we all enjoy - although most watching may think differently. We grew up very competitive...

Since November we have been getting together about every-other week to play a late night of Peurto Rico. Late night is the only time we can break away to do it, so usually the games begin around 9pm after the kids are in bed, and can easily go until 1 or 2 in the morning. Whenever we invite others to join, I think they are a little taken back by how competitive we get. I am the worst by far, but I am trying to get better - we have always been this way in games though.

It is a game that doesn't seem to get old as each game changes so much and forces you to dynamically change your strategy based on how things fall when your turn comes around and how the others are also playing. There is only one way to win - get the most victory points. But there are three ways to get there - ship a lot of product, get a lot of money, or a mixture of the two.

It has been interesting to see the way everyone goes about this. Lance was the first dominator. For the longest time we couldn't figure out his strategy - which didn't require a lot of production, but just producing a little of everything and shipping it which gained a lot of victory points to win the game. Then I began taking the lead for a little bit producing less than the others and making a lot of money instead by trading the little I did produce, then basically buying victory points toward the end of the game. My domination did not last as long being everyone was now getting the hang of this game - they all began trading and my strategy became a lot harder to use. Then Chad figured out that buying a certain piece at the beginning of the game was very key to get him producing before everyone else. He was winning quite a bit and got to the point that he said "Is it wrong that I am so addicted to this game?". His dominance too was about to end, we figured out what he was doing and like me, his strategy became difficult to keep winning with as others were either using it or keeping him from using it.

Ryan - well he did much better last night. He has always produced and shipped really well, but I think he has not been aggressive enough to win on production alone, so working on the $$$ may help a little. Another thing that would probably help him is a little more defense - without defense, there is a good chance the other guy will beat you. Last night was probably his best night yet. He didn't win, but he came close a couple of times and made more aggressive and defensive moves than usual. He may be the next guy to dominate!

Last night was a very close match as far as points go. If you go strictly a shipping/victory point strategy, you have to end the game REALLY fast, or you won't win. Most of the time, the shipper needs to come up with a enough money at the end of the game to buy a high victory point card - this is the mixed strategy of shipping and money. If you go with an all money strategy, you have to purchase as many high point victory cards as you can while everyone else is busy shipping and producing. Usually a mix of both is the guy that wins - I would say Lance is probably the best at this. I took the night last night, but it was very close - and this time an all-out strategy of greed was enough to win, but barely. I have officially become the worst producer/shipper in the game, but I can make money like no body's business.

Lance took two out of three Wednesday...

Me and Lance won two each last night,
but I was able to creep past him in total points!

Yes, we keep track of scores on a spreadsheet!
It is way easier to add them up...

No wins for Chad this week,
A sure sign his dominance has come to an end - finally! :)

Another great scripture

2011-02-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

Quick post to add to last night's post...

Wanted to add a story that I can't believe I left out. I believe it is Luke 16 that talks about the rich man and Lazarus. You all know the story, the rich man ignored the begger at the gate and did nothing about his poverty. Guess who went to hell and who went to Abraham's side? This is a great picture of what the scriptures have always pointed out, we must hear the cry of the poor, or we will not be heard ourselves.

Look...we could just as easily be the rich man, maybe we ARE. We may not think so, but we are in the top 95% richest of the world, every one of us. God has blessed us richly, and we now have an obligation according to scripture to help those in need. You must not take my word for it, but read the word of God and be in obedience. This is what I have meant in the past about getting myself so tied down by the things of this world that I am unable to help the poor man. Just before this story Jesus tells the Pharisees that what is valuable in man's eyes is detestable in God's eyes. There are many scriptures to add here also.

My advice if I had any, read the scriptures and be transformed by them. Read them and obey them - Jesus says this in Matthew 7, this is the evidence of a child of God. But as Craig also pointed out, this is Chris living in us, so don't do this on your own accord. Remember to value the word of God above all though! Lazarus wanted to go back and plead with his family, or at least for Lazarus to go back and plead with them. Abraham told the rich man, they didn't believe Moses and the prophets (their name for the word of God), so they will not believe a man coming back from the dead.

Information Overload

2011-02-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

Adah is doing much better now, she will be better in no time. I expect she will be mostly back to normal tomorrow. Daddy should not have stayed up with her all night Saturday though, he gets sick EVERY time he doesn't sleep. So, I am sick (not the flu), hoping to fight it off, but I will have to improve my diet so this quits happening to me.

Speaking of a better diet. If you you do Hulu or Netflix, lookup "Food Matters" and "Food Inc". I probably mentioned it already - yikes. They are a must see. Another documentary I watched was on the US debt - "IOUSA". Looks like we are in for some rough waters, and our children even worse. There is no way out unless drastic action is taken, which will first cause a lot of pain, but it must be done. So far nothing is being done except making the problem worse. I hate to say it, but George Bush pretty much doubled our national debt in his eight years of office. (Ya, Terah's dad has been telling me this for years) Social security and medicare are being used to pay the debt, but that will soon run out and the debt will then began climbing like crazy, at which time they would have to double taxes to keep up (42%!). We are ok in the short term (not sure what that means, a couple of years?), but the long term is not looking good. Pay off your debts and get some money in savings is what the wise would say!

Other than the many documentaries I have watched over the weekend, I have also been studying many other things. Far too much to blog about, but maybe a high-level for you.

On the boring side, I have been reading "work" materials - you know, sharepoint, web applications, site collections, kerberos, ntlm...stuff you just can't put down.

I have been reading a lot of "Joy Unspeakable", my second time through this book. The first time I only made it half way. He is not my favorite author, although quite popular - Martyn Lloyd Jones. As I am reading other books or listening to podcasts, he is quite often mentioned. The subject of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of my favorites to discuss! That is what this book is about. He repeats himself often and makes a very detailed case for what we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I do like how he makes it plain through scriptures that the Holy Spirit's work at the time of regeneration (salvation) is different from the filling of the Holy Spirit as with Jesus, and the disciples, and Paul, and the church at Pentacost, and all through-out history . This baptism of the Holy Spirit is one that is supernatural (well, I suppose it is all supernatural, especially salvation, but you know what I mean - something evident to all, miraculous). Not something that is necessarily tied to salvation, but is certainly tied to believers and something that Christ gives according to his sovereign will. Like I said, no time for details here - I could go on forever about this.

I have also been listening to David Platt, over and over. Podcasts on the body of Christ - huge subject, on Jesus' teachings and how that calls for a radical change in our lives, and teachings on taking care of the poor - wow.

It is plain in scripture that one of the fruits of a genuine faith is a heart for the poor, the orphans and widows. Scriptures have a lot of bad news for those who ignore the poor. At some point in our faith, I believe a Christian will reflect the heart of Christ with a heart for the poor - but it is hard to understand if we don't read the scriptures. You would have to choose to ignore it as it is in so many places. Being a Christian and ignoring the needy is impossible - I will post some scriptures. The sad thing today (in the US) is that we have a blindspot. For one, we don't realize we are the righest people in the world, in the top 95%! Meanwhile, whether we choose to ignorantly or not, we have ignored the 30k children dying EVERY DAY from starvation or preventable diseases, totally powerless to help themselves. John Wesley is one of the most influential Christians in our history. He decided he would live on as little as possible and give the rest of his money away. As we all know, he wrote many hymns and books which made him a wealthy man - sort of. At one point he was making well over $100k a year (that is huge in his time) and he gave it all away but the $20k he needed to live on!

Along the same lines, there are over 6 billion people in the world, and very shallow estimates would put over 4.5 billion people lost and going to eternal judgment and torment. Now, if we truly believe that people will suffer this judgment, we have an incredible obligation to tell the world the truth. Which leads to my next point...

There is not a greater obligation in the world, then that of spreading the gospel. In the words of Jesus himself, he calls us to take up our cross, to lose everything, to leave everything, to give everything for the kingdom's sake, for his sake. This takes priority over all other things, including family - mother, father, daughter, son, husband, wife. There are too many examples of this to mention in this post, it is all over the gospels.

Various scriptures:

Matthew 6, do not to store up treasures in earth, but store your treasures in heaven. Do not worry about food and clothes or what tomorrow brings, but to seek first his kingdom and he promises to take care of us. That is such a comfort! The creator has promised he will take care of our needs, now there is a freedom from worries of this world and we can take the gospel to the ends of the earth, losing all for Christ's sake.
Proverbs 21:13 - Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered.
I John 3:17 - If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Matthew 25:31-46
Matthew 19 - just after he tells the rich young ruler to sell all he has and give to the poor and follow him: 28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.
We read about the farmer who sold everything he had to purchase the kingdom of God.
Proverbs 28: 27 Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.
Luke 6 - 20 Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.....24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. 25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
Luke 9:57-62
Luke 12:22- (Same as Matthew 6 - "do not worry about clothes, food....") then: 32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I have left a lot of scriptures out, but I am out of time and probably lost you half way through this post...

Night duty...

2011-02-06T00:48:00.000-08:00

Poor Adah.

Shocked us all when she puked all over Mommy and herself and the furniture in the middle of a birthday party today, never seen it coming. Not sure how we got it, but looks like we will be in for a rough week. She is getting the hang of it pretty quick though and is taking longer breaks in between "getting sick", so hopefully she will sleep now. I am doing the first watch while Terah gets a little sleep. As I have said before, the only negative I have found so far to having kids is that once one of them gets sick, they all get sick. I remember the last time that happened, I was the only one that didn't get it. So I slept on the couch running upstairs all night taking turns between the three kids making sure they got sick in the bowl - while Mommy took care of her own sickness all night long. Colds are one thing, you can't avoid getting a cold, but it is no fun when the flu bug goes around!

So I just finished my 3rd or 4th documentary on Netflix. If you want to keep yourself and your kids from an early grave (diabetis, heart disease, hypertension, etc), you may be interested in watching them. "Food Matters" is really informative and eye opening - I certainly will be changing my diet! "Food Inc" is just plain scary, you may never eat fast food again, along with many other processed foods. Also watched another food documentary on obesity, pretty much saying the same things. In the end, we are in a society that is killing us with its processed foods and drinks, but we make the decision to keep eating it. Until the masses demand something else, it will not change. It is a knows fact that diabetis is setting in a record pace even with our kids. It has become a national crisis. There is not likely a chance that the food industries will change unless the people strongly oppose it as many of the government food agencies are led by former managers and CEOs of the big food companies that are doing this to our food. In the end, you can be sure that it is all about $$$.

Then I ended the night with a documentary on North Korea - so sad. The ones who try to leave are killed along with their families. Most are brainwashed and literally revere Kim Jong II as a god. They don't know anything else and he is all they talk about, praising him all of the time. They have the third largest army in the world. There is something like 127 miles of electric fence with a two mile wide demalitarized zone and two million soldiers gaurding it on the North side, along with one of the most densely populated mine fields in the world. How do you escape? The soldiers gaurding it have to face all directions so they can shoot each other if someone decides they want to defect. The documentary was a done by journalists disguised as a medical group assisting and eye doctor. The eye doctor performed over 1000 basic eye surgeries to give people sight, while the journalists were there to sneak a peak of North Korea. They also interviewed one of the few people to ever escape.

Reading through Exodus. A small detail I don't remember reading before - shortly after God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he snuck up behind Moses to kill him because he had not been circumcised (most likely because he was raised Egyptian). I believe it was Moses' wife that acted quickly on his behalf before the Lord and saved his life. Another incredible picture of the holiness of God. And later displayed with Moses when God said, "you cannot see my face, for no one can see my face and live." Right after that, they killed many of the Israelites for making a golden calf. Not too long after that, Moses made his blunder in striking the rock which doomed him to his death and never entering the promised land. A very holy God.

Listening to a lot of David Platte's podcasts. He is the author of "Radical". I highly recommend his stuff. I agree with his teaching of the scriptures, and if it indeed is true, then it demands a radical change in the way we live...and it IS true, it is the word of God. Very inspiring, very convicting.

Would love to get some sleep now, but Adah has already been sick three times since I started this, so I guess I will try to stay up. REALLY sorry if someone else gets the flu because of this, we had no idea it was coming. I guess we will stay home and miss church and the superbowl tomorrow. ):

Continuation

2011-02-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

I will try to be careful what I say as I do not mean to ever come across judgemental, just have a need to get truth out and I am not very good at it. So forgive me ahead of time. This is just an extension of the comments on this trip to Africa. I am in agreement with all of you and thought I would take advantage of this situation to encourage all of us even further. I truly can't get enough of this stuff...

First, I just want to make it clear that I was not directing any negatory things to anyone, simply emphasizing what a great thing this is for these ladies. For anyone who could not make this trip, I was not implying you are not in God's will, just that this is certainly the kind of thing that is always on God's heart, so you don't have to doubt it if you want to know God's will. It may not be the right time or place for some - this seems to obviously be good timing for Terah as this is what God has been leading us to do for some time.

Secondly, I agree, we can do this sort of thing here - that is always the first thing I hear from people when I bring up missions, so my question is - what are we going to do about it? We have already been called, so how are we responding? There is a youth group that needs help, there are home-groups that need to be active, there is VBS that anyone could take vacation for to be a part of. There are orphans to be loved, widows and the poor to be helped. This may not be the things God calls us to do specifically (although universally in the church they would apply to all of us), but do we know what God IS calling us to do and are we obeying the calling? There is a couple in our church that has been such a great example in the way they have chosen to live, it is very inspiring! There is hardly a day that goes by I am not frustrated in how I have tied myself down to this world so much that I am not able to do the things God is calling me to do. I pray continually that God will free us from these chains. We are incredibly blessed with riches here, but unless we use them for the kingdom, they will only be a stumbling block.

So let's also take this as an encouragment and a challenge to invest in the kingdom right here! It was your idea! :) It is certainly way more fun when we all work together!

Africa? - updated -

2011-02-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

I keep waiting impatiently for someone to blog, but I can't take it anymore!

There are a couple of ladies from our church going to Africa for a couple of weeks, and I can't believe they are not blogging about it. I guess I will just talk about it because I am just as excited as they are, and I am not even going.

Long story short, Terah is headed to Africa with two other gals from the church (as long as things keep working out). It was very short notice, but it looks like it is going to happen. From what I know, they will be working with orphans and homeless people. Pretty cool that the people heading this up are Matt Palmer's pastor! :)

There are a lot of ironies in this that made this an easy decision. I am not going to get into those details, but there was no questions or doubts from me, this is an incredible opportunity! I really didn't picture Terah going like this without me, but I am so excited for her, and so jealous! She keeps saying she is going to fall in love with an orphan and want to adopt. I just want her to fall in love with them and keep wanting to go back - and she will - maybe permanently? I hope this is the beginning of a new life for us. This life is such a waste living selfishly like we do while thousands (24k?) die every day from starvation or preventable diseases - and without Jesus. If you didn't listen to the sermon I posted back in December, you really ought to...it is very convicting. We have it so good, and yet it could easily be the end of us. I don't want to get into that though.

This whole thing may not work out, it does take a certain amount of money to get there and passports, etc. Those things don't worry me in the least though. When God says "go", the only option is to obey. This usually requires stepping out in faith first, before the provisions come - or it would not be faith. You may ask, how do you know this is God's will? First I would answer, "have you read any of my posts lately?" Three times in December I posted that this was coming. (Updated) In fact, I remember sitting Terah down last month to talk to her, telling her, "I'm really feeling a burden to missions - overseas missions. We need to be prepared to go when God calls us to go. We need to be prepared to leave everything and go." I just can't believe I am not going with her!!! Secondly, I would say, "have you read the Bible lately? When is it not God's will?!!!" ;)

Yes, there are risks. Sickness? Maybe. Something could happen? Maybe. Money all gone? Maybe. This is the Christian life - it is not some cushy, comfortable life where we don't need God. This is the life the scriptures calls us to - to lose everything for his sake, but to gain the kingdom. This is the kingdom that Jesus describes a man selling all he had just to buy a field with treasure buried in it - the kingdom of heaven. That is how we ought to live, to give everything we have chasing after the kingdom. We are at much greater risk living over here keeping our lives, than going somewhere losing our lives - if you know what I mean. I realize this is just one trip, but I'm quite certain this is just the beginning for these girls. :) This will be an incredible example to our kids also.

Now I am just rambling, but I can't help but be excited - things probably won't be the same after this! All this to say, I am so proud of this group, and can't wait to see what happens. I hope this is a life-changer for all involved, and that this is the beginning of a great outreach from our church. Let's forget the family vacations and just start planning family mission trips! :)

Tuesday 10

2011-01-25T23:10:00.000-08:00

Barely keeping up, but this is the way I like it - no time to get board.
Spent the weekend eating out and having fun. No wonder I have to work so many side-jobs! :)
Just finished my second side-job this week and we are not even to Wednesday.
Made a deal with my former boss for a large amount of sound equipment and picked it all up today - it is very exciting for me. It has taken me a good 15 years to build the sound system we have, and now with this one deal, I probably won't have to make any purchases for a long time!
Now we have to hurry and get all of the sound equipment setup for our worship night Saturday evening. It will be different than any we have done before. There will be no drummer this time, which is usually the highlight, and probably no Debbie on the piano. ): It is going to be a nice change in music selection though, we are kind of excited about it. Just going to tone it down and do familiar songs we can all sing and worship together.
Blood pressure is still pretty high. Last night it hit 162/96, that is the highest I have seen on the systolic side. However, I did get to the treadmill and felt pretty good today...and it was lower tonight than it has been since last week. Guess I better keep up the exercise!
Picked up "Joy Unspeakable" again, a book I never finished. Martyn Lloyd Jones is the author, very well-known. This book is about the baptism of the Holy Spirit - very good.
Also keeping on schedule to get through the Bible in a year so far. It has been a very long time since I have read through Job - pretty interesting conversations between Job and his buddies. They were all quite knowledgable in the scriptures despite Job not liking what they had to say. Job amazes me how full of wisdom he was - he understood the nature of man and God very well.
Can't remember if I told you that I got my new computer at work, runs like a dream! My old one just couldn't run my virtual machines.
Bought a miter saw on craigslist last week. I am pretty excited about that. It is very used, but can't beat the price. That is the one tool I always need for EVERY project. Terah said to get whatever I wanted if I would just make the girl's beds for her...I wanted a very used miter-saw. :)

The silent killer...

2011-01-21T21:12:00.000-08:00

...because most people don't know until it is too late.

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

The second leading cause of doctor visits today (well not just today, you know what I mean). There are not a lot of symptoms to go by until things start getting noticably bad - shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches, chest pains.

While I don't have those symptoms, I have noticed for some time now little things like heart-burn. I didn't realize that hypertension can also cause vision loss (hmmm). I really have noticed a lot the last three months or so however. I kept telling Terah that there was something wrong, I didn't feel good. Then I began having sleepless nights, tossing and turning. Then I began getting sick. I was sick three times in the last two months of the year.

I finally went to urgent care to treat my sinus infection, and they surprised me. They didn't care at all about my sinus infection; they grilled me about my high blood pressure. The Dr encouraged me to go back in to get some blood work done and make sure my liver was ok. I told her it was just because I hadn't slept the night before, and she agreed. The lack of sleep was making me sick, so why am I not sleeping? Most likely hypertension. It seems to be a nasty circle for me. Hypertension, no sleep, sick, hypertension, no sleep, sick.

Here is the general rule for blood pressure:

•Normal blood pressure less than 120/80
•Pre-hypertension 120-139/ 80-89
•High blood pressure (stage 1) 140-159/90-99
•High blood pressure (stage 2) higher than 160/100

I hang out somewhere between 140/89 and 157/101. Uh-oh.

So, let's face it. I am getting old, and my decisions to be unhealthy are catching up to me. The cure lies in my hands alone. If I choose to keep going like this, it could be very bad news.

What now? Well, it is 100% curable in most cases. Better diet and exercise. Two things I have absolutely NONE of. No salty foods and no caffeine (ouch), regular exercise (ya that hurts too). We always get mad at the doctors for prescribing pills to everyone, but in the case of high blood pressure it is simply because no one will follow the rules - better diet and exercise.

This is one of the worst days of my life, how will I ever get myself to be healthy - to stop drinking pop?! Time to stop being selfish I guess - actually, not yet, I'll start on Sunday, after I have eaten my big steak at Wolf Lodge this weekend!!! :)

Another project off the list...

2011-01-19T22:32:00.001-08:00

Gwyneth received a wonderful gift from Grandma,

passed down from my cousin.

It took us a year to get to it, but we finally tackled it.

The amount of hours that went into building this doll house is unbelievable!

It is no wonder they never finished it.

It was mostly built when we received it,

but there was a lot of work to be done still.

What a beautiful doll house though!

All of the railings were broken off, so I had to rebuild them.

Half of the deck was broken off.

The chimney had to be reattached.

The stairs had to be taken out and reinstalled the correct way.

And much more...

I actually enjoyed building the rails.

[Please excuse the bad quality pics from my phone]

This was Mommy's project - the inside of the house.

She painted and painted!

I couldn't finish the rail, ran out of pieces.

Emergency run to the craft store to get some project wood - perfect find!

Time to start painting...

...and painting

...and painting.

Yes, three coats of paint on EVERYTHING

I actually don't have any completely finished pictures,

but here is the inside

Only missing stairs and the bedroom divider upstairs.
Believe it or not, Terah wallpapered the inside
...and it looks great!

Terah painted all of the pink, and I painted all of the white.
Terah also stained the roof!

This thing is gigantic!

I am hoping Terah will take some good pictures of it to share with you...

Girls, I really hope you love it!
Daddy only loved doing this project because he was so happy to do it for you.
Next project will be your beds!
Then your playhouse outside.

Daddy must really love you...

(Mommy did the most work on this project though)

Thoughts on Thursday

2011-01-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

Over 350 posts on my blog now - probably half of them are deleted or never posted though.
My boss donated some sound equipment to our church, that is pretty exciting - we have never had super good equipment...just pieced together over the years.
Getting ready to do another worship night at the end of January! Very exciting!
Attempting to read through the Bible in a year again, we'll see how it goes. Last year I got way behind at the very beginning, this year I am staying ahead so far. (two weeks into it ;)
Need to get Bible study started up again - there are a couple of new families that would like to come, one of whom has said he is interested in teaching!
Watching Gonzaga beat Pepperdine on my phone - gave my ticket away or I would be there. Not too disappointed though, I have too much going on and need to choose what is priority.
Work is much better this week. The week returning from vacation was a killer.
Ordered my new computer for work today! It will be a test to see how well it works, then we will get one for each person in IT - 8GB of memory, 4-6 core processor, mirror'd 500gb drives!
I always joke about this, but I really have outsourced a lot of work to India. :) They have been a great resource to get projects done for us, so I spend a lot of time working with a couple of groups from India at all times of the day. They take care of us much better for much cheaper than anyone in the US ever has.
Had a dream I found a bunch of homeless people across the street and tried to "minister" to them. A lot of "hints" going on these days...

Bonus - Verizon is coming out with their first 4G phone next week, the Thunderbolt (new Incredible). May be time to move away from AT&T! They are clocking 4G well over 12mbps! This will be the new internet to sweep the nation. We may have 4G as soon as a year from now.

Adah's latest accomplishment

2011-01-06T19:02:00.001-08:00

She is on track to start terrorizing her brothers and sister within weeks,

maybe days!

2010 to 2011

2011-01-03T20:42:00.000-08:00

1020 was always my favorite number, so 2010 is one of my favorite years.

Terah and I have been married 10 years! I am one of the lucky guys that has it easy, will always know which anniversary it is as it is marked by the year.
We went on our first vacation since having kids - glacier was awesome, and hoping it will be the start of a new family tradition every year. Starting a tradition is not really the problem though, the problem is affording a family vacation every year. :)
Was a year of spiritual struggling for me, and ironically, a year of the most indepth learning I have ever had - maybe that goes hand in hand though.
Spent more time working outside than I ever have over the summer, and boy did it make a difference!

BEFORE:
AFTER:
Made the golf course about a dozen times. That is a good year for someone like me. Set some mile stones in my golfing, which is not saying much in the golf world, but it is good to see improvement. Probably the coolest thing that happened was getting the worst score in YEARS on the front nine, then turning around and getting a record 4 birdies on the back nine along with my best score ever.
Finally bought a new acoustic guitar this year. Played a piece of junk for a good 15 years. That was probably something I should have done a long time ago.
Was "promoted" to new responsibilities at work. This new job has projects stacking up every day, but I really love it! We are doing some amazing things with our data.
Was involved in a new Bible study, which a couple of us took turns leading. It was good and I hope we continue it now that the holidays have passed. I really miss the small groups and am feeling a burden for the present to keep "discipling" as best I can.
Goals for 2011?
Hope to spend enough time studying to get through the Bible and teach small group (that will be hard). I want to possibly see if I can get my feet wet in missions. I am pretty sure I could escape for a week or two and use my computer skills on the mission field. I think that would be the easiest way to get started. However, it is really going to start with prayer and just seeing what doors God opens up. We would love to look into adopting, but that most likely won't be 2011, who knows really. When you start praying toward these things, there is no doubt in my mind God will open doors. I think one of our biggest goals will be to focus on reducing our debt so we are free to help others and better able to adopt.

How beautiful...

2010-12-31T01:10:00.000-08:00

Codeine worked pretty good for a few hours of sleep, but here I am again. It feels like the time I was sick with the swine flu and didn't sleep for days because my mind was stuck in one place every time I closed my eyes. I think I am going insane, maybe mad cow this time.

At any rate, I thought I would settle my brain a little and continue reading in Romans. I have been in Romans a long time now, but have not made it past chapter 9. If you remember I got stuck in chapter 9 a few posts back speaking of predestination. Tonight I read chapter 10, and it jumps out like never before. You have to go two blog posts back and you will remember me writing a long-winded idea of taking the gospel to people who have never heard it, never had opportunity to even hear a message of salvation. Remember, there are over 1.5 billion people who have never heard the gospel, so how will they hear unless we go? Now read this out of Romans 10 and see what God keeps throwing in my face:

Romans 10:13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” .....17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

Coincidentally, I have had several people tell me I have beautiful feet, but now I find myself wanting beautiful feet in a spiritual sense.

Vacationing

2010-12-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

If you can call it a vacation...some things have not worked out so well, but it is hard to complain when we are so blessed.

Thanks to Aunt Heather, Adah is crawling up stairs on a regular basis - yet another big hurdle off the list. She will be walking in no time!
We took the kids to see the new Disney movie, Tangled. We dropped Adah off with Aunt Heather and showed up to the theatre to a sold out show. Apparently it was on its way out, so they only show it in one room that only holds a very small amount of people...so we did some shopping, some eating, picked up Adah and went back to a later showing. A little more challenging, but it worked out and the kids loved it.
Jude, Gwyn, and Daddy have been sick. Jude only seems to have a cough at night. Gwyn only has a cough at night, but it is worse than Jude's. And Daddy is going to the doctor today. Every time I wimp out and go in, it is just a cold and I feel pretty stupid, but quite certain this is not a cold.
We got over 14" of snow yesterday, hard to say the exact amount. I measured 8-1/2", then 11-1/2", then we got several more inches after that and it just kept coming.
The power went out at 630pm - I had just gotten to the church to do a little work and the lights went out on me. Found my way out and back home, and being the power was out from the Long Bridge through Cocolalla, we thought we would pack up and head to Grandma's house where it was warm and had running water. After finally packing everything up (blankets, pillows, clothes, kids), we drove to the RR tracks to find a train stopped and backing up (strange - probably weather related), so we turned around to go the other way and found our power had turned back on. So we unpacked everything, put the kids to bed and the power went out AGAIN! This time we were going to wait it out. We jumped into bed and hoped everyone would stay warm until the power came back on...and it did.
We are slowly getting the girls' doll house finished this week. It was handed down to us from Grandma's side of the family, and is quite the doll house. It needed a lot of work though, so I have been putting it back together this week and Terah is getting ready to paint it. We'll do some pictures - quite the project.
I have two new bosses at work now. That all happened while I was on vacation. Quite sudden and unexpected...hmmm.
Half of a chapter left in the book "Radical", recommend it to everyone! I may try to get through the Bible this coming year, but like last year, it will be very difficult if I am still doing Bible study.
Sleep deprived. I have been sick about 4 times in the last month and a half (only real sick 2x, but pretty much sick the entire time), and even when I am not sick, I toss and turn all night long. I don't know what is going on, but I can't get sleep no matter how hard I try - which is why I am sick. The kids have been really bad at night the last couple of months, and my tossing on top of that has made it really hard for Terah to sleep also. We are getting very tired of it (no pun intended).
Terah got me a McArthur commentary for Christmas! I am getting quite the collection of study guides, and I love them all!

Radical

2010-12-26T18:56:00.001-08:00

I am nearly finished with the book written by a young pastor named David Platt. He is the pastor of a huge church in Alabama, and has been encouraging a radical life-style that opposes the American Dream we have conformed ourselves to. From this he has also written the book "Radical". He is also the one giving the message in the link on my previous post.

The book has been extremely convicting, and very encouraging. He has the gift of speaking the radical truths from scripture that we simply don't like to hear, at least in the United States.

This is the latest reading, and very convicting. He went through a quick summary of Romans. Despite the fact that there is over 1.5 billion people that have never heard the gospel, God has made it plain to them that there is a creator. Despite this fact, man will reject God. Man is wicked, no one is righteous, no one seeks God. There will be just judgment for mankind. Long story short, the one and only way to salvation and escape of the wrath of God is faith in Christ. So back to the 1.5 billion. We read in Romans 10 a great secret to the salvation of mankind. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved! However, they will not call if they do not hear, and they will not hear if we do not "go".

You see where I am going with this? There are over 1.5 billion people who will go to eternal punishment simply because they did not ever hear the gospel. You say, how can this be if they don't even hear the gospel? If we somehow make some way for these people to get to heaven without hearing the gospel though, that means we are putting them in further danger of going to hell by preaching the gospel to them. There is ONE way to eternal life - faith in Christ, despite the fact that some will never have opportunity to even hear the gospel.

Fact of the matter is, I was called to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and so were you. I have gotten so comfortable in my American Dream that this call seems very distant and I have made every excuse in the book to stay where I am at. Meanwhile, there are over a billion people who will never hear the truth while I try to decide what God's will is. There is not a question of what God's will is though, only a question of my obedience. The first breakdown in man's chance of salvation is "me". If they hear, some will believe, if they believe, they will call on the Lord, if they call on the Lord, they will be saved. They have to hear - more importantly, we must first go!!!

I guess now we try to rationalize - Well, God didn't call me to go. Well, God put us here for a reason. Well, we were called to another ministry. No, no, no. God did call us to go and make disciples. It may be "here", it may be "there", but am I doing either? Do I care that so many have never even had a chance to escape eternal punishment? Am I making disciples where I am at?

Another key thing to think about, don't get overwhelmed in the numbers. Jesus spent three years of his life discipling 12 (11) men, sacrificing everything for their keeping (John 17), then from there, these 11 turned the world upside-down! Are we investing time to disciple anyone? You can read story, after story, after story of people who ministered to a small group of people who then went on to save hundreds, thousands. Our obedience to take the gospel to the lost is the only way man will have a chance of salvation. No one will come to salvation apart from hearing the gospel and putting their faith in Christ.

Let me put it this way. Put yourself, and your kids in a remote area of Asia. There are over 1.4 million people where you live, but no one, not even one has ever told you about the gospel. When you and your kids die, you will not be going to heaven.

Does this have any meaning to us? Does this even strike a single chord in our hearts? It is worth everything we have to make it our mission to save these people! It is a worthy call; it is worth risking our lives for the sake of saving even one person from an eternal fiery punishment is it not?

Four times this week in three different applications I have heard the story of the rich man and Lazarus. I think God is trying to get my attention! The rich man is me! The religious guy with all the money who ignored the poor begger. Back then the Jews thought God blessed the righteous with wealth, Jesus told them differently. He said, sell all you have and give it to the poor. The Jews reaction was "who then can be saved if this rich young ruler cannot even have eternal life?" Jesus also tells this parable of the rich man and the begger. The rich man went to Hell, Lazarus the poor begger went to Abraham's side. The rich man begged Abraham to allow Lazarus to warn his family of Hell. Abraham said if they didn't believe the word of God, they will not believe a person come back from the dead. The torment was so great that the rich man begged for just a drop of water on his tongue. Do you think this is just a parable that is not literal? Do you think Jesus knows what he is talking about? While there are many things we can get from this story in Luke 16, I am feeling the need to give man his only chance out of this eternal torment by sharing the word of God with him.

Well worth your time...

2010-12-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

If you haven't checked it out on Terah's blog, this may very well be the most life-changing message you listen to.

http://vimeo.com/5833626

Another good story:
http://www.mikeysfunnies.com/archive/richFamily/index.html

Awesome idea:
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/11/christmas-its-just-deciding-whose-birthday-it-really-is/

Sad, sad, sad
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2010/12/to-set-up-a-complete-nativity-scene/

You can read all of this on Terah's blog also...

2010-12-20T20:43:00.001-08:00

Vacation around the corner - use it or lose it!
Today was a big day at work. Support finally gave me a patch for the problem that took our big project offline of over a month. Now I have until Wednesday to get things back up on its feet.
I need some sleep, seriously. I had a pretty rough week last week with very little sleep, lived on energy drinks. You know you are tired when you fall asleep on the couch drinking an AMP. Although I have been getting 6-7 hours of sleep the last couple of nights, I still feel like I'm dying. I think my body is telling me to start eating better or it will go on strike. So I kept eating pizza and drinking pop...I'm still dying.
Adah is improving her strength every day. She has figured out how to pull herself up and stand! And tonight, she somehow managed to fall in the bathtub trying to get the toys. I never thought I would be proud of my kid for falling in the bathtub.
We had our annual Christmas play at church last night. It was so good! I have never seen the church so packed! We didn't have enough room for everyone - standing room only! Cars were parked out on the road! It turned out so good...I can say that since I was not a part of it. :)
We also had our annual Christmas dinner for litehouse this weekend. They made a pretty big announcement - the owner is stepping down and giving the reigns to the "new guy". He was made president in 2008, and now he is CEO & President of Litehosue Inc. He is the guy responsible for this crazy growth and all of these new products we are now pushing out. Only a month or so until the smoothies start hitting the shelves.
If you are interested in a really nice computer (brand new still in a box), let me know - $500 for the tower!
No time to waste, need to get back to work so I can go on vacation later this week. Also have one last side-job to finish - I had four laptops at one time last week. Yikes!
Oh ya, another big announcement came Friday at work. The director if IT (my big boss) has accepted the job as Director of Operations in our new plant down in southern Utah. I am assuming that means I am getting a new boss this coming year. Interesting... I hope that is a good thing.

Foreknowledge continued...

2010-12-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

I have listend to Adrian Rogers' message on Predestination a couple of times now, it was quite good. He has great thoughts on this idea of predestination.

He brought out some key scriptures like "God does not will that any should perish". This is always the first place people go when you try to tell them that God chooses those who would believe. Before I get too much further with this, let me give you a better idea of what Adrian believes on this subject.

This word "predestination" to me has always portrayed a choosing, God choosing us. This may be where some confusion can happen. Adrian tells us that this word means "foreknowledge", and it simply describes that God in his omniscience and being outside of time, has already seen those who have put their faith in God and those who will put their faith in God, and he has also seen those who did not and those who will not. He goes on to say that God has called all men through the gospel, and it is not his will that any perish. At the point that man hears the gospel, God has presented him with an opportunity to choose, and man will either say "not my will, but yours be done" and put their faith in Christ or "my will, not yours be done" and reject the gospel. When he stands before God without faith in Christ, God will say "Not my will, but yours be done". Basically, man chose his own will, and despite God's wish that he does not perish, he must send him to the judgment he chose, because God does not predestin anyone to hell.

There were some great scriptures that he shared. He mostly based his message on Romans 8, particularly the verse I have shared several times, verse 30. "Those he predestined (foreknew) he also called, those he called he also justified, those he justified he also glorified." He makes a great statement on this idea of "foreknowledge" with this verse. Being glorified is something that takes place in the future, so this has an idea of foreknowledge tied to it. God already knows who will be glorified to Christ's likeness.

I am still a little hung on something though. I agree that man has a choice and that God has foreknowledge of everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future. I am still stuck on God choosing us though. It is all over scritpures that God has chosen us. Adrian believes that God has chosen everyone, but not everyone has chosen God. Then you can get into the scriptures that talk about the "elect" (chosen). Adrian simply puts it, the elect are those who have chosen to put their faith in Christ. That makes sense if you interpret scriptures this way. I honestly need a little more time to chew on this as it seems to me that it speaks more of God's choosing us, and not us choosing God. Adrian says that we have chosen God, but only because he chose us first - I agree, but I have to suppose this refers to God choosing everyone, or he is contradicting himself. I am not quite there yet.

I wish he would have gotten into Romans chapter 9, it would not seem to fit his view as much. Paul speaks of how God has mercy on whom he has mercy, and hardens who he will harden for his glory. To the ones who questioned this, Paul responded "who are you to question God?"

In conclusion, I do love Adrian's view, but I am not with him on God choosing everyone just yet, despite the fact that God does not will anyone to go to hell. I can't get past some scriptures like Romans 9. I will be digging further into this.

Ironically, Craig just sent me another link to study on this subject, so I will have more to share soon!

Is it pride?

2010-12-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Pride, pride, pride.

Is this the killer of us all? At its roots is the lover of self. Probably the source of all anger and offenses. So subtle in most cases you never see it. I may do the right things and believe the right things, but as soon as someone questions it, boy does the pride kick into high gear. Even in my best days of serving and teaching this pride seems to show up to the party. It is never interested in others unless others are interested in me. It is never "wrong", so it doesn't like to be questioned. It only likes to be flattered, and if you ever hurt me I will "hate" you.

I must be a lover of souls, but I can't seem to see past my own reflection.

"For I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live for Christ, who loved me and gave himself up for me."

Radical

2010-12-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

If you haven't read it yet, I would encourage you to read "Radical". It is a life-changer! I will never put value of a book over reading scriptures, but in the American Dream culture we live in, it is hard for us to read the Bible and believe it without distorting it to fit our comfort level. Truth is, Jesus was a radical and to be a disciple requires some radical changes that we are not willing to make quite frankly. This book will challenge you in two things - to believe the words of Christ and to obey them. Of course I just started the book, but trust me, it is good! :)

http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Taking-Faith-American-Dream/dp/1596449381/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291964060&sr=1-1

I will certainly be sharing some things from this book - I think I would probably liken it to "Crazy Love", but better.

Why oh why...

2010-12-06T22:48:00.001-08:00

...do I always get into the difficult doctrines? It seems every time I "teach" a study, it is one of those subjects that is hard to teach. Every time I open my mouth I become a radical. Every time I open the word just to read the next chapter, the tough doctrines always jump out at me. I don't seek them out, they literally just jump out at me.

This time I am reading and Predestination seems to be the theme that keeps popping out at me. I am not going to get too deep, but just wanted to share a few thoughts. This is a subject our pastor believes is scriptural (as do I), but he tries to avoid preaching on it because it causes so many problems. People just do not like this subject, and in fact, one couple seems to have left our church over a small mention of this idea of predestination. Our human nature has a problem with this idea and we immediately think that it means we don't have a free will. Vernon McGee has concluded (waiting for a MacArthur commentary) at the end of his journey that there is the sovereignty of God and there is free will, but he cannot reconcile them, so he is just leaving it at that. Possibly that is what I should do also - we don't have to and simply can't understand everything! His thoughts and his ways are much higher than ours.

Martin Luther said of this subject and scripture, "who hath not known passion, cross, and travail of death cannot treat of foreknowledge (election of grace - predestination) without injury and inward enmity toward God. Wherefore take heed that thou drink not wine while thou art yet a sucking babe." I believe he is saying we had better be careful when diving into this subject because we naturally want to say that God is not fair and get angry with God concerning predestination. This subject better be left for a time when you are matured in Christ and ready to receive it in its context.

Our first reactions to predestination are usually "How can God desire that none should perish but only choose a few?" "How can this be fair?" "Why does God blame us if he controls our hearts?" "There is no free will then." "Why should I even try?" Paul's answer in Romans 9 is, "Who are you to question God?" That is pretty much how we have to leave this subject in the end. God is the potter, we are the clay, how can we question God's design? HE IS SOVEREIGN, END OF STORY.

A few thoughts anyway - Romans chapters 1-8 is a lot of salvation by faith (sin, justification, faith, sanctification). Romans 8 is where this idea of predestination seems to begin, verse 30 has become one of my favorites - those he predestined (chose) he also called (drawing to himself), those he called he also justified (made right with God - salvation), those he justified he also glorified. God is at work in the salvation of man before we have done anything (not that we do anything for salvation) to the very end of our being glorified. Then chapter 9 was a jaw-dropper for me. This is the one the pastor always refers to in disbelief that someone could not believe in predestination after reading this passage. I believe it is mostly written about the Jews, but the point is clear. God has mercy on whom he has mercy, and compassion on whom he will have compassion. And whether he has mercy on this person and not this person, it is all for his glory.

Without getting too deep and with much more to dive into, I am beginning to form my first thoughts on predestination. There is no doubt, God is sovereign and chooses to show his mercy as he wills. And as chapter 9 even states, if it were not for his mercy, even his chosen nation of Israel would have become another Sodom and Gomorrah in their wickedness. This is the view of our pastor, if it were not for God's mercy and his working in our lives (drawing us, calling us), we would never come to salvation. Our hearts our deceitful above all things and desperately wicked - there is none righteous, none who seek after God. Yes, we must choose and put our faith in Christ, but we would not make this choice if it were not for God's grace and choosing us first. We love because he first loved us.

There are many scriptures that come to my mind. I love the gospel of John. "No one comes to me except those you have drawn to me." "I have not lost any you have given me." There is Ephesians which is also loaded on this subject.

Yes, there is free will. But in our great depravity, we would not choose wisely but by God's grace and mercy. And when we are elected (chosen), we will run for office! I would not spend so much time questioning God, but praise God in his sovereignty that he has found it pleasing to have mercy on me!!!

Should be more on this down the road. If nothing else, it is another incredible and profound mystery of God. I sure love this stuff!!!

A little time to spare

2010-12-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

Adah got really sick a couple of weeks ago and didn't shake it for a while. Then Camden got it, but it was pretty mild. Now Gwyn is trying really hard to get over it because she really wants to go to Preson's party, but she had it really bad this week. Then Daddy got it...it is pretty nasty.

Being I was sick, I missed out on the concert last night. I went to bed at 630pm! I just couldn't imagine loud music with a pounding head ache....but really bummed I missed Mike's band and Jim's band. ):

Up early now wide awake....a little time to spare before the men's breakfast.

I usually stop playing music in December and let the Christmas hymns go without me, but there are so many good songs to do this year that I am going to try and have the group do some. Now I have to figure out how to do a practice being all of our singers are working long days in December.

Woke up at 545 this morning (slept on the couch because of my cough) to see the brightest "star/planet" I have ever seen directly out the window. This is from my iPhone, so you can see now, it must have been big!
Can't see what I am writing very well, not exactly sure where my glasses are
We bought a new software at work that was installed last year. When they hired the new guy to replace me at the beginning of this year, I was the one they chose to implement the new software. It is a workflow software that will send tasks and emails along their way to assigned people as decisions are made. We found a perfect application for it and spent the entire summer on this project. We finally put version one out in production and it was doing fairly good. Over the course of the summer I found a lot of "bugs" that would supposedly be fixed in a software upgrade. The people who sold us the product wanted $32k to upgrade the software for us! So I found a source in India that upgraded us for $1k! I am very happy with the new software, but there were so many changes that I literally had to rewrite all of the workflows I had done. This has taken me nearly a month to do and I have not even made it to the project that took us all summer to complete. This one died with the upgrade and the software support has spent many hours and late nights with with me trying to figure it out - so far nothing. I really hope they can fix this, it was an unbelievable amount of hours that two of us spent getting this project on its feet. That doesn't count the hours of meetings that an entire group of us had on this project. I am still hopeful they will get it working! Truth be told, it seems we are doing things with this software that the developers have never tried before. I think it is in their best interest to get this fixed. My supervisor went on a trip this year and did a demo on this product. One person offered to pay us money for the workflow that I made. The people that sold us the software were at the demo and they told my supervisor that we are way more advanced than any of their customers; they loved the demo.
Gotta get going to the breakfast. Probably shouldn't spread my germs, but I simply can't pass up free food - especially when chris is cooking. If you know me very well, you know that I am afraid of my own germs, so I will keep my germs to myself.

And the winner is...

2010-11-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

Stunt Man Award

This guy is crazy

He is fearless

He was out after dark all by himself...

...sledding from the top.

Death Defying Award

This guy was a little nervous

I was too after this run

He is still alive to talk about it though!

Bravery Award

Goes to Gwyn

My four yeard old girl

Went down the big hill all day

Why Daddy Feels Old

2010-11-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

Why Daddy Feels Old - in no particular order

I don't like wearing jeans. I guess now I know why some people refuse to wear jeans, or at the very least take them off as soon as they get home from work - when you began to outgrow your clothes (some people call it "getting fat"), it is not comfortable to wear jeans.
My four year old daughter took the scariest sled-hill everytime down and I was a little intimidated by it.
It hurts all the way down the sled hill, not to mention trying to cram your fat body on the sled.
It hurts to shovel snow, and it hurts to fall down the driveway while plowing snow - ok, so I wasn't even plowing, I was just getting my car after someone else plowed me out. It still hurt just as bad!
Everything hurts after sledding, shoveling, and falling down.
No sleep. Between late nights, sick kids, kids waking up, early mornings, aching bodies. Ya, I don't remember the last good night of sleep. By the time eight o'clock comes around, I am pretty wasted, but that is not bed-time, just when I feel wasted. I am not sure when bed time is actually, because we never actually fall asleep. We just keep getting into bed all night long. Finally, the alarm goes off and I don't have to get into bed any longer!
Getting fat, going bald, failing eye-sight, a little gray hair (what's left anyway). I thought getting old was all of this stuff, but I now realize it is when this stuff becomes old news.
Eating on the way home is a must. Sometimes I will stop at Target when the drive home is too long...if you know what I mean.
When I mistake a college graduate for a high-schooler. That was embarassing. They look like little kids to me!
I make a lot more $$$ and have a lot less.

10

2010-11-18T22:29:00.001-08:00

Ok, here is a 10 list...

Adah has "tentatively" been diagnosed with "low muscle mass". This is great news! She probably won't walk by her second birthday as she is very weak in her legs, but with a lot of work and patience, she will walk.
Gwyn is going to have a third eye surgery. The doctor really cares about her. Pretty crazy that Gwyn has been going to her since she was six months old!
Tomorrow is the last night of Bible study until after the holidays. I sure have enjoyed the six week study we did! I think I learned more than they did, I am blown away!
Crazy days with work and side-jobs. I have not seen time to relax for quite a while. Last night was an all-nighter at work to finish a really important project, just to find out things are still not up and running today. I am hoping I get a call from India tonight to resolve the issues. ):
A friend at work stopped in last night to chat while I was pulling the late shift. Amazing how so many times we don't openly talk about our faith, then a friend will surprise us and just start talking about faith because they are desparately seeking for what we already have. He really wanted to chat though, and he did this last time we happen to be on the same shift, so I took the hint and tried to be as open as I could in the short time we had.
My supervisor's son just got back from Haiti. He has made it a habit to go on a mission trip or two every year. He is now pretty certain God is calling him to leave his things and head to the mission field. The confirmation came when his wife was against it until just recently she felt God calling her to join her husband on the mission field. Hearing his testimony is encouraging though, he is beginning to see things through God's eyes.
Snow! Yuk! Next week - single digits. That is worse than snow!
Adah woke up this week and said, "Mama? Is Daddy bye-bye?" "Yes, Daddy is bye-bye" "Ohhh" She is such a Daddy's girl, and I love it.
Ya
Any needs we can meet around us this week? Keep your eyes peeled.