Month: March 2005

Posted on

say it ain’t so

it’s 2:03 a.m. and i’ve just gotten home from the first night of our discipleNOW. overall it was quite a good night. i’ve loved spending time with the guys from ten shekel shirt, they have a real passion for social justice and it was been encouraging to hear what they are involved in. andy neely said some powerful things this evening. i was only able to visit two of the homes this evening – the boilings/ tenth grade girls and the fletcher / 12 grade co-ed. the 10th grade girls were really loud. i can’t believe they haven’t woke up the entire neighborhood. i’m so thankful i have boys for kids. 🙂

now i have to report the impossible … my linux computer has CRASHED. it’s crashed bad. the thing locked up and i had to do a cold boot up (unplug the thing and restart. now the machine locks up every time it starts loading “x” (the graphic interface). i don’t really have time to look into this right now so i can’t give any more details. i thought this wasn’t supposed to be possible. linux is supposed to be the stable platform. the one that all the others look to. why do i apparently have the only bad linux machine in the world?

anyways, have a good night or morning.

Posted on

this weekend

hello there faithful participants of this blog style conversation (basically this means my mom and dad). it’s 1:25 in the morning here in baton rouge (ignore the blog time – it’s wrong and i don’t know how to fix it) and i’m posting while doing some last minute work on the d-now that’s coming this weekend. i’m presently looking for pictures on flickr that could convey the idea of freedom. i’ve found some cool pictures but i still need more for the weekend.

anyway today was adam’s birthday. i just think it’s wierd that i have an 11 year old son. pretty soon i’m going to have to live in fear of him figuring out that he could whoop me. for now i can still take him though.

Posted on

i scream, you scream, we all scream for … hey wait!

on the way home from church this afternoon i saw the first ice cream truck of the spring. i love ice cream and i especially love ice cream on wheels. i will regularly go out of my way to get ice cream from an ice cream truck. it was this love that cause me to decide to convince the driver of the ice cream truck to pull over and let me buy some ice cream for myself and my kids. i turned after the truck, got on his bumper, and desperately started flashing my lights. i couldn’t get a response so i started lightly tapping my horn. nothing.

i followed the guy for almost two miles flashing my lights, honking my horn, and screaming wildly with my kids for the guy to pull over and sell us some ice cream. no matter how much noise i made i couldn’t even get the guy to look in his rearview mirror. he just kept on meandering at his ten to fifteen mph pace. i finally decided to pass the guy, stop in front of him, and thus force him to stop so i could get some ice cream. i sped up to pass him and pulled into the opposite side of the road. when i did this he immediately turned to the right entering another road. i don’t think he ever saw me. i could hear his music traveling all around our neighborhood but i never saw him again and i was never able to purchase any ice cream.

they really should give people a hearing and vision test before they allow them to drive an ice cream truck.

Posted on

welcome table for the view

jonah-table

here’s my drawing of what i want to do with this week’s “worship station / welcome table” at the view. we’re dealing with jonah and the table is supposed to symbolic hit on some of what we are going to do.

this week as been a good example of why youth ministry is the greatest of all ministries. i’ve done everything from serious counseling, to message preparation, to relationship building, to coming up with a creative / artistic (slightly) manner of covering the windows of the former “cry rooms” now storage rooms. i’ve worked with teens and adults who are in pain, youth workers, other pastoral staff, janitors & maintenance crew members, and parents. it’s simply great. nothing else compares.

in the back of the student center we have these four huge windows that look into the former “cry rooms” of the church. these rooms are now storage rooms but they still have the glass and you can look into the mess that is in them. i finally came up with the idea of using “the rasterbator” (a program i learned about via a professed agnostic’s photoblog – how’s that for irony). “the rasterbator” takes images, rasterizes them (reduces them to various size dots), and then print the image to whatever size you want on normal paper. we’re pasting the rasterized images in the windows of the “cry rooms.” the image below is what it looks like right now. the thing i like about it is that when you turn the “cry room” lights on it produces a nice soft glow that back lights the rasterbated images.

cry room #1 cry room #2

Posted on

discipleNOW things

it’s the week before our discipleNOW and therefore i have a huge list of things that have to be finished.

  • finish the video intro for friday night worship.
  • finish the video intro for saturday night worship.
  • prepare basic outline for summary video that will be shown sunday morning.
  • maintain contact and answering questions with the dnow leadership.
  • set-up improved sound system.
  • set-up borrowed and scraped together improved video system.
  • hang a 18′ wide screen from the back wall.
  • spend as much time as possible with my family.
  • spend as much time as possible with GOD.
  • desperately pray that it doesn’t rain saturday.
  • enjoy the fact that no matter what i get done or don’t get done amazing things will happen simply because of the fact that those involved within the weekend are willing to look to GOD during the weekend.

i really want to get everything finished. i want the weekend to be amazing from a technical side. yet honestly it is very freeing to realize that even if all the technical stuff flops it will still be a great weekend simply because the people involved within it will answer JESUS’ quiet and persistent knock at the door of their lives (revelation 3:20). teens and adults will begin to follow the way of CHRIST a little better not because of any great thing that i have orchestrated. rather it will be because those involved in the weekend have simply slowed down enough form their overly busy lives to actually see GOD at work and hear HIS voice. it has taken me a long time to realize that even though GOD choose to use me HE still doesn’t depend upon me. it will not be by my effort that anything good happens. instead i am greatly honored to know that GOD chooses to work through my feeble efforts to help with HIS good. ultimately everything is on HIS shoulders. i’m very appreciative of that.

of course, i’m still going to fret about all the stuff i have to do.

SIDE NOTE – a friend and fellow youth minister dropped by today asking some questions about the sabbath retreat we did in january. i’m glad he did, and not just because of the fact that he helped us carry the 18′ long projection screen that i still have to hang. i was glad because it was nice to think back through that weekend. it was a great chance to watch GOD and my youth do something special. anyways, thanks j.t. for coming by. i hope y’all’s weekend is just as amazing.

Posted on

a little disappointed

i have to say that i’m a little disappointed. i post a picture of montana standing on the table and nobody has commented. i usually don’t really long for comments or anything but that picture was different. it’s funny. go ahead and look at it. it just plain funny looking to see a 12″ high dog standing on a table. i was sure everyone would get a great laugh out of it and that the comments would pour in. so i posted it believing that it would bring a moment of levity to your lives and you would respond by commenting on the hilarious nature of a basset hound on the kitchen table.

but no! nobody responded. what’s with that? it just simply doesn’t make any sense. do you people have no sense of humor? are you unable to laugh? are you unable to comment? has someone stolen your computer and therefore you haven’t actually seen the picture of my dog standing on my table? that would really be a shame. okay, i guess i won’t hold it against you since your computer was stolen an everything.

Posted on

oh yeah

for some of you this will be meaningless for others you’ll simply think “it’s about time.” anyway, today is a great day. i have finally entered the world of those who are using linux. i’ve moved one of the “windows” machines at our house from being a “windows” machine and instead being a “linux” machine. i just finished loading the “fedora” distrobution of linux on the kids’ computer and i can already tell that there will be certain things that i like allot about lunx. the number one thing i like about it is that micro$oft doesn’t own any of it. to my knowledge there is zero micro$oft software on the computer and i feel like a better person because of it.

now i have to go through the process of leanring the differences and teaching them to my kids. it should be fun.

Posted on

what a jumper

dog on the tableour basset hound, montana, learned a new trick tonight. i was in the living room watching the boys play a game (adam has a couple of boys over tonight to celebrate his birthday, which actually happens next week) and pam was on the computer in the study. montana on the other hand was desperately trying to reach a piece of cake that had been left in the center of the table. i wasn’t too worried about it because i had been watching her try to get the cake for a good ten minutes without much success. she was whining because she couldn’t reach it. then it became quiet … too quiet. i looked up to see what had taken montana’s interest away from the cake. it was then that i saw her new trick. my 12 inch tall dog was standing on top of the table. the sight really caught me off guard and i laughed sudden enough that i shot sweet tea out my nose. the sight of a basset hound on your table is just a little odd.

other terrell news of interest:

  • based on her conversation with one of her professors pam should finish your ph.d. at l.s.u. december of 2007 (this is good news).
  • the old terrell game cube died this week and was replaced tonight with a new, shiny, platinum limited edition game cube.
  • adam and noah have learned to do “crisscrosses” with the jump rope.
  • as a family we saw the pacifier” tonight and i was pleasantly surprised by it.
  • our glass cabinet doors came in today and thus we are much closer to finally finishing remodeling the kitchen. the doors are cool. the guy at the glass store saved glass that he had pulled out of old windows and put that into our doors. you can see the imperfections of the old glass and i love it.
  • my life has consisted of “tuning up” our windows 98 computer, loading a windows xp computer, learning about loading linux on a computer so that i will no longer have to mess with windows, and finishing the second season of “24” (which was great and thus i can’t wait to start on the third season and be completely caught up with the fourth season that i have loved watching).

i guess that’s it from my life for now.

Posted on

being showed up

i hate it when GOD puts me in my place. tonight i wanted to steal an idea from doug pagitt and solomon’s porch and have a group discussion on the scripture that we will use for next wednesday’s view service. solomon’s porch does this each week and they call it bdg. i liked the idea and thought it would work well with the personality of our group. i announced it last night after “the view” and hoped that a person or two would show up since i had not mentioned it before. the plan was to discuss the book of jonah and together figure out some of what GOD wants to say to us from the story.

the problem is that this morning i was asked if i could provide a ride to the group. it was a person that i really thought would be a lag on the conversation. i wasn’t expecting much from this individual and wasn’t really excited about being “stuck” taking him there and back. i don’t know why i’m so stupid. i should have learned from past experience not to underestimate people. hopefully i have learned my lesson this time because the comments my friend added to the conversation were incredible. if anyone was a “lag” on the conversation it was me. my friend was amazing. i’m not sure that i’ve ever understood jonah until now. how can i be so consistently stupid?