i saw this cartoon on doug pagitt’s blog. too funny. of course, i’ve never done anything like that at all. 🙂 i mean really, who would ever steal one of rick warren’s messages and pretend like it was their own?
freaky, falling, feme fatale
this is incredibly freaky and yet mesmerizing. it’s a shockwave flash animation of a woman falling through the air into these bubble-type things. you can then “click” on her and drop her in different areas. pam, the boys, and i have been watching it for quite some time.
click here to view the animation and be disturbed.
basketballs
every year we take a ton of basketballs down to nicaragua with us. we do this to be able to give them to the kids. try as we might we never have enough for everyone to get one. sometime the kids get so desperate to get a basketball that fights break out over them. we need to find more basketballs to take with us to nicaragua.
that’s where you can help. consider bringing some basketballs to church with you. you might have three or four old basketballs sitting around your house collect dust – you can bring those too. every basketball you bring will be sent down to nicaragua and given to a kid who will be extremely thankful for it.
besides bringing joy to a small child your basketball will also help to continue cementing the relationships between parkview and the people of diriamba, nicaragua.
freaky bikini clad falling woman
the plan
as many of you know i’ve kind of gotten into this photography thing. i’m not saying i’m any good at it (there are several people who read this blog that are significantly better than i am – alan and brad just to name two). all i’m saying is that i really enjoy taking pictures. the more i take photos the more i want to take more of them.
according to pam i have proven that the “picture taking” is not just a phase and therefore she agrees with me moving up within the world of cameras. so i want to move up to a digital slr camera. unfortunately there are two problems with this situation: first, digital slr cameras cost a bundle, and second, i’m cheap. so right now all i am doing is researching and dreaming. i’ve been looking around to figure out which camera i should never actually spend the money to buy. everything seems to be pointing toward the nikon d70. it’s a really nice camera to never actually buy.
so here’s my plan for overcoming my cheapness and raising the money to buy the nikon d70. i need one of my faithful readers to volunteer to work and give me the money he/she gets paid. i know for one of you this will be a difficult thing … but that is a sacrifice that i am willing to make. remember it’s for a worthy cause. all i need now is for one of you to volunteer.
thanks to modern technology
thanks to the modern technology of our world you may now send kate encouragement via emailwhile she is in nicaragua. how convenient is that? click here to email kate and encourage her.
you’ll be able to do the same thing for haley when she leaves for nicaragua. i’ll place haley’s email up on the blog when she leaves for nicaragua.
the quest for the camera
so now i’m trying to figure out how to earn, steal, or print enough currency to purchase a nikon d70 (which looks like it will probably be my choice camera instead of the canon d20). earning a spare $1,000 is not an easy thing for me. thus my plan has been to make a “deal with the devil” per se.
about four years ago i started publishing the discipleNOW/retreat curriculum and bible studies that i write and putting them on the net (under www.disciple-now.com which i have since shut down). my desire was that small churches could use this material for free and that larger churches that wish to use the material would pay a small fee that would cover the costs of the website. the site worked well. in fact, it worked too well. the whole enterprise started to take too much of my time. originally all i had wanted to do was help out some ministers in smaller churches who couldn’t afford to buy their material. i wasn’t wanting to be an entrepreneur. i was constantly having to fill orders and that was more than i had ever wanted. so about 8 months ago i became tired of the whole process and dropped it. since quitting the website i’ve still had people calling and emailing asking for any new material i had.
so i’ve kind of decided to set up another website to let people use the discipleNOW / retreat curriculum and bible studies i write for my own ministry. yet this time i’m going to use a little more modern technology to enable the whole thing. i’ve set up another blogger site in order to upload adobe acrobat versions of the material i have published. this way smaller churches can print copies of the material for free. all i have asked is that if someone from a larger church uses the material and they have it in their budget i would appreciate them “spreading a little love my way” via paypal. pam, my wife, says it will never work because youth ministers will never give money for something they can simply take for free. that might be true but i really hate the thought of going back to selling the stuff so that’s a chance i will simply choose to take.
of course, the “deal will the devil” is really placing google adsense ads on the blog. today i actually earned $0.94 through these things. now i only need 1,063 more days like that and i will have enough to buy the camera.
just a friendly reminder
hey there guys & girls i just want to remind all those who are involved within the student ministry to continually lift up in prayer kate, our friend and sister in CHRIST. over the next month she will be ministering with our friends in nicaragua. we will see her again when some of our number go down to nicaragua in late july.
in the student ministry we have often talked about missions as a bow and arrow. the arrow goes to the target but it is the bow that supplies the power and direction. kate is the arrow being sent to the target. we, her church, are the ones who are supposed to send her and continually support and empower her. she is going to nicaragua to be faithful to what GOD has called her to. we have to be faithful to make sure she knows that she is not alone.
haley, another of our family, will go down and join kate next week.
digital photography
my amazing wife said the other day that she thought my interest in digital photography had reached the point that she would agree with me shelling out the money necessary for me to purchase a digital slr camera (i lean towards a nikon d70 or a canon eos d20). she says i should use the pastor appreciation love offering all the pastors in the church get each october but i don’t feel comfortable with that because i would rather than continue to go to family things. so this means that i am free to buy a camera that i don’t have the money for.
thus i need to figure out a way to raise $1,000 or just keep dreaming about a great camera. if any of you want to send a few hundred my way i would greatly appreciate it. 🙂
polaroid-o-nizer
the polaroid-o-nizer is cool. it takes any digital picture that you have and converts it into a polaroid-looking image. as you know everyone wants to take their high-tech digital photo and make it look like a very low-tech polaroid image. there are other ways of doing this but the polaroid-o-nizer is a web based program for doing it and it’s free (yippee).
from the above description of the polaroid-o-nizer you should be able to figure out what is important about it … it is yet another thing on the internet that previously i didn’t know or even care about but i am now no longer able to live with out. that’s the beauty of the web – it makes stupid things a necessary part of life.