Author: Robert

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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.

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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?

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howl

pam, my wife, has officially gone crazy. pam now spends ten to fifteen minutes each night trying to get montana to howl. i’ve written about this once before but since then it has become a nightly occurence. pam will throw her head up in the air and shout “arooooo” and montana goes crazy. this only eggs pam on and she slowly gets worse and worse. so just be warned that if you come over to my house at night and here some howling it may or may not be my dog.

i really need to get some prozac for pam.

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that’s not polite

i went to foxy’s fitness center this morning to play raquetball versus bill. when i walked into the center there was a sign on the door saying that they would be working on the “large men’s locker room” later today. i asked around and it turns out that foxy’s has two men’s locker rooms (a fact i didn’t know). one is named the “large men’s locker room” and the other is named the “small men’s locker room.”

that’s kind of rude to separate people based on their size. the real disturbing thing was that i wasn’t exactly sure which locker room i was supposed to go to.

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the view – march 2, 2005

amos - table 2monday i posted my drawing of what i wanted our “welcome table to look like for the view, our wednesday night youth worship service. here’s the picture of what happened with the actual “welcome table.” you can’t see it on the picture but the plumb line is there.

the thing that amazed me was the “worship stations” that the youth developed. they were incredible. one teen did hosea and had an amazing station on brokenness and forgiveness. the other teen did shadow boxes of joel. they were both incredible. i was deeply moved personally and so were many of the others who participated in the stations. these kids blew me away with the depth that they pulled out of these things. i can’t wait to see what next week’s stations involve.

of course, part of what got me was the fact that i was expecting less from the teens. i really figured it would take a few weeks for them to “get it.” that’s part of why i did the “welcome table” as a station. i wanted to give them an example. boy am i stupid. they understood perfectly what was involved in the worship stations. i should have never doubted them.

here are a few pictures of the kids’ worship stations. if you follow the link to the flickr photos you can actually see where i have tagged the images telling what is in each image.

hosea station #2hosea station #1

joel station #1joel station #2

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the view – wednesday, march 2, 2005

joel station #3i have to take a second and brag about what happened tonight at “the view.” over the next several weeks we will be dealing with the minor prophets during the view. we are constantly trying to bring “the arts” and different learning styles into worship. that is why they are several people within our student ministry who are establishing worship “stations” within the student center dealing with eight of the minor prophets. the people doing this are using different methods of expression to convey the meaning of each book. tonight, haley and julie did hosea and joel respectively. what they did was incredible. i thought both were extremely moving and very much in tune with the scripture and what we as GOD’s people needed to hear and experience. it was an awesome night.

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wow that tingles

last year i resolved to quit playing racquetball twice a week and though it took me 12 months to reach my goal i was finally able stop playing racquetball twice a week this past january (2005). it took me being sick, and then the boys being sick, and then bill being sick but for awhile i was definitely able to stop playing. unfortunately everyone is well now and thus i had to start playing racquetball again. today was the first day.

having not played racquetball in two months both bill and i were definitely a little “rusty.” this showed in the manner in which we played. we went the wrong way, gave up on balls that we could have actually got, and never really hit the ball where we wanted to hit it. i think that’s why bill pegged me with the ball. he hit it as hard as he could and i was only five feet away from him. it hit me dead on my right elbow. i think it probably hurt but i really don’t know.

have you ever accidentally hit your funny bone? if you have then you know the tingling feeling that you get. now imagine someone hitting you on your funny bone with a racquetball at full force. my arm went completely numb except for the overwhelming tingling feeling that kept on going up and down my arm. i had a huge red mark on my arm that was probably very painful but by the time i could feel again the pain from the racquetball had subsided (i think because of course it may have actually never really hurt).

i think bill did the whole thing on purpose. that’s why i decided two things 1)to beat him and 2)to hit the ball as close as possible to him through out the game just to keep some fear in him. it was fun to watch him jump and fun to actually beat him. of course, i still can’t feel my arm.

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listen to me

look into my eyes. you are getting sleepy, very sleepy. now you are under my control. now you must do what i say.

so swap from internet explorer to firefox. i shouldn’t have to hypnotize you to do this but 45% of the people who visit this blog still use micro$oft internet explorer (51% use firefox plus 3% use safari – me – and one percent use netscape – both of which are mozilla derivatives and therefore firefox/mozilla is winning). it would be best for all of us if micro$oft learned a lesson and got it’s butt kick by firefox. help out by swapping now.

then you can move over to a mac or linux and we’ll really get things going right.

SIDE NOTE – sign up for the disciplenow if you haven’t done so already.

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minor prophets

amos's table for the view

wednesday we’re starting at “the view” a message series on the minor prophets. it’s really supposed to be more than a message series though because we are going to have experiential stations set up around the room each week walking people through the 12 minor prophets. i stole the idea from jonny baker who did a worship session on the minor prophets that we have since adapted with some help from him. there are nine of us doing this (8 people doing the 8 minor prophets that i’m not talking about). i was so jealous of the fun that they are going to get to do by prayerfully developing a station that i decided i would do one on each of the four prophets that i am talking about (i just didn’t want to miss out). i’m using the “welcome table” that we build each week for basic ministry info as a way to convey the prophet that i will be speaking on. we’ll see how this whole thing goes.

above is the drawing i made in my moleskine of what i want to do with the “welcome table” while i’m speaking amos. i’ll post pictures wednesday of what really happened.

here’s the series of mesages and the stations for each one:

march 2 – amos

    station hosea – haley
    station joel – julie

march 9 – jonah

    station obadiah – whitney & sarah
    station micah – meagan

march 16 – habakkuk

    station nahum – sergio
    station zephaniah – brittany

march 23 – malachi

    station haggai – pam
    station zechariah – rebekah
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not a happy clown

clown
the above picture is all that i have to remember the horrific episode that happened yesterday. i have set myself a flickr goal of posting one decent picture a day on flickr (i’m not sure that i could say any of my pictures are “good picutres” so i’ve set my goal for merely decent). this wouldn’t be to terribly hard if i could use all the pictures that i have taken over my life but that’s not part of the bargain i made with myself. the deal i made was that i could only use one “old” picture a week. all the other pictures had to be taken during the week in which i was posting. this means i have to take pictures constantly in order to get just a few that have the relatively high for me rank of “decent.”

yesterday i was blank on decent pictures. i didn’t have any “decent” non-posted pictures from the week waiting in the background ready to be placed on the photoblog. so i had to go on a picture hunt. i decided that i would go take so pictures down at the state capitol building. i figured that even on a gloomy day the statues around the capitol would look cool. i was wrong! the day was simply “bla” and i couldn’t find a good shot (this is where the difference between me and a good photographer becomes obvious – someone with skill would fid a great shot on such a terrible day). to make things even worse i had a horrific event happen on the way down to the capitol.

on the way down to the capitol i saw a clown in full costume driving on tiger bend street. i figured this would be a great shot. i mean really who wouldn’t love a picture of a clown driving through the streets of baton rouge. so i rolled down my window, started honking, and began shouting at the clown. i was holding my camera out with my free hand and screaming “i want to take your picture! please let me take your picture.” the female clown must not have heard me because her car sped up away from me. so i pressed the accelartor pedal and caught up. i started screaming again and but then the clown’s car slowed down. she must have been having some car trouble or something. so i slowed down till the clown’s car caught up with me again. once again, i started screaming and waving my camera. all i wanted was a picture of the clown in her car driving. for some reason this offended her because the next thing i knew she stared right at me and flipped me off.

that’s right the clown gave me “the bird.”

after flipping me off the she pulled into the turning lane and turned down jones creek road and out of my life. the above picture was all i was able to get as i sat in stunned silence. you’re barely even able to see the stupid clown in the picture. i hate clowns.