I mispell things!
I was just reading a letter that J.R.R Tolkien wrote to C. S. Lewis concerning Lewis’ book Mere Christianity and this section stuck out for me
And wrong behavior (if it is really wrong on universal principles) is progressive, always: it never stops at being “not very good,” “second best”—it either reforms, or goes on to third-rate, bad, abominable.
I thought it was good point that seems to be true.
When I was much younger and the Youth Minister at Parkview Baptist Church I was blessed of God to have the most amazing suite-mates ever. Really, I loved and still do love these people. Jessica Lawrence, Megan Kelly, T. Alan Lusk (I still don’t feel cool enough to just call him “T”), Clint Barron, Josh Causey and most, important of all, Jonathan Whilmore were the main ones but there were other interns that also a part of the room for shorter time periods that I also loved (that right I am talking about you Lauren Joyner, Scott Brignac, and Chris Mouhot). My study was connected with theirs and so I spent a great amount of time with them all.
These are people that I madly respected at the time and they have just grown in my respect level in the years that I have been gone from Baton Rouge. Not only were they amazingly creative, incredibly faithful, sacrificially loving, and great risk takers, but they were also just plain fun people to hang out with. It seemed like we were always taking a break from work to do something interesting. I loved working with them and hanging out with them. There was a reason that Pam would often drop by the suite and it wasn’t me … she liked hanging out with these people too. Most surprising of all is that in the midst of the fun of working with these amazing people we were actually able to get a lot of work done at the same time. Not the brag but I believe that as a group we led one of the most amazing youth ministries ever known and I got to work along side quite possibly the best college ministry ever.
One of the things that I liked (and still do like about them) about the suite was the fact that I could use them as critical ears. When I was working on a message my suite-mates were generous enough to allow me to interrupt their work and ask them questions and run things past them. They were always a huge help. They helped me to see things with different eyes and hear things with different ears. This was huge for me and truthfully it still is. I need to bounce ideas off of other people. I need people who I can trust to think critically and deep on subjects. My suite-mates were just such people.
Unfortunately I don’t have the suite anymore. I miss them often for their friendship but I also miss them for willingness to let me pick their brains. Thankfully I have a new group of people who are generous enough to allow me to run things past them. If anything I do it even more now than I did when I was at Parkview and with a greater variety of people. It is just that now my questions are directed at my friends at Emy J’s and people in Tapestry. For example, I just quizzed the barista that I know the best concerning what comes to her mind when she hears the words “antichrist” because this Sunday in Tapestry’s Sunday night worship gathering we will be discussing 1 John 2:18-29. I am so thankful that I still have a group of people that are willing to lend me their eyes and ears. I am even more thankful that some of my new lenders of eyes and ears aren’t a part of any organized religious practice and yet still aren’t afraid to help me with my sermons.
Now if I could just convince the people at Emy J’s to go “reverse Halloweening” with me then everything would be great.
SIDE NOTE – “reverse Halloweening” is something the suite did on Halloween that started because we were worn out and needed a break. We dressed in costumes and visited every office in the church (this was a large church) and gave them candy. Really a ton of fun.
Nothing specific to blog about. Just thought I would post about a few random things basically just to post something.
That is all for now folks.
A while back I wanted a bluetooth keyboard for use with the various bluetooth enabled tablet like devices I use. Of course, while I wanted the keyboard I didn’t want to pay the actual retail price for said keyboard. I wanted to find a deal. Eventually I discovered an excellent deal on a Motorola keyboard. Regular price was $65 but I found it on sale for $9. Why was it on sale? Well because it is a British keyboard.
This means there are slight differences between this keyboard and a normal US keyboard. This isn’t usually a problem. I can pretty much do everything I need to do with it without any difficulty. Unfortunately every now and then the Brits mess things up for me by making the British key placement slightly different from the US key placement. Come on Brits. Get with the program! Argh!
Even though he and his bride moved up to the Pacific Northwest this past Summer I still blame Henry for this. Darn you Henry and darn all your tea-swilling countrymen too. 🙂
I think this quote fits in with what I talked about tonight at Tapestry.
The reduction of faith to practice has not enriched faith; it has impoverished it. It has let practice itself become a matter of law and compulsion.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, page 8.
It is very important to know the “why’ of what you do. Your “why” should determine what you do and how you do it.
SIDE NOTE – here is the entire video from which I only used a segment tonight during the message.
This Summer Noah and I are on an adventure. We are trying to find a favorite local hamburger. Each week we are eating a hamburger at a local place and rating. The scale is 0-10 with 10 equaling “as good as Riverside Patty or Whistler’s.” You need to understand that we had amazing burger places in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Carthage, Missouri. Both places are very different from each other and both places had amazing hamburgers.
Noah and I realized a few weeks ago that we really hadn’t found a burger in Point that we thought was as good as either Riverside or Whistler’s. So we decided to become more purposeful about searching. So today we tried the Classic at Guu’s on Main.
Guu’s was highly recommended. We have several friends who swear by Guu’s and there is a group of “threads” who meet there pretty much every Wednesday night. Noah and I both really liked the burger. The bun was toasted a great deal on the grill and we both thought that was great. The meat itself was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Its a 1/3 pound burger that is decent size and cost $6.99 with a side. Actually, while the burger was good Noah and I both agree that our side of waffle fries was the best part of our meals. The waffle fries were excellent. Dang crispy without being burnt.
On the 0-10 scale we originally thought the burger was a 7. A good rating for the first burger, when we are still pretty much figuring things out. We enjoyed our experience at Guu’s and were sure that we would want to come back and have that burger again. We wouldn’t crave it like Riverside or Whistler’s but we would still enjoy another one.
That changed 30 minutes after we had eaten our burgers. Almost at the exact same time both of us went running for the bathroom. The burger giveth and the burger taketh away. In this case the burger tooketh away our dignity and a little Terrell family toilet paper. We both feel fine now so it wasn’t food poisoning or anything similar. The burger just didn’t want to stay in our stomachs. It was enough for Noah to lower his rating to a 5. I’m just dropping it one point to a 6 because the burger was good enough that I would eat it again, even knowing that I would end up running to the bathroom 30 minutes later.
Guu’s on the Main Burger Experiment Score – 6.
We are thinking next week will be Arbuckles Eatery & Pub.
Earlier this week I posted about hoping OGIO would fix/replace the backpack I received from Pam and the boys for Father’s Day four years ago. They have responded and they are replacing my pack. Woohoo. I had to cut out a logo and send it to them.
Anyhow, I’m glad OGIO pulled through. Once they receive the logo thye are sending me a Ombre Tan Rebel 15 Pack. Truthfully I prefer my original backpack. The only real advantage I see to the new backpack is that it has straps to hold my skateboard. Of course, I don’t skateboard so that doesn’t really do me any good.
SIDE NOTE – the designer of the ’92 Sentra XE really wanted to make it difficult for you to change the starter. Sheesh. I am changing the starter in Fred and it is a royal pain in the butt.
For the past two months I have been struggling with a page numbering issue. I am on the very last part of the downhill slide of my D.Min. I have finished my doctoral ministry project and written the Project Report (some other seminaries call their D.min project reports dissertations – NOBTS does not). My report has been approved by my faculty mentor which leaves just three more steps:
I have been waiting to send the report to the Style Reader because I needed to work out how to do the page numbers on one appendix. The first appendix of my report is the approved proposal for the project. The page numbers in that proposal need to reflect both the original proposal’s page numbers and the Project Report’s page numbers. It should look like this.
I have asked for lots of help concerning these page numbers and I have received a lot of suggestions from people. Unfortunately none of them had worked in the past.
I became so frustrated a month ago that I asked a friend of mine who graduated last year how he did it. He told me he couldn’t figure it out and had to get a guy to do it for him. He sent me the guy’s number and I called him figuring he could walk me through the process. This is kind of a big deal for me. I usually can figure out what I need to do with computers and software. I have a bit of pride concerning this ability. Any how I humbled myself and called the guy. He told me it was too difficult to talk me through over the phone, but he would find a sample that would work with my report that I could copy and paste my stuff into. It would just take him a while because he was busy. So I thanked him, said I would look forward to his help when he could do it, and immediately emailed back my friend asking if I could get his Word file for his Project Report so I could just figure it out on my own. After a couple of weeks my friend forwarded me the file and I looked at it. It was absolutely no help because for some reason when I toggled the codes (Alt+F9) it would show the code for one page number and not the other. ARGH! I needed the codes for both page numbers.
I asked for help again from my Facebook and Twitter friends. I received more responses. Unfortunately once again none of them worked. So I waited for that one guy to send me a template to use. Today I thought I would give it another try and once again failed. When I posted my frustration on Facebook and Twitter I started receiving suggestions yet again. This time one worked. A college friend (thanks Jane) sent me a link that had a code I could manipulate to work. I SCREAMED! Seriously you can ask Pam. I screamed and danced. This was awesome. i now appreciate Jane for another reason other than introducing me to the Violent Femmes in college.
What is even more awesome is that my D.Min project is about collaborative sermon preparation and ultimately the report has been finished by collaboration. I love that.
SIDE NOTE – For anyone searching for the way to do these page numbers (basically NOBTS D.Min students) you just need this code:
{ PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT } [{= { PAGE }+68}]
You replace the “68” with the overall page at which your appendix starts. it was really that simple once I knew what to do.
So I was just riding my bike to a seamstress to have my favorite backpack repaired when I had a sudden revelation that the bag probably has a warranty. I looked it up and OGIO does have a life of the product warranty on their backpacks. I really like this backpack. Pam and the boys gave it to me over 4 years ago and I kind of want to keep it. It worked fine until the zipper decided to eat it. I called around to find a seamstress that would repair it and found out it would be $15-20ish to fix it. That was worth it to me BUT warranty fixes are even better.
So I’m filling out the warranty form and it asks for a few photos. First, they want a photo of the front of the bag. That makes sense. They need to know what type of backpack it is. This is the photo above on the left. Second, they want a photo of the problem (i.e. the broken zipper). Again this made sense. The top right photo shows the problem. Finally, they offered a space for an optional photo. I choose to send them a photo of me and the backpack fondly remembering all the great adventures we have had. This photo is below. I titled it “the bag and I remember.”
I also considered sending them a cat photo sense everyone on the internet seems to love cats but since I like this backpack I prefer to think of the folks at OGIO as dog people. Perhaps I should have sent them a photo of our bassets, Montana and Roux, with the bag. Crud I wish I had thought of that before typing this post.
Well we’ll see how the folks at OGIO do with the warranty claim. I hope to report good customer service and a new/repaired bag.
I believe that Pam and I are pretty charitable people. We tithed our income to our local church, support some other ministries, regularly give to Word Vision and Baptist Global Response (World Vision is our personal favorite way to give – I’ve seen their work first hand and I believe in how they do things), and support and regularly give to lots of other people/projects/oragnizations – both short term and long term. That is part of why the truth of this list upsets me. I saw this list of America’s Worst Charities via the Dead Kennedys‘ Facebook page. This list is amazing to me. I can’t believe how much is raised and how little is actually used for the the need the money is supposedly raised for.
Anyhow here’s the list of top ten worst offenders.
| Rank | Charity name | Total raised by solicitors | Paid to solicitors | % spent on direct cash aid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kids Wish Network | $127.8 million | $109.8 million | 2.5% |
| 2 | Cancer Fund of America | $98.0 million | $80.4 million | 0.9% |
| 3 | Children’s Wish Foundation International | $96.8 million | $63.6 million | 10.8% |
| 4 | American Breast Cancer Foundation | $80.8 million | $59.8 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Firefighters Charitable Foundation | $63.8 million | $54.7 million | 8.4% |
| 6 | Breast Cancer Relief Foundation | $63.9 million | $44.8 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO | $57.2 million | $41.4 million | 0.5% |
| 8 | National Veterans Service Fund | $70.2 million | $36.9 million | 7.8% |
| 9 | American Association of State Troopers | $45.0 million | $36.0 million | 8.6% |
| 10 | Children’s Cancer Fund of America | $37.5 million | $29.2 million | 5.3% |
SIDE NOTE – every now and then people will post or email out the following image concerning charities and their CEO salaries. This list, unlike the list above, is mainly malarkey. You can find the details all over the web but snopes is the easiest source.
