I mispell things!
stevens point, wisconsin is number seven on this year’s list of the one hundred best places to live in the u.s. of a.
how cool is that?
when i was in high school dothan, alabama (my hometown) was declared one of ran mcnally’s fifty worst places to live in the u.s.
i have now gone full circle.
SIDE NOTE – my salsa came in second within the competition. they said it was good but it was too hot. i would have to agree that this batch was a little warmer than normal.
you may not know this but i cut the cheese better than anybody else in my immediate family. it’s true. it comes naturally to me because my father was also an excellent cutter of the cheese. i don’t really know my biological grandfather so i can’t really say if he cut the cheese well or not but i do know that my step-grandfather (who was my real grandfather) was one of the best cheese cutters i have ever heard of (this of course lends more credence to nurture versus nature). so i come from a long line of excellent cheese cutters and because of this lineage i was able to make my youngest son proud in his class today.
you see today was noah’s oral report on the state of wisconsin. he has been working on the written version of this report for three weeks or so. pam and i knew that the oral report was coming soon so while we were in wisconsin last week we bought noah a wheel of cheese to pass out during his report. i brought it to class today and it was one of the best moments of my life. first, because i was able to use the talent that my family has passed down to me, and secondly because when noah’s teacher said to me “and mr. terrell what are you here to do?” i was able to answer “well, i am here to cut the cheese!”
it doesn’t get much better than saying that line in a room full of 4th graders. today my cheese wheel and i were the elementary school equivalents of george carlin.
[tags]cutting the cheese, cheese wheel, cheese[/tags]
i thought i would take a second and brag on some friends at the ring community church. i was talking with jessica today and she told me what they had done for mother’s day. if you have ever been in an evangelical church during mother’s day then you have probably watched as a big deal is made of mom’s (which is a good thing) and a crappy gift is given to them (these are usually cheap, stupid little things that nobody ever uses – like a quote book, or a flimsy bookmark, or a wilted carnation). jess recommended that instead of wasting allot of money on allot of people to acquire nothing more than clutter she recommended to the leadership of the ring (basically josh and meg for this decision) that they take the money they would have wasted on the meaningless gifts and instead give it to world vision in honor of their mom’s. so that’s what they did – they gave all the money to world vision to help the helpless and printed out a little booklet to give to the mom’s in their church explaining what the money would be used for.
it was a simple yet brilliant idea. from what i hear many of the mothers in the room were moved to tears. i wish i had thought of it. i will definitely be using it when jar starts.
speaking of “jar” i figured i would give y’all an update on what is happening now that our assessment is complete. here’s what is happening:
SIDE NOTE – “24” has gone down hill – it is a sad day in tv-land.
SIDE SIDE NOTE – we’re entering our homemade salsa in a salsa competition wednesday. i didn’t even know that there were such things as salsa competitions.
[tags]ring community church, world vision, mother’s day, salsa[[/tags]
this is stinking hilarious. there are some wickedly sick people in this world and i for one am thankful that many of them have video cameras.
[tags]squirrels, squirrel catapult, youtube[/tags]
eric (one of the student within the youth ministry) and some friends made this video and i think it is great.
my run for the day
distance – 1.5 miles
time – 16:28
pace – 10:58/mile
yesterday i received a few negative anonymous comments on one of my church planting posts. they were pretty vulgar and therefore i didn’t allow them to stay up. the thing that gets me is not the fact that they were negative, personally i like people feeling comfortable enough around me to disagree with something i write or say. instead what gets me is when someone posts the comments anonymously. i know i’ve posted on this before but it really drives me nuts. these comments were most likely just random comments from someone who accidentally surfed in and therefore they probably didn’t come from someone who actually want to do anything other than be rude. of course, i’ll never know since the comments were left anonymously.
i’ll probably just skip commenting on anonymous comments in the future.
i cannot stand myspace. i think it’s okay for organizations and media but bugs me for individuals. besides there always seem to be reports of creepy people lurking around on myspace. i’m not as familiar with facebook but some of the college students swear by it and i have seen many reports recently concerning the wonders of communicating through facebook. so i figure i’ll give it a try and see if it is something that will be useful in stevens point.
speaking of stevens point pam and i are back from our teAMerica church planting assessment week. the point of the assessment is to see if i should be able to hack it when it comes to the nature of planting a church. apparently about 85% of new churches fail within 5 years. that’s not a good percentage. yet with the right assessment and training that figure flips over on itself. the teAMerica week takes a person and sees whether he/she would be a good fit for planting a church. the way they do this is through a series of personality inventories, written interviews of your friends, surprise group projects, planned presentations, a series of interviews, and basic teaching time. truthfully the whole thing was kind of similar to a church planting version of “the apprentice” without the “you’re fired” part. everything you do is watched and analyzed to see how you work with people, how you lead, how you follow, how you think, etc. it was very tiring but cool.
at the end of the week there are 4 options of what they will say to the candidate.
we left the week with a “full recommend” and therefore we have crossed another hurdle on the path. now we continue working with namb to see if there is any possibility of getting some funding through them. if we get some funding from them that will mean that i can focus all my efforts on planting the church rather than being somewhat distracted by the need to hold down a part time job for financial reasons.
[tags]church planting, teAMerica, facebook, myspace[/tags]
it’s 2:01 a.m. and pam and i got back from our teAMerica church planting assessment about 10 minutes ago (more on this later – it was great). never ever go on a trip with pam and i. we always seems to have something happen that messes the transportation up. tonight the final leg of our transportation was delayed because of a thunderstorm. we sat in the plane on the tarmac for 4 hours! it was awful. actually we only sat in the plane due to the storm for the two hours. our first hour on the tarmac was due to the runway having to be checked and rechecked due to a prior plane having hit a bird during takeoff. the final hour was due to the fact that our plane had run out of fuel sitting on the tarmac waiting for the bird carcasses to be cleared off and the storm to go away. the good side of the wait is that i finished my third book of the week.
if you’re a “lost” fan and have emailed me (i.e. debbie) please don’t be offended if i don’t answer your email until later. pam and i haven’t watched this week’s episode yet and i’m scared to open those emails because i am afraid they will give something away. i hope it was a good one.
okay this post has nothing to do with the movie from 1985 and i’m not really looking for anyone named susan – it just seemed like a fun answer. earlier this week i decided i would start emailing some friends of mine that don’t really like the whole “church thing.” some of them are followers of CHRIST and some of them are not (if i haven’t emailed you yet it probably means that i couldn’t find your email address). i’m seeking their thoughts on what church is like and what they would like to see it like. i know and belief that CHRIST sets up the church and is the head of it but i also know that most of what goes on at church has nothing to do with JESUS. i don’t think JESUS cares at all if we have organs or guitars at church and i think HE really dislikes some of the stuff that we do in the name of being HIS body. so i’ve emailed them and asked them the following questions:
now i was wondering what you guys & girls thought. if would greatly appreciate any thoughts or opinions any of your had. you can either leave them in the comments or email them to me at robert.terrell (at) gmail.com.
thanks a bunch guys.
roux has now been a stray for at least two weeks (he may have been gone from his house for longer for all we know). we’ve advertised finding him in every manner that we can think of – from signs to an add in the newspaper. so we’ve reach the point where we are going to start his heartworm treatment and claim him as a member of the terrell family. roux is now officially one of us.
now we no longer have to say “can i get a roux, roux?” because we already have one. 🙂