Andy Bowar

Wordle Wallpapers

2009-02-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a long time since I last posted, but this is the best way I can think of to get these out for everyone to see. All of these wallpapers are a 1024x768 resolution, but if you want one for your wallpaper, let me know and I can resize it for your resolution. To find out what your resolution is, right click on your desktop and click on "Properties". Then, click on the "Settings" tab and there should be a place where it says "number by number pixels". If you're interested, shoot me an email.

The Book of Luke

The Book of Luke

The Book of Luke

The Book of Luke

When Comes the Revolution?

When Comes the Revolution?

Conglomeration of J-T Songs (Vertical)

Conglomeration of J-T Songs

Conglomeration of J-T Songs

There ya go.

Since Graduation

2008-06-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last posted. My apologies. Before graduation, things got very busy and stressful. There are six of us from Minnesota on the CSI this summer. I kind of put myself in charge of buying the tickets for the megabus, which is a bus service that goes from Minneapolis to Milwaukee and Chicago. I reserved seats for us and accidentally reserved them for the day before we were supposed to leave. We didn't find out, however, until the bus driver said, "Oh, hold on now...this ticket ain't no good! This here says June 8th, today's June 9th! Call customer service." So we went through a long deal of talking to customer service, who said if it was ok with the driver, we could get on the bus anyway. In the end, the bus driver didn't trust us because "headquarters" had no record of us calling, so he drove away without us.

The day before we thought we would leave was Sunday, June 8th. This day was chock full of grad parties, including my own, which also included Nick Raway and Joe Bulger who were both coming with me on the CSI. Joe Bulger and I had come up with a plan the day before to get to every party but one. This meant going up to North Minneapolis, then down to Shakopee, Savage, Hastings, West St. Paul, then back to Burnsville. This is probably a little over 130 miles of driving. It would have been an incredible feat. However, our party ran a bit late and we spent too much time at the first couple of parties, so we missed about four parties. Oh well. It was a fun day. Micah Olson's party was last and he was coming on the CSI with us as well. Five of us, plus one friend of ours who wasn't coming, decided to stay the night at Micah's house.

We had a bonfire going after Micah's party with some of the seniors plus a junior or two until about two in the morning. After they left, all of us going on the CSI buzzed our hair. This is the shortest I've had my hair in about 7 years, if not longer. At one point, everyone but Micah and I fell asleep. Micah and I stayed up the whole night opening his cards and counting his money. That next morning, we went to the megabus station. Upon finding out that our tickets were bad, we changed them to the next morning and went back to Burnsville. Some of us wanted to do some kind of work, but most of us were too tired to. What we ended up doing was cleaning up Micah's party. After that, we slept a bit, and after that my dad came and took us all out to lunch. I was very grateful of this. After this, we went to a cigar shop, where Micah and I bought a couple of Cigars. Then we all went out to the Putziers' cabin and boated a bit. The next morning, we finally got onto the megabus and on our way to Chicago, where Kevin McShane and Justin Lokke picked us up and took us to South Bend. Ever since, we've been hearing many talks, trying to get used to 8 hour work days, and getting used to living in household.

This last weekend, we all went to Indy to help out there. It was great to see everyone there again, especially my brother John, who is taking two years off of school to be a missionary. Some people were assigned to demolition of parts of a house that was recently bought by the People of Praise. I was assigned to organizing all the tools and stuff in the basement of the main house that they live in. It is now all organized and looks much much better than before! Today we all got up, went to church, had brunch, and some of us went out to the Porters and swam and did some other things. Now most of us are back in South Bend, relaxing until another week of work begins tomorrow.

Reaching the end

2008-05-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

As you no doubt have noticed, it's been difficult to keep up this blog in these last weeks of my high school career. There's a lot going on. We had a work day couple weekends ago, which was the first big thing we've done since the J-T Concert. It was the first time that Chamber Singers and Action have clashed for me. We had had two performances in the two weeks before that, then we had state performances the day of the Action workday. This was May 4th. Our choir had superior ratings (the highest you can get) as well as all the soloists and ensembles. However, this is nothing new. Chamber Singers gets superior ratings almost, if not every year. The way it works in Minnesota is that we don't compete against other choirs, we compete against a standard. This makes it so that it's not really a competition. You could have like 20 "winners" every year. All this really means is that they all got superior ratings from the judges. For the workday, everybody slept over in Dinkytown. We started with dinner, then heard a talk from Mike Wacker, and then we all split up into different groups doing different things, like learning how to read scripture, and learning some songs from the new songbook. In the morning, the Chamber Singers folks went straight to our thing, while everybody else split up into different groups doing work projects mostly in Burnsville. When we came back to Dinkytown, the guys took out the fence in the front of 1027 (the big house, while the girls painted a shoe shelf in the entrance of 1027. At about 5:30 we all assembled for Lord's Day, where the seniors were honored. Since that weekend, not much has been going on. The Senior Drama this quarter is Arsenic and Old Lace. It's a really fun play, and I have a smaller part. I'm in it this Saturday night, for those of you that would like to come. It's at 7:30. For now, that's all I've got...only 8 days of classes left. Then another two weeks before I actually graduate. I'm getting antsy.

April 12th EVENT!

2008-04-12T14:36:00.000-07:00

April 12th

2008-04-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

I can't remember if I've ever written on the J-T Kelly Concert/retreat type thing. If I haven't, here's the deal. Action is hosting J-T Kelly and a few of the Indy Missionaries this Saturday in our auditorium for a night of music by J-T Kelly, plus some talks and testimonies from the missionaries. I have been in charge of organizing and making happen a broadcast of the event, much like what happened over the summer. To watch it, I'll have the live feed embedded in a blog post that day. The event will be from 7pm CT to 10:30pm CT. That's all for now. God bless.

No end in sight

2008-04-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

I think I would have to say that I'm in a good place right now. I've got my life figured out (for the most part) up until at least the beginning of next semester, things are going well in action, my men's group...things are just going fine and dandy. At this point, one of the bigger things on my mind is the J-T Kelly concert/retreat type thing on April 12th. We're planning on broadcasting it over the internet and I've enlisted the assistance of MIS. We've been working with them for a while trying to organize this thing, and it's really going well. We have no hit any big stumbling blocks thus far (although we may have come close once or twice. Or may we did hit some stumbling blocks and I just didn't really notice. The Lord has really helped me through it, giving me the grace to be calm and patient.

There seem to be a lot of miscellaneous things that I need to figure out before the end of the year, and it's like when I remember one thing I forget another. I know that a solution to this could be to write things down, and I've been doing that as much as I can. Unfortunately, most of the time I happen to remember something when I happen to be paper/pencil-less.

I've been able to get myself out of the mindset of life ending when I graduate. What I mean by this is that a lot of people, before their second semester of senior year still don't really have any idea what anything will look like for them after they graduate, and I've gotten myself out of that mindset. I now think of things in terms of what's going to happen in the next couple of years as I go to college for a two year Associate Degree, and probably transfer to the U of M. It's difficult, however, to think of what things will look like for me after college. Of course, I betcha not a ton of people think a lot about what after college will look like before they've graduated from high school. I dunno. Will I be a missionary? Will I get a full time job, get married? No idea. I think if I try and think about it too much, my brain will explode. No, I've decided to stick to a couple of months at a time. Hopefully this will work out for me.

P.S. - I'm curious to know who reads my blog, so if you could just leave a quick message (even if I might not know you), that would be awesome! God bless.

Indy

2008-03-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

So last week was awesome. I spent the week in Indy with 8 of my senior classmates and Don Ferber. We arrived at about 5:30 pm on Monday Evening. One of the greatest things about the week was to spend the week with all the people there that I hadn't seen in a long time and to meet the one person there that I hadn't yet met, Mary Timler. I spent the week sleeping in 1819, which is a house they are renting right next door to the house that some of them live in on the South Side. It was really great. Every morning we got up to do PT (physical training), has personal prayer, breakfast, and then went to the north side to have morning prayer and start the work day. The evening talks were really great. The work was enjoyable. We put in a gravel walkway behind the duplex after destroying the cement stairs with a sledgehammer. That was pretty fun. The thing I enjoyed most though were the conversations I had with various people. First of all, they helped me with some problems I was struggling with, and second of all, they got me (if possible) even more excited for the CSI this summer. It's difficult to describe my feelings of last week. The Lord really moved in all of us. It's a good feeling when you know you're playing a big part in getting a lot of work done, which is what we did this last week.

There are 8 weeks left until the last day of school and 10 weeks left until I graduate. This last break was the last break of my high school career. This is the home stretch...here we go.

Apologies/Return of the Bowars (Jedi)

2008-03-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

So first of all, about my last post. I'm sure most of you had no idea what the heck I was talking about. It was meant to be something like what my neighbors may have been thinking when we move back in. Notice that I posted it on Wednesday, but the title said March 22, 2008", which is tomorrow. It was meant to be like a journal post of one of my neighbors from that day. I should probably have explained that before. My apologies for any confusion that certainly occurred.

Anyway, we have finally moved back home! We spent last night and today packing things, bringing them home, and unpacking them again. The annoying thing is that when we moved there all anybody had was their bag of clothes, some bedding we also had food packed up. Today when we moved home, we had three vans full of stuff. It took all day to get everything unpacked and put away and the whole house cleaned up and everything. It is an awesome feeling to be back home to sleep on a real mattress again. Despite the fact that I didn't mind sleeping on an air mattress and if it came to it I probably would have gotten used to sleeping on the floor, I'm really excited to sleep on my bed tonight.

My brother John came home today and helped clean up a bit, had dinner, then watched
I Am Legend (an incredible movie). My brother Joe is coming home tomorrow. On Monday morning at 5:30 I am leaving for Indy for the week. I have no idea whether or not I'll be able to update during the week, but I'm assuming I won't be able to. I'll update upon my return, however. I think I'm going to go to bed. God bless.

March 22, 2008

2008-03-18T21:36:00.001-07:00

Dear Journal,

Happy almost Easter. Back in December, Adam and I were just starting to think about what this winter would be like in terms of snowmobiling conditions. Around the middle of the month, I noticed that my other neighbors started making an abnormal amount of trips to and from their house. I have no idea where they were going all the time. I used to play with two of those neighbors a lot when I was younger. We used to go swimming in my pool. At some point, a transformer blew up that happened to be on a telephone pole right next to the pool. The pool was ruined after that. Anyway, I don't really know where they've been, but when these two guys that I used to play with would come out of their house sometimes, they had taken so much stuff out of their house that it almost looked like they were looting the place. At first I didn't make much of it, but then they started bringing out TVs and computers and stuff...I asked my parents about it and they didn't have any idea. They didn't seem to care either. I thought about calling the police once or twice, but the fact always came back to me that those guys are always coming and going somewhere so this probably isn't any different. However, I still didn't know what to make off all that "looting" I kept seeing. Oh well. It doesn't really matter anymore because they're back after three months of coming and going at random times of the day. In closing, my neighbors are weird and Happy almost Easter.

~Travis

A History of Guitars in the Bowar Household

2008-03-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

When my brother John began developing an interest in guitar, he taught himself himself with a bit of help from a guitar book that my parents bought him. After a couple years, he bought an Ovation Balladeer with help from Joe and my dad. It was at this time that I was able to start learning guitar seriously, because I now had my mom's guitar at my disposal.

For as long as I can remember, my family has had a guitar that my uncle bought and gave to us because he never played it. About 2 years ago, I took it out of its case to look at it. It was missing a string and the bridge was coming off. I put it back in its case and continued using my mom's guitar to learn how to play. About a year ago, I took it out again and wanted to have it fixed. I asked my dad if we could have Chris Raway fix it. Chris is the father of Nick Raway, a good friend of mine and one of the seniors my men's group. Chris learned how to build and fix guitars at Red Wing Tech college and he built his own guitar, so I figured he could probably fix the bridge on this guitar. After receiving a warning that it would probably take a long time for him to be able to get around to it, I gave it to him to fix. Six or so months later, I got it back fixed, but discovered that the holes in the bridge were too big for any normal sized pin to hold in the strings. Last night, I got the over sized pins that my dad ordered for me and tonight I put strings on the guitar. This guitar will be mine if I decide that I like the sound of it. It's a Franciscan C37. Franciscan doesn't even have a website, so I don't think it's a very well known brand. Most of their guitars sell for under $200 brand new. Obviously, it's not a very high quality guitar, but hey - if I like the sound of it, why spend $500 on a different one when I can just have this one for free? The guitar I used to use for mornings prayers, men's groups, and take to Allendale isn't actually mine, it's my mom's. She bought it about 30 years ago for around 100 bucks. This model now, brand new, would probably go for around $700. Unfortunately, the neck needs to be reset, which costs around $300.

Anyway, John eventually moved out, and David wanted to start playing. Then I had to start sharing my mom's guitar with David. A couple months after he started playing, my sister asked me if I could teach her guitar. This kind of frustrated me, as we already only had one guitar between my brother and I. It was during this time that the Franciscan was fixed but needed new pins, so we couldn't really use it. This has kind of been the case up until just a couple weeks ago when my brother bought his own guitar for about $400, my grandpa called to say we could have his because he never plays it, and I got new pins for the Franciscan. We gained 3 working guitars in a matter or two weeks. Because of my grandpa's giving us his guitar, my sister can now start learning. I really love music and I'm very thankful that the Lord has blessed us with the opportunity to sing and learn guitar. Praise the Lord!!

Too Much!

2008-03-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

So here's why I haven't posted much. It's a combination of a large conglomeration of small things that I would like to post on all at once I can't keep in my head all at once and a lack of BIG things happening. Nothing has changed, but I feel an obligation to my readers to post.

A few weeks ago, Micah Olson, Joe Bulger, and Sam Arachtingi went to state. It was great, because not only was it an awesome opportunity to support my brothers, but it was really great to see wrestling (and get out of school for a couple days). I really enjoy watching wrestling, but I rarely get a chance to see it during the wrestling season. Ironically, I started feeling sick the first day I missed school for the tournament. This was a Thursday. By Saturday, I was running a high fever and had to miss out seeing Micah win 4th place. I was out of school until the following Wednesday. I kept asking my classmates what I was missing, but they pretty much kept saying that I wasn't missing anything. Upon my not-so-triumphant return, I discovered that I had missed enough to keep me working on make up work until just last night.

This is where all those small things come in. Lots of small but fairly significant things have happened since I came back to school, but I can only remember some. As always, I've been cleaning three time a week, but last week was so difficult for me to get through that I figured I probably should focus on my schoolwork instead of clean, so thats what I did. Upcoming events are constantly on my mind, like the Easter Break trip to Indy, The J-T Kelly concert on April 12th, what's I'm doing this summer, and what I'm doing next year (just to name a few). There really is no "biggest thing on my mind" right now. However, I'm really happy to say that we're finally going to be moving back home this next weekend. This time it's for real. Definitely. Last weekend, some of the seniors (plus Phil Gaffney on Friday) got together on Friday and Saturday night to have a smoke and to just have a good time together. It's been a long time since I could appreciate the fact that I have these people as my brothers and sisters.

So about next year...I'm pretty dang sure it's gonna be MCTC (Minneapolis Community and Technical College). I would be living in Dinkytown, which I'll be really excited about once I finally make an official decision. This summer I'm going on the CSI (Company Summer Institute), which I am very excited about.

It seems like there's more to say, but either it would be too out of context to talk about here or I just can't remember. I guess I'll end here. God bless!

Things are Happening

2008-02-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

So our plan to invite youth groups was to mail them letters, call them and/or email them, and offer to meet with them. We ended up calling most of them and got nobody who wanted to meet. Thus far, we have had mostly answering machines, and no's. We have one yes and a few people who have said they're interested. However, I'm still confident that we can get around 100 people at this thing. When we first started planning this thing and I found out how many youth groups we had invited, I was thinking we could easily have move people than we can fit in our auditorium. Unfortunately, my hopes (along with several others) were much too high. Pat Murphy, when we first starting talking about it, hoped to have around 100 people there. Turns out he was right to set his hopes that low. Oh well. Since a lot of the no's were because people already had something going on that day, this just means we have to call earlier if we ever decide to do this again.

Action is also in the midst of planning a 7-9th grade girls event and a separate one for the guys. The girls are planning a tea party type thing and are quite well into it. The guys on the other hand....well I don't think we even know exactly what we're doing yet. I think it's gonna be a football or ultimate frisbee game. I'm not sure where that's going. It's not for about a month though.

Other than Action, the biggest thing on my mind has been summer and next year. I know that I am definitely going on the CSI (Company Summer Institute) over the summer. I was accepted to St. Thomas and they gave me $4,200 a year, but that still only bring down yearly tuition to $12,400 a year. I don't think I'll say much about college decisions right now, mostly because it involves long and boring explanations, but also because I haven't made any decisions yet concerning next year.

Our house has been completely cleared of mold! This week we will be painting it and will hopefully be moving back in next week.

That's all for now. God bless!

Updates!

2008-02-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that the three events in on week thing isn't gonna work out. The main event we're planning at this point is a concert/retreat type thing with J-T playing and Abe Olson giving talks. A while back, Pat Murphy was telling me about a couple guys who go around the country with the idea that "high school students can actually do stuff!" Apparently, they typically have around 2,400 students at these rallies or whatever you want to call them. The way they get so many people is by inviting youth groups in whatever area they're in. Our method of inviting people to our things is by individually trying to spread stuff by word of mouth. This has never really worked out for us. Pat heard about these two guys' method and we decided to adopt this method. We currently currently have a plan to invite about 140 youth groups to this concert. This could very well end up being the biggest Action event in Action history. Personally, I think the thing that might help youth groups to decide to come is the fact that it's free. It's quite a small chance that all the youth groups will come. We're hoping for at least 100 people to come. not 100 youth groups, but 100 people. Personally, I think we'll get a lot more than that, but some people don't want to get their hopes up, I guess. Hopefully, we'll have a good turnout.

With regards to my house. I'm still living at my grandparents' house, even though about a month ago I said we would probably be back within 2-4 weeks. At this point, we have someone scheduled to come and clean our house of mold a week from Friday. The week after that, we'll be painting the inside of that house, and hopefully move back in the following week. So probably another 2-3 weeks. I'm excited to move back.

Well, that's all for now. God bless.

Big Plans/Strong Immune System

2008-01-27T19:20:00.000-08:00

We've had several big things in the works lately here in the Servant Branch Action Division. For a while, our plan was to just kind of throw each of them wherever they work. However, some of us recently thought about the possibility of having all three of them in the SAME WEEK. It would probably be one of our biggest ambitions since the second Variety Show. However, it's quite possible that it won't even happen, just because there are so many hoops to jump through. I can't reveal any more details about it simply because I either don't know them or because it's too tentative a thing to talk about in detail. Before these (extremely) tentative plans came about, I had been feeling like not much was happening in Action, we've hit a dry spot, and anything that was in the works probably wouldn't happen. At this point, it seems clear to me that the reason why I felt like that was because I wasn't involved with any of the planning committees. I've been involved with other aspects of Action lately, like cleaning the school. So things are picking up for us in Action

Last week there were a ton of people sick at school. Being in Tutorial, I only have two other people in my first and second period classes. On Wednesday, those two people were absent. So for my first period class, I just did some writing on the book I'm reading in Humane and then second period was Calculus. My teacher said there would be no point in going forward, so she just had me do other homework, so I did my Humane homework for that night. Anyway, long story short, I ended up not having homework in any subject for the rest of the week, due to a sick teacher and two sick classmates. It was sweet. I knew a lot of people who were sick, so it was kind of surprising that I didn't get sick myself.

If the purpose of this blog were to report on my opinions of the use of new technologies, I might go on an angry rant about why the Macbook Air is a somewhat inconvenient piece of equipment. But that's not its purpose, so I won't.

Well that's it for now. God bless.

Break/Start of School

2008-01-13T20:28:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of my first week of Christmas Break, I predicted that this break would be a significant time of my life. There happened to be a few huge things changing all in the same week. On the first Saturday, My dad told me that we were moving to my grandparents' house for an indefinite period of time. This was totally unexpected for me. That's one thing. Another thing was the move to the new building. Though it's been heavily anticipated by just about all of us in this branch, it's still sentimentally difficult. We poured their lives into that building and made it our own for at least 15 years. That's another thing that changed. Those must have been the only two big things that changed, because I can't seem to remember the other things. Nevertheless, things have changed during this break. I sort of expected to be affected by it with more than just a slight feeling of sadness. I don't know exactly what I was expecting. It's possible that in my sadness I made a bigger deal out of the whole thing than I should have. Overall, I would say that this break has been really good in some ways, but also quite annoying. Although I've enjoyed the numerous trips to the new building for various reasons, it's still going to take some getting used to. My grandparents' house actually turns out to be nicer than our own house, mostly due to the fact that it's about 47 years newer than our own house.

I typically begin to feel a bit unrested if I go more than a couple weeks without a community meeting or a men's group. I've been feeling like this pretty much the whole break. We recently had our first CM in the new building. It wasn't a whole normal CM because the circle wasn't finished....by circle, I mean auditorium. In the last building, we called the auditorium the circle because it was basically a circle. I'm never gonna get away from that one. The auditorium will always be known as the circle to me. Anyway. We had a few songs in the circle and then had time for people to eat dinner and tour the building.

Tomorrow is all school orientation, and in 7 hours and 15 minutes, I have to leave for a short chamber singers rehearsal before school. Maybe I should go to bed.

God bless!

News as of Late

2008-01-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

New Year's celebration in Dinkytown was pretty fun. I, of course, still don't live there, but I went to celebrate with them regardless. My brother David and I went, and there turned out to be several other high schoolers there too. I spent part of the time in the basement watching The Aviator with my brother Joe and Dan Ficker. Most other people spent a lot of time talking and playing with balloons. A couple groups of people also played card games, which I know was probably really fun for whoever did it. It wasn't a wild party, but it was a fun party nonetheless.

Ever since that party, anticipation has been building in my mind about project week. My project parter is Joe Bulger. Our task is to build a bridge and make it as strong and as light as we can. After this is done, we go to Trinity on Thursday of project week and test it. Testing it means putting a little wood car on the bridge and see how much weight it can hold. This is what it would look like. After our first bridge is tested, we will build another one, trying to improve on it to make it stronger. Because of Joe's time restrictions, we need to have our bridge started and finished today. I should probably get to work.

Today is Christmas Eve

2007-12-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, we finally got internet back here at my Grandparents' house. The Comcast guy came, and after he left I set up a wireless network with a Wireless B router that my dad quit using after he bought a Wireless G access point and a router, which is faster. My dad was in Romania so he couldn't do it himself. We've been getting more and more settled in since last I posted. The whole family is here now, and it's really nice. We (my brothers and my dad) have been playing Halo together on our computers a little bit. I just shoveled out the driveway because of the snow storm yesterday and today it's a really nice day. I'm excited for tomorrow. Merry Christmas!!!

Getting Settled In

2007-12-19T20:02:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I talk about moving to my Grandparents house for who knows how long. This last week has been incredibly chaotic for me because I've had to drive back and forth between home and here constantly to get stuff we need that we've forgotten. Mostly Christmas decorations and food. Well much to my delight, we're finally getting settled in. Feeling settled in to me is basically just getting at least somewhat of a routine back in my life. We've got a tree up and it's all lighted and decorated. We still don't have our own internet until tomorrow (Thursday). Until then, I'm using the neighbors' internet. Christmas is in about 5 days. Glory to God for his blessings!

New Beginnings?

2007-12-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

For week, anticipation has been building about Trinity's move to our new building. The biggest thing that Action had to do with this was the relocation of all our lockers. We had to move them all into the Auditorium (affectionately known as the circle). Each set of lockers could be anywhere from 3 to 8 lockers. A set of 8 lockers weighed about 300 pounds. It took 9 people to carry one set, and most of them were wrestlers! So that's one type of a set of lockers. Another type is the shorter, but heavier set. They were heavier because each set had 8 lockers. They were shorter in height, but they were situated such that there were four lockers on one side and their backs were connected to the four lockers on the other side. I hope that's not too confusing. I'm guess that a set of these was about 400-500 pounds. Altogether, there were about 50 sets of lockers that had to be carried into the circle, and we did it all by about 2:00 pm. It was awesome. The biggest problem that we've had with our workdays and stuff in the past is inviting people. We always say that it could have been more successful if we had invited more people. For this workday, we had an announcement at every Trinity morning prayer for a week for people to come. We had probably about 5 times as many people not in Action at this workday than any other work day at least in the last two years. Glory!! I think that this workday could be a turning point for the Action Division here. We have always felt that most Trinity students think that Action is too exclusive and that we think we're better than them. I think that this workday has formed a strong bond between Action and Trinity.

In some ways, it's kind of difficult moving to a new building. I've grown up going to meetings in that building. Heck, I've never gone more than a month without being in that building at least once. It's not only difficult for me, but for others who put their sweat and blood into River Ridge. It's kind of bittersweet, I think. It's very exciting, moving into this new building, but it's hard to leave behind our home. It's pretty exciting.

I found out on Saturday that our family would be moving to our grandparents house for an indefinite period of time. I can't say why at the moment. My grandparents moved to Arizona for the winter, so we have this house to ourselves. Unfortunately...it's simply not home. Some of us are having a hard time adjusting, and we don't know how long we'll be here. We do know, however that we'll be here for Christmas. I can't say much more right now, but if y'all could keep us in your prayers, we would be much appreciative. That's all for now, and I have chosen to disregard the fact that I haven't posted in two months. God bless!

From the frontlines

2007-10-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy time since I last posted. Here's a brief summary. I've been able to sort out carpool situations. Basically, it's come to the point where I have men's group Monday night in Burnsville, Burnsville morning prayer on Wednesday mornings, and Chamber Singers on Wednesday nights. This means that I'm gone from home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night of every week, and it will most likely be like this for the rest of the semester. I was feeling a little disappointed about this, until I talked to Dan Reinbold at Nathan and Genevieve's wedding last weekend. He told me that I should be thankful that the Lord has given me the opportunity to sacrifice family for Him. So that was really helpful. For the last month or so, we've been discussing and organizing the start up of a morning prayer at Burnsville. This last Wednesday we had our first one. It went really well. FCA is a Christian high school organization. One of our Action Members has a friend in the this organization. So our guy went to some of their meetings and spread the word of our morning prayer. So on Wednesday morning, we had our morning prayer in the middle of the main hallway of the school. I was playing guitar for it, and as I played songs, I would constantly notice people walking by looking at us. Some of the people who saw us actually came over and joined in! We had about 15 people there who weren't from action. When we asked if anyone had the word of the Lord, one of the FCA members actually gave one, which was sweet. Next weekend, we have a retreat/workday at a farm about 2 hours into the middle of no where. We will be roofing a house and a garage and we'll also be giving several talks. Camping out in 50-60 degree weather on a farm. Yes. The Lord will definitely be moving.

Of cars, school, and whatnot

2007-09-09T20:19:00.001-07:00

Well, I've been meaning to post since my first weekend after school started, but I've been really busy. The first week of school was crazy. The whole week, I struggled with the way our carpool schedule looked. We don't seem to have very many people this year who want to clean, so every week there are at least 3 days where hardly anybody is signed up to clean. Our carpool schedule has no late rides this year, but over the last three weeks, I've been able to work out different things so that Action people from Hastings can clean more.

At our first action meeting this year, we had a lot of words about sacrifice. I think we're already seeing places where people can sacrifice their time for Action. We've had a lot of discussion about what we're up to, and where we're going. We're going to be going to high schools again this year, although I can't say where on this blog. We've got a kickoff this weekend, which I'm excited about. This whole summer, my brother and some other people have been working on a video to sort of show what Action is. It's going to be shown at the kickoff this Saturday. The week before school started, we worked at a Life Care Center in North Minneapolis, tearing stucco off their building. A couple of the people there talked to Pat, asking if it would be possible for us to do projects for them personally. As a result, we're going to be having a work weekend in October out in Willmer. One of the people who talked to Pat needs a new roof on his barn, so we're all going to go out there and have a retreat/work weekend, which I am very excited about. Pat wants some of us to be experienced with roofing, so me, my brother, and two other guys are going to be roofing Don Ferber's barn-like garage on the 22nd. The four of us who are roofing his garage are going out to Willmer this weekend before the kickoff to check out the area and see what kind of tools we'll need and things like that, which is also pretty exciting for me. The Lord is doing a lot with us.

School is going well so far. Doing my homework every night seems pay off in class. Last year, I dropped out of Spanish, and so this year they had to figure something else out for me. Instead of Spanish this year, I'm taking a type of individual studies course. Kind of like an extension of Humane Letters, where I choose a book to read and write essays on and stuff for the semester. I chose a book called On the Incarnation, by St. Athanasius. I haven't started it yet, but I've been told that it's a very hard book to read.

Well, that's all I've got for now. God bless.

Servant Camp, Action work, and a little bit of some other stuff

2007-08-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Servant Camp started a couple weeks ago and ended a week ago last Friday. Servant Camp was great this year. I wasn't in charge of music, but I did do a ton with it. I didn't have my own unit, but I did sleep and eat with the 5th graders. This was pretty fun, because I always love playing around with kids and picking them up and whatever. During the morning, I was considered a camper, not staff. So during the morning, I would participate in the morning program, which is a talk at 9:15, after which, me and the rest of the 12th grade junior staff would get together and have a discussion. After this, the men and women would separate and the women would have the same woman talking to them all week, and the men would have the same man talking to them all week. I don't know who the women had, but we had Carmen Lee speaking to us all week. He basically told us his life story, which was pretty cool. After this every day, the 12th grade junior staff would get together again and have another discussion, and then to go lunch. My afternoons usually were never the same. Since I didn't have a unit, I had no specific duties. So I just spent every day sitting in the staff lounge, playing guitar or learning songs I didn't know very well. It was usually pretty enjoyable for me.

After the closing ceremony on the last night, Phil Gaffney and I decided that the Lord wanted us to stick around in the amphitheater and see if there were people we could pray over, because a couple groups stayed back. We prayed over 3 groups of people, before Phil said to me that he thought our work there was done. I said to him "No...I think the Lord still has something for us to do." So we walked around a bit more and found a sophomore guy sitting alone, and he said he didn't want to be there. We asked if we could pray over him, and he reluctantly said yes. As we were praying, all the rest of the 10th grade guys came over and laid hands on him and started praying over him. We all prayed over each other and sang songs together for the next 2 hours, and it was really great. The Lord really moved in all of us that night.

After Servant Camp, Action Division had a job to do up in North Minneapolis. We had about 17 Action members come. We were all under the impression that our job was to scrape paint off a building that the company who was hired before us did a really bad job doing. Not too long after we got there, did we find out that it was stucco that we had to get off the building. At first, it looked like it would just be an awesome job to do because it would be pure brute force that would be getting the stucco off the walls. Nope. Crowbars, hammers, face masks, and goggles. It was still a lot of fun though. The people who had done the job did a really bad job. The corners were not square by a long shot, there were streaks and lines all over the place. It took us a day and a half to get it all off. The people there were very very appreciative, not to mention surprised that a bunch of high schoolers would come out and actually work. A couple of the adults there asked Pat Murphy if we could do some other jobs for them personally. One guy had a cabin up in Brainard that needs repainting, and another guy had a barn that needs a new roof. Hopefully, we're going to do both of these. At the Action meeting last Tuesday, we found that the Lord has a lot for us to do this year. We want to keep doing missionary work at other high schools, but we also have some volunteer and fundraising work that we're looking at. To my knowledge, the Action Division in this branch has always only focused on one of these things. Last year it was Missionary work, the year before, it was fundraising. This year, it's both. It's going to be a really great year.

Today was all school orientation. I can tell already that this is going to be a very interesting year for school. In the middle of the year, we move to our new school. Everyone is very excited about it. Every single rule that has anything to do with the campus, or where you can and cant go in the school will have to be changed. As Bill Wacker put it, it will present us with an entirely new set of challenges. Apparently, our action room will be about half the size it is now, but I suppose I'm fine with that. My only concern is that we currently use our action room as a study hall for Action members after school. If our new Action room is as small as I expect it to be, we probably wont be able to use it for a study hall. Oh well. I'm very excited for this year, as I have said numerous times now. God bless y'all!

Still goin'

2007-07-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

Since I got home from Allendale, all I've really been doing is reading Harry Potter. We bought the last book the day after it came out, and my sister read it first. I had decided to read the 6th one again, because I hadn't read it in such a long time. It was like I was reading it for the first time, because I had forgotten so much. I then read the 7th book, which is amazing. It is, by far, the best one. I won't talk about the story itself, because I know of several people who will be reading this that have not read it yet. After reading the 7th one, I decided to start again from the beginning, knowing what I now know about Harry's past.

For Servant Camp this year, I am helping out with music. I'm helping out so much, in fact, that music is all I'll be doing for the whole week. I wasn't expecting that, although I'm more than happy to accept what I'm given. I don't know at this point exactly what is going to keep me busy every day, but I'm excited to find out. I love music!

Day 8/Home again

2007-07-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I was put on chores because I had skipped out on Monday since I was sick. I was ok with it, for the most part. It turned out to be a pretty laid back day for me, though I was very tired at the end of the day for some reason. In the middle of the day, my laptop quit working because it randomly stopped seeing the operating system. I knew how to fix it, but I didn't have the resources at the time. Saying goodbye to everyone was a little hard, as always it is when saying goodbye. The trip home was rough and tiring, but the Lord blessed up with cool weather (our air condition quit working on the way to Allendale, and we were never able to get it fixed). We left Allendale at about 9:30 pm on Friday, and got to Trinity at 4:05 pm on Saturday. This is the first time I've come home from Allendale not wishing I was still there. I'm not sure why, but it could be just because I've been there and back so many times, and I know I'll most likely be going back again. Today after church, I'll be going with my dad and brother to dinkytown to go out for lunch with my two older brothers to talk about this camping trip that the 5 of us are planning. It should be good.

So I got the 7th harry potter book last night. Please don't spoil it for me. I wont be able to read it for like 2 or 3 weeks. Thanks. God bless y'all!

Day 8

2007-07-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

This morning, I found out that I wouldn't be working on Yale. This meant that if I needed to lie down, I wouldn't be able to. I spent a lot of time sitting down, rather working because I was so tired. However, I had to go to the store to get something I needed, so that meant I would be able to get an hour or so break. When I came back, it was time for lunch, and I had hardly experienced any pain all day. After lunch, I went back with everyone on my crew and ended up sitting around a little more. I did do some work, like taping the trim. At one point, while I was sitting down, Lula (the woman whose house we're painting) came out and said "I really appreciate y'all's work here. It looks beautiful. Beautiful!". Lunch and end of the day were both an hour early today because of the barbecue. We're setting up at 3:32. So I gotta go now. God bless.

Day 7

2007-07-18T13:21:00.001-07:00

Well, I woke up this morning feeling great. I got to Yale, and as soon as I started working, I started to have intense pain in my stomach every 20 minutes or so. Fortunately, I had my feathers numbered for just such an occasion. I had asked Matt the previous night if he could have me working on Yale, in case I had to go rest. So there were a couple of times during the day when I had to sit down for a little bit, or go inside and lay down. I was able to talk to my dad for a little bit, during one of these times, which was pretty nice. After this, I went outside to help Matt fix the screen door, but he already had someone helping him, and its really just a one man job. So I kinda just...sat around for a little bit until Matt asked me to take some tools and put them away. I then took my shower, which was pretty refreshing (how could it not be refreshing in Allendale?). Overall, my day has been a little bumpy. However, I am excited, as always, for tonight's broadcast. They're doing some crazy technological stuff tonight, apparently. We'll be watching that, once again, in Allendale. God bless.

Day 6

2007-07-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Yep. Sick again. I did no work today. My head and stomach hurt all day, and every once in a while it started feeling like I had just gotten kicked in a place that should never be kicked. However, I was able to relax, listen to some music, and watch my dad's favorite Marx Brother's movie, Animal Crackers. I was blessed to see how many people cared about how I was feeling. Almost everyone I talked to today asked me how I was feeling. At this point, I'm beginning to feel better. I'm not quite sure how I'll sleep tonight, as I did not sleep well last night (monday night). I'm also now sure at this point whether or not I'll be able to work tomorrow (wednesday). I'm going to bed now. God bless.

Day 5 of what would have been work

2007-07-16T13:57:00.001-07:00

Today, I was supposed to be on chores. About 10 minutes before second breakfast, I almost collapsed from exhaustion while I was cleaning the bathroom. After second breakfast, I talk to Anne, and she told me to go lie down until I felt better. I woke up at 1:00 pm, hoping that there was still food leftover from lunch. There wasn't. So I went back to sleep, since I still had a terrible headache. I woke up at about 3:00, and decided to get up, because I had been sleeping all day. Matt Louiselle came into the room before I got up and gave me some ibuprofen. I am now sitting in the kitchen, feeling a little better. All it is at this point is some exhaustion and a bit of a headache. I may have also had a bit of a fever at some point today. Don't worry, Mom, I'll make it. Everybody please pray for me, though. God bless.

Yesterday and today

2007-07-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

So yesterday...I remember it being and interesting day. But now all I remember is that Brad and I worked on the Lattice some more. Today was more interesting, whatever happened yesterday. Brad and I woke up and immediately saw that it was raining. At morning prayer, we prayed for the rain to stop, and when we came out, it had stopped raining, so we all went to work. After second breakfast, it started raining again, and it came back with a vengeance. Matt, at one point, came over to us and told us to stop working, because we were using power tools in the rain. Almost immediately, he saw that we weren't working in the rain, we were right under the roof. So we kept working. We worked until lunch, because by lunch, it started raining so hard that we were getting wet, and people were coming back from painting, not being able to paint. So almost every crew stopped working earlier. I would have kept working, but the makeshift extension cord made out of splitters didn't work. So we got off work at about 1:00 today, which gave us a lot of luxury time. Some of us went on a tour of Allendale, which I've been on several times. This time, however, I learned that Allendale is bigger than I thought, and also that Habitat for Humanity is doing work in Allendale as well as us. After we got back, I burned my hand with some coffee that I was drinking, because I was told that people were waiting for me to help them carry some tables from Dove street. When I got out there, it turned out that they didn't need me. Oh well. More time to write this blog post. We've got Lord's Day tonight, which smells GREAT. I'm excited.

About these posts...

2007-07-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking about my posts from the last 3 days, and to me, it seems like its the same old routine over and over again. My plan was to keep posting like this, but I'm not so sure at this point, how I should be writing my posts. Let me know what you think.

Tonight at Lynch's

2007-07-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

I decided to post tonight, before I go to bed, just because I've found myself doing nothing else at the moment. Tonight, I ate dinner with the Lynch's, along with 8 other people. The dinner was great, we had great conversation afterward. After dinner was over, Jack and I talked for a little bit about computers, which I really love to talk about. I guess I could go into a little more detail, but this would have to be detail about the conversations. This would then require me to stay up for another half hour or so and go into great detail about every thing that we talked about...and i don't remember everything anyway. But it was a great night.

Day 3

2007-07-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

So last night we had the Broadcast, which was great. It was, however, more than just question and answer. Nick and Ellen shared a healing story that had happened to them earlier in the day, which was awesome. Basically, they prayed over a guy at a gas station on the way from Indy to South Bend, because his hip was in a great deal of pain, from when he had gotten out of bed 11 days before. They prayed over him 3 times, and he was completely healed. After the broadcast, Liz Brewer and I had a good conversation. It was mostly me telling her about what Action was doing last year, rather than both of us talking to each other, but it was still good. I always enjoy telling people about those kinds of things. Today was nice because was able to work on Yale, so I didn't have to go anywhere, and plus it was very cool for July...with a breeze. I was still hot and tired all day, but whatever. I was working with Brad Milliren and Bill...from the branch. We recently got a bunch of plants to put in from of the houses, and we had to nail some wood beams into the ground. It was really hard. After this was done, we had to put up the lattice on 1434, which was kind of hard because we had to sit down almost under the house and screw them in at and awkward angle. We used a grinder to cut the lattice sheets, which was kind of cool. Using power tools is always fun. There a lot of things I've been thinking about in my prayer times. Unfortunately, I can't adequately express these thoughts in a blog post. So I won't. At this point, I am looking forward to having dinner with Lynch's tonight.

Day 2

2007-07-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

SO last night, we had a talk from Nathan. Although I've heard variations of this talk several times, it's really good to be reminded of the shape the world is in and that we need to change it. After the talk, I was able to play around a little bit with Chris' new laptop. I've been wanting to play around with Vista for a while, and I now know that the organization of things in folders and stuff is way too different from the XP and 2000 organization for my taste. After the talk, I played a little guitar, after which, I went back to my host family's house (Jack and Theresa Lynch). When I walked in, Jack says "I gotta get back to the den quick, Tori Hunter is up to bat in the All-Star Game." This obviously excited me, being a Twins fan...from Minnesota. So I went in there and watched the game for a few minutes before going to bed. Yesterday, we had been painting a house green with cream trim (try saying that 5 times as fast as you can!!). Today, I was assigned to paint at the same place as yesterday, but today, we ran out of green paint after about an hour. So me, and a couple of the girls on our crew were sent back to Yale to clean some of our brushes and then ask Laura Brummer what we should do next while they stayed and painted the trim. I don't remember exactly what she had us do right then, but at some point during the day, we were given the task of organizing all the wood under 1442...there was a lot of wood. After a couple hours, we finally got it all organized. The are, at the moment, a bunch of potted plants sitting by the street in front of our houses. After we were done with the wood organizing, we placed most of those plants in the places they'll be potted, which really wasn't a whole lot of work...it's just really humid right now. This brought us to 3:00 and I took my shower. I'm really looking forward to tonight's broadcast, which will be all question and answer. It should be interesting and missionary educational.

Day 1

2007-07-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Well, we arrived in Allendale at about 10:00 pm last night. After arriving, the people staying on Yale went into their houses, while everyone else left for their hosts families' houses. I am staying with Jack and Theresa Lynch, who have a really big house. I woke up at 5:20 this morning, very tired, and got prepared for the day by packing up all the stuff I would need for the day like clothes for after the workday, shower stuff, and all that jazz. After breakfast and morning prayer, we had orientation. Nathan, of course, gave the majority of the talk, with David Zimmel, once again gave the part of the talk about jobsite safety. Gretchen gave the talk on hospitality. We had introductions of all 60 or so of us, along with each person saying something interesting about themselves (I said that I've recently been developing an interest in photography). After orientation, we started our workday. I was put on a fix-it crew, painting Rosie's house. While we were painting, me and another guy were asked by another fix-it crew next door for help, putting a window in. This window turned out to be around 250 pounds, pushing it up a ladder. When we got to the top, we found that the space was not big enough to fit the window in. The window was too heavy to take all the way back down, so we ended up having to hold it there for about 10 minutes while the space was widened. It was rough. But we got the job done. By this time, the workday was over and we all cleaned up and came back to Yale, showered, and now I'm here, writing this blog post. I'm thinkin im gonna go socialize with people now. God bless.

At a McDonalds

2007-07-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

So we've been on the road for about 6 hours now. At this point, we might be somewhat lost, but we're finding our way. I found out that theres free wireless at this mcdonalds that we're eating at for breakfast. I havent been getting a whole lot of sleep, but ive been getting by. having left at 2 in the morning, most of us havent been getting much sleep. thats it for now. see ya.

Vacation

2007-07-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am, writing from the north shore of Lake Superior. I am currently in a coffee shop in Lutsen, MN. So far, this vacation has been one of the more relaxing vacations I've ever had. On Tuesday, we got to the Eagle Ridge Resort, where we're staying, at about noon and found out that we couldn't check in until about 4. So we decided to drive up to Grand Marais, to Artists' Point. Artists' point is a rocky shore of Lake Superior, where there are some cliffs about 15 feet high, and are really easy to climb, which is really fun. We spent about 2 hours there, and John and my dad both got a lot of really great pictures. Both of them have been playfully trying to best each other in photography. Of course, my dad, being a professional photographer, easily wins most of the time. It mostly has to do with who is where at what times, and things like that. Yesterday (Wednesday), we went to the Temperance River, and hiked upstream. I tend to get pretty worried when I see a sibling or parent leaning over the side of 30 foot high cliff edges, looming over the raging river. Everybody got annoyed with me because of it. However, the waterfalls and the river were very beautiful. After going to the Temperance River, we went to eat lunch at this little park right on the lake, which was very pleasant, due to perfect temperatures and a great view of the lake. After this, we drove to Grand Marais again to get some groceries and other things. We came back before dinner and had dinner at the resort, and spent the rest of the night there. Today, we went to the Cascade River, which was a lot less rocky then the Temperance River, but much more beautiful. There were a lot of waterfalls, which of course, my dad took many pictures of. At both the Temperance River and the Cascade River, John and my dad sort of battled with photography. We've had a lot of very funny pictures so far, as well as a lot of beautiful and interesting pictures. Right now, I am sitting in a coffee shop, and we're going to go to Grand Marais again. Today was the only day we actually planned on going there, but we've ended up going there every other day. We leave tomorrow morning for home, and I am leaving for Allendale on Monday morning at 2:00 am.

Productive?

2007-06-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been watching a different movie every night before I go to bed. They've all been pretty good, but now I'm down to my last two, and I've got 4 more nights this summer that I'm not gone. During the days, I've been finding myself with a desire to do something productive around the house. We've got a lot of things that need to be done. For example, our whole computer set up and network is based in out dining room, because of a lack of space to put it elsewhere. Now that Joe and John have moved out, we have an extra room available. However, over time, that room has become kind of a storage room. So I've been working to get that room cleared out a little bit so that we can make it a computer room. At this point, I'm kind of at a loss for what else to do around the house...I was thinking about re-reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain, which is an amazing book. However, I lent it to someone a while ago, and they haven't given it back yet. I'll find something to do. God bless.

In Dinkytown

2007-06-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am in Dinkytown for the day. Last night's community meeting was great. Joel Kibler gave a great talk on the things we have heard the Lord saying to us in the last year. Overall, theres not much to report on. I'm mostly just writing to let y'all know that I haven't forgotten about this blog. At the moment, I am sitting in the Annex apartment in Dinkytown with Evan Declercq, who is here shadowing Ben Reinhardt for the Company Summer Institute. Right now, we're just listening to music, occasionally watching a video or two on YouTube or Google Video. So thats pretty much it for now. God bless.

Walmart

2007-06-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I decided that saying all this on my status message on Google Talk would be too long. So here's the deal. I went to Walmart today, and waited around for about 20 minutes before they had me go into the break room to wait another 20 minutes while they figured out where I was in the system. After about 40 minutes of making me wait, he just deciding to just give me the interview for the gardening department. After this interview, they set up an appointment at the clinic for a drug screening. I had signed all the papers and everything, when I remembered that I hadn't told them how much time I need off this summer. The guy interviewing me thought for a few seconds, and then went to ask someone if that would have been ok. Then, he came back and basically said I should forget about the stuff I had just went through and I should just reapply when I come back. It was obvious to me that he wanted to hire me. In fact, he almost gave me the job offer before the drug screening. He also said they'll pretty much just pick up where they left off when I come back. So I've basically got the job, just not until I come back from Allendale. So thats what's goin on with that. I'll talk to y'all later. God bless.

Not much going on...

2007-06-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

My lack of posts lately is due to a lack of things going on. I really haven't been doing much lately, except for the occasional curiosity of something mechanical. I'm trying to start learning python for the summer, but haven't been able to get help from my dad yet. I have been reading a little about it though. This morning, I woke up with a note in my face telling me to call Wal-Mart for a job interview! Praise God! My interview is on Monday at 10:00.

So today, I had my license test scheduled for 2:30. I went to the DMV, and they told me it was actually scheduled for 10:00. So I couldn't take it. However, there is apparently a good chance that I can take it tomorrow if I go to the DMV in Eagan early in the morning. So we'll see. Pray that I can take it and pass it. That's all ive got for now. Talk to y'all later. God bless.

As of late...

2007-05-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the lack of posts recently. The last significant event of Action was the Action weekend about two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend most of it. I was able to attend on Friday night and then I wasn't able to be there on Saturday until the Lord's Day dinner. So I cant say much about the weekend. Since then however,
school has been going well. I am no longer taking Spanish, because we had gone through three teachers with 2 week long stretches in between them where we just didn't do anything, and you cant learn a language like that. So I now have study hall that period, which has helped me immensely to get all my homework done, instead of just half of it.

This summer, I hope to be working...somewhere. Les Miserable is also coming to the Chanhassen Theater this summer, and so a few friends of mine and I are going to go see it! I am very excited about it, partly because the day I see it also happens to be the day before I leave for Allendale in July.

The Action garage sale is next weekend (not this weekend) and we're getting ready for it. People around the branch have (hopefully) been giving us things to sell. Last year, I had signed up to work at 6 in the morning on setting up tables and stuff. I definitely did not enjoy it, mostly because I didn't go to sleep until about 1:00 in the morning the previous night. This year, however, I've signed up for things later in the day like 10:30 to 6:00. So anyway, thats whats been going on with me. I'll talk to y'all later. God bless.

Next Year

2007-04-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

Before I start this next post, I'll start by warning everyone that I've decided not to post more pictures simply because I have none. Sorry guys.

Now that that's out of the way. So before Allendale, I didn't really have getting a job very high on my list of priorities. About a week after I got home, however, I started thinking about next year, and after I graduate. The fact that I would have to start being self-sufficient (at least to a certain extent). I realized that, basically, I'm going to need a job. Obviously, it will be an hourly job. I'm hoping to get one soon, so it would be good if you could pray that that happens.

In thinking about next year, I've also been thinking about the fact that all the seniors this year will be gone next year (obviously). Being underway in Action, I am already considered a leader, but I don't do as much as the underway seniors. I guess I'm just worried that next year, I won't be as good of a leader as some of the seniors this year. Next will be a whole lot different for me. Action will be much different. We want to be able to hit the ground running. The fact is that next year, we probably wont have as many leaders as we do this year. We're all going to have to be 100%.

My concerns about next year, however, do not outweigh my excitement. I've been thinking about how far we've come this year, and it's very exciting thinking about how much we'll do next year, in terms of missionary work. Besides the missionary work, we may even be doing some tough work over the Christmas break. We're not sure yet whether or not it's going to happen, but it's still exciting to think about.

Another thing about next year is college decisions. In my situation, it's not exactly an option for me to go out of state, and because of my grades, its not a likely option to go to a University, so it's looking like a Community college, like my brother joked about all those years ago at a certain community meeting...I'm not sure why I remember this...As it turns out, I would actually much rather go to one community college in particular. I know I want to go into computers...but there is such an incredibly vast amount of things that go into computers that I'm not sure what I'm most interested in. The best thing I've seen so far is the Computer Support and Network Administration. My dad has been helping me with this, so that's been good.

Overall, I'm very excited for next year. I'll talk to y'all later. God bless.

At the Frontlines

2007-04-18T16:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I got back from Allendale on Saturday night somewhere between 11:30 and 12:00. The trip was great. We left the Trinity School parking lot at around 7:36. About 5 minutes after we left, people in the van were already taking pictures. We drove through the night, stopping only a few times. Sleeping conditions were not very good, but what can you expect from a 16 passenger van? I had only one hour of battery life on my laptop, so I decided to wait until I got to that rest stop in Iowa to turn it on. The trip down was around 20 hours or so. I had a chance to rest for a couple hours before dinner, which was great. After dinner, we had our evening session and went to bed. The next day was the first day of work, and it rained for the first two hours of our day. It was raining so hard, in fact, that we didn't work. However, this bit of rain was just enough to soften the clay up enough to be easier to dig, but not unworkable. I dug trenches to make sidewalks for the rest of that day and the next. We were right on schedule to have the cement put in on the third day we worked (Thursday). It just so happened that on Thursday, I would be working at WDMO. On Thursday, David Wind, Abby Earhart, Catherine Ficker, and David Brookman from the Tampa branch, all went to WDMO to do work around the building. David W., Abby, and I all painted part of the building for a little bit, while Catherine and David B. put decal on a box truck.
After painting, David and I organized a semi trailer of doors. It was crazy. I learned a lot about doors. For example: Exterior doors are typically made of aluminum or fiberglass with a styrofoam insulation. It was actually kind of enjoyable. On Friday, we had the same crew at WDMO, and most of us did little jobs here and there, like cleaning up all the wierd garbage on the ground behind the building, and painting a ramp, and basically just cleaning up, making it more organized. We left Allendale at about 5:12am or so on Saturday morning. So that's just a brief overview.

I'll get more detail in now.

So Tuesday night, we had a crawfish dinner with people from the Shreveport Branch. This was pretty fun, except crawfish is, in my opinion, a lot more work than it's worth. And it was cold. But it was still sweet. I wasn't able to bring my guitar along, which was a huge and shocking disappointment. However, I was able to use Tom Duddy's guitar for the week. Great thanks to him for that. I played his guitar almost every night, led dinner prayer twice, and played guitar with Tom on Monday night for the prayer meeting. The meals were great, thanks to Ruthann Seitz. Second breakfast and lunch were always brought to us at WDMO. Second breakfast was always AWESOME. Always some kind of incredible hot dish. One interesting thing that went on was that I stayed in a house that had been built by the People of Praise, sold to a family that already lived in Allendale and now has been put back in the ownership of the People of Praise. So for some reason, we had no hot water. We took cold showers all week. All for the Kingdom! One shower leaked badly out the bottom of the house, so on Wednesday, Bruce Brand, who I was working under, asked me to go figure out why the shower was leaking. So together, we figured out that the pipe was actually completely disconnected from the shower. So I shoved the pipe back up there, wedged it in, but it still leaked a tiny bit. So I'm not sure where that is at this point. But it was cool anyway. One day, this ice cream truck came by, and we all took a break to have ice cream. It was fun. On Friday night, we played two of the absolutely most INCREDIBLE games of mafia Ive ever played!!! We had played so many game of mafia by this point, that everybody knew I was terrible at being the mafia. I always smiled all over the place. So in the very first round, something happened that made me smile, so someone accused me. So because of that, everybody was voting against me. However, I gave a very strong defense, and so hardly anyone voted against me. By the end, it was just me and two other people! The whole game we terribly intense! It was incredibly exhilarating. I loved it.

For those of you who know how to play, I'll explain what the situation was. The doctor and detective were both dead, obviously, so there was no way somebody could save or detect someone. All we had to go on was facial expressions and the way people were acting. So there were two people I had expected to be the mafia. At this point, there were 5 people left. It was so intense that we voted off the detective without even paying attention to his defense. By this time, both Allendale households were watching this, which was apparently very entertaining to watch. I really wish I could articulate it better. It was so awesome!! Hopefully, I'll get a video of it posted here soon, along with some more pictures. On the way home, we played at least 8 hours worth of mafia. I got so good at it. We'll, theres probably more I could say, but this post seems to be getting pretty long. God bless y'all.

on the way down

2007-04-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

9:45. leaving rest stop in iowa. see ya

My Computer

2007-04-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

So about a month ago, my laptop hard drive died. I had spent about the previous 3 or 4 months making it comfortable for me to use, and then it quit working. So because this laptop technically belongs to Trinity, I had to give it to Mr. Stauble so he could figure out if he could fix it. So I gave it to him, and after about 2 weeks, he decided I was right, and my hard drive was only mostly dead. I asked him if he could partition the new hard drive to be two 20 GB partitions so that I could dual boot Fedora Core 6 and Windows. So I got my laptop back, but Mr. Stauble had backed up all my music on a hard drive at Trinity. This presented a problem, because I didn't get my laptop back until 3:20 yesterday, and campus was closing at 3:30. I only had 10 minutes to get 6 GB of music from this hard drive to my laptop. So I had to leave it. This was kind of a bummer, until I realized that my old hard drive was not completely dead. Mr. Stauble had given me the old hard drive, so I just swapped the new with the old and put all that music on an external hard drive here at home. So now I've got all that music back, which is awesome because I'm going to Allendale this next week! I'll probably be writing a massive post about it when I get back. Have a great Easter, y'all! God bless.

Update

2007-03-27T20:39:00.001-07:00

I recently found out that i am definitely going on the Easter Break trip to Allendale! Ever since I left Allendale last summer, I've been wanting to go back SO badly. Allendale is such an incredible place to be. It was there that I received confirmation from the Lord that I should come underway. It is such an amazing place. I can't wait to go back.

Update on the room we've been working on at Millirens: we're almost done! I wish I had pictures, but somebody hasn't sent them to me yet. It's looking pretty sweet. We got the floor down, the room painted, and everything. Mary Reinhardt is painting the words to When Comes the Revolution. As Chris would say, "She's a human stencil!!". But seriously, it looks awesome. I hope to get pictures up on here soon. All we need now is the words finished, and the table we're building done.

A few weeks ago, my laptop hard drive died. I pretty much lost everything on it except for some stuff i was able to save before it completely shut down. I picture it as the scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke is trying to get Vadar out of the Death Star before it blows up. Fortunately, I've been able to use my home computer for blogging and emailing and stuff. The school will be buying me a new hard drive, and because 20 GB is so small now, the smallest and cheapest one they can buy is 40 GB, which is awesome, because 20 GB can be very constricting. Another sweet thing about this is that because I am in the Tutorial, I can't learn programming like the rest of my grade, and I've really wanted to learn for a while. Because of this, I was able to convince the IT guy at Trinity to leave about 30 GB of unpartitioned space on the hard drive for me to install Linux. I'm really excited about this because I always love learning more about computers. A lot of the reason why I want to learn programming is so that I can helper. out with sites like citybuilder.org . So I'm really excited about that.

That's it for this post. God bless y'all.

P.S. If you ever want updates on either of the high school morning prayers we're going to, shoot me an email (I encourage you to do so, whether you know me or not). For security reasons, I'll have to know who are. My email address is summonalexandar@gmail.com. Note: It's summonalexandAr, not summonalexandEr.

Unusual Saturday

2007-03-24T19:41:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a lot different for me than most Saturdays. This morning, as soon as I woke up, I had to take my first behind-the-wheel training session. It was interesting because for some reason, I was expecting my driver's instructor to be criticizing my every move. What actually happened was that we had some cool conversation. At one point, I mentioned that my dad went to Farmington High School, and it just so happens that she went there too. After further conversation, we realized that she knew my aunt! Crazy stuff. I also talked about People of Praise and explained to her a couple things about it. It was sweet to be able to somebody I didn't know very well about it for like an hour. One thing I noticed though was the same thing that always happens when somebody I'm talking to finds out that I'm strong in my faith. The person I'm talking to suddenly feels the need to talk about how they believe in God too. I guess they figure they gotta prove themselves to be "worthy" to talk to or something. Maybe I'm generalizing too much. This is just my experience. It's kind of weird though because I don't really care if the person I'm talking to believes in God or not. I don't ever try to pass judgement. Why would I? It's not for me to judge, it's for God to judge. Well anyway, overall it was a pretty cool experience.

As soon as I got home from that, my dad told me we had to go to Bloomington to pick up a desk for my sister's room. So I was like "Ok, that's cool, I guess." So when we got there, we found that this desk weighed...a LOT of pounds. It hurt a lot to carry this thing, but hey. I like challenges. My dad was afraid it would turn out to be a 3 person job, but we only had me and him. So this was an incredible feat. When we got home, we found a brand new problem. The door to my sister's room is too narrow for this desk. We might have been able to find ways around this problem if it had not been for another problem: the hall was too narrow to angle the desk into the room. We spent about the next 2 hours trying to figure out if we could take the desk apart, how to do it, etc. We finally decided it was impossible. We only bought this thing for like 20 bucks anyway. Some office was desperate to get rid of it. It's actually a pretty nice desk, other than the fact that it weighs a freaking ton. I remember thinking at about 1:30 that, strangely, I wasn't at all frustrated about anything that had happened thus far. I was also surprised to see that by the time we put the desk out on the porch to leave it there until some other time we attempt to get it into the room, it was only about 2:00. This was after driving 2 hours in incredibly thick fog all around Hastings, driving to Bloomgington and back, and driving to and from Ace Hardware several times. I'd say we made good time.

After this, my brother and I made a fire. The law requires that you have to have a hose ready in case of emergency. A couple years ago, the pipe in our basement broke open and water sprayed everywhere in the laundry room. My dad fixed it pretty well, but I guess it wasn't good enough. I made the mistake of leaving the hose on after having the fire. See, when water freezes, it expands. During the winter, the pipes for the hose freeze, and it expands the pipes and can break them. You don't actually know if they broke unless you look at them before turning on the hose, or you can find out by just turning the hose on. I chose the latter, not realizing this little fact about the pipes, and our basement flooded about 1 inch. We spent the next couple of hours clearing out all the wet boxes in our storage room down there and vacuuming up water.

It was a very packed Saturday. One cool thing about today was that I found out that that strangely shaped gray box thats been sitting on my porch for about a year is actually a computer! It doesn't look like a computer, though. Another computer to play around with. So all in all, it was an interestingly unusual Saturday. God bless y'all.

Work of the Lord

2007-03-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all
I recently started writing a post about how I haven't been hearing the Lord and I'm getting all frustrated about how I know He is calling me to something huge, but I cant figure out what it is. After a few days, I realized that it wasn't true anymore that i didn't know what it was. I figured out that I'm already doing this huge thing. This post was start about two weeks ago. Last week, at the Wednesday morning prayer at the highschool we've been going to, Chris Milliren and I were prayer walking and I heard him praying that the Lord would bring people to talk to us. Well, at that moment, a thought came into my head saying something like, "What if we went to people and talked to them instead of them coming to us?" Chris and I spent the next couple of minutes trying to figure out what this would look like. After a few minutes, Chris saw a kid sitting alone at a table. He went over there alone, thinking that if we both went over there, it would seem kind of intimidating to this kid. As soon as he introduced himself, another guy sat down at the table. So I figured i should probably go over there and help him out. When i got over there, we started talking a little bit. After an awkward silence, I asked him "What do you see when you look at this school as a whole?" he replied, "Cocain...drug addiction...i dunno." Chris said "And you dont think thats bad?" he replied, "well if it doesnt affect me, why should i care?". At this point, we were at a loss for what else to say. So we said goodbye. It was very obvious the whole time that these two guys were trying as hard as they could not to laugh their heads off at us.
Anyway, after praying about this, I realized that this is what the Lord wants me to be doing. Ever since then, I've been really wanting to do it again! And again! Getting rejected is going to be common. So what? It can't shake us! "Blessed are they who are presecuted for Christ's sake; for their's is the Kingdom of Heaven." God bless ya'll.

Holograms could replace computer monitors in the future

2007-03-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

I was just looking at Dan Ficker's blog and one of his recent post was very interesting. It's about some kind of product that projects three dimensional objects. This was kind of ironic, as i had just been thinking the other day about how three dimensional projections like on Star Wars would be nearly impossible to create, because it's impossible to project light and make it stop after going a certain distance. Its really exciting to see this kind of thing. I could very well have misunderstood some things about what it is, exactly, but the official website of the product doesnt give much information as to how it works, or even what it is exactly. The Wikipedia site gives fascinating information about how it works and what you can do with it.

From two weekends ago

2007-03-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

The week before last, we had Mid-Winter Break. "Mid-winter" is basically just an excuse for us to have a break for no particular reason. It was really nice to have a break. On the first day, i downloaded Audacity which is a free open source sound editor. I had a couple music files that contained more than one song in each. I spent the whole first day of my break splitting up these songs into their very own files. It was actually pretty cool to use. I've also used it to record some things I've played on guitar, or sung...with my voice. So that was pretty sweet.
The next couple of days were spent mostly working on the room at Millirens' house. On Friday, I went over to Dinkytown to spend the weekend with the households there. It was an awesome weekend. Friday, i was able to go out for coffee with my brother, John, who i hadn't been able to have a good conversation with in a while. After getting back to the house, i hung out until Lord's day, which was AWESOME. The food was really great, we had awesome conversation. After this, all the guys in the Dinkytown households went to a park and played ice soccer. While we were playing, we were in the middle of a huge snow storm, so we were playing in the snow...on the ice. It was sweet. It went from normal soccer to just tackling the guy with the ball. We then came back, ate dessert, and went back to the park again, only this time, with the women. This, of course, meant no tackling. By the time we were done, my pants were completely crusted in ice below the knees and my shoes and socks were 100% soaked all the way through. It was an awesome night.
I had school only for two days this last week because Monday i took off because of the pain in my neck fron ice soccer. I went to school Tuesday and Wednesday, but due to another big snow storm, didnt have school Thrusday and Friday. On Friday, I once again went to work on Millirens basement, but instead ended up snowmobiling and watching The Return of the King. My brother and I stayed so late, in fact, that we slept over and just worked on the room in the morning. Chris and I went to Joe Murphy's championship tournament, which he won 1st in (w00t w00t!!!). It was his 200th win, his second time winning (he won 1st last year also) and also his last match in his highschool career. Micah Olson won 6th in state, and Joe Bulger was in the top 12 in state. After this, we decided to go to the last 's Varsity basketball game. They suffered defeat, but played an awesome season. On Sunday, we had an action meeting, at which we heard a talk from Peter Putzier about personal testimonies. He gave us a general outline of what a personal testimony should look like. After this, we each took about 30 minutes to write our own testimonies. I had no problem with this, as my last post on this blog was exactly that. I am excited to see what the future holds. I think the Lord is preparing all of us for something big. I am praying the He will make His will clear to us and that all of us will be completely on board with it. Glory!

Growing up in the People of Praise

2007-02-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

I grew up in the Servant branch. Our branch is divided into 8 or 9 areas. I live in the East Area, which includes the towns of Hastings, MN and Prescott, WI. The years from 3rd to 6th grade arethe first years I remember being involved in the People of Praise. I was in Boys of Praise and attended Servant Camp every year. Servant camp was and is the highlight of my summers. Kids from grades 3rd to 10th are campers, with people from juniors and seniors in high school are Junior counselors and anyone older are staff. Servant Camp is a great place to form relationships. It is an incredible experience to be able to camp with young kids and older men and women from all over the People of Praise. Boys of Praise only goes to 6th grade, so when I came into Trinity as a 7th grader, I really had no kind of support in keeping my relationship with the Lord.

I was put in the Tutorial program at Trinity, which is separate from the normal curriculum. Those who do not pass the entrance exam are placed in this program. In 7th grade, there was one other person from my class, and a guy from the grade above me. We became friends quickly, but one thing was missing: the Lord. None of us liked the People of Praise. We would always sit in the back row at meetings. Our parents never looked down on any of us for not liking People of Praise. In fact, they would always be trying to help us become more involved in the worship. None of us appreciated this, however. Somewhere along the line, we ended up breaking a few laws, which cost us 200 hours of community service, 75 bucks each and our relationships. Our friendships were never the same after that. What each of us had with our friends' parents was almost completely destroyed. It seemed to me that I was the only one who actually learned anything from it. It was around this time that I began to become interested in what my brothers were getting into: Action Division.

Over the next year or two, I noticed my oldest brother, Joe, and his class. These guys were the most pumped up for the revolution than I have seen since then. I saw the life they had together and the relationships they had. It was evident to me that they had something I lacked: the Lord. However, I did not know this at the time. This was in the school year of 2004-2005. I still hung out with my other two friends in tutorial, but I started to gain an interest in the meetings. We would be sitting in the back just talking about stuff, but I would find myself singing along occasionally. Eventually, I started to actually feel restrained by my friends. What would they think if I were to actually like those meetings?

So I kept doing what I was doing, until 9th grade. At Servant Camp before 9th grade, I met Collin Anderson and Dan Reinbold. These guys were in my brother Joe's grade. I got to know both of them at Servant Camp, which was awesome. I was really happy to actually know a couple guys in that class, because at this point, I really looked up to them. When school started, I found that one of my friends in tutorial had become fed up with Trinity and left. He was the only person I ever hung out with during school in 7th and 8th grade. This made me depressed, but because of this, I got to know Collin and Dan a ton more. Every day at lunch, I got a small glimpse of their life, and it was awesome. I grew more and more eager to learn about Action Division. I saw more of Joe's love for the Lord when he invited me to a Friday Night Meeting, which was basically a small scale Community meeting, but focused more on worship. It was such a great meeting. On the way home, Joe asked my friend, Nick Raway, and me what we thought about baptism in the Holy Spirit. I had heard this term once before, but the picture i had in my head about it was a bunch of people praying over someone and water being shot down from heaven on this person being prayed over. I obviously knew next to nothing about it. Joe talked about his experience of being baptized in the Spirit. This was one thing that really inspired me. By that summer, I was thinking hard about joining Action. I really wanted to join. Servant Camp that year was a truly miraculous week. I saw the Lord working everywhere.

Every day that week, our group went off the campground for some kind of sweet activity like sailing or canoeing. There is a sweet story about the canoe trip, but for your sake, I wont go into that now. Ask me about it if you want to know. Anyway, I had several awesome conversations with Pat Ficker, who was my head counselor about how I wanted to be able to praise God, and to be able to love Him more than anything. I just could not figure out how to do get this kind of fulfillment. At the closing ceremony, we were singing songs, praising God. The problem for me was that I felt like there was a limit to how much I could praise Him. Like there was a cap on it or
something. After the closing ceremony, there was an opportunity for people to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I truly desired this. More than anything. So I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. My life completely changed. I had an incredible desire to begin something like a regular prayer meeting. If you look at the archives of this blog from late august and early September 2005, you might find a post or two about this. I gained an incredibly real love for the Lord. My relationship with Him became more real than ever. I was able to think more deeply about things. It was not actually until several months later that I was able to speak in tongues.

The Sunday after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, we had a community meeting, at which, my brother John told me I could start coming to Action Meetings. So I started going to Action Meetings, and it was around this time that I started to understand what we mean by "the revolution". It started becoming very real to me, especially through talks we had. My brother John also helped with this, even though he probably does not know it. I saw how eager he always was to learn new songs written by people in the People if Praise. And also by his coming underway. It was really cool to see how eager he was to be involved and also how willing he was to teach me new songs on the guitar. This might not sound like much, but it was one of the things that really inspired me to come underway. In about December 2005, I began thinking about coming underway. I thought about it a ton. In about April 2006, I decided to talk to Joel Kibler about coming underway. I knew that you could not actually come underway until you were a junior, but I decided to take my chances.

I met with Joel, he told me to read the Spirit and Purpose of the People of Praise. So I read it, and met with him again. He told me that after praying about it, he felt that I should wait until August to come underway. That Easter break, I went to Allendale. It was such an awesome experience. I will not get into my experience now, but ask me about it if you want to. That summer, I went to Allendale
again. Once again, I wont get into it, but you can ask me about it if you want to. After Allendale, I went straight to South Bend, IN, where my brother was for the summer. I met up with my family there, and we were staying with a family from the branch there. It was such an incredible blessing to stay with them. I had heard a lot about the hospitality of other branches and how going to another branch of
the People of Praise you feel like you are right at home with them. I was able to experience this, staying with a couple there for about 3 days. On August 3rd, I came underway. My experiences since then have been absolutely great. Men's group is awesome. Headship is awesome. I think because of the length of this post, I wont talk about anything else between then and now. If you've gotten this far, that's awesome, and I thank you for that. God bless.

Action projects

2007-01-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all! So for the last month and a half or so, we've been working on several different projects in Action Division. One project is to make a song book so that we could use it at prayer meetings. Its sort of supposed to be mostly songs that would describe our life, not necissarily songs that are meant to be sung by a whole group of people. I am im charge of putting this together. At the meeting last sunday, i had previously made copies of all the songs i had that i thought should go into it. I made six copies of each song, because there were to be 6 groups of people looking through them and deciding which ones they thought should or shouldnt go in and they would also write down suggestions of other songs that could go into it. So i am currently going through suggestions, deciding and praying about which songs to go into it and which songs to leave out.
One other project one is a series of computer programming sessions. I personally would have loved to go through this series, but alas. I live 30 miles away from it. It would be too hard for me to get there. I havent heard anything about how its going, but i have a hunch that its going pretty well.

Another project is preparing rooms at the Horan's house and the Milliren's house for us to use as study rooms, party rooms, whatever. Tons of work has been put into both of these rooms. Theyll both have pictures of Allendale, pictures of work we've done on Action weekends and workdays. The purpose of these rooms is for us, as brother and sisters in Christ, to become closer to each other, and to form stronger relationships with each other.

The room being done at Millirens still needed to be completely sheetrocked and floored. Lots of people have been going over there every weekend since break ended, and during break, people were over there almost every day after new year's. At this point, we have done some sanding, but only until we found out that we shouldnt be sanding until after all the mudding is done. One day, we spent and entire evening sanding. The only place we really had to sand was the ceiling, and it was nearly impossible to do without getting it in your eyes, so we wore goggles. As of right now, the room looks pretty good, except for a few places that still need mud. Another group/project is the Tutoring committee. They are working to orgranize people who can tutor others, using these two rooms as places for people to be regularly, and also will be setting up meetings with people who come to them to be tutored. The last group is the committee in charge of keeping these rooms filled with food. So a couple groups revolve around the rooms, so obviously these rooms are our biggest projects right now.
So i think thats all ive got for now. I'll talk to y'all later! God bless!

This Week

2007-01-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

Second semester at Trinity started this week. This means I have a couple of new classes, Scripture and Spanish. On Tuesday, the first day of class, it hit me that sometimes people do not want to join the People of Praise because their impression is that we ignore denominational differences. It occured to me that the fact that Trinity puts a bunch of Catholics and Protestants in a room together to discuss scripture demonstrates that the People of Praise does not ignore denominational differences, but discusses them. Now spanish...I never wanted to take Spanish. Last semester, Mr. Beskar told us that Mr. Hendrickson, despite the fact that he is a genius, could not get the teachers and classes to sync with ours, because of the fact that tutorial is on such a different schedule. So Mr. Beskar gave us a choice to have Spanish, or an Ancient Philosophy class. I wanted more than anything to take the philosophy course, but everyone else wanted to take Spanish. I am sure I will get over it though.

Lately, in Action, we have been going to morning prayer at Eastview High School and Hastings High School. After some conversations we decided we did not want to change the way they do things, but show them how we do it, and see what they think. We had a retreat/pentecost seminar a few weeks ago, and one girl who goes to Hastings morning prayer came. She really loved it. We had an extremely powerful prayer meeting. During the prayer meeting the leader, Mike Wacker, would pause the meeting and explain why we were doing what we were doing. She loved it and now she wants their morning prayer to be like that as well. This is why we want to show everyone else the way we have morning prayer. So this last Wednesday, we went to morning prayer at the Hastings High School, and did morning prayer the way we do it. With permission, of course. As far as I know, they all liked it. Well, I got to get back to homework. God bless.

Project Week

2007-01-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well, this last week was project week. Because i am a junior, i was supposed to write a 10-12 page paper on any world event since 1940. I chose the fall of the Soviet Union, because i had always found it an interesting subject, but didn't know that much about it. On Monday, i woke up, immediately realizing the enormous project i had before me. After eating breakfast, i began reading, foolishly not taking notes on anything. Although i found what i read interesting, i had no real desire to begin writing. So, naturally, i put it off until the next day. I started writing, but everything i was writing was coming from an extremely dense book about the entire history of the Soviet Union. My paper was to consist of several different parts. part one was supposed to be about two pages long about the beginning of the Soviet Union. Basically everything up to Gorbachev, who was the last ruler of the Soviet Union. This was all supposed to be condensed into two pages?? And then one ruler was supposed to take up the other 10 pages? I had no idea how i could possibly do it, especially seeing as how i hadn't even gotten to Stalin, the second leader and i had already written two pages. I talked to my mom, and she wanted me to meet with my teacher, and talk to her about it. She told me that what i had written so far was too condensed, and too detailed, so i either had to cut some out to make it shorter, or start over. Well, i read it through and realized that there was no way i could cut some parts out and still have it all make sense. So i had to start over on Wednesday. But, every since Thursday, its been going very well. I think the only reason i was able to get it all done was because there were several people praying for me. Without those prayers, i would have gotten far more frustrated than i ever got, and i probably wouldn't have been able to stay concentrated. The most fascinating thing i realized in writing this paper was that in less than one century, a new country was formed, became a world super power and collapsed. This country was based on principals thought of by Karl Marx. Communism was what he called it. Vladimir Lenin began the Soviet Union based on Marx's ideas. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union showed the world how much Communism does not work. China and North Korea obviously haven't realized it yet, but yeah. so this project was sweet. this post might be a little boring, but hopefully you've gotten all the way through it. I am going to go to bed now. Talk to y'all later. God bless.

Renewal of the Blog

2007-01-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Well, this blog has been idle for about a year now. I used to just use this thing for "fun", but it got old after a little while, so i stopped using it. At this point, I've become more mature, especially in my relationship with the Lord. After going to Allendale twice, its been hard to keep up with the friends I met there. Extremely hard. so im going to be using this blog mostly for keeping people up to date on my life, things going on in Action, etc. I know a lot of campus division people might like to hear about whats going on in Action. So anyway, here we go. God bless ya'll.

Happy Daylight Saving Time Everyone

2005-10-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

Of course, daylight saving time just ended, but its still nice to get an extra hour of sleep and have more light in the morning and have it warmer too. anyway p. bush wants to extend daylight saving time starting in 2007 a couple weeks longer. i dont think its worth messing up all these clocks in computers. do we really want another y2k? i mean that last one was disastorus. also i think indiana reciently decided to accept daylight saving time. dont quote me on that though. to the real question is, when im posting this, has daylight saving time ended yet? theres no way to tell.

Vending machine prices at Trinity

2005-10-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

Ok so the prices in the vending machine at Trinity suck now because they raised them to like a ton of money. Candy bars and skittles and stuff were all raised to 65 cents! chips were all raised to 50 cents. Except the Fritos, they were left at 35 cents because nobody buys them. But they also have some new stuff too, like beef jerky, which is a frickin dollar! same with a dumb sports bar. They also raised the pop to 60 cents. Who the heck carries 60 cents?! everyone carries 50 cents - 2 quarters! Nobody carries 2 quarters and a dime! And with the candy - who carries 2 quarters, a dime, and a nickle? Its so inconvenient! So, because of this, some people are bringing in their own candy to sell at the REAL prices. yeah thats right. Take THAT Trinity.

kinda cool

2005-10-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

ok so right now im connected to the internet via a laptop with a cell phone modem. so theoreticly i could be riding in a car and actually stay connected to the internet. its sweet. its not the best speed its about 25kb/s but its faster than dialup. but like if you were driving in a car using "wifi", once you find a wireless router, its gone in like 10 seconds which is not enough time to do anything. but this is sweet.

Hunderd somethingth nominated supreme court judge

2005-10-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Well it doesn't look like theres any getting out of it this time. Bush announced on Sunday that he has nominated a "friend of the family for 10 years." I dunno, that sounds an awful lot like cronyism to me. But liberals, they pinprick. They were looking around for anything in his speech that might possibly show faults. They found a fualt pretty easily, but when they found it they were probably like, "HEY!!! THATS CRONYISM!!! HE CANT DO THAT!!!!" But when i found it i was just like, "uh-oh. this might not be too good for Bush."

Car Crash

2005-10-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

At around 6:00 tonight, Mike Ryan, Mike Zimmel, and David Wind were driving home from soccer, when they crashed into a bus. Immediatly, they were rushed to the hospital, all unconcious. At this point, Mike Ryan is at home, with a few cuts and bruises. David Wind is in intensive care, due to spinal injuries. Mike Zimmel is in an induced coma because of severe head and neck injuries. The next 5 hours are critical to his survival. At this point, he is on a fine line between life and . Please pray that God will send them and their families his blessings and heal all of them, especially David Wind and Mike Zimmel.

turns out andy might be right about rita...

2005-09-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

well origionaly i was talking to andy about rita and he was saying that it was expected to be a cat-3 hurricane. and im like, "weeeakk..." but now they say its a cat-5, and when i hear cat-5 i only think of two things: network cable and the worst type of storm possible. its not going to be as bad as katrina, because theres no city thats 10 feet below sea level that i know of that this will hit. but still. it also might die down a little before it hits texas also. but texas could use a little water.

Action!

2005-09-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

crap its been a while. ive got a lot of stuff going on im so busy. school, homework, cleaning, guitar, committee meetings...man im a busy guy. but anyway, New Orleans is pretty much un-flooded. i know thats a little pathetic for news, but i cant really think straight anymore. all because of school...oh yeah, you cross country guys. my apologies for that DUUUMB comment in the changing room. all those who dont know: i came into the guys changing room to clean the tables and then saw all the crap they had on the tables and im like, "ok guys get your stuff off the tables cuz i gotta clean them!" and then a coupla guys gave me a look like "who do you think you are? get out of here you idiot!" so sorry about that. Im on three committees for action and i also have to get together a clean up crew to clean up after the Action Kick-off on October 2nd. thats OCTOBER 2nd. thats the second of october. at brickwegs. thats the BRICKWEGS. get it down and come to it! except for those of you who are--ahem--younger than sophmore. For those of you who can come *cough*trevorjohnson*cough* its at the Brickwegs at 6pm-8pm. come to it. itll be awesome. one of the committees im on is making the slideshow for the kick off. its gonna rock man. i mean guys. so yeah. come to it. its gonna be sweet. 6pm-8pm. Brickwegs. Sunday, october 2nd.

Wow. That's... interesting.

2005-09-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

This is one of the stranger explanations for the hurricane that I have heard.
I did a report on this guy in 6th grade, so it's kind of interesting for me to see what he's thinking currently. Actually it's really wierd.
Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment's research center, published an article titled "The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah, But Not an Adherent of Al-Qaeda."(1) the Aug. 31 edition of the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa. Following are excerpts:
"...As I watched the horrible sights of this wondrous storm, I was reminded of the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah [in the compilations] of Al-Bukhari and Abu Daoud. The Hadith says: 'The wind is of the wind of Allah, it comes from mercy or for the sake of torment. When you see it, do not curse it, [but rather] ask Allah for the good that is in it, and ask Allah for shelter from its evil.'
"When the satellite channels reported on the scope of the terrifying destruction in America [caused by] this wind, I was reminded of the words of [Prophet Muhammad]: 'The wind sends torment to one group of people, and sends mercy to others.' I do not think — and only Allah [really] knows — that this wind, which completely wiped out American cities in these days, is a wind of mercy and blessing. It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire.
"But I began to ask myself: Doesn't this country [the U.S.] claim to aspire to establish justice, freedom, and equality amongst the people? Isn't this country claiming that everything it did in Afghanistan and Iraq was for truth and justice? How can it be that these American claims are untrue, when we see how good prevails in the streets of Afghanistan, and how it became an oasis of security with America's entrance there? How can these American claims in the matter of Iraq be untrue, when we see that Iraq has become the most tranquil and secure country in the world?"
"But how strange it is that after all the tremendous American achievements for the sake of humanity, these mighty winds come and evilly rip [America's] cities to shreds? Have the storms joined the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization?
"How sad I am for America. Here it is, poor thing, trying with all its might to lower oil prices which have reached heights unprecedented in all history. Along with America's phenomenal efforts to lower the price of oil in order to salvage its declining economy and its currency — that is still falling due to the 'smart' policy America is implementing in the world — comes this storm, the fruit of Allah's planning, so that [the price of] a barrel of oil will increase further still. By Allah, this is not schadenfreude.
"Oh honored gentlemen, I began to read about these winds, and I was surprised to discover that the American websites that are translated [into Arabic] are talking about the fact that that the storm Katrina is the fifth equatorial storm to strike Florida this year... and that a large part of the U.S. is subject every year to many storms that extract [a price of] dead, and completely destroy property. I said, Allah be praised, until when will these successive catastrophes strike them?
"But before I went to sleep, I opened the Koran and began to read in Surat Al-R'ad ['The Thunder' chapter], and stopped at these words [of Allah]: 'The disaster will keep striking the unbelievers for what they have done, or it will strike areas close to their territory, until the promise of Allah comes to pass, for, verily, Allah will not fail in His promise.' [Koran 13:31]."
Wierd, right?

Affects of the Hurricane

2005-08-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well, i dont what hit you guys in the head to make you think this, but somehow you had the idea that New Orleans didnt have as bad damage as it would have if the hurricane had hit head on. This is simply not true. Just because the eye didnt go through the city itself, doesnt mean there wasnt as much damage as there could have been. Youre right, Theresa, it is a big city. Ya know how much of that big city is underwater? 80%. Sea creatures have actually enterted the city as if its part of the gulf. A shark was seen swimming down what used to be the main highway. The Super Dome, which, by the way, is supposed to be able to stand winds up to 200 mph, had a whole layer of its roof torn off! They are actually considering evacuating the city permanently and leaving the city up to nature. You cannot possibly tell me that the damage wasnt as bad as it could have been.

I haven't even begun on Mississippi! Every single casino in Biloxi was literally carried by the wind. Every single one ripped from its foundation and carried. Some landed in the middle of the highway, some landed on the beach. There wasnt as much flooding in Biloxi, but there wasnt one building standing within 2 miles of the beach. The only one i saw standing was a K-Mart. But all that was left of it was the pillars and the roof. no walls or anything inside except pillars.

Ya know whats worst about this whole thing? Three of our P.O.P. branches happened to be located in the three cities that were hit the worst. New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile. These were all hit the hardest in the hurracane. the deth toll in Biloxi is over 100. Same in New Orleans. I havent heard about Mobile, yet, though.

Hurracane Katrina

2005-08-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

ok guys, this 'cane will be pretty destrucaive and horeabel by the time it hits our branch in New Orleans. When it hits, it will be a catagory 5 hurracane and by Monday, the city is predicted to be submerged under 10 feet of water. By the time the eye hits New Orleans, the entire state will be covered in the storm. this means it will hit Allendale. Most of those houses are almost ready to fall down even without the storm. We know a lot of people down there, some of wich had plans for coming up here on tuesday. All we can do is pray, guys.

Prayer Meeting Agenda

2005-08-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

ok, i have decided to take down an actual agenda of what the prayer meetings will be. So first, my brother will open with the song Hallelujah. and then i will tell a scripture verse and then tell about why im doing the prayer meetings and stuff. and then maybe tell about my experience with what the lord has done with me and then open the stand or whatever ill have and let other people talk about the same. then, maybe another song or two maybe even three and then have a prayer time. maybe like split up into groups and just pray. if any of you have any ideas whatsoever please tell me. and then close with a song and then probly just hang out for a little bit or something and have refreshments and stuff. also, theresa, i need to know if we can use your house. me and peggy and bridget talked on the phone and decided to have them probly on sundays. just email me, or just comment with your thoughts on this.

NWA Strike Useless?

2005-08-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Some news reporters took a trip to NWA airport to interview customers. Lots of people didnt even know about the strike! Either the people on strike need to strike better, or just stop because all its doing is wasting time for them. It's buisness as usual at the airport even with the strike. When people were asked what they thought about the strike, some of them just paused for a little bit and said, "Well this is the first ive heard of it." So it doesnt really look like the strike is doing much. One porblem did occur, though, in Chicago. Before a plane took off, they realized that one of the front wheels was, mysteriouisly, completely flat and ruined. It was supposed to be a 15 minute delay, but quickly turned into a 30 minute delay. But, customers waited patiently, some still ignorant of the strike. But, in other places, they havent encountered any major problems with the replacement workers.

Breaking News: Gmail is Awesome

2005-08-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

This just in: Gmail is an awesome method for having email. whether you are new to email or sick of all the ads in yahoo/hotmail/juno gmail is the way to go. take it from me, ive been using gmail for over a year now, (its only been out for a year and half) and its awesome. anyone who uses gmail will tell you, the forever expanding 2.5gb of space isnt the best part about gmail. sure gmail gives you another gigabyte of space every year, but who cares? the nice parts of gmail are the simple design, no image ads, fast speeds (even for broadband), and the way it organizes email with the conversation method. this conversatin view turns out to be extremely nice. its hard to explain and you really dont see how usefull it is until you actually use it, but its quite possibly the best part of gmail. like outlook? you can use gmail with outlook.

the first time i saw gmail was when my sister got it and showed it to me. she got an invite from a friend. i later got an invite from that friend too. as soon as i could, i invited dan reinbold who inturn invited joe bowar and mike walker. i also invited charlie griffith, tj ryan, trevor, and kevin daly. andy got his invite from dan ficker.
anyway for more info you can take the tour or ask andy or i to send you an invite.

Prayer Meeting Time

2005-08-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Well, i have decided that this will never get done if i dont do this. I have decided that the prayer meeting will take place this week. im still not sure what day this week but yeah. this week. everyone needs to tell me if they can do it this week, and if so, when would be the best time? morning, afternoon, or night? just tell me when. all of you. im also going to be calling some people too. anyway yeah. just tell me. if it doesnt work for any of you or almost none of you, then i guess ill have to change it to the week after that or something. i know its a big week with school starting and all, but yeah.

Gaza Evacuations Moving faster Than Expected

2005-08-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Protestors have finally agreed to leave peacfully, but request to be carried or led out as a symbolic protest. 85% of protestors have been evacuated, police said. It was unclear how many protesters who had entered Gaza in advance of the pullout remained.
The pullout -- an emotional turning point for Israelis -- is scheduled to resume on Sunday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon first unveiled the plan in December 2003.

Palestinians hail pullout

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Friday told a cheering crowd that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza was "the fruits of sacrifices" of Palestinians.
"My brothers, we are living these days in historical joy, a great joy, with the dismantling of settlements out of the Gaza Strip," he said. "This exit of the settlers is the result of sacrifices of our people, the patience of our people ... and the wisdom of our people." Palestinian leaders long criticized Sharon's disengagement plan, saying it was wrong for Israel to take such a step unilaterally rather than through negotiations. Recently, Palestinian leaders have expressed high hopes for the plan. He said the most important task for Palestinians now is to build a successful, productive society in Gaza "so it will become a of civilization for the rest of the world."

Residents cooperate

Evacuations began Wednesday and were expected to last up to three weeks. Officials now say if it proceeds at its current pace, it could be completed by Monday or Tuesday. After Gadid, four settlements remain to be evacuated. Most of Gadid's residents, about 350, had left on their own, officials said. About six families were thought to remain, but by Friday afternoon they had either left or were in the process of doing so. Arriving troops found the settlement's main gate -- intended to shield residents from Palestinian militants -- locked, and tires and other objects in flames. At one point on Friday, some protesters who had perched themselves on the roof of a synagogue came under fire from Palestinian militants. The Israeli Cabinet still needs to approve the evacuation of three other settlements in northern Gaza, but most residents there have left of their own accord, police said. The Cabinet is expected to approve the evacuation of those settlements along with those in the northern West Bank on Sunday. In the first four days of the disengagement, some 4,000 people have been evacuated, Hartman said. Israel has controlled Gaza, a 140-square-mile piece of coastal land between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israeli settlements there housed fewer than 9,000 settlers, amid a Palestinian population of 1.3 million. The evacuations of all 21 settlements in Gaza and four small areas of the West Bank are an effort to restart the peace process with Palestinians. The pullout is the largest peacetime operation in Israel's military history.

Chemicals thrown on police
Operations in some settlements were easier than in others.
In the Kfar Darom settlement on Thursday, several police officers were lightly burned when protesters threw a substance believed to be paint thinner mixed with water and other chemicals on them. The officers were also pelted with glue, dirt, plants, paint , water bottles, fruit and other objects, said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the Israeli military's Southern Command. Police responded with water cannons and used cargo containers lifted by cranes to place officers and soldiers on the roof of the settlement's synagogue, where the protesters had sought refuge. "It was not very good for us," said Sgt. Yossi Attias, an Israeli border police officer who took part in the operation. "We got on the roof, and they tried to get on top of the roof to take care of the people there, and then they started to throw paint and oil and all of the things they had there." Spokeswoman Hartman called the situation "heartbreaking. There were a huge amount of troops who were ... overwhelmed."
"The young people and the families and the elderly people who were there, who refused to leave, especially around the synagogue -- it was a very difficult scene," she said. "They were throwing paintballs and yelling at the betrayal. But the soldiers were amazing in their tenacity." In Gaza's largest settlement, Neve Dekalim, hundreds of mostly young, ultra-religious demonstrators chided troops with chants of "Jews don't expel Jews!" as they were carried out of a synagogue they had refused to leave.

Psychologists on hand

At least two soldiers had refused orders and joined the protests, Harel said, but added those cases were "blown up in the media."
"It's very painful to have an 18-year-old soldier clear out a 17-year-old gi rl who he might know from school or from childhood. It's very difficult. But they were very strong yesterday." Palestinians have been barred from the evacuated areas until all the people and their possessions have been removed, and Harel said troops and soldiers had remained behind to prevent looting. Settlers were offered compensation packages ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 per family, but those who remained beyond a Monday line and a 48-hour grace period stand to lose up to a third of their amount.

Change once again and hopefully the last

2005-08-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

I changed the name of the blog again. i was kinda thinkning that bowing to me is a little much. So i changed it to a house of power. power over this blog, that is. but im not power hungry, like sam is. dont worry he jokes about it too. anyway....yeah....

Prayer Meetings

2005-08-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, Andy, I have some questions about these things:
1. How frequent will they be and how long?
2. Have you found other possibilities for locations, or is my house the only option?
3. What is the age-span that you were thinking of?
4. What kind of a format would you like (as in praise and worship time, talks, sharings, etc.)?
5. Would they be open to people other than those at Trinity, or people at Trinity at all?
You don't have to answer all of these right away, as I know that this is still in the processes of becoming something. These actually aren't all my questions, jsut ones that my parents asked me that I dodnt' know the exact answers to. Thanks!

Israeli Troop Invade Synagogue

2005-08-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

The action came after hours of unsuccessful negotiations with religious leaders inside the synagogue. After giving a 10-minute warning, thousands of police and soldiers began forcibly picking up and carrying the mostly young, ultra-religious demonstrators out of the synagogue, as protesters chanted "Jews don't expel Jews!"
Before entering the synagogue, soldiers poured sand and dirt on a ramp that protesters had covered in oil. Then troops rushed into the building.
Demonstrators outside the synagogue wrapped their arms around metal railings to try to impede their removal. Inside the synagogue, protesters packed a central sanctuary, filling up the pews, aisles and floor space, chanting and clapping.
As troops and police struggled to unlock the protesters' arms and take them out, water was thrown in their faces and other demonstrators hit their arms and pushed them. Authorities cut electricity to the synagogue during the evacuation, silencing a speaker system on which protest leaders exhorted those inside to stand firm and not leave. The majority of the protesters are not residents of Neve Dekalim, which was founded in the 1980s and is the largest of the 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza.
More than half of the Gaza settlements were cleared by Thursday, Israeli officials said, as part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan to reinvigorate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some settlers don't wish to leave because they believe Gaza is part of the traditional Jewish homeland. Other secular Israelis say they believe the move rewards ists and will lead to more attacks from Palestinian militant groups. Raanan Gissin, senior adviser to Sharon, said the evacuations were going better than expected, despite some pockets of resistance.
"Everyone can respect their right to demonstrate, but they have no right to violate the law," Gissin said.

Kfar Darom standoff

Israeli forces on Thursday also entered a synagogue in the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom where about 200 resisters inside were refusing to leave. Authorities used a water cannon to spray protesters on the synagogue's razor-wire lined rooftop. Demonstrators had launched paint and other projectiles at police below.
Israeli troops and police broke through the synagogue's doors using a special device and began removing furniture that had been piled up against the entrance.
Two cranes positioned on each side of the synagogue stood ready to hoist boxcar containers to the roof. They will presumably be used to hold protesters.
"These are the more difficult evacuations," Israel Defense Forces Capt. Yael Hartman said, referring to Kfar Darom and Neve Dekalim.
Going into synagogues, she said, is "traumatic" for the troops. "Many of our soldiers are religious, and it's very difficult for them to conceive of the idea of going into a religious building and trying to pull those people out ... but this is what we must do. It's for their safety and the soldiers' safety that it happen as quickly and efficiently as possible." Also in Kfar Darom, the IDF said it had begun evacuating a religious s' school. Kfar Darom is a settlement of about 500 people that was founded as a religious community in 1970. About 300 settlers remain there.
Holding a child in the streets of the settlement Thursday, Ahuva Weis said she had traveled from Jerusalem to demonstrate against the pullout. "I am so heartbroken that the saddest and most infamous chapter of history is being written here," Weis said. "Never has it happened before that Jewish people would throw their own out of their homes." The Israeli military also said evacuation of Gan Or and Shirat Hayam settlements in Gaza had begun. Officials at a ministerial committee meeting said that evacuations at the current pace will be completed by Monday or Tuesday, sources said Thursday. About 70 percent of residents have been evacuated, sources said.
Israeli security officials told Sharon on Thursday that 12 of Gaza's 21 settlements had been evacuated. That's about 1,050 families of the 1,530 families who live in Gaza and four small settlements in the West Bank, the security officials said in a briefing to ministers. Israeli officials said seven settlements were to be evacuated on Thursday, and it's hoped that the evacuations under way now will be concluded by sundown Friday -- the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. The removals will resume at the end of the Sabbath at sundown Saturday.

Wednesday

Although reports of have been few, an Israeli man who ferried Palestinian workers to and from the West bank settlement of Shilo opened fire in a vehicle Wednesday, two of his passengers before running into an industrial area, another Palestinian and wounding two more. Israeli medical sources said one of those wounded died overnight, bringing the toll to four. Sharon condemned the attack, calling the gunman a "Jewish ist" and saying his actions stemmed from the "warped thought that out of this action, the disengagement could be brought to a halt." Near the empty Gaza settlement of Morag, a Palestinian mortar shell landed harmlessly, the IDF said. No one was injured. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack in retaliation for the West Bank . The Israeli government is evacuating all 9,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza and four small areas of the West Bank -- along with the Israeli soldiers who guard them, in the largest peacetime operation in Israel's history. A month after the evacuations, Israel is to hand over to Palestinian control the area it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. Settlers who chose to remain after the line -- which was Monday, although they were given a 48-hour grace period -- stand to lose up to a third of their compensation package, which ranges from $250,000 to $500,000 per family. Gaza, a 140-square-mile area of coastal land between Israel and the Mediterranean, also is home to about 1.3 million Palestinians.

Pole

2005-08-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

ok, im to lazy at the moment to make a pole on my website, so we shall do the plan b method. who votes the bowars should get rid of their filter?

Sweet mountain website

2005-08-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

This http://www.summitpost.org is an awesome site for those of you that find mountains awesome. You can find any info on almost any mountain in the world, including photos and stuff. It's sweet.

My Awesome Week at Servent Camp

2005-08-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well now its time for me to tell everyone about my week. Here goes. On Monday the group and me went sailing. This was probly one of the coolest things i have done in the last few years because the guy who owned the boat and was doing stuff was really excited to have us there and he always was really excited to answer all our questions about sailing no matter how stupid they were. Plus, I was able to steer the boat and change the sail from port to starboard as we turned around. We spent 7 hours in Lake City that day. When we weren’t sailing, we walked around the town. It was me, David fasbender, Sarah Adam, matt smith, Paul brummer, Ben fossen, and Emily (I don’t know her last name dang it). So we walked to a gas station and got some ice cream and then to a grocery store. Just to keep in mind, matt smith and Paul brummer had chugging contests all week long whenever they could. So in the grocery store, Sarah Adam bought them two bottles of pure lemon juice. Matt and Paul chugged them down within 1 min. 88 servings down the hatch. Their stomachs hurt for a while after that.

The next day we went on a rocking AWESOME overnight canoe trip. The canoeing itself ROCKED. At one point in the river the water was only an inch deep so we all raced across the sandbar dragging our canoes. We were always trying to ram each other hard enough to swamp them (of course we all wanted to swamp them eventually so everyone was prepared). At one point almost everyone's canoe was swamped. This happened to be the deepest part of the whole river. So we all took the canoes to the shore to empty them. Eventually, it was just our four canoes that were really late. So we just took it easy getting back. We strapped all of the canoes together with our life jackets and made up and sweet beat. When we were really close to the docks, we played it with our ores. Some of the beats were higher than others and some people were singing to it. It was awesome. That day pretty much went downhill from there. After we got the canoes back to the trailer, Joe Bugler lead us down a gravel road. Keep in mind that most of us were barefooted, myself included. So we went down that road for a while and eventually we got to a really really steep long path that lead up a bluff. For some reason we went up that hill. At the end of the trail, we came to a straight up and down rock wall. We climbed up that and climbed over a fence when we got up there. That’s when I realized we were outside the camp. But none of us wanted to go all the way back down barefooted, so we took a right down a paved road and eventually the fence ended. There we thought it was time to get off of the road and go into someone's yard. Micah thought we should stay on the road. I thought this too, but as I didn’t know that he was going to, I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to be left alone. Micah stayed on the main road while the rest of us went through this guy's yard. As we were walking through his yard, he came out with no pants on and told us how to get back inside the camp. So we went back in and had to go through a forest for a long long ways before we heard Jim analla's voice calling for us. He was with the others, and they were all lost too. So we climbed back over the fence and went down the road the opposite way that we went before still wondering what had happened to Micah. Eventually we found the gate back into the camp and the while way back, I was praying to God really really hard that Micah would find his way back and would be safe. When we got back, I saw that Micah was there and I hugged him so hard he couldn’t breathe. Later, I found out that Micah had been there for 2 hours with Mr. Ficker and they were getting worried about us and sent out the scouts of the camp to find us. That night we all stayed up late talking and having a good time.

The next day was also a good day because of the talk in the morning. I don’t remember if it was Joel or the women who gave us the talk, but either way, it was very inspirational. In the afternoon, we all got to finally have showers. After that, everyone felt good. Except for me. I got into a fistfight with some jerk and took a punch to the neck. I was told later on by that person that he was thinking about punching me in the Adam’s apple. But the rest of the day was pretty good because of the skit and coffee house. By the way, I was wondering what everyone thought of my group's skit? It was the one with lido mosquito. Anyway, the guy's night at coffee house rocked because anyone was able to just go up there and tell a joke or sing a song or anything. It was lots of fun.

The next day, our group and the gir ls got to go on a campout. I liked it most because we all got to get to know the gir ls better and make some new friends. I also taught a few of the gir ls how to throw a football and the ruled at it. Later, some of us went to play Frisbee golf and then it started raining really hard. I seriously looked like I had just come out of a pool. But that was really really fun. When we came back and got on some dry clothes, we went down to the closing ceremony and were late because we were going to go down in a van but couldn’t find the van keys. So, with Mr. ficker ahead of us, we all went down. On the way down, there was 7 or 8 of us who got way ahead of the whole group, myself included. So when we heard the cheering as Mr. ficker rounded the corner, we decided to charge down the hill in full glory and make an awesome entrance. The closing ceremony was really really great. There were a lot of inspirational things said. During the singing, I was so touched by the Lord, that I just felt like I couldn’t get enough of him. It was such a great experience for me. At embers, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. That night, there was really a lot of friendship forming and almost everybody came out of it a new person, i would say. I was truly touched by the Lord.

Hello everybody...

2005-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

So camp rocked... my group had a sweet year. It was a super unifying week. I had like 14 water fights with different people which was sweet... I don't think there was a single afternoon activity that I didn't get wet during. We had sweet counselors too... they all graduated from high school within the last 3 years. I did manage to sprain my wrist and twist my ankle and break my toe though... well my toe was broken before camp... and my ankle pretty much got healed on like the second day of camp... and my wrist really didn't hurt until coffee house last night... actually I did it by playing foosball with Phil which was stupid... so I guess I was okay during camp but now it all hurts again... bummer. Sorry I didn't mean to complain. I'm done. CAMP ROCKED! WHOOO! I hope camp was awesome for those of you that went and for those of you that didn't (Collin) I hope you had fun at home. Wait... weren't you coming to coffee house last night? Whatever. This is kind of a funny post... it's like random but not because I'm staying on the basic subject of camp. Yeah.

Liberals are DUUUUUUUUUUUUUMB

2005-08-07T00:59:00.000-07:00

anyway, i just wanted to mock andy for my first post.

and fix the time zone already! are we in europe?

go ahead you can laugh all you want! i got my philosophy.

well this is good bye for now

2005-08-06T22:19:00.000-07:00

ok well, i, the administrator, am leaving for almost a week to go to camp. theresa is going too(no we are NOT together!). i am leaving collin in charge(not that he will have any more power than he has now). so collin you can post anything you want while im gone, but i dont see any point to it, as you and mike and charlie are the only people staying bhind who actually do the blogs. good bye until friday.

Japanese remember Hiroshima

2005-08-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

The Japanese city of Hiroshima is marking the anniversary of the moment an atomic bomb exploded above the city 60 years ago.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is attending the annual commemoration in the city's Peace Park, at the epicentre of the blast.
Around 140,000 people were killed by the bomb and its aftermath.
Many commentators believe the attack helped bring an early end to World War II in the Pacific. Thousands of people thronged into Hiroshima's Peace Park to remember the moment the bomb exploded in the skies above the city, at 0815 on the morning of 6 August, 1945.
Nicknamed "Little Boy", it generated a wave of heat which reached 4,000C (7,200F) and expanded across a radius of 4.5km (2.8 miles), obliterating the city.
Water for the dead
Mr Koizumi said that after the bomb, the city had relentlessly pursued peace.
The dome was one of the few buildings to survive the blast
"The citizens of Hiroshima are the witness of global peace, we hope that Hiroshima will continue to be the symbol of global peace," he said.
Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, led an estimated 50,000 in a moment of silence, 60 years on from the instant the blast struck the city.
He said respect for victims of war demanded abolition of all nuclear weapons.
"We have to pay due tribute to all the souls claimed by the atomic bomb," Mr Akiba said. "We will not make the same mistake again".
A huge metal bell has tolled in memory of the victims.
Children dressed in black and white, the colours of mourning, laid wreathes of flowers at a simple, arch-shaped memorial.
Ladles of water were also offered for those who suffered the atomic heat.
Today, Hiroshima is a bustling, modern city, much like any other in Japan.
Monuments commemorate the losses this city suffered when the atomic bomb exploded.
But 6 August is not a holiday in Hiroshima. The cars and trams in the roads nearby are not stopping to mark the occasion.
The BBC's Chris Hogg in Hiroshima says that those who survived the atomic bomb prefer to mark the anniversary quietly at home, if at all.

THE ATTACK ON HIROSHIMA
0812 local time, 6 August 1945:1. American B-29 bomber 'Enola Gay' approaches Hiroshima at an altitude of about 9,357 metres, and begins its bombing run2. At 0815 it releases the atomic bomb 'Little Boy'3. The aircraft then performs a sharp, 155 degree right turn and dives an estimated 518 metres4. The bomb explodes with a force of 13 kilotons at a height of approximately 576 metres above the city5. About a minute later the first shock wave, travelling at about 335 metres per second, hits the aircraft.

fine.

2005-08-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

hmmm... let's focus on Russia today...
Fears grow for air supply to Russia mini-sub crew
By Oleg ShchedrovReutersFriday, August 5, 2005; 10:47 AM
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian military raced against time on Friday to rescue seven sailors trapped on a stranded mini-submarine 190 meters (623 feet) down in Russia's Pacific waters with enough air to last less than 24 hours.
The AS-28 mini-submarine, itself a rescue vessel, ran into trouble on Thursday when its propeller got entangled in fishing nets during a military exercise off the Kamchatka peninsula.
More than 30 hours after the mini-submarine snagged on the Pacific sea floor, two Russian ships were sweeping the sea bed in an effort to cut through a cable from a fishing net that had ensnared the propeller.
"The sailors have enough air to keep them running for around 22 hours," chief naval spokesman Igor Dygalo was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency. "I hope there will be enough time for the rescue operation to succeed."
Though much smaller in scale, the accident had uncomfortable echoes of the disaster involving the Kursk nuclear submarine almost exactly five years ago.
All 118 seamen on the Kursk died in the accident in August 2000 in the Arctic Barents Sea that occurred after explosions on board.
Earlier, Dygalo had said there was a five-day supply of air and an adequate amount of food and water on board while, in a conflicting report, the Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Viktor Dmitriyev, said there was only enough air for two days.
INTERNATIONAL HELP COMING
Russia, which said it had 10 ships engaged in the rescue effort, asked the United States, Japan and Britain for help.
A spokesman for Japan's Defense Agency said four military vessels had been sent to join the rescue operation. But he said it would take three to four days for them to reach the site of the accident.
Dygalo said in televised comments that Britain would airlift emergency equipment, but its plane was unlikely to reach the site before Saturday. A U.S. navy plane had been sent to San Diego naval base to pick up a Scorpio, an unmanned underwater rescue vehicle, and deliver it to the site of the rescue operation, he said. He added later that it would take at least 13 hours for the Scorpio to be delivered to the site.
After the Kursk disaster, Russian navy command faced strong public criticism for being too slow to appeal for foreign help.
"Pending the arrival of reinforcements, a plan is being drafted relying on our own resources," Dygalo told NTV television. "This plan can be put into action within next five hours."
Dygalo said the crew of the submarine was safe and was told to switch to minimal energy consumption pending the release.
At 190 meters (623 feet), the AS-28, a 13-meter-long (43 feet) vessel capable of diving to depths of 1,000 meters (3,281 feet), was too far down to allow the crew to evacuate.
"The operation will continue non-stop until a result is reached," Dygalo said.
Bird flu spreads in Russia, may be in Kazakhstan
By Dmitry Solovyov and Aleksandras BudrysReutersFriday, August 5, 2005; 11:05 AM
ALMATY/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Bird flu has been officially confirmed in two more Russian regions, and the disease may also be spreading in Northern Kazakhstan, officials said on Friday.
Health officials fear that a subtype of bird flu dangerous to humans may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival or exceed the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 20-40 million people worldwide at the end of World War One.
The presence of the highly pathogenic H5N1 subtype that can cause disease in humans has so far only been confirmed in one Russian region, Novosibirsk. But four other Siberian regions have been confirmed to have some sort of bird flu virus.
Russia's Agriculture ministry said on Friday the disease had been confirmed in wildfowl in two locations in the Kurgan region and in one in the Omsk region. Bird flu has already been confirmed in the Altai and Tyumen regions.
The ministry statement said the virus found in Kurgan and Omsk did not appear to be highly pathogenic.
H5N1 bird flu has killed more than 50 people in Asia since late 2003, mostly in Vietnam. Bird flu has also led to the death of 140 million birds at a cost running to billions of dollars.
Russia has culled over 10,000 domestic birds in the last few days to stop the virus spreading, the emergencies ministry said.
The ministry said in a statement no new deaths had occurred among wildfowl and domestic poultry on Thursday in the Altai, Tyumen and Omsk regions.
However, 139 birds were found dead in Novosibirsk region.
Senior veterinary officials in neighboring Kazakhstan have confirmed bird flu has broken out in the Pavlodar region, bordering Novosibirsk.
Officials there said it was premature to say whether the Pavlodar outbreak was dangerous to humans.
But a disease with similar symptoms is already killing birds in neighboring regions.
Some 364 hens have died in a village in the eastern Kazakh region, while 37 wild ducks have been found dead at the Vinogradovka lake in the Akmola region, the Kazakh Emergencies Ministry said on its official Web site www.emer.kz.
It said sanitary and veterinary controls were being heightened to contain the spread of the disease, while in Akmola 70 hens and 30 ducks living on private farms that may have been in contact with wild ducks had been destroyed.
And by the way Andy, I'm not sure that I like this title. It should be "Bow to the Bowar and Bulge to the Bulger. " Wait... never mind.

2005-08-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Why doesnt anybody comment? :(

Another Niger hunger update

2005-08-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Mothers who left their homes at dawn to trek to the village of Yama northeast of the capital swelled a crowd of expectant faces to more than 1,000 by the time aid workers began handing out biscuits and flour from a stock designed for 500 people. Women lining up patiently to recive biscuts and flour for the weakest childeren. Once word spread that there would be food to feed 500 in the villlage of Yama, women left their farms to get food for their starving children. Eventually, more and more distributions of food will be given to those most hungry and weakest. They have only begun to reach a fraction of the millions who will die within weeks if they are not reached soon. I imagine that Women always must keep their children close at all times to make sure that they do not die. The U.S. government says that they have spent $13.74 million on fighting hunger in Niger this year. In Rome, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had raised its appeal for its Niger operation to $57.6 million from a previous appeal of $16 million -- now met by donors -- reflecting the raised costs of emergency relief. So it isnt like nobody is doing anything about this is it? The U.N. emergency food agency said it could have intervened earlier and reduced the price of dealing with the crisis had it received earlier responses to appeals. Under an operation that has expanded several times in the past few weeks, WFP is aiming to feed 2.5 million people in southern Niger, where locusts and drought ravaged crops. British aid agency Oxfam warned that the crisis in Niger should not obscure wider shortages in West Africa, where Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso also face hunger.

Cool.

2005-08-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

I guess this means that I'm a member of two blogs now. Niiiice. I'll get better articles on this later, but for now, this will have to do. NYPD Officials Reveal Details Of London Bombing
POSTED: 6:46 pm EDT August 3, 2005
UPDATED: 8:06 pm EDT August 3, 2005
NEW YORK -- The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off.
Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged on Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders.
The briefing -- based partly on information obtained by NYPD detectives who were dispatched to London to monitor the investigation -- was part of a program designed to encourage more vigilance by private security at large hotels, Wall Street firms, storage facilities and other companies.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly warned the materials and methods used in the London attack were easily adaptable to New York.
"Initially it was thought that perhaps the materials were high-end military explosives that were smuggled, but it turns out not to be the case," Kelly said. "It's more like these terrorists went to a hardware store or some beauty supply store."
The NYPD officials said investigators believe the bombers used a peroxide-based explosive called HMDT, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. HMDT can be made using ordinary ingredients like hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach), citric acid (a common food preservative) and heat tablets (sometimes used by the military for cooking).
HMDT degrades at room temperature, so the bombers preserved it in a way that offered an early warning sign, said Michael Sheehan, deputy commissioner of counterterrorism at the nation's largest police department.
"In the flophouse where this was built in Leeds, they had commercial grade refrigerators to keep the materials cool," Sheehan said, describing the setup as "an indicator of a problem."
Among the other details cited by the NYPD officials:
-- The bombers transported the explosives in beverage coolers tucked in the backs of two cars to the outskirts of London.
-- Investigators believe the three bombs that exploded in the subway were detonated by cell phones that had alarms set to 8:50 a.m.
-- Similar "explosive compounds" were used in the attempted attack in London on July 21. However, the detonators were hand-activated, not timed.
Sheehan said the NYPD was troubled by information it had received about the bombers' links to "organizations," but he did not name any groups.
"We know those same types of organizations that they're affiliated with are very much present in New York City," he said. "That's something we're studying very, very carefully. ... This could happen here."
After the briefing, police spokesman Paul Browne said the department had clearance from British authorities to present the information about the July 7 attack, which killed 52 people.
The session at police headquarters in lower Manhattan was attended by officials from police departments and law enforcement agencies in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and other jurisdictions. The officials were in the city discussing plans to beef up security along Amtrak's New York-Washington route.

War of the blogs

2005-08-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

Back in the early days of the CCS people used to talk about politics. Now a lot of it is just side comments and stuff. Out of the CCS spawned two major blogs. Prescott Hick and Evil Kumquats. Prescott hick was like a break room or somthing for the CCS. When someone was kicked off of Prescott Hick, a battle of anger ensued not long afterwards between the two blogs. Rage between them tore apart friendships. The CCS meanwhile was detiriorating due to lack of insightful comments and, well, comments in general. Even one member of the blog (i wont say who) admits that the CCS is not going very well at all. I say we should look into the past and find out what started all this. This stupid dearabby person came and went like a disease. It was actually like i thought it would be! I thought that this person just goes from blog to blog destroying as it goes. well this person began at the CCS. it somehow made its way to Prescott Hick and pretty much destroyed that blog and now two blogs are against each other, and one great great blog is going down. Well personally, I have HAD it! We are all mad at each other, taking sides, and being stupid, throwing insutling comments at one another. No more guys. i know this seems kinda corny, but its true. I think this post could just as easily make things worse as make things better. i dont know why, but i just have that feeling. Plus, its all getting kinda boring anyway. I keep posting stuff about world ews and nobody is commenting on anything, so its just kind of boring but im gonna keep doing it anyway. Well, thats it from me for now. I hope nobody gets mad at me for posting this, and if they do, please dont do anything to me. For example: peggy, dont kick me off your blog if you get mad at me. good bye for now.

Air France jet

2005-08-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

wow. an Air France jet was about to take off in Toronto, Canada when it just skidded off of the runway and blew up. all passengers survived. Click here for CNN version. Click here for MSNBC version.

Iraqi Women

2005-08-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Women have been meeting with us ambassadors asking for women rights like in the U.S. I think its remarkable how much Iraq has evolved over such a short period of time. our invasion there proved that we are so powerful that even with the most infectious of viruses(so to speak), we can easily wipe it out in 2 years or so. MAN we are a powerful country. We should do that to China. Only instead of only wiping out the government, we should just destroy the whole country. for more on the Iraqi women's rights click

here

2005-08-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

It looks like people are responding to the famine. Click here to see and update on the Niger hunger crisis.

Al-Qaida blamed

2005-08-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Not much is said about this in an artical i recently read, but there was an Al-Qaida ing in Jakarta. I had the impression that the ing was recently, but it was last year. It was an attack on an Australian embassy in Jakrata, the capital of Indonisia. Australia was targeted because of its support for America. They claim that Australia is always most actave in conspiracies against muslims. The boming costed $7,600, which the Al-Qaida is paying for. Read more about it here.

Communist party's grip on China

2005-08-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Well it seems as though this could be the beginning of the end of the communist party in China.

Famine near the Sahara

2005-07-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

The U.N. is urging countries help Niger with an outbreak of diseases cutting across the country. This began last year, when drought and loucusts swept the world's poorest nations wiping out crops. 3.6 million childeren will die of hunger and disease if they are not helped.

Cholera has taken the lives of 5 people out of 49 people who have been diagnosed with the sickness. The famine only worsens the sickness. People weakened by malnutrition are more likely to die sooner than others. Hundreds have died already.

In other news, The India deth toll has reached 1,000. Read more about it here

Bowar Photography

2005-07-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

As you can see, i have put a link on the blog to my dad's website, at which you can look at or buy pictures from school events like track and basketball and soccer and commencment and much much more! Its like a free advertisment! Hey Trevor! That could be the first advertisment on your blog! Of course, you would probly want money for it, wouldnt you?...oh well...

The high horse British

2005-07-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

Have any of you ever wondered about the british translation of our words? Things like the bathroom. The British say "the loo". They also call dessert "afters". i suppose this makes sense, as dessert is meant to be eaten after the meal. One wierd one is when we say "from back to front" they just say "backsyfore". Wierd huh? The wierdest one i have ever seen, though is what we call a person's mouth, THEY call a cake hole. Cake hole! Why do they call it THAT?! I don't know if i'll ever understand their language. Click here for more on the British language.

Peggy's blog and the behavior of others...

2005-07-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Well, i have just come from peggy's blog and i noticed that i am not welcome there anymore due to the excessive amount of dislike shown towards me. My brother, david, has shown no sympathy towards the matter and i have forthwith decided not to go to peggy's blog anymore. However, the people of that blog are certainly welcome here. David has been deleting my comments and being highly stubborn and possesive. i hope that he will not comment on my blog things that i would get angry at him for. also, david dont tell me for the thousandth time that i dont type the way i talk. i dont think very many people do type the way they talk anyway. i also still need help with my links.

2005-07-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

Well, i have recently deleted two comments, one of which was someone signed on as me, and another was the same person saying that not even i think my blog is good. i am SO enraged right now that i can't think of anything good to post besides this. Let me just say this: if you are going to comment somehting stupid or insulting, dont comment at all. hopefully, im going to be getting contributors soon.

The reopening of the blog

2005-07-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

Well, i have decided to reopen my blog and have decided to ask that when you come here, leave a comment on this post, so that i know weather or not people are coming here. i would like this blog to become as good as peggy's or sam's.

2005-07-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

I' m sorry everyone who looks at this blog, but i can't think up interesting things to talk about on my own, plus nobody comments, so what is the point of even saying anything interesting on here if no one will look at it? If you want interesting conversations go to the Cross Country Syndicate.

People these days....

2005-07-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ya know, i really dont like all those people who believe that society and the ecosystem are going bad. Actually i shouldn't say that. I don't like what they believe. Lots of people think that what others believe has actually become who they are. Thats why people fight other people because of what they believe in. What I think though is that what people believe has become like a wall in front of who they really are. I guess i might have trailed off a little bit. It's kinda of hard to explain my thoughts. I look at it and see that its a little disorganized...but theres a look into my mind for ya.