Quick Update

Hi. I havn't updated for a while. I've started some but they were so big they were lost before finished. I'm back at Central. I'll be doing some supply preaching this semester. I'm taking a few classes and looking for a job in Illinois near Heather. We are still planning on getting married in June, so a job soon would be nice.

I might post some pictures from my internship later. Love you all. Talk to you soon.

The Pictures

Wow, its a been a while. Went to camp. Twice. Got to see Heather. All my friends are getting married. Met people my age. Preached. Teaching alot. Started a new program called Lyric. It is going sort of well. Had a Movie Night. Finally learning names. Rawr Here are the pictures. Oh and now I have no hair. :)


Jacob Serving Drinks

Joe Our Guitar Man

Jacob and Leah discussing a human pyramid

This is Kathy (The lady)

The View is always great

The Kids are cute!

This is George the Minister. He is in camp mode.

JJ working at camp.

Check our under my left eye. I hit a girl.... actually it was a water slide accident.
This is what happens to people when kids give to missions.

The Year

It is officially only one year until Heather and I get married. The church has been reserved. Oh my goodness. Only 366 days to finish my internship, finish my schooling, and find a job.... near Heather. Oh my. Oh well. That which needs to get done gets done. So all that will too. Rawr!

My internship is going well. Most of my time I spend in the basement of Arza's house. Today I started planning a new program. A simple teen worship service. No bells. No whistles. As much of a public place as we can manage, as much of a band as we can round up. Worshiping God figureing out who this Jesus Christ is and what is this Christianity He started.

Hello to all the good people at NGCC who just found out about my blog. I miss you all. I pray that the youth of NGCC will grow spiritually and in numbers. It is my hope that you can find the leadership for the youth you need. It may be closer than you think. It may be you.

I've started playing my bass again. It seems everytime I go back to playing it I learn something new. I've finally gotten the pat of worship songs yay! Gotten.... is that a word? Anyway I hope that we will have a sound system for the teen worship program. Then I can put it to good use. Heather comforts me: "Time will tell"

I was able to hang out with the kids some more this past week. Its been 2 weeks since I've been here. I went to camp and saw 3 of the kids. Went to a baseball game to see a couple more. I went and saw 2 of the boys and we did a slideshow together. Finally, I went to the diner where one girl works and ate some onion rings there. I'm alot happier that I just got to see them. I threw out one of my lessons at the last moment on sunday. I didn't like the one in the book, so I went off of that theme. I did the same lesson on wednessday. There was a skit a girl and I did and she wore my grey hoodie. So as I was welcoming everyone I pretended I smelled something nasty. So I sniffed around till I got to her. So I told her to take off that hoodie and put on this nice red jacket. I left the room and she took off the red jacket and put back on the hoodie. I came back and was shocked at what she did. Why would you put back on that nasty thing? Why when we are clothed with Christ do we sometimes put back on the disgusting clothes of sin?

May God hear our prayers and smell a sweat fregrance. 

The Couple

So Shane and Beth got married yesterday. So Julia and I went and attended. I was very nice. I did alot more than I expected which was nothing. I ended up playing music, serving communion, running sound, buying cables and taking 325 pictures or so. In the end it was really fun.

They look so good together.

Anyway I also preached today. That went well. Their stage was alot higher than New Galilee's so I was afraid I would get altitude sickness and tumble down over the comunion table.

My internship is going good. I'm getting my work done, enjoying my time here. I still miss Heather way much, but I get to see her soon. Yay! I can't wait.

Oh well I have a meeting tomorrow morning so I will see you all laters. 

The Internship

This is Arza, the man I'm staying with this summer. He's the kind of guy that impresses Mr. Pelfrey. He's written volumes and volumes of lessons, historical documents, and devotionals. Right now he's working on 365 lessons for the year. Each day he writes a lesson or two hes about 23 days ahead of schedual right now. He estimates it will take him over 600 hours to get them all done. Its really nice to be able to spend time with a guy who spends his time thinking about Biblical things. While he has no formal training in such scholarly things, he continually dives deeper into what he does not know. He said something today that I nearly did, "The more I learn the less I know". I've thought this alot about what I study. I'm glad to be near someone like this. Unfortunatly, he is also very keen at rummy. :)

My internship is going good. Though sometimes I feel like I'm wasting some of my time. I'm making photo copies and writing lessons and doing lessons, but I wish I could be doing a little more. I kinda just want to hang out with the kids some. Not to be cool and get on their good side or anything, but just to get to know them and be a role model. Anyway I'll be talking to Kathy about that some. Anyway I'm starting on a lesson plan through James. I'm still on the intro. I think I need to introduce the idea of the canon to the kids. I doubt they've ever even thought about where the Bible came from. It will be a good lesson. I actually wrote a program for VBS... yes an actual computer program. You see I am incharge of the point system for VBS to encourage the kids to show up bring their Bibles and to do their memory work. But I thought if we just add up the figures then wouldn't larger classes do better than smaller classes? So I created a formula so that the kids would gain points based on their potential rather than their shear numbers. In order to do this with half a dozen classes in about five minutes it was clear that something was needed. Thus the VBS Point System Calculator was born. It is written in Python and it took me two evenings to write, but I think it will be worth it when the time comes. If nothing else it gave me something to do on my day off. :) I think thats it, I'm going to KC with Julia to Shane and Beth's wedding. Bachelor party!!!..... which means coke and fries!! Bye all I miss you. 

The Yellow House on top of the Hill

So as you have read I'm in Ravenwood, and if you can figure it out the internet works. It took 3 days- 2 call for help people, one online person, 2 people coming and personally working and finally me doing a system restore on my laptop for it to finally work. But here I am.

The place where I am staying is on the corner of Hawk and Nelson. Ironically there is a Christian band called Hawk Nelson. Tight huh? Anyway they set me up with the entire basement to myself. My own bathroom office, bedroom, private enterance. Its nice. The hard part is getting back from meetings and such for supper and dinner.

I'm not too busy yet. So far I've only met the people at Sheridan, had a few discussions with Arza (the man I'm staying with), been to St. Joe and seen the hospitals, went to a meeting for VBS, set up internet, unpacked some of my stuff, took picturs of Kids for VBS, hung out with kids, met a million people, planned for my lesson sunday night, worked on the passports for vbs, made a movie for sunday night, and made a trip to walmart. Can't escape that walmart :)

There is a girl up here with me, she is working for the children's ranch this summer. She is also from Central. It is nice to have a familiar face. Most of the people I talk to every day are twice my age or atleast 4 years younger. My closest friend here is Arza, he is 79, my next closest is probably Kathy's granddaughter she is 5. She is pistol, but she is fun.

I got to see Heather on webcam. That is a highlight. I miss her so much. I can't wait to see her, to hug her, to speak to her in person.

I hope everything goes well over at NGCC. Expecially for MEDIC. Those kids really need some way to make their Christianity work. To see that its not some stories seperated from reality, but the way to live. The youth programs need some help, I don't think I was the one to help them, but I hope opened their eyes to the need. There is a lot of work to be done. I just wish I was the one to have done it. I trust that God has a purpose for NGCC and the youth of lincoln county. I trust that God had me there for a reason. I just hope I fulfilled that purpose. I really wonder if what I did there was temporary (a class lasts only for an hour, a student leaves after a few years), or more permenant. I hope I caused an upswing, I hope I brought encouragement, I hope I fulfilled God's desires. I suppose time will tell.

Tomorrow is the first Sunday here. It will be interesting. I am still sick. It feels like it has sank into my lungs. I'm having some trouble sleeping. I wake up coughing. Arza is helping me out with that. He is quite the writer. He gives me a couple devotionals every day he writes. Sends them out every day. He is 20 days ahead. I really enjoy talking to Arza. 

The Wait(stop)

IN RAVENWOOD STOP MY INTERNET NOT WORKING YET STOP MUST USE TELEGRAHM STOP FIRST POST COMING SOON STOP

The Delay

Soooo, I'm sick. I'm supposed to be on my way to Ravenwood... but I'm sitting here blogging. Blech. I'm getting better, but I'm still ill. Hopefully I will get to leave tomorrow.

At this time I would like to note that the lovely Heather is displaying refreshing Crush soda. Grape, Orange, or as Heather is drinking Strawberry.

Time to go back to sleep. Good night. 

The Goodbye

So the day has finally come. Heather graduated. She went home. :( I'm really proud of her, I just wish she didn't have to go. Oh well. As Heather put it we have things to take care of. At church today they called her my fiancee. I called her, yesterday, but we were so tired yesterday that we didn't get to talk on MSN. I hope she gets on today. It was busy today. A sermon and meeting. It was my last one and NGCC.

Wedness day I'm going to Ravenwood for my internship. I need to pack, wash clothes, get my eyes checked, sleep, oil change, talk to Heather, e-mail NGCC, sleep.

Anyway I hope to see you all soon. Thanks for all the fish! 

The Graduate

I realized why I love Heather tonight. She pushes me to be a better man, more than I would ever desire of myself.

The Mara

This is my princess. Her name is bitter but I call her Heather. She is graduating in a week and I am very proud of her. She also happens to be my favorite person to take pictures of. Any way. This is my woman and you can't take her from me. She reminds me that she is not my possession. She puts up with me when I'm messy :).

This was the last week of classes. Yay, year is nearly over. Only 4 tests this week. Then to Ravenwood for my internship. I'm working on getting my duities at NGCC turned over. Pray.

Mmm did I mention I love my princess?

So I jumped on this guys back to help out clifton in his game. He pulled me off by the neck, but I still got done what I needed. Ouch. My shoulder still hurts. Ong-Bok is an amaizing movie. Watch it.

Mmm this is it. I will write more when I have more time.

Happy Mother's day all.

The Burn

So this week was really rough. One Koffarnus test, one Reese test, one Summa project, one 6 to eight page paper, and one 10 to 12 page paper. Before that a sermon, and my computer died.

I made it. :)

Heather is at my house again this week. Yay! We cleaned my room this weekend that was alot of fun... not really. Its really nice to get through alot of that stuff. There was an endless amount of papers. I still need to organize those files. :(

If you are wondering about this burning Torah. It was Dave Pratts project for Torah. He made a bunch of old looking stuff. So to make it look old we burned the edges.

Two more weeks till the end of school. Two more weeks... I miss Heather just thinking about it.

After a week of not posting you think I would have more... oh yeah I love my new compy! 

The Acer

So this is going to be my new laptop. Not this exact laptop, rather this is one that is very much like mine. Mine will be sent to me and not live in a picture. Since I know you want to know what it is I will tell you. Its an Acer Aspire with a 1.66 ghz Intel CoreDuo, thats dual core baby!! 2 gb of memory and a ATI Mobility Radion x1400 with a dedicated 128 megs. No more S3 graphics no way. Its got a webcam built in and what I really like is the middle mouse button. A Toshiba style keyboard so I can jump right into it. WinXP Pro. DVD burner and 120 megs of hdd so I can easily dual boot. Wide screen. 4 USB 1 Firewire Gigabit Ethy, a/b/g wireless Flash card reader and IR too. I'm excited I hope it turns out good. :)

To day I preached. It seemed to be my best sermon yet. I was pretty smooth, but took forever to get it like that and just didn't have the polish I thought it could have. But I think it made the message stick good. Good message on comitment. Basically I was preaching the sermon for one of the elders. It'll get preached again.

Heather was here this weekend. It was nice to spend alot of time with her. She really helped me with my sermon a whole lot. Mmm I'm going to stop blogging now so that I can hang out with her. Bye.

The Eulogy

Lappy

August 21, 2002 - April 28,2006

Devoted PC, Loving Compy,with a CPU of Gold

Lappy, after nearly 4 years of hard service has passed away. Efforts to resessitate it failed today and it was pronounced dead at 2:43 PM CST. Lappy spent most of its days in hands or lap of Mark Lee. Mark said: loosing lappy is like loosing half my brain, one hand, and a friend that doesn't speak much.

Plans are underway to part the machine for spare cash. If you would like to contribute to the new lappy for Mark fund send all your checks to him.

Lappy left behind, a mouse, a webcam, and several CD's. The AC addapter commented that it never thought that it would outlive Lappy. The news was a shock.

Lappy, if you are up there, we miss you.

The Darknes

So I'm sitting in world music night and I'm pretty sure I just heard a song about tawdry sex blurred and lyric changed. Praise ...erm Jesus?

It was a cigarette break and I was des...perate
I saw her pushing that wheelbarrow
She said have you got a match. I said yes
My cock and Farmer Giles' prizewinning marrow

Frolicking in the summer fields were we
I fell for you and you grew to like me

I carved U 4 me in the bark of a tree
In an English Country Garden
We rolled around kissing on the ground
In an English Country Garden
You succumbed to my charms, fell asleep in my arms
In an English Country Garden
Beneath the stars above I fell in love
In an English Country Garden
Jardin Jardin Jardin Jardin

They did a quiz at the village fete and we came last
Everybody laughed at the two of us
But I've never seen a bale of hay move so fast
She was a bona fide forking genius

Frolicking in the autumn fields were we
I cherished you and you tolerated me

We mucked about while we were mucking out
In an English Country Garden
You took me under your wing when we had our fling
In an English Country Garden
You gave my heart a boost, we ruled the roost
In an English Country Garden
Just as I got broody you got moody
In an English Country Garden

Pulled out all the stops, harvested the crops
In an English Country Garden
The yield was meagre, you were far less eager
In an English Country Garden
The seeds we scattered never really mattered
In an English Country Garden
I saw you leave the farm on another guy's arm
In an English Country Garden
Jardin Jardin Jardin Jardin woooh!

Really, do we actually have to screen this stuff? Praise Jesus.

The Cult

Here is a chart by Shane Smalley. Be sure to add this to your cults file. Don't forget to pray for the Jehovah's witnesses as well.

	Christianity	Jehovah's Witnesses
Founder of the “Movement.”	Jesus Christ.	Charles T. Russell (1852-1916) Founded in 1879.
The Gospel Message	Jesus came as God in the flesh, and died for our sins, so that we might be found justified in the eyes of Almighty God.	Jesus opened the door for us to earn our own salvation by adhering to the Watchtower's rules, doctrine, and mission.
The Church	Those who are saved, and have been baptized into Christ Jesus (Romans 6). These are the ones who have put their faith in Christ.	Those who have been baptized into the Watchtower organization, having received the Watchtower baptism. This faith is in the “Victorious Watchtower”
God	Trinity; 3 Persons in One Essence.	One God, revealed in one Person.
Trinity	The 3 Personal Aspects/Manifestations of God; The Father, Son and Holy Spirit; all Co-Equal for all eternity, yet internally distinct from One Another.	In essence, Big God, little god, force. God, JHWH (Jehovah) is all powerful, Jesus, created, and the Holy Spirit, force. To them, the Trinity is a repugnant, 3 headed false god invented by Satan.
Jesus Christ	God in the flesh. Eternal, Immutable, Fully God, Fully man.	Created being, Michael the archangel who became a man, and while sojourned on earth, died a Physical Death, with a Spiritual resurrection only.
Holy Spirit	The 3rd Member of the God-head; active in Creation, God in us apart of the New Covenant, seal of promise (Ephesians 1-3). The Holy Spirit has personality and Deity (Romans 8:26-27), disciples also knew the Spirit Personally (Jn 14:16-17).	Deny both the Deity and personality of the Holy Spirit; an Impersonal force that God uses to accomplish His will, similar to the force of Star Wars. The JW use their translation at Gen 1:2, and escape the Definite Article that is in the Masoritic Text, and call him the “holy spirit”, Inactive.
Salvation	By Faith, Through Grace. Man responds to God's offer of Salvation by First Hearing the Message, then he must believe what he hears, then must repent, confess Christ as Lord, then present Himself for Baptism for the Remission of sin, to receive the Holy Spirit In Order to help live the Christian life; then must be a practicing, faithful Christian until His Last day.	Elusive, works-oriented, and different for two classes of believers. The Watchtower wants everyone to look to the society for salvation, not Christ, and to get 'ones name written in the Lamb's book of life depends upon one's works (The Watchtower, April 1, 1947, Pg 204). They want all to come to the Watchtower Society for salvation (The Watchtower, Nov. 15, 1981, Pg 21)
Scriptures of the New Covenant.	The Holy Bible; Emphasis on the New Testament as the standard for rule, faith and practice in the Church Age. The Bible Alone.	The Bible (New World Translation-Badly translated), Studies in the Scriptures, and the Watchtower and Awake Magazines.

Resurrection	Jesus rose in the same body He died in.	Jesus rose spiritually from the dead, and the body of Christ was either mistakenly lost, or thrown to the dogs.
Second Coming	Christ has one second coming, of which noone knows the day, time nor hour. The 2nd coming is VISIBLE, not an INVISIBLE one (2 Thess 4; Mt 24:26-27; Rev. 1:7.)	The Watchtower asserts that Christ has returned multiple times, such as in 1874, and was 'invisibly present'. Have taught many 2nd comings, due to error of their 'prophet's' prophecies not coming true. 1874/1914. Taught in many different places within Watchtower paraphernalia ( Creation, 1927, Pg 310 in the early editions, Pg 289 in the later ones; Golden age, 1930, Pg 503; Golden age, 1934, Pgs. 379, 380; The Harp of God, Printed March 1937, 5,736,190 Edition, Pg 235; Etc.).
The Conception of Grace	Christian concept of Grace: God's Riches At Christ's Expense. We see that, from the words of Ephesians 2:8 that we are saved by Grace through Faith, and that faith causing us to respond in such a way that is pleasing to God. Titus 2:11 speaks that we are saved by grace apart from anything we could ever do. We realize that God has saved us according “to the riches of His Kindness in Christ” (Eph 1). Paul says that if one works for grace, it is no longer free, but earned (Romans 4:4). We are given God's grace, free of charge; because of What HE has done, not because of what we've done.	Grace depends on affiliation with the Society. This concept is relatively unknown to them. The Greek Word Charis, what we would translate in our modern day and time as “loving-kindness”

The Covenant(s)

Hello Central Students. Here are some covenant theology graphs for you. For those of you who don't know Dispensational good (Covenant wise); One Covenant bad. :)

The Sea

This isn't a picture from my life. This is a picture of my life. I'm going to moan for a bit. So trying to go to bed at 12 is useless. Something always has to get done. Fix the computer, write an e-mail study for a test. Then my palm pilot does a nose dive off my bed which is 6 feet in the air. Thankfully it lives still. Test today, which the whole class probably bombed. Test tomorrow where the whole class will probably bomb. Test friday where half the class will bomb. Test next friday where 75% of the class will bomb... if they were still left. Paper Tuesday, Project Thursday, another Paper Friday.... same day as the test. I used to wonder if I was lazy about all this, saving all this til the last minute, but the fact is... no. I know I was really busy before now. But now all that business has caught up and so I'm even more busy. Mmmm. Sermon Sunday, 3 lessons as well. I'm going to bed. Pray for me.

Oh and I know it will all get done :) 

The Alarm

Just yesterday Shane ran into the room telling me to get my camera quick. Thinking that the library was on fire, the aliens had landed or Jesus came back and was holding a press conference I ran out side to see the weirdest clouds I'v ever seen. They were all bubbly and there were just rows of them. Crazy lightning too, it was pink. This was a shot I managed to get. You can't see the pink, but immagine the clouds flashing pink from one end of the sky to the other. Considering the storms that have been pounding the midwest it was really eirie.

I didn't dare take a picture bc it was too personal. Not to me, to the victims. We went and picked up the pieces of a house torn apart by a tornado a few weeks ago. The house was gone and what was left was burned to clear the land. Down a field from where the house used to be is where we went and helped. Garret described it best when he said we were working down where it looked like a T-Rex just ran through. I have never seen so many trees torn down in my entire life. It was just like someone sat the tree line on its side. The part that really go to me wasn't all the giant pieces of tin, not the log that was hurled through a piece of plywood. It was the muffin tin. Once you see something like that you realize this isn't a house that was wreaked it was a home. My mom makes muffins in a tin like that. There was parts of a stove, a shelf from inside an older refridgerator, bits of screen door, a little kids plush toy. Things we touch everyday at home. Shredded. Obliterated. Destroyed.

The worst thing I noticed while I was there. None of the churches helped... only the college. Now on Saturday I have two options. Cough Church is putting in a sound system, since I have knowledge of that kind of thing I would be perfect to help get everything squared away. The second is this: get up at 7 AM take a bunch of scrap metal toss it in a truck. It takes not special skill. Get cut. Tire myself out before I drive home. Bet sweaty and nasty. Bleed.... What would Jesus Do? Bleed. On one hand help a church bc no one in the church will do it. On the other hand help some stranger bc they need it. I wonder if our churches do that? I remember one church that spent thousands of dollars on upgrading their lights so they could better set the "mood". Perhaps, I will suggest the problem with church is church. We are infatuated with it. How do we improve our church. How can we change our church? Maybe we should change ourselves. Maybe it would be better for us never to enter the doors of church to praise, when we fail to praise out side the building. Frankly, I don't care if Cough gets a new sound system or not. I'm going to go bleed.

The Comic

So Justin is reliving his highschool days by picking up and reading some comic books. There's Spawn.... its ok. Spiderman by Todd McFarlane... havn't looked at it. But I have looked at V for Vendetta and the few chapters I've read have been real good. The best part is it came out in 1997 ish so its all finished so I don't have to worry about them not making any more or waiting for the next one. Its kinda fun to read a chapter once in a while.

Heather's grandma Bragg came today for her birthday. I got cookies that was fun. Of course we went to the Holiday Inn Express the only indoor pool in Moberly. Good times. Only Heather Sarah and Pratt were there from school so it was a bit quieter but I had fun splashing Heather anyway. I think Pratt is dying of Bird Flu.