Sitting in a room, big and dark

Last night I went to a local movie theater and received a student (or military) discount for the first or second time in my life even though I am no longer a student and I have never been a part of the United States military. The movie which watched was recommended by Trevor and was called Transformers. I had no idea what the transformers movie was about because I was not allowed to play with transformers or read about transformers as a child because my mother determined that she had better things to do than to determine whether or not the somewhat ugly looking toys were related to anything good. It had its problems, but was quite fun. Even more fun than the Spider Man 3 movie. The person who gave me the unexpected discount at the movie theater was a lady and most of the men whom I know would probably have advised me to pay a bit of attention. But none of them were there to remind me, so I don’t even remember anything about what her name is or what she looks like. Oh well.

Having more movies that I want to see, in a theater than I can justify spending money to see is unusual for me. I am not used to more than two interesting movies being built in a year.

Curbing your disappointment

On Saturday night, worship pastor Patso informed me that the rate at which I have been posting updates to this blog has been disappointing of late. Having disappointed leadership is not good, so I am typing this to offset that disappointment in a desirable direction.

Unfortunately, I do not seem to have sufficient imagination or inclination to type a real post or to finish any of those posts which are in my drafts folder, so I am left with referring you to something that you have never seen before (most likely).

I am referring you to blog writings that were written by the wife of my good friend Brandon. Brandon and his wife are more liberal than I am, but we are still friends because they seem to love Jesus.

Loving Jesus is one of the subjects of the writing to which I am about to refer you. The lady typed about a song called, My Jesus, I love Thee. The song has a chorus and this chorus ends with the words, If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, tis now. I have wondered a number of times, “What makes the vocalists think that they love Jesus any more during the last chorus than during the first chorus? Is it just the singing of the song? Perhaps we should get the whole world to sing this song so that everyone will have some love for Jesus.” Brandon’s wife wrote better and more interesting things about this song than these. You may read them by clicking here.

This lady also wrote a bit about patriotism while I was in church this week. You may read it by clicking here.

Oh yes, this same lady also wrote the gag tract which I posted earlier.

New people igniting dry humor with fireworks

Have you ever been in a church or at the meeting of a special interest group and had your buddy take hold of your shoulder while earnestly whispering in your ear, Friend, look over there! It’s a new person! If this has ever happened to you, you probably responded by turning your head in the same direction that your buddy had been pointing and you expected to see someone who had been born only the day before. But of course, you were disappointed because there before you, seemingly at the end of the finger of his or her introducer was someone who had clearly not been born yesterday, or had he? You never know, because some people are born twice.

I finally got around to taking a picture of a person whom I met upon the day directly after the day upon which he was born the first time. His name is Halsey. Please gaze upon this picture which contains an image of himself. The same picture also includes an image of another person named Joel whom I met once at church and have spoken with several times at community group.

I have included that little bit of dry humor because I need to explain the difference that exists between dry humor and wet humor by contrasting them.

I had community group at my house last week and only two people showed up and both of them were women (they were still women when I saw them this evening as well). One of them brought a whole load of food because we were expecting a lot of people who decided to not come. We read through a lot of scripture verses about the day of the Lord and how disastrous it will be for many people (all of those who do not trust in the Lord). We prayed. We ate food. One these women left. The other woman invited me to watch fireworks in Poulsbo with her and yet another woman. I’ll call this other woman Lady C.

I think that fireworks on the 3rd of July is a really good plan because it enables people to have a good time staying up late before a vacation morning which can then be used for what could normally be called excessive sleeping, but would normally just be called sleeping in. This leaves the evening of the 4th of July free for going to bed at a prudent hour so that work can be done well during the 5th of July. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. It works just like New Years Eve and New Years Day!

Lady C was still busy working when I arrived with one of the first two women. I’ll call this woman Lady A (Just in case you were wondering about Lady B, be informed that she departed and left my home directly after the community group event ended and was hidden from my sight until Sunday). So Lady A explained to me a bit about power ballards whilst I explained to her a bit about how to wipe compact discs without damaging them excessively even though lady A kept going into and out of the place of employment of Lady C to see if she had yet completed her labors over which she had presumably been laboring laboriously.

At l e n g t h these labors were complete (or maybe quiting time finally arrived, I don’t really know which) and we picked up chairs from the place of employment (perhaps I should say from a place of employment for she has a couple) of Lady C and sat upon them in various locations about the parking lot from which we expected to see fireworks. After some discussion we found a place near a kid who needed to be told to not tackle bushes. This location was mere feet away from a fence which surrounded a large stormwater detention pond, so I got to spend a while explaining to ladies A & C about why stormwater detention ponds are built. Lady C related to myself and to Lady A one of her own experiences which she experienced while employed by an engineering company in California and how she quit over a conflict between her own wardrobe and the dress code of said company. It was quite enlightening for me. Then some people shared some wet humor.

My mother raised me to avoid wet humor entirely, so I stuck to dry humor, which leaves me many more options than wet humor because everybody knows that all wet humor is about the same thing, but dry humor includes endless variations.

Several pictures were taken by a 2.1 Megapixel camera that had a battery that quickly became depleted.

The fireworks were not very impressive in any way. They could not be heard very well from my location.

I was transported back to my home without incident.

Ladies A & C were very nice to put up with me for part of their evenings, and to request this report.

Traveling to Mars Hill Church

I went to Mars Hill Church yesterday for the first time in 364 days. Mars Hill Church is the flagship of the Acts 29 network. I figured that I had been away so long that I could justify going again when Tim asked me if I wanted to go on Thursday. Tim is my volunteer at church. I used to think that I was the A/V lead, but I learned from a piece of church literature yesterday that I can probably get by with calling myself a service producer.

Tim and I finished up with our one (1) service at Seaside Church and decided that we wanted to show up for the 1700 service and joked that we would attend both the 1700 service and the 1900 service. I offered to build lunch for Tim, but he had family to visit, so we agreed to meet at the ferry terminal at 1500. I went home and ate something and drove back to Seaside Church for parking and walked approximately one mile to the ferry boat. I arrived as the gate was opening so that I could board the ferry boat. Tim and Tim’s sister joined me after I had decided that I would make the trip all by myself if Tim didn’t show himself. We managed to get along during the ferry boat ride to Seattle and we discussed how I could save approximately $500/month on housing.

We arrived in Seattle and found the bus stop. Tim and Tim’s sister decided to buy coffee and managed to finish just in time to hurry across the street and into the bus before it departed.

I have not traveled on very many buses. I traveled on a bus in Seattle with my friend Darin Brill when I visited him in Seattle once, but he had to tell me exactly what to do and what not to do. I rode a bus in Pullman Washington once, but I had instructions on the amateur radio and from other passengers. I think that the only other times during which I rode a bus were long ago when I was quite young and I was following my mother around because I was not allowed to chose to do otherwise.

I looked like I didn’t know what I was doing when I tried to begin the bus trip by paying at the beginning of a trip that originated in the ride-free zone. Then I insisted that we get off one stop too soon and we had to walk across the 15th Avenue bridge. I have included a picture of Tim and Tim’s sister traveling across the 15th Avenue bridge because of my mistake while carrying some of my stuff so that I could take a picture of them walking across the 15th Avenue bridge because of my mistake. None of the cars smashed themselves into any of us.

We arrived at Mars Hill Church Ballard in just enough time for me to greet my friend Darin Brill and to utilize the facilities and to be one minute early. I mean, we arrived in just enough time for my friend Darin Brill to greet me (because he was in charge of all of the greeters).

1 Timothy 2:8

Perhaps I should be putting this on the dead man blog, and perhaps I will after I verify my citations. I will be quoting a pastor regarding a subject about which I have not heard him speak in a number of years and I have recently received rebuke for misquoting people. So there may be some revisions

This little part of my blog is about the application of this verse here:

I Timothy 2:8
I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing. (NIV)

Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. (NASB)

Although there are many ways in which to worship God, to worship God in a way other than the way which He has established as acceptable is not necessarily recommended.

To “worship” God in a way contrary to the way which He has established has been condemned and is still dangerous. E.g. Leviticus 10

In the application of the scriptural text which is above, these two ways of worship are mutually exclusive (although I suppose that worship of God that is an afront to God may not really be worship of Him at all, but only something else, i.e. an afront to God)

1. Acceptable: Raising your hands in worship to Jesus while trusting God to restore all things and also bring His judgment with speed and finality
2. Condemned: Raising your hands in “worship” to Jesus while dissatisfied because of His foreign and/or domestic policy (think about Jonah)

This was pointed out to me by Pastor Dale Swanson of Reaching Men Ministries and other such things who was once an interim pastor at Sky Valley Bible Church which I attended immediately prior to moving myself to Pullman Washington. I remember that on more than one occasion he indicated from the pulpit that during worship services some of us acted even more uptightly than a bunch of baptists [in a bar]. There were a number of people there who likely would have been members of the frozen chosen society had there been a local chapter. But in pointing out an application of the above passage, he asserted that the reason that so few people in that congregation raised their hands during worship services was that the majority of the people there were angry with other people and didn’t want God’s mercy for those other people.

When I heard this, I thought to myself, “that sounds about right.” Because of this warning (coupled with my anger towards some people) and the fact that I had grown up in that particular church, I never raised my hands during a worship service before December 6th of 2005.

I find the above scripture to be inconvenient because there is much aggravation to be had in the church and I have noticed that I have to do spiritual discipline if I am going to be able to get along with the people with whom I minister. So I have found that I can go to church and waste my time by not worshiping Jesus appropriately because of my anger, or I can trust God to take care of the things that I am angry about.

This can be difficult because I have a tendency to invent things to be angry about when there is nothing to make me angry. I forget that God is more interested in changing me to become more like Him than He is changing the whole rest of the world so that I will like it (–Danielle Deniet). On the other hand, this has nothing to do with failing to resist evil in its various forms.

Competition and Community Group

Well Crystal finally put up her new blog. It is much more interesting than I thought that it would be because it is not primarily about the thing that I thought that it would primarily be about. I thought she was just going to use it to make fun of my blog, but she quickly became bored with that and started blogging about herself and about Jesus, both of whom are more interesting than making fun of my blog. You can read about all of those things at http://thisgirlspointofview.blogspot.com/

I had community group at my house for the first time last night. Four people besides myself came. The people who attended had all sorts of questions to ask me like, Why is your apartment not furnished? and Why are only two of the light bulbs in your chandelier shining? I don’t really have a good answer concerning my chandelier except that it keeps the energy consumption and heat down and I have not been lacking light, but I was able to win somebody over concerning the lack of sufficient furnishings in my apartment.

We did get around to re-reading the texts from which the sermon had been preached and to asking ourselves questions about how the different parts fit together and we all seemed to be able to bring ourselves into agreement with what we understood God to be saying. One major point was that we should not waste time on trying to figure out how the end times are going to work because no matter how they work, they will be disastrous for many people without Jesus, whose death and resurrection are the primary points of the gospel. These two extremes (wasting time on times and dates and the primary points of the gospel) are assigned values in 1 Cor 15 (note verse three and verse 35).

Then prayer time came and went and then everybody left. Oh yes, someone brought cake too. Oh, and I felt strange when one attendee thanked me for my hospitality because he is an active part of the United States military, without which my hospitality would not be possible. It was kind of funny, almost like when we give God the money and other things which He gave to us previously.

My mistake

I received some negative comments about my blog on Sunday. Crystal told me that she really didn’t say that my empty bun was a veggie burger. Crystal was really trying to inform me that I could fill my empty bun with something called a veggie burger. I neglected her kind message to me and missed out on the veggie burger as well as the pleasure of quoting her correctly the first time on my blog.

Crystal has threatened to start her own blog at http://ibloginspiteofjoshua.blogspot.com, but it has yet to appear. If it does appear, I will have my first real opposition and I am sure that my site traffic will increase a lot. Perhaps I should make more mistakes. But if there are mistakes that I should make, are those really mistakes at all?

Father’s Day 2007 (or visiting SVBC) part 2

Right, so I played Age of Empires 2 with my little brother. We lost the first game, but we made things easy on ourselves and won the second game. My mother built mashed potatoes for me and I ate them at the dinning room table with mom and dad and little brother and other little brother. We ate late so that my brothers were made to prepare for sleeping immediately following the meal.

Dad and I watched a movie on VHS. This movie was called John Q. about a man who put up a violent front to save his son’s life after his company sold his insurance out from under him. The movie made me realize that I have no idea what being a father is like. I went to sleep after that and managed to wake up in time to ride with my father to church.

I even woke up in time to load my father’s recording equipment into the little car which my mother had kindly emptied the night before. I have included a picture of my father with his recording equipment.

This was to be the first time that I attended Sky Valley Bible Church in six months, but I knew that a fair amount of the format there had changed. Sky Valley Bible Church meets in a high school and has been in the habit of using the seats which are at multiple elevations (those at the back are higher than those at the front), but Sky Valley Bible Church leadership really likes to talk about and think about being a family and they also like to make themselves feel like they are a family, so they decided to use an electric motor to move the elevated seats on one end of the room to make room to set up a multitude of seats at the finished floor elevation instead. This seems to make everyone feel more like a family than did the former format. I noticed that the music sounds substantially better within this new format than it did within the previous format. This may be because of the new electric piano and the increased skill of some musicians.

The sermon was about Father’s day and the text was from Psalm 86. I have no idea what the pastor was trying to say because I wasn’t listening at all, but was wondering how long his sermon would last. It wasn’t even that long, but I began to wonder even before the service began. Oh yes, he quoted a bit of secular research regarding the importance of fathers and said something like, If you haven’t been a father to your children, start now. I am sure that there was something more biblically based in there somewhere, but again, I wasn’t listening.

I spent the rest of the afternoon by taking a nap and visiting my brother’s new horse and by eating a piece of dutch apple pie from Burger King because that is where my dad likes to go to eat food away from home.

I left my parent’s house at about 2130 because a late dinner and arrived at my own home before midnight. I didn’t even wreck the Illuminate 2.

I wish that I had a more grateful heart regarding my father because he has been an enormous blessing to me. Actually, I could stand to have a fair amount of who I am reconfigured entirely. Maybe I will get around to typing how I came about this little bit of information about myself later.

Community Group 1

One of the meetings of my Missional Community Group took place last night.

I have included the picture of an instant of this meeting on the left there not because it makes me look good (clearly), but because it is the only picture that I was able to have taken last night; my batteries only had enough energy for one picture and my backups had been sitting around for far too long to be worth anything.

The beer in the blue cup was the first beer from a can which I had ever consumed, and I did not find it positively impressive, but it was a gift which was offered to me by a military man directly after he learned that I had finished with my engineering exam. I felt very uncultured after I had begun to pour the can of beer into the blue cup which I had been using for dihydrogen monoxide because Crystal decided to tell me that there was too much foam on the top of the beer which I had poured into the blue cup and that I was supposed to tip the blue cup while pouring. I was later informed that I was not supposed to pour the beer into the blue glass at all. Isn’t it convenient that people in the beer drinking community are so pleased to share the correct cultural protocols?

My whole community group seemed to be on a mission to rejoice with me, even though I wasn’t bent upon rejoicing.

Hostess: When you found out that you passed, did you jump up and down?
Me (not wanting to think long enough to remember that I did jump up and down): I don’t remember.
Hostess: I would have jumped up and down.

I got to eat oreos and potato chips and a hot dog bun. Crystal told me that the hot dog bun is called a veggie bun or something like that when it is empty. I can’t imagine why it is called that.

Please note that Real Deal Mark Keel (pictured) is not the military man whom I mentioned above.

Father’s Day 2007 (or visiting SVBC) part 1

I went to visit my dad on the day before father’s day. I arrived at 1500 because I had been busy listening to pastor Dale Swanson preach about relating to women for four hours in a little tiny baptist church in Bremerton which took me forever to find. Listening to him was most interesting because most of it was stuff that I have heard from the Acts 29 Network, but with different illustrations. There is to be another such event in August, and I think that I know of some other people who would benefit from it.

Upon my arrival at my father’s house, my father and my little brother continued building an additional sling for their trebuchet and took it out to the lawn for testing. They now have two slings: one for golf balls and one for tennis balls. The trebuchet seems to work well. I caught the tennis ball which was hurled by the trebuchet as a result of my first attempt.

After testing the trebuchet, I went inside and prepared to play Age of Empires II with said brother while my mother and other brother returned home. So of course I had to postpone the game a few minutes to unload my mother’s car and to make sure that my mother knew that I had noticed her and regarded her presence because no one likes to be ignored.

This reminds me of the only time that I went to a Bible Quiz meet in Cranbrook British Columbia because upon the somewhat late arrival of myself and my teammates, those hosting the meet met us all (~30 quizzers and coaches) and gave us a welcome and told us exactly where to put our stuff, how we could help them to get the meet started quickly, and passed around the please spend money here type gifts from the mayor of the city (that letter has got to be one of the only letter that I have ever received from a politician that doesn’t say vote for me).

All of that is to say, if you live with someone whom you love, you may be able to show it by deferring whatever you have been doing to the unloading of his/her vessel or the lightening of his/her load as he/she enters your residence. Similar ideas can be used in other places on people who are not living with you.

FE/EIT

I passed the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which is also called the Engineer In Training Exam!

I had to take this exam twice. I do not particularly think that I did any better the second time than I did the first time, but during my second examination, I did manage to accurately indicate which module of the exam I was going to take in the afternoon so that my exam key was graded correctly.

Now that I have finished with this exam, I won’t have to explain the last paragraph to any employers ever again! Isn’t this nice? Praise Jesus!

I am not completely helpless

I am taking a little break from blogging about spiritual things. I may never cease to be amazed (from time to time) at how much aggravation there is to be had inside of Jesus’ church, just among those who are committed to the one mission. I must remember what Pastor Dale Swanson once said, which was to the effect of, “If you knew that tomorrow morning, one of your Christian brothers or sisters was going to be found dead, hanging on a streetlight downtown, you wouldn’t care which church you went to. You wouldn’t care if they spoke in tongues or not, you wouldn’t care if they baptized their babies… you would just be glad to be with a brother who loved Jesus and believed the Bible. I don’t think that having the ability to be choosy and seemingly independent means that I should be so. But I am taking a break from that (now where’s that seat belt?).

The reason that I can say that I am not completely helpless is:

You guessed it! Yesterday, I sewed my own button onto my own pants with my own needle and my own thread all by myself after I realized that the original thread was failing. I even used thread that matched the pants. My employer’s wife informed me that I should have done it her way, and not just the way that I was instructed to do it by the internet, but it seems to be working.

Civil Engineering

I have been working as a civil engineer for more than a year now and I have decided to share with you some of the things that I have learned during that time.

1. Always use some sort of interface between your body and a manhole cover when moving the manhole cover. I am sure that you all remember reading about how I got my finger stuck directly beneath a manhole cover.
2. When topographical maps created from data gathered by your company’s survey team conflicts with the opinion of a property owner who says “your survey doesn’t show how the land really is,” believe the survey. One property owner entered the office of my company because he claimed that my design assumed that water would flow uphill. He dragged myself and my boss out to his property where he had to apologize for his ignorance which he had forced upon us in arrogance. He brought us flowers later that day. Job 38:2
3. Sometimes people invent problems. Like Professor Hill in The Music Man musical, people call engineers to tell them things like, “Oh we’ve got trouble, yes, we’re in terrible, terrible trouble. We’ve got trouble and that starts with T and stands for Tank. The tank you designed is full of water! I visited the site along with a county inspector and a county engineer who immediately determined with me that the tank would begin to drain immediately following the installation of a tank outlet (which was included in my design). My boss’s wife said that it was a good thing that they sent pokerface (that’s me) for the site visit because my boss would have died laughing if he had been there.
4. Don’t change your analysis just to please a client. I recently analyzed an existing detention system to determine whether or not it would be sufficient to mitigate the increased runoff that would be expected to flow from a newly planned development. I determined that one part of that system needed to be expanded. Because this expansion would cost money, I had multiple people calling me and telling me that I was wrong and that I had missed something and that this would have to be discussed with my boss and so on. Just last week, the most persistent of those people admitted that he wrong and all but apologized for questioning my work.
5. When a man and a woman disagree regarding the location of a property corner, the woman is right. I don’t know how this works and it has never been shown to me, but my boss tells me that women remember these things best.
6. Never back the company truck off of the stabilized construction entrance.

Spiritual blogging (unmarried this weekend?)

I just blogged about more spiritual things (just what you all have always wanted to read).

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2007/05/being-single-on-saturdays.html

Bishop Jefro

I will be blogging about worship pastor Patso again soon because I wound up at his house again last night, even though he didn’t invite me to his house and I did not plan to visit his house.

I can’t seem to remember exactly how I did it, but on Sunday evening, I talked bishop Jefro into allowing me to invite myself over to his house anytime that I wanted to. On Wednesday, I tried to invite myself over to his house, and we decided that I could visit his house on Friday evening.

So on Friday, I climbed aboard the Illuminate 2 and traveled along the same road that my dad lived on years ago to visit bishop Jefro. I was five minutes early so I decided to sit in my car on the side of the road, near the outside edge of a bend in the road and wondered whether or not any cars would fly off of the road into the Illuminate 2. I decided that I should stop wondering about that.

At the appointed time, I was received into bishop Jefro’s home and the television was turned off and bishop Jefro and his wife began to tell me all about their cat and their local library and how repulsive bishop Jefro used to be to his wife before they were married and they fed me an orange and a sweet potato and brown sugar and butter substitute. Then I watched them feed their son and prepare their son for bed because their son is not yet one year old and needs help with these things. Oh, they told me about their cat too.

I was asked about how I got to Seaside Church from Pullman, and they didn’t want to hear about how I got into my little car and drove, so I had to tell them which church I used in Pullman and which house I lived in and which website I used to learn about Seaside Church and what I didn’t like about the other churches that I tried in the area. I didn’t mention Dale Swanson to both of them, but I have realized that he is probably the person who prepared me most for typical Acts 29 events like the one I had last night at worship pastor Patso’s house.

In as much as most of the women who attend Seaside Church had gone away to learn about sabbathing, but bishop Jefro’s wife was unable to do that for various reasons, bishop Jefro then decided to take me to worship pastor Patso’s house to meet with men who were exploiting the absence of their wives in various ways.

Worship pastor Patso part 1

It is kind of funny that the people with the authority and the responsibility at the church that I attend are the three people with the comical nicknames: Lead Pastor Swanny, Bishop Jefro, and worship pastor Patso. Worship pastor Patso canceled a meeting tonight and told me to spend the extra time blogging and reminded me that he hadn’t read any blogs about himself recently. He must have recently read the proverb that says, “let another praise you and not your own mouth” recently, because he had the wisdom to avoid blogging about himself. So here we go.

Here is a picture of worship pastor Patso sitting to the left of “Real Deal” Mark Keel. “Real Deal” Mark Keel was sitting directly between worship pastor Patso’s little green car and the camera that took this picture during the time that this picture was being taken.

Worship pastor Patso does his ministry in an unusual way. I have observed that most worship pastors get things done by doing the things that need to be done all by themselves because that is one of the ways to be sure that things get done (see the end of my blog called What I did last night). One of the responsibilities of worship pastor Patso is seeing that the congregation at Seaside Church is led in worshiping Jesus with songs on Sunday mornings, but instead of doing this himself, worship pastor Patso has been able to find musicians whom he has directed to perform this task and the tasks related to it so that he can perform more pastoral tasks like premarital counseling and less deaconatorial tasks like tuning his own guitar.

I have been imagining in my own mind that you who have read the last paragraph are thinking to yourselves, “What good is a worship pastor who can’t lead worship music,” so I guess that I should say that worship pastor Patso used to lead most of the worship music at Seaside Church and still does lead worship music from time to time when the other musicians are otherwise engaged.

Not too long after I sent my resume to the elders of Seaside Church in an electronic message, the subject line of which read, Put me to work. I was assigned to the Audio/video (mostly audio) team which is also under worship pastor Patso. At the time, Seaside Church was running only one service and I was expected to arrive at the facility two hours ahead of said service. My first remark to worship pastor Patso was something like, “What in the world are we going to do for two whole hours?” and worship pastor Patso told me that he thought that I had chosen a strange way to begin a ministry with someone. I should probably not begin any dates that way because it might be the beginning of my ministry to my wife, and that would be a strange way to start.

My dear sister’s visit part 2

Jocelyn and Brian and I finished off that day by eating birthday cake and watching an old movie called Ivanhoe. Well, it is only as old as I am. Oh, we also squeezed in some prayer for the problems of those other people. Then Jocelyn and Brian did some of something that would generally be called roughhousing. It is convenient that no one was living in the apartment that is directly below the apartment in which I live while they were doing that. Oh well, I guess that that is what being married is for. At least I got birthday cake.

Jocelyn and Brian had to sleep in a while after their roughhousing, so I left for church without them, but they arrived on time and met most of my acquaintances there. They had a nice time talking to the church planter and listening to the sermon, which was a recording regarding the minor book of prophecy called Hosea.

We only stayed for one service so that we could leave and eat French Fries at Fritz Fry House, but it was closed, so we took pictures outside of it.

There is a fountain outside of Fritz Fry House.

This is a picture of me and of my dear sister. Brian took this picture, but perhaps he would not have if he had been able to tell what was going on. Imagine that you’re trying to use a strange new camera to take a picture of your wife, you push a button, and all of a sudden, you see this image of another man kissing her which is displayed in your viewfinder and you can’t make it go away. Doesn’t that sound pleasant?

This is a picture of Brian and my dear sister. Just a reminder: Brian is that man to who my dear sister is married. I took this picture. Pictures similar to this picture are available from the blog of my dear sister and the man to whom she is married.

I have included these two pictures to illustrate the difference between the relationship that I have with my dear sister and the relationship that Brian has with my dear sister.

I have included these two pictures for another reason too. To point out that I can take better pictures than Brian can (You’ve got to admit that the picture that I took is better than the picture that he took)!

Since Fritz Fry house was closed (probably because the owner was in church), we went home and ate pancakes and such and listened to music and Brian left and forgot his shirt and Jocelyn left and forgot some stuff in my shower.

Maybe I’ll remember something else about this later.

My dear sister’s visit part 1

Because of the twenty fifth anniversary of my birthday and because my dear sister and that man to whom she is married will soon travel far away for a long time, she recently came to visit me for nearly a day with that man to whom she is married.

These people brought me birthday cake and ice cream and fruit juice and carrots and cookies and other nice things.

We started off our visit by going for a little walk to the beach where I briefly floated my Frisbee disk in Dyes Inlet. We walked to an abandoned restaurant called the Sandpiper which once ripped off my parents during one of their premarital dates. They were gracious because they wanted to make room for the vengeance of God and they later saw it burning up. It has since been rebuilt, but does not seem to be having much success right now. Perhaps it has been cursed by God. We had our picture taken while we were sitting in front of it. We then had a great time talking about the problems of other people that we know (further evidence that problems are likely to be noticed by everyone except their possessors).

After we arrived back at my home, my dear sister voluntarily complimented the cleanliness of my bathroom (brag, brag), particularly the floor and the toilet!

We went to visit my community group leader’s/neighbor’s new baby who had been born the day before. The picture of him that was transmitted to me directly following his birth made his head look larger than it actually was.

So there’s part 1. Compare it to Brian’s version here.

Blogging Elsewhere

Oh yes, I blogged again on my church’s blog. This time I blogged about killing in the old testament.

http://wakingthesleeper.blogspot.com/2007/04/thou-shalt-kill.html

Impending Blessings or Impending Judgement

After I sat through the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam on Saturday, I found that I was nearer to Monroe where I used to live than usual, so I decided to travel there and attend the Quinceañera of the adopted daughter of the pastor of the church in Monroe that I attended when I lived in Monroe. It was the second birthday party of a teenage woman that I can remember ever attending.

As everyone else (or seemingly so) was busy dancing, I was standing and sipping my punch and talking to the father of a high schooler about the advantages of comedy colleges for science majors. My friend of a number of years entered and I congratulated her because of her recent marriage engagement:

Me: lady’sname! Congratulations upon your impending marriage!

Lady: Thank you Joshua! But you make it sound like such a bad thing. I think that you have just associated my upcoming wedding with doom, gloom, and destruction.

Me: I did wonder if that use of ‘impending’ was appropriate–

Lady: No, I don’t think that it is.

Me: –So I looked it up in an on-line dictionary to find out and the only example in the first definition was ‘impending marriage!’

Another source in the on-line dictionary indicates that impending is a good word to use for describing the day of God’s judgment because it is impending just like 2 Peter 3 says. The sweet thing about the impending day of the judgment of God is that many people have actually had the judgment that was to be applied to them diverted.