Paul's Shipwreck

I finished this book last night.  A truly amazing story.  The author Robert Cornuke is the founder of the BASE Institute.  He is been on many expeditions in search of Bible based archeology.  He prides himself on fallowing the Bible during his searches.

There is a chapter he put in the book that talked about his trip home from his first visit to Malta.  He came home on a plan during a major ordeal known as September 11th 2001.  He was over the Atlantic during the attacks.

This is a great book.  I recommend it to anyone.  Enjoy. 

More Bradley

I am sure that most of you received the e-mail from my mom with these pictures.  But for those of you that don't my moms e-mails, here are some new pictures that she took of Bradley.  She gave him one of those gram cracker type teething biscuits.  Well, just let the pictures do the talking.  What a mess.

Something To Pass The Time

Well, it all started last months during the Winter X Games.  I wrote a bit about it in this link here.  Anyway, after enjoying a lot of great competition, I notice something about a lot of the athletes.  They were thanking God before any of their sponsors.  I decided to do a bit of research to find out about the questions I had.  Here is an article that I found.

So, that day, January 26th or 27th, I decided to start a ministry geared toward helping to spread the Good News of Jesus.  There is one or two groups that do the same thing.  One is a group on Colorado, Snowboard For Christ Ministries.

The mission of Shred 4 Christ is for Christians with a specific specialized calling of taking the Message of Christ to the extreme sports community.  The reason I am trying to create this ministry is to provide the teens and young adult an alternative to the local bar scene and party scene.  

I guess we'll see how things turn out.  I still have a lot to do.  I have the start of a logo as you can see up top there.  The little endeavor of mine will be keeping me busy while I am on the mend.  

New from Rob Bell

If you have been reading my blog as I go along, you may have read my past posts on Rob Bell.  He is Pastor/Founder of Mars Hill in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He is also the author of two amazing books, Velvet Elvis, and Sex God.  No, Sex God is not what you think it is about.

Anyway, back to the reason for the post.  Bell has something new.  He just released a DVD from his Everything is Spiritual tour.  The DVD is obviously entitled Everything is Spiritual.  As far as the premise of the DVD, there is a small blurb on the back that goes like this:

In the Hebrew Scripture there is no word for "spiritual."

And Jesus never used the phrase "spiritual life."

Because for Jesus and his tradition, all of life is spiritual.

So what does that mean?

This DVD is truly a remarkable lesson in searching your ability to understand that every single task you preform, you should do it in the name of our Lord Jesus.  Not only should explore the possibility in doing so, but to enjoy it.  I recommend this DVD to anyone.  If you want to know more, click on the link and watch a short video from the DVD to see for yourself.  Enjoy.

9 Months

I know it has been a while since I have posted any new pictures of Bradley.  I am sure that most of you have already seen some of these because my mom is all over the emailing pictures thing.  The first three she has sent out through email but the last three I took a few days ago.  He is getting really big and more adventuress every day.  He is also growing into a bit of an attitude.  I'm not sure where he gets it from.  Well enjoy the pictures.

A New Toy

Well, I finally got what I have wanted to a long time.  I just bought a new computer.  I was going to buy a PC, but I hate Vista.  The three or four times I used the program I had nothing but trouble.  So I looked into a MacBook Pro.  It was going to cost me 2700.00 for the one that I wanted.  So I thought I would look into the iMac.  

Here is what I bought.  I found the 20 inch iMac with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB memory and a 320 Gb hard drive.  I got it for 1699.00.  I got twice the computer in the iMac than I would have got from the Macbook Pro, for a lot let cash.  This thing is sweet.

I mainly bought the computer because I have had a lot of school work lately and have been using my older Gateway.  Problem is, Christy wants to use it.  So I bought this bad boy to help control the computer traffic.  Here are some pictures of my new toy.

 

A Lot Going On

Here is a little story about what has been going on this past month.

It all started the morning of February 5th.  I got up at 5:00 in the morning, drove to my buddy Gary's house, picked him up at about 5:30.  Started a 2 and half hour drive out of town to a place known as Mountain High.  We're on our way to a day of snowboarding fun.  We arrived at 8:30, just as the lifts were opening.  We suited up, bought our lift tickets, and headed to the lift.  We had a small discussion on where to start.  I had not been on a board in about 6 years and for Gary it had been longer.  We made the choice to start on a green slope instead of heading to the summit.  A smart idea if you ask me.  Well, it is now 9:00, we are snapped in, standing at the top of the slope.  9:01, we're off.  9:02, I'm done.

I had been heading down the slope, I carved in to go around a guy and started to carve out.  I ride goofy foot, so when I am carving out, it is on my back side.  Anyway, as I am doing this, my tail edge hits a patch of hard pack and gives on me.  I caught it just in time, but then it went again.  This time, I lost it.  I went down on my back side and jammed my left hand into the snow.  As I did this my collar bone broke.  The picture you see at the top left is my x ray.  After my x rays, the doctor said that I shattered my collar bone.  It broke in four places, two were main breaks and one was the split of the little piece in between the two mains. 

Needless to say, they couldn't just set it and let it heal.  I ended up having surgery to fix it.  Now I have a large piece of titanium with screws holding everything together until it heals.  The surgery went off without a hitch.  It took about 50 stitches to close 

me up.

After the surgery.

Incision.

A closer look, pretty isn't it.

Christians And Extreme Sports ?

It’s now February, and that can only mean one thing. The Winter X Games have come and gone. I watched all the pros ridn’ their sticks and sleds, goin’ big and throwin’ it down. Sorry, sure is surprising how watching three straight days of extreme sports can change your lingo just a bit. Anyway, there was a lot of great competition, a few upsets, some up and coming no names, and some of the old names dominating their events.

I noticed a few things this year that I didn’t pay to much attention to the few years I watch the games. There is an overwhelming amount of camaraderie and sportsmanship between the competitors. No matter what happened or how it happened, you always saw the competitors giving their respect to big tricks and big scores. You don’t see that in many of the professional sports now days.


Something else I noticed this year, not seeing in past years, was the amount of competitors thanking God and or Jesus after their run. In most cases, they would thank one or the other, or both, even before their sponsors. I think that is amazing. I give those competitors more respect now than I ever did before.

Those were just a few things I noticed this year while my eyes were glued to the tube.