My Trip to Lexington in 2012. (only the third or fourth time I have written this)

Personal Narrative= My Trip to Lexington

            This summer in July, I went on a mission trip to Lexington Kentucky. I went with my church group, called BIG45. There were 14 people going on the trip. Nine kids and four adults. The people who went were Mrs. Penny, Mrs. J, Mr. David, Mrs. Amber, Jill, Andy, Houston, Trey, Alexa, Emma, Maggie, Louise, and Me. We were working with three people, Geoff, Sherry, and their son Isaac. We stayed at a dorm in UK (University of Kentucky) with some other college students. There were three people to a dorm, and I stayed with Ms. J, and Alexa.

            Every morning after breakfast, we would do something before VBS. Two mornings we worked in the garden, one morning we went shopping for Kentucky Refugee Ministries, and one morning we played a stimulation game. In the stimulation game, we were divided into families. Alexa and Trey were married and their daughter was Ms. J, (Alexa’s Mom). Emma and Andy were married and their daughter was Mrs. Amber, (Andy’s Mom). Mr. David was the father of Jill, and Louise. Houston and Maggie were married, and I was their translator. In the game, we were all refugee families, and we had to get social security cards, jobs, and a place to live, and we couldn’t sit down at all. It was fun, and hard. Something funny: Andy was supposed to carry a chair around with him to show that he was paralyzed, once, Mrs. Penny called him up to get his Social Security Card, and he forgot to bring his chair with him. Emma, who was his wife, said, “He’s walking, it’s a miracle!”  Everybody burst out laughing, even Mrs. Penny lost her seriousness and broke down.

            Every afternoon, we went to a community center, and ran a VBS for the kids that didn’t have as much as we did. We did a devotion, crafts, and games for them. Also we made them lunch. Chicken fingers, bagel bits, hot dogs, and fruit and veggies with a choice of lemonade or water. Most kids chose lemonade. By the last day we were almost out of lemonade. There were three girls there that we all became really good friends with. Their names were Madison, her sister Sarah, and their cousin Shanea. Madison and Shanea were 9 or 10, and Sarah was 4. Sarah was the cutest little thing ever!! On the last day of VBS, everybody was truly sad to leave.  Mrs. Penny said that maybe she will let the sixth graders go next year, and if she does, than I will definitely sign up. Mrs. Penny wrote a blog and I will post the link below so that you can hear more about our fantastic trip.

-EB

Blog Link= http://www.kidsonmission.blogspot.com/

Hayek vs. Keynes, Round One

Beyond well done.

Screwtape Letters 6-10

1. Letter 6: Thy Will be Done
1. Submitting to the Enemy's will, where we seek to submit to some future potential state while toiling in suspense and anxiety in the moment, waiting for the future to fall upon us.
2. Group Question: how do you react to uncertainty?
3. S/T's strategy (which, if flipped on its head, may be the Enemy's as well??): In all things that support our cause, let him be un-self conscious, forgetting himself and concentrating on the object/activity of our cause. In all things which support our Enemy, focus on the self, bringing to mind how this activity affects the self. 
1. My translation, after reading this passage 5 times: from S/T's perspective, he desires us to be mindless when frolicking in sin, while self-absorbed when acting righteous.
2. My thought on flipping this: from God's perspective, be un-self conscious when acting godly, and mindful of sin.
4. Let virtues be a part of our distant fantasy realm, admired, cheered, but not a part of our core.
2. Letter 7: End or Means?
1. What is the practical long-term difference between FAITH as an end or a means to an end?
2. S/T strategy: Have him adopt an ideal, identify that ideal as a part of Christianity, regard it as of the most importance.... then, flip it, whereby Christianity is a part of the ideal, a mechanism to obtain towards that ideal. The world is the end, and faith the means.
3. Letter 8: There and Back Again
1. Undulation: "To be in time means change" - wowsers
2. The Trough, where "He [the Enemy] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives," where the follower is challenged to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.
3. "Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsake, and still obeys"
4. Letter 9: Slippery Slope
1. Trough, where S/T can degrade pleasures into debauchery, increasing the cravings while decreasing the pleasurable results, getting "a man's soul and give him nothing in return."
2. Trough, where S/T encourages the Enemy-follower to recover "old feelings by sheer will-power"
3. Trough, where we start to wonder if the Peak was a phase, a life-experience to learn from, rather than a portion of reality.
5. Letter 10: Vanity of Vanities
1. Where Wormwood makes "good use of all his social, sexual and intellectual vanity"
2. Vanity, where our desire for social acceptance, or to not ruffle feathers, we betray our God and ourselves with our silence and laughter, giving great joy to S/T for both the incident and our decay. Above all, let them fear being puritanical.
3. The sick reality of two parallel lives, where "he will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he out to be silent"

What did I do last night?

I have learned from my better half that the best time to weigh yourself is first thing in the morning. Apparently she read that in Cosmo, or maybe it is feminine wisdom passed from generation to generation. In a fit of curiosity, I tested this wife's tale.
Last night, just before bed, I pulled out the scale and stepped on: 179.1 lbs. This morning, immediately upon waking up, I step on again: 175.1.
What exactly was I doing last night to lose 4 pounds? If any of you were there, or have any information that may lead to the discover of said activity, I would appreciate your insight.

Infectious Disease

Last night I was chatting online with a friend, and learned they had just come down with Shingles. I think it is Chicken Pox’s older cousin, a part of the Cooties family. Chatting through Microsoft Communicator, not through a browser, on my work laptop.

Today, I go upstairs to check the scores on my personal PC, open up Chrome, and am blasted with “Now’s the time, before it’s too late, to get your Shingles’ shot” sidebar adds.

Within 12 hours of communicating on a separate computer, separate chat program, about a friend’s cooties, I have been targeted with adds. Apparently, Shingles is more contagious than one may initially assume, given the rate it seems to spread online.

Screwtape Letters 1-5

1. Letter 1: No Tall Poppy Here
1. Screwtape encouraged Wormwood to latch onto "how enslaved they [humans] are to the pressure of the ordinary." What are these pressures? How do they help Screwtape?
2. S/T warns Wormwood against engaging in argument? Why? What could go wrong for S/T and his purposes?
3. The power of distraction (I forgot what my question was)
2. Letter 2: Church Disappointment
1. We encounter the Church in all its crude, boring and hypocritical actuality. This encounter can enchant pride in our self and disenchant our self regarding others. How has the church been a snare?
2. How does the Enemy use our disappointment in the Church for His purpose?
3. What about the Church does S/T not want us to see?
3. Letter 3: Family Annoys Us
1. Prayer, where we separate spiritually minded thoughts from the physical actions and interactions with those in our lives.
2. Family, where we get annoyed, and justifiably annoy others because they first annoyed us. 
3. Challenge: who annoys you? why? what in them and their actions gets to you? Now ask: is there anything in you, in your view of yourself, in your view of them, which is to some degree responsible for the annoyance you are feeling?
4. Challenge: does any of our religious/church behavior annoy our family/close friends? Do we justify our actions because they are religious/church actions, regardless of the fact they annoy others (turn a blind eye, hide our actions behind the veil of God)?
5. What 'spiritual' acts do we partake in that could just as easily serve Screwtape's purposes as the Enemy's purpose?
4. Letter 4: Being Spiritual
1. Why does S/T like 'moods'?
2. S/T encouragement: create a god to help you concentrate, then concentrate on that god. Why is this dangerous?
5. Letter 5: War (hunh), what is it good for? (less than Wormwood thinks)
1. "Do not allow any temporary excitement to distract you from the real business of undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues."
2. Spiritually speaking, why is war a strange mixture of good and bad?

A Bit of a Letdown

10 weeks ago (read this) I experienced some level of a healing, a personal healing of my jaw, which was misplaced 20 weeks ago (read here). Not sure what happened, and scared to share this healing before others in case I was wrong, I kept quiet. Daily, I awoke, and told God that tomorrow I would share the good news. 

After a few weeks, my jaw, not hurting yet still the constant focus of my every thought, began to hurt again. And after a few more weeks, it hurt as much as it ever had.

What does that say about me, God, healing, and the physical dynamic of my jaw line? Am I in pain because I didn't have the faith to announce to the world God's healing? Was I not in pain before because I had faith that God healed me? If God is directly involved with my jaw, then (respectfully) what is His angle?

Today, I asked my Doctor for his advice. Dr. Saltz encouraged patience, that my tendons (or ligaments, I can never remember which is which) are stretched out, and that it will take 6+ months to heal. Bring on the pills, don't chew gum, seek understanding, and hope my jaw heals.

If only…

If I only had a means to quickly and easily access my blog,

A means to jot my thoughts, satire and introspection without all of the hassle of ‘getting on the internet’ and typing ‘blog’ before the auto-fil remembers the correct website address and automatically sends me to my blog’s home page…

If only, then I would more readily blog, would more readily share my collective wisdom with the world at large.

It looks as if I have been saved from this toil by Windows Live Writer, where I only have to open the program to write the blog, rather than take the arduous journey previously outlined.

I welcome this blessing that tackles the challenges of the first world.