Local Area Blogs
Random
• THE house church movement continues to grow. ~ link
• "ALGAE-DERIVED plastics could cut more than half of the petroleum currently used in traditional production" ~ link
• THERE is only one thing more annoying than SMS spam on the cell phone -- and that is, SMS spam on the cell phone at 3:17 a.m. Do they REALLY expect that I'll want to do business with them after they wake me up in the middle of the night?
• "A record one in seven US mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter." ~ link
• VERY good news for the Valley -- An unnamed buyer has been found for the East Valley Tribune, which had been scheduled to close at the end of the year. ~ link
What’s the most important tree in Yosemite Valley?
Could this be the most important tree in Yosemite Valley? Photo by Dale Carlson.
What’s the most important tree in Yosemite Valley? Is it the sugar maples by the Chapel? The aspens along the river with their beautiful golden leaves? How about the big tree in the meadow that all the photographers love to shoot (pictured above)? The answer is none of those. If you want the answer you need to head over to Jeffrey Trust’s blog to find out what the most important tree in Yosemite Valley is. I bet the answer will surprise you.
What are you waiting for?
Normally when I’m looking for a Photo of the Day one of the first places I look is the Yosemite Blog Group on Flickr. There’s always amazingly beautiful photos in the group pool. That’s why I wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to all the people posting those photos, the members of the Yosemite Blog Group.
These guys are a who’s who of great Yosemite photographers and yet they add their beautiful photos to the pool for everyone to share. We’ve got Gary Crabbe, Nathan Eaton, G. Dan Mitchell, William Neill (yes, his work is in the Ansel Adams Gallery), Jason Armstrong, Taylor Davis, Christopher Chan, Tony Immoos, Steven Bourelle, Edie Howe-Byrne, Brian Ernst (aka Buck Forester), Rober Pearce, Neil Kronberg and over 100 more awesome photographers!
Anyone can join the Yosemite Blog Group on Flickr and anyone can add their photos no matter what their skill level. Flickr is a free service (if you don’t mind seeing a few ads) provided by Yahoo! so there’s no cost to join if you’re not already a member.
A previous Photo of the Day and a favorite of many in the Yosemite Blog Group Pool on Flickr. Photo by Neil Kronberg.
Random
• DAVE Owen and Steve Stinnette, in Phoenix for a couple of days before heading back to Guam, came over for lunch today, along with Matt Augee (who took the picture). Dave and Steve are on the last leg of their five week mainland recruiting and fundraising excursion before returning to PIU on Guam. We ate sandwiches and a good time was had by all. They leave for Guam on Saturday.• UPWARD mobility in India is leading to a shortage of coconut pickers. Surely someone can come up with a safer and economically feasible way of grabbing coconuts. ~ link
• "WORLD poverty rate plummets" ~ link
• SEE 3 proposals regarding the future of Arizona ~ link
• SOUTH Korea, which currently exports tangerines to Alaska, Guam, and Saipan, is positioning itself to begin exporting to the US mainland in 2010. ~ link
• IF drafted into the North Korean army you serve for 10 years. Defectors from the military paint a picture of life there. ~ link
• ZONDERVAN has responded to the criticism of Deadly Viper: Character Assassins and has permanently removed the book and related material. There were several Asian-American leaders who felt that Deadly Viper relied too heavily on racial stereotypes. ~ link
• THE Japanese government is trying to get the US to move a Marine airbase off Okinawa to either Iwo To (Iwo Jima) or Guam. The US is already in the process of moving 8,000 Marines and dependents to Guam. I don't think Guam would be too happy with that idea right now. They're already nervous about the impact of the 8,000 Marines. How about Saipan? They could use an economic boost. ~ link
Random
• GRAPEFRUIT juice interferes with the metabolism of certain medications. Researches have discovered that there is possibly a fungal solution to this problem. ~ link• 10-10-10 Initiative = cross-denominational emphasis to plant thousands of new churches on 10-10-10 ~ link
• THE population of the Phoenix metro area has been flat since the recession hit in 2007. That's phenomenal for this area, which has relied on construction growth to fuel the economy. ~ link
"5 trends affecting your ministry in 2010"
1. Shifting demographics.
2. Technological advances.
3. New ways to collaborate.
4. Greater interest in service.
5. Blurred lines between nonprofit and for-profit.
Has she nailed it or is she missing something important? What do those of you working in the business and media sectors think?
Curry Village Ice Rink Slated to Open this Friday November 20th
Skating at Curry Village Ice Rink in Yosemite National Park. Photo by Dolan Halbrook.
How cold has it been? Well cold enough that the Yosemite Ice Rink at Curry Village is scheduled to open this Friday, November 20th.
If you’ve never visited the rink it’s located just outside Curry Village and affords you an awesome view of Half Dome. It’s a great place to hang out and have fun especially if you come up with people who want to go skiing at Badger Pass (not open yet) and you want something to do.
The rink is open:
Weekends and Holidays
8:30am – 11:00am
12:00pm – 2:30pm
3:30pm – 6:00pm
7:00pm – 9:30pm
Weekdays
3:30pm – 6:00pm
7:00pm – 9:30pm
It’s $8 for adults, $6 children and skate rentals are $3. There’s an outdoor fire ring to get warm by and supplies for making smores and hot drink are available in the store.
For more information call (209) 372-8319 or visit YosemitePark.com.
Five months ago...
WE arrived back in the States five months (and a few days) ago. Since then we've:bought a car --
traveled a little to see family up north --
had good family time in Arizona --
bought a nice little house off the distressed real estate market in Laveen (Phoenix) --
hung light fixtures and ceiling fans --
moved our Guam belongs out of storage and into the house --
found two couples who want to start a church --
started meeting as a church a couple of times a month --
met lots and lots of new people --
painted --
planted --
and painted some more --
loaded our belongs from the storage container in Turlock into a truck and drove it to Phoenix --
spent hours in the dentist chair --
and many many many hours dealing with Cheryl's broken wrist (which BTW, is healing well and she is a trooper in doing the physical therapy).
Neither Cheryl nor I have landed revenue producing jobs, yet. She has applied for over 70 positions and has had one interview as a result. Usually, when we move some place the jobs find her -- and there are often multiple opportunities. I haven't applied for nearly as many jobs. But I've filled out quite a few part-time teaching applications. These are interesting times. And we're still doing okay financially -- living off savings.
Sometimes when things don't seem to be happening as fast as we'd like, it is helpful to look back over several months just to see how much has been accomplished. And I suppose that if we had paying jobs we wouldn't have been able to get so much done. God is good.
Tweaked Aerials, Architecture, Machines, Misc.
Nuts and Bolts.
Nopales con Flores / Cactus Roses.
Body and Soul.
The State Theater, Modesto, CA.
Aerial photo looking up 10th Street in downtown Modesto, CA.
Aerial photo of homes in the Del Rio Country Club area of Modesto, CA.
Aerial photo of the DoubleTree Inn in Modesto, CA.
Aerial photos of homes in Discovery Bay, CA.
Desert home in Albuquerque, NM.
Victorian Houses in San Francisco, CA.
A Stainless Steel door in San Francisco, CA.
The Prospect Theater Project production of "Desdemona."
Tango: the First Century>
Hammond B3 Organ.
Chile Peppers.
Portuguese bullfight in Stevinson, CA.
Farm tractor.
Random
• PERHAPS the American church has swung to the opposite extreme. We loudly and obnoxiously protest every little thing that rubs us wrong, eroding our credibility in the culture -- and leaving very little energy left over for dealing with the things that count. But at least we feel important as we hear ourselves talk.
• I'M embarrassed by the animosity that many Christians are aiming at President Obama. Now we have this "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8" venom. If you disagree with the president or if you think he is a schmuck -- that's okay -- you are entitled to an opinion. Think of it as your opportunity to practice radical-graciousness. ~ link
• TIM Stafford: "These are not your enemies" ~ link
• GUARANTEED pastoral appointments may soon be a thing of the past in the United Methodist Church. ~ link
• IN SPITE of my best efforts at personally propping them up, Lowe's third-quarter profit fell 30%. In this area people are reluctant to do improvements on homes that they worry about losing.
• THERE is a crew working on the vacant house across the street. The bank auctioned it off last week. It would be nice to get some new neighbors in there but I suspect that once they replace all the missing pieces and redo the yard, the house will just go back on the market as a flip. That's been the pattern in this area.
• "WORLD'S most annoying cities" ~ link
• HOW is it that so many children are suddenly getting hurt by falling television sets? ~ link
• WILL Google help flatten the legal system and reduce the need for lawyers? ~ link
• GOOGLE Translate just got better. The next step should be to add some truly useful languages like Chuukese, Yapese, Palauan, and Marshallese. ~ link
• PRICE dispute -- Costco says it is going to stop carrying Coke products. I never found Costco to be all that competitive on their soft drink pricing. Perhaps they're trying to address that. ~ link
Random
• RIO de Vida Covenant Church, our partner congregation a few miles up the road in Surprise, was featured in a story on the PSWC website. ~ link
• PRESIDENT Barack Obama: "I have never used Twitter..." He's got 2.6 million Twitter followers and he's never sent a tweet. Grounds for impeachment? ~ link• THE fall issue of Theology, News, and Notes is now online. Covenant colleagues Todd Johnson and John Weborg are contributors in the discussion about traditions of Christian spirituality. ~ link
• I'M optimistic that the Chinese government will eventually figure out that their censorship of the internet is putting the country at an economic and political disadvantage in relation to the rest of the world. ~ link
• AROUND two million people in Bangladesh are suffering from arsenic poisoning. Apparently the man-made ponds intended to protect villagers from unclean water have become catch basins for contaminants, which then enter the ground water system. "Experts have described the situation as the worst mass poisoning of a population in history." ~ link
• EGYPT has launched the first Arabic web domain name ~ link
• NEW research finds correlation between two chemicals found in plastic and feminization of boys. ~ link
Has pastoral ministry become too demanding?
"The average lifetime length of service for an active pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church is only 11 years, according to statistics recently compiled by the denomination’s pension plan." ~ linkThat doesn't sound right. Perhaps if you figured in the large number of staff ministers, many of whom have temporary credentials and don't see pastoral ministry as a life-long vocation, 11 years might be accurate. OR it could be that because the denomination has expanded so fast that the number of people with short-term service is a lot greater than those with long-term service.
Who knows what those stats really mean!
I have also begun to question the notion that "excessive pastoral demands" are shortening ministry careers.
Yes, we can all point to some unhealthy churches which are overly demanding and which need a kick in the ecclesiastical butt -- or need to be disbanded. I've even gone through some stressful times at various points in my "ministerial career." But I'd have a hard time saying that any of the churches I've served have been "excessively demanding."
The work is hard and occasionally the hours are really long but all the churches I've worked with have bent over backward to be accommodating -- even when we're not all seeing everything eye-to-eye.
On top of that, there is a great deal of flexibility in the pastoral rhythm -- unless the pastor thinks that he or she can be all things to all people -- some kind of messiah. There are pastors who see themselves as being so important that they tightly schedule every moment of the day in order to squeeze in as much "ministry" as possible -- and then complain that they are suffocating. But those excessive pastoral demands are generated from within.
I'm not terribly sympathetic to the pastor who says, "I haven't had a free evening in 10 days." My perhaps too snarky stock under-breath response has become -- "and whose fault is that?"
Remains of Visitors Missing Since 1996 Believed Found in Death Valley
This has almost nothing to do with Yosemite but the story is something right out of CSI. The skeletal remains of a human have been found in a secluded corner of Death Valley and are believed to be one of four German visitors missing since 1996.
Two hikers discovered the bones Thursday in remote Goler Wash, a rugged area accessible only by 4-wheel drive vehicles. The area is several miles from the spot the abandoned minivan of the German tourists was found, the last sign of them until now.
“The park near the Nevada border is considered the hottest and driest location in North America. The four who vanished in the 3-million-acre wilderness on July 22, 1996, were Dresden residents Cornelia Meyer, 27; her 4-year-old son, Max; her boyfriend, architect Egbert Rimkus, 34, and his 10-year-old son, Georg Weber.
They had arrived in the United States earlier in the month and were touring in a Plymouth Voyager minivan rented in Los Angeles.
They checked out of a Las Vegas hotel room on July 22 and arrived in Death Valley the same day, records indicated.
Temperatures in the park that week had topped 120 degrees.
The visitors bought an information booklet at the visitor center and then apparently stayed overnight in the park and the next day took a dirt road into a remote area.
An entry in German and dated July 23, 1996, was left in a guest book kept in a box on a metal pole in an abandoned mining camp. It indicated the visitors were going through “the pass” — possibly a reference to Mengel Pass, a dirt trail that crosses the barren Panamint Range, a barren mountain range on the park’s southwestern border. (AP)”
You can read the rest of this exciting story here.
Will Zondervan recover its reputation?
Zondervan has spent a lot of time in the evangelical doghouse this year:
It will be interesting to see if Zondervan is able to recover its reputation.the brouhaha over the discontinuation of the TNIV Bible translation, the recent publication of Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership, which has been seriously criticized for the racial stereo-types, the staff changes at subsidiary Youth Specialties, and now this LaHaye nonsense.
Random
• THE bit about the White House replacing the Christmas Tree with a "Holiday Tree" this year appears to be another internet hoax. Be discerning. ~ link
• SOME of the swamped community colleges are out of necessity turning people away. ~ link
Reformtting spiritual formation class
For example, I've spent a lot of time this week reformatting my spiritual formation class so that I can teach it (from Arizona) by distance education this spring. Ideally we'd teach this class as a small group experience but the students we're aiming at are unable to get to the PIU Guam campus and there aren't really enough of them in a single place to set-up groups -- even if there were qualified group leaders in place.
To make things even more interesting most of these students are on islands with spotty electricity, slow flaky internet, and really snail mail service. That rules out my video content and online forums with tight deadlines. But I am counting on email being available some of the time.
The students will be doing a lot of writing, which won't hurt them at all. They are all English as second language learners. And I really admire people who will commit to such endeavor in a second language.
If you are one of my island or Pacific Rim readers and you or someone you know should be taking this class, registration information can be found here. The work, while formatted differently, is about equal to what you'd have to do if you took the class in a classroom.
Photographs tweaked with Kai's Power Tools (KPT) 3 Video Feedback filter
Jessica
The McHenry Mansion in Modesto, CA.
The Cirque de la Symphonie.
Paije Dolza
Apples
Zinfandel Grapes
Cancun Condos
Random
• H1N1 in America -- 22 million had contracted it, 98,000 have been hospitalized with it, and in the last six months 3,900 Americans have died from it. ~ link
• THE Arizona department of Transportation tweeted this about an hour ago -- "Weekend restrictions: Freeways open for NASCAR..." If they're opening the freeways for NASCAR racing this weekend I'm staying home. It's already too fast without a bunch of race car drivers.
• ACCORDING to a new report released Wednesday, pollution levels in Arizona have increased 61% statewide since 1990. ~ link
• THE Atlantic headline reads: "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?" I take issue with that, the "prosperity gospel" has little to do with Christianity. ~ link
• 16% of adults in the world would move to a new country if they could. By far the destination country of choice would be the US. Asians are least likely to want to move. Africans are most likely to want to move. ~ link
Random
• NOW online NLT/Greek Interlinear New Testament. Initial response crashed the server today. But it seems to be functioning smoothly now. ~ link
• "JOHN J O'Connor III, the husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has died." ~ link• WHILE some are talking about vibrant new designs for NFL helmets, others, perhaps more level headed people, are suggesting that the number of head injuries in football would be reduced if they got rid of the helmets altogether.
• MALAYSIA has enough internal strife. Now they've annoyed Indonesia again -- which seems easy enough to do. ~ link
• WE are supposedly in an El Niño pattern but Arizona weather continues to be wacked out in the opposite direction. Things are supposed to be wetter than normal but there is no rain in the forecast for the rest of November. It may briefly get cooler than normal next week. So far, though, we're still doing days in the upper 80's and lower 90's (!). ~ link
• FABULOUS colour video of London in 1927 ~ link
• GREAT Veteran's Day link -- dogs and children welcoming their soldiers home ~ link
• GOOGLE has slashed the price of additional online storage. I'm at 94% of Picasa/image storage capacity (used by blogger) so I may eventually have to breakdown and spend 41¢ a month for more. ~ link
• SETH Godin's post on choosing customers is highly adaptable to church planters. Relax. Take some time. Discern who God is putting on the team. Don't chase people down just because you need warm bodies to create critical mass. It will come back to bite you later. ~ link
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