Project 2

This is my second project for Tech and Detailing, it took quite a lot longer, closer to 15 hours. It includes details for some sidewalk joints and various reinforced concrete foundation section details. And now that I've finished, I'm talking to Sophie! Yay!!!

Tech and Detailing Project 1

Well, as I will be spending a large majority of my life this semestre in Seaton 254H working on projects for Construction Techniques and Detailing, I figured I'd at least post the finished projects for everyone to see to make up for my lack of existence to the outside world...hee hee! This first project wasn't anything too exciting. Basically it was just an exercise to get our fingers back into practice and such. It took about 11 hours to complete.

New Haircut

Hello everyone! I just got a hair cut yesterday, so I thought maybe I should put up a picture...I think Misty did a fantastic job, especially considering I was no help at all in making decisions about what she should do...hee hee!

Summer Update...and Thermodynamics...blah!

So, I realise it has been quite some time since I've written anything, so I figured I should probably give everyone somewhat of an update. I've been meaning to for awhile, I guess I just never really got to actually doing it. Anyways, for those of you who didn't already know, I had quite an adventurous summer.

The second week in June, I volunteered as a counselor for Royal Family Kids Camp, which is a summer camp for abused and neglected children who are now a part of the foster care system. Basically, we just try to provide a weeks worth of happy childhood memories for them and show them the love of Christ through it, because many of them have never gotten to experience much joy in their lives. It was a completely fantastic time spending an entire week hanging out with a bunch of 7 to 11 year olds, but it was also very exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Obviously, they have a HUGE amount of energy, so they definitely wear you out, and sometimes there can be a lot of discipline problems and things like that, and some of their stories are just completely heartbreaking and bring tears to your eyes, but it is always wonderful to see the joy in their eyes during camp, and the hope they have for the future when it finally comes time to say goodbye. Anyways, I just feel completely blessed for the opportunity to reach out to these children, and although there were definitely a lot of challenges during the week, I am very excited to do it all again next year!

Then, the day after returning from camp, I promptly did all of my laundry and had to get everything packed up again for my first ever international excursion to visit Sophie in England! It was crazy exciting! I had never flown on an airplane before then, never been on holiday by myself, never been out of the country...so yeah, it was both exciting and terrifying at the same time! But it was totally worth it! I finally saw the ocean, built a sandcastle, rode on the "correct" side of the road, ate profiteroles, ate a ginormous pancake, ate an ice cream from a van, went to Hillsong London, posed as Sherlock Holmes and saw and experienced so many other fantastic things that I just don't have the time to list... I took over 900 pictures and went through like four sets of batteries while I was there...hee hee. I'll include all the links to the albums towards the end. And on top of all that stuff was obviously the most wonderful thing of all, getting to spend time with the most amazing girl in the world, which made it INCREDIBLY difficult to say goodbye...yeah, six hour time differences aren't much fun, and 15 hour ones are even worse (she's in Australia at the moment)...but I get to look forward to seeing her again at some point, so all will be alright eventually.

And now I'm just back to Manhattan, working and trying to pay off my trip, which is almost done because we had a big conference at work a couple weeks ago and I made twice as much as usual for that, so praise God for that! And I'm the Mactech Manager now, so that will be interesting being the leader this semestre...I guess we'll see how that goes, but everyone at work seems quite confident in me, so that seems pretty good. And I think I've finally gotten my schedule for this semestre sorted out, only after changing it like twelve times...my roommates finally convinced me that taking 20 hours was not only insane, but humanly impossible, so i dropped down to 16. I have a lot of time consuming classes this semestre, and people who have taken the classes before have told me that there is a good chance I'll be spending 60 hours a week on coursework during the semestre once the projects start hitting, so I'm trying to get a head start on some of the other classes by studying for them now. So yeah, last night I started studying Thermodynamics...oh joy...and as soon as I get the books borrowed, I'll be adding Mechanics of Materials and Electric Circuits and Control Systems to that list, but at least it will give me something to do...

And next week I'll be going back to Larned for a few days to see my family and hang out with some friends back home. We Larnedites have an annual camping trip that we take to a pond out in the middle of a field and go kayaking and play paintball and chase cows and crazy sorts of things like that, so that'll be fun and a nice break from boredom. And maybe at some point I'll finish the book I've been reading, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. It has been pretty entertaining, yet another about chivalry in England...it has Robin hood in it, so that instantly makes it pretty awesome to me...hee hee. And not quite as insane as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain that I read earlier...the ending of that one was just ridiculous! And at some point I need to finish The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I had been reading ealier. Anyways, I guess that's enough babbling for now, I should probably get back to work, here are the links to my albums from England...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89498&id=686446537&l=35155e5f3c
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89731&id=686446537&l=dc1afe875e
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90027&id=686446537&l=d581ab376c
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90625&id=686446537&l=1fd061a497
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90849&id=686446537&l=87bbcc0089
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91010&id=686446537&l=f7a4b2b040
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91228&id=686446537&l=765e19c47b
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91613&id=686446537&l=2798472367
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91861&id=686446537&l=334f9bc2af
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92908&id=686446537&l=5ff33a9674
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92911&id=686446537&l=1f28d0e74b

Enjoy and have a wonderful day!

Costly Grace

For resource group, we have begun reading The Cost of Discipleship which was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran minister in Germany who made a stand for his faith and joined with a group of conspirators to work for Hitler's defeat, and was eventually hanged for it. In the first chapter, he greatly discusses the dichotomy between the "cheap grace" that so many fall for, and "costly grace", a grace which actually means something, a grace which requires a choice and an adjustment--grace that truly calls us to follow Christ daily. He writes the following concerning "cheap grace":

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

This cheap grace he explains as the idea that people have that grace covers all they do, and since we are sinners and will always be sinners, there is no need for us to change or attempt to be more like Christ, because we will always fail miserably, so everything can remain as it was before. Cheap grace is the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Basically, cheap grace is the idea that accepting Christ costs us nothing at all and requires no other action on our part--that we need not worry about aligning our lives to His will or pursuing a relationship with Him, and unfortunately, many people have fallen for this idea.

Bonhoeffer contrasts this with the idea of "costly grace" of which he writes the following:

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son, [...] and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. [...] Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.""

All of this greatly reinforced a thought that God had placed in my mind quite some time ago, that following Christ costs us "everything", but through following Christ, we gain the true everything, the everything that is truly something, and in comparison, the "everything" that it costs us is truly nothing in comparison. Maybe that is a bit crazy, but hopefully it makes at least a bit of sense. It reminds me of Paul in Philippians 3: 7-12 when he writes:

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me."

Anyways, just a few of my thoughts. Hope they can be of some significance to someone. Have a wonderful weekend and Happy Easter to everyone!!!

I'm going to England!!!

Well, I don't have a whole lot of time, but for everyone who doesn't already know, I'm officially going to England in June to visit Sophie! Woo hoo! Praise God for that! It is going to be a wonderfully exciting adventure! Now to just get through the rest of the semester...

Life is Meaningless...Without God

Carlos and I began studying Ecclesiastes today, and the first section of the first chapter has the title Everything Is Meaningless, which definitely caught our attention. Ecclesiastes is written from the perspective of someone, most likely King Solomon, near the end of his life, and is a reflection upon that life. The author speaks of the meaningless of worldly endeavors and of how there is no true value to anything we toil at under the sun because it will all pass away when we die. At least, this is the case without God. The chapter begins with the phrase "Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless!" which would seem like quite a hopeless story, but it does not end there. The King James version says something like "Vanity of Vanities" instead of meaningless, so I decided to look a bit more into that. Vanity can mean something like empty, valueless, or worthless, and it can also mean taking excessive pride in one's self or accomplishments, and so putting these two definitions together, you get something like the worthlessness of pursuing a self-centered existence--the vanity of vanities. And we see this theme emphasized throughout the rest of this chapter and chapter 2. It also emphasizes how there is nothing new under the sun--that the same sins have existed for all of creation--there are just new ways of disguising or rationalising them. We see the classic example of someone hoarding wealth and treasures in this world, but never finding satisfaction in any of it, and seeking to gain worldly wisdom, but realising in the end that it is all of no importance--it is just a "chasing after the wind." He goes on to speak of how though wisdom is better than folly, the wise and foolish man still share the same fate, so everything a wise man does in his lifetime is just as meaningless as the foolish man because after he dies, it is done--it will be passed on to someone else to do with as they please. God, however, does not die away, and his plans are everlasting, and by allowing Him to work in our lives, it is no longer just a "chasing after the wind." We have a purpose in Christ. He also speaks of being content with what God gives us and not lusting after what others have or what the world thinks we should have. Reading and discussing all of this reminded me of something I read in Experiencing God about learning to distinguish between what is temporary and what is eternal. Everything in our lives is temporary except for what we allow God to work through us--and this is reaching other people--loving our neighbors as ourselves--the greatest commandment--sharing Christ with the world. Anyways, that is what I felt God speaking to me when reading through those first two chapters. Just realising how futile of an existance we have if we are not serving God, and being content with what God gives us and in His timing. That last part, about being content with God doing things in His timing is probably the toughest part, at least for me, but God uses patience to build character and prepare us for what He has coming, and we must persevere on towards that goal. Anyways, sorry that this was a bit rambly. Have a most excellent day!

Cloverton and Conversations with Carlos

So, just a bit of an update on what has been happening lately. Last night Paul, Joshua and I went to the first ever concert of Cloverton, an awesome new Christian band from here in Manhattan. They were celebrating the release of their first EP Into the Beautiful. The concert was absolutely phenomenal, and the turnout was amazing. The little theater where they performed was completely packed from wall to wall. In fact they had to remove rows of chairs so that more people could squeeze in. Needless to say, it totally surpassed everyone's expectations, and the Spirit of God was definitely at work in that place. I am definitely glad I decided to go, and I pray God's continued blessing upon the guys in the band as they passionately work to make Christ known through the musical talents that He has instilled in them.

And today was my first weekly meeting with Carlos. We have been chatting a great deal lately about all sorts of things, and there is just so much that we can learn from one another and what God has been doing and is continuing to do in both of our lives, so we have decided to meet on Saturdays and delve into the Word together and just see what God has for us. Today we met at Radina's and the focus of our discussion was fear. We all have fears that hinder us from truly allowing God's will to be done in our lives sometimes, so we were just trying to get an understanding of what we are afraid of and how to overcome these fears. For me, it has really been knowing what to say sometimes, or knowing how to say it, or whether or not I should, or just worrying that it won't be good enough or silly things like that. I know that God will guide my words through the Holy Spirit, and I know that it is silly and that I shouldn't be afraid of such things, but it can still be difficult to trust God when fear sets in. It's easy enough to say that you will, but when a scary situation actually arises, sometimes you just totally forget. Anyways, in an effort to overcome my fears, I have really just been trying to do a better job of communicating with people about what God has been speaking to me or what He has been doing in my life because you just never know who is listening and may need to hear it. One thing Carlos told me is not to be afraid to speak up, even if I am just agreeing with something someone has already said. You may have something to add that is very meaningful to someone.

Basically, it just came down to turning to God when you are afraid, which I'm sure most people understand, but like I said, in the midst of fear, that can be easily forgotten. Carlos told me he always remembers Psalm 23:4--"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me." Also, Psalm 27:1 reads--"The Lord is my light and my salvation--whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life--of whom shall I be afraid?" I mean seriously, we've got God on our side--He walks with us through death's shadow--why should we fear anything but Him?

Another point that we both came to is that nothing is to small for God. I mean, so often people are told that their situation isn't too big for God to handle, which is definitely true, but I think it is also important to remember that no situation is too small for God either. So often I feel like my needs are minimal in the grand scheme of things and that God should focus on other people who's needs are much greater rather than worrying about me, but the fact is, God is perfectly capable of doing it all, and my not asking is really doubting that ability, and I definitely don't want to be doubting God. I mean how can we trust Him with the huge things in life if we can't trust Him with the small ones. Anyways, when I said this it just kinda jumped out to both of us, so we will be exploring this through scripture next week, so I will let you know how that goes. Anyways, meeting together was very helpful for me, and I am very excited to see how God continues to teach and encourage us both as we continue meeting together.

Oh yes, I also got the game Would You Rather from Sophie today...that was quite a wonderful surprise! She is so lovely! Thank you very much my love!

Just a bit about what God has been revealing to me lately...

Alright, so I've really been making an effort lately to seek God more passionately and really just deepen my relationship with Him and truly be open for Him to work through me to accomplish His purposes. He has been revealing so many things to me, and well, I've never been terribly good at recording things or communicating anything in any sort of comprehensible manner, but I would like to have some sort of reminder of the things I am learning, and well, I figured why not attempt to compile some of these thoughts, feelings, revelations, and whatever else into a blog entry every once in a while. I mean I guess that's kinda the purpose of a blog anyways, and you really never know who else might benefit from hearing something that God has been speaking to you, so I'll give it a try.

So, I've recently started attending a new Sunday School class at church entitled “Experiencing God” and God has really been revealing a great deal to me through this. It is basically about making yourself available for God to work through you. The first week has been over understanding God's will for your life, which is definitely a very applicable lesson to me. So many people want to know what God's will is for their life, and I admit that I have been one of those people, but really the question should be just what is God's will...period. Then once we have an understanding of what God's will is, we can begin adjusting our lives so that we can live a God-centered rather than self-centered life, allowing Him to work through us to accomplish His designs. We cannot accomplish anything for God on our own or by following our own desires, but rather we must sacrifice them to Him and allow Him to mold us into something He can use to accomplish His work. And the truth is that when we allow this to happen and we are obedient to His call, everything works out far better than we ever could have orchestrated on our own. Of course the challenges and obstacles will be many and the sacrifices are great, but it is worth it.

This brings me to another point, one that is often very difficult for me...that God rarely gives you a detailed road map of where He is headed with something, but rather He wants you to trust Him completely to be the guide. I mean look at the way God called most of the people He sent to accomplish His amazing plans. Abram, Moses, the disciples...I mean there are examples scattered all over throughout His Word of God basically saying “Go” without filling them in on any details, and they trusted Him to do it. Of course they had their doubts and excuses just like everyone else at first, but eventually they came to a place where they trusted God totally and completely with their lives.

This brings me to my last point for the moment, probably the one that has impacted me the most, and one that I have known for a long time, but never ceases to amaze me...the fact that God chooses to use us to accomplish His works despite our endless faults and disbelief. I have been reading Genesis lately, and I've read it several times, but I've never noticed just how wretched and unqualified the majority of the people that God uses here, and throughout history really are. I mean just read about Abraham and His repeated distrust in God. He lies several times about his wife saying that she is his sister to escape what he deems to be certain death, and he doesn't believe that God can provide him with a son through his wife, and so on...yet God still uses him to become the father of His people, Israel. And Jacob, he was a con-artist, a huge liar, deceiving nearly everyone around him for his own personal gain, yet God uses Him. Then moving into the new testament, there are the disciples, the most unlikely group of ridiculous and uneducated hooligans that anyone would ever expect to be trusted with anything of importance, especially spreading the Word of God throughout the world. And then there's Saul who would have thought nothing of killing any Christian he met before his experience with Christ, becoming Paul and carrying the message of Christ to the Gentiles. And these are but a few of the instances where God uses people that no one would ever expect to carry out His goals. The truth is that not a one of us is “qualified” for the tasks that God has called us to, but if we trust Him, He will always be successful in His endeavors. Anyways, the fact that God chooses to use us despite our very obvious inadequacies is utterly amazing.

Well, I guess that's all I have for the moment. Like I said, I'm not very good at explaining things in any sort of intelligible format, but hopefully you have gotten some sort of something out of my rambling. Have a blessed and wonderful week!

A Shocking Experience

So, today we started Engineering Physics studios...oh joy! (Can you sense the sarcasm there?) I was rather not looking forward to going to that, but I got to talk very briefly with Sophie before, so I was in quite a joyous mood. Actually, they really aren't all that terrible, just rather annoyingly time-consuming and they can be rather difficult to understand at times. Anyways, I have come to expect the labs to be rather crazy and they never seem to go as they are supposed to; however, today's lab was extremely chaotic considering we haven't yet had a lecture over any of the material, and it was dealing almost entirely with a Van de Graff generator, which is a device that produces loads of static electricity, and can produce some rather shocking results (hee hee) when no one really knows what they are supposed to be doing with it. The lab instructions are always rather vague and assume that you've already seen a similar sample experiment performed in the lecture, but since we hadn't had one yet, we were all quite puzzled, but being engineers, we proceeded to try things until we got the desired results. The first thing we were supposed to do was ground the Van de Graff to kee it from building up too much electricity, but no one, including the lab teachers, seemed to know how to go about this with the provided materials, so we just assumed that it must already be done. So, the first thing we were supposed to do was touch the generator and observe what happens. I volunteered to try first, knowing it would just make my hair stand up, and this was true, and that all went fine. The problem came soon after that when we attempted to turn it off. I touched the power switch and it zapped me. Then, it started attracting everyone's hair towards it. Finally I just flipped the switch to it using my pen. It was really quite comical, except now no one in our group wanted to touch the thing. Our group managed to get through the rest of the lab without any more incidents, but one group did manage to get some pretty large blue sparks shooting from their's, but I'm pretty sure they were doing it on purpose. So, it looks like this semester will be full of plenty more crazy physics studios, but most of these will be dealing with electricity and magnetism rather than liquid nitrogen and catapults. I'm not really sure if that is more or less dangerous.

Oh, and I get to read another Steinbeck book for my U.S. Geography class called Travels with Charley in Search of America. Hannah got a good laugh out of that when she heard. Not really looking forward to it, but at least it is much shorter than The Grapes of Wrath, so I can't complain too much. Really it should be a fairly easy class, and hopefully will be rather interesting as well. The teacher is a bit nuts though, but I guess it'll keep things interesting. I guess there's some big geography conference in Las Vegas after Spring Break, and he's going to that, so he's not sure how classes will work then. He also said something about possibly never returning from that trip and the possibility of free "A's" if that occurred. Anyways, should be interesting. And I'll be starting Differential Equations classes tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. It will be interesting, because that has a lab with it as well, so I wonder how a lab class works for a math class. Probably lots of boring computer stuff, but we'll see I guess. Oh, and Chi Alpha starts tomorrow night, so that'll be exciting! Really, it should be a pretty awesome semester--I'll be done with the math and physics department after this, so that is definitely something to celebrate about.

Oh, I should also add that I successfully fried eggs the other day. They were actually edible this time. My last attempt ended with me running outside with a flaming frying pan, so this definitely went much better. I've been experimenting with some new sandwich recipes recently. The eggs were for my ham, bacon, egg, cheese and pickle sandwich, though my new favorite is cucumber, cream cheese and bacon. Yes, as you can tell, I eat a lot of things with bacon in it...hee hee! It is very delicious though! So is cheesecake...maybe I'll go get some of that soon. Anyways, I guess that's about it for the moment.

World Missions Summit

Alright, so I've spent the past couple days in Cincinnati, Ohio at the World Missions Summit, and let me just say that it was a completely awesome life-changing experience! I am really excited about everything God is doing around the world and am anxious to be a part of it. I don't really want to write a whole lot at the moment, but I will keep you updated on things pertaining to it as I can. Here is a link to a website with a couple articles about what all has been happening the past couple days <http://worldmissions.ag.org/details1.cfm>. There will also be more stuff posted on the official World Missions Summit site eventually at <http://twms.ag.org> if you would like to check that out. God Bless!