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NZ Update I

I’ve now been here for a week. On Monday the boys and I did some landscaping for a member of the church. Ezra and I biked to Pukekohe to exchange my money on Wednesday and that night was children’s Bible study, Thursday was door knocking in Pukekohe and adult Bible study. Friday night we went street preaching in downtown Auckland with a stop at Wendy’s afterward for a Frosty Cone. We’ve been busy, but we’ve had fun. I get a kick out of practicing and polishing my Kiwi accent. 😉 Jillian said she was jealous that I could it so well. Please pray for me as I do Family School on Sunday. I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers Mate!

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English: This is a vector image of the Fiji Co...

Fiji Coat of Arms (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, I arrived in San Diego last night, and am taking off for Fiji on Thursday morning. The flights were uneventful; the person beside me on the first flight fell asleep almost immediately, and on the second she and her husband were agnostic. She was not interested in the Gospel but thanked me for sharing. Hope you all have a great Memorial Day. Thanks to those who served!

Next Stop Fiji

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The Iroquois and the Soap Company Have It Right

“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

-From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy

I found this quote on the back of a soap bottle from Seventh Generation. It makes me wonder how many times we actually think about the consequences of our actions. Do we even ask ourselves how it will affect us next year? The Iroquois looked 350 years ahead. It might surprise you if you consider what types of decisions have lasting affects: That movie you watched, that book you read, how you use your money, where you go to church-or whether you go to church, even what you eat. Will your entertainments, your friends, your church, etc. lead to your descendants ending up in Hell? It may not do anything to you, but over time it will most likely open the door to worse and worse. Will your health choices show your grandchildren farther down the path to cancer or diabetes? Maybe you’re reading this thinking “I don’t plan on having children or grandchildren”. Well, what about your friends and their children? Your family members and their descendants? You may not realize it, but you have many people watching you, some of whom will follow you. I’ll end with a verse that compliments this: “Ponder the path of thy feet.” -Proverbs 4:26a.

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New Zealand

The Snyder FamilyIt’s now “official”; I’m going to New Zealand! I’ll be helping the Snyder’s, a missionary family we’ve known for years. Originally, I was going for one year, but, due to new requirements for religious workers, I am not able to apply for a work visa (needed for a visit longer than three months). Instead, I will be going on a three-month visitor visa and applying for a work visa over there to finish out the year if we get the necessary paperwork in time. I will be leaving New York around Memorial Day, stopping in California to visit relatives, and arriving in New Zealand on June 2.  Some of the things we will be doing include:
  • Children’s Bible club
  • Teaching in the schools
  • Nursing homes
  • Street preaching
  • And whatever else Mr. Snyder says

Please pray for me and the Snyder family. I will be posting updates as often as possible.

 

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The Pangolin Has Been Released

Precise pangolin, or Ubuntu 12.04, to be exact. The newest version of Ubuntu was released yesterday (actually a day early) and, of course, I installed it. Here are some things I’ve noticed about the changes made along with some screen-shots.  The first thing I noticed was that when you open the dash (Unity‘s start menu), the home page no longer consists of shortcuts, but is now just your recent files, recently used programs, and your downloads folder. Not too big of a deal, but still an inconvenience. Secondly, when you maximize a window the launcher no longer auto-hides. I can see the reason, but it does get in the way now and is a little distracting. (Edit: you can turn on auto-hide in Appearance. However, this will hide it even with no windows maximized.) Only one more negative; the scroll function on my trackpad no longer works in file manager windows although it works in other programs. OK, now for the positives: the launcher now changes colors to reflect the predominant color of your background image, just like Windows 8. Rythmbox is now the default music player. The default from 11.10, Banshee, always crashed on my computer. Other than those two things, it’s pretty much the same as the last version (as far as I have seen, at least), which I really liked. I suppose with time I will get used to these changes that bother me and enjoy it just as much as 11.10.

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Rending Your Clothes

King Josiah by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld

King Josiah by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry it’s been so long; I’ve been busy with special meetings at church and have had problems with Wi-Fi. Anyways, I just want to share something from my Bible reading today. I was reading in 2 Kings 22, and I noticed something in verse 11: “And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law[the part of the Bible that they had], that he rent his clothes.” So why did the king rend his clothes? In Bible times, you would rend your clothes to show great sorrow and/or consternation. It was also a sign of repentance. King Josiah rent his clothes because he was shocked at what the Bible said and how well it applied to his people. He realized it was an indictment against his kingdom for the sins of the people and was saddened at what their punishment was to be. He wanted to show God that he was sorry for the way the Israelites were acting and asked for forgiveness and deliverance. Then I thought about myself; what do I do when a hear a sermon or read a verse that convicts me? Do I do as King Josiah? Do I just ignore it, or even worse, pretend that I am sorry to try and fool God into forgiving me(tip: it doesn’t work)? God forgive me if I ever do anything other than truly repent and get right; that is the only way I will hear something like what God tells the king in verses 19 and 20: “Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the LORD.
Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.”

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I’ve been using Codeacademy for a while now to learn Javascript, but just recently they released an overview on HTML and CSS. As of now it is just the basics of HTML but the rest will be released soon. It’s fairly easy, I managed to complete it in a day, but it teaches you all you need to know to build a simple webpage in HTML (which is actually the way I wrote this page, now that I know how). If you’ve wanted to learn HTML, give Codeacademy a try.

Codeacademy