Happy New Year!

The Parable People are performing at our New Year's Eve service tonight. Thanks Jesse and the youth group from Coldwater Baptist.

Relief Efforts in Asia

The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is already mobilizing to bring aid to those areas hit by the tsunami.

"As Asia's battered coasts began to reveal the enormity of the death and devastation caused by the biggest earthquake in 40 years, Southern Baptist relief workers began working with others to aid the survivors.

Initial efforts will focus on delivering food, water, blankets and other essentials to coastal villages in southern Thailand -- some of which were nearly wiped out by towering waves – and the heavily damaged resort area of Krabi."

Source: International Mission Board

The Baptist Convention of North Carolina already has a mission partnership with Thailand and Southeast Asia. North Carolinians like you may already be on the ground and aiding the relief effort. If they aren't they certainly will be in the coming months. For more information regarding short term mission projects in Southeast Asia please contact the North Carolina Baptist Men.

You can contribute financially to the relief effort by donating to the IMB's Asia Earthquake Disaster Relief Fund (One hundred percent of each dollar given is used in a ministry).

You wuz tryin' to chank me!

Over Christmas dinner my sister and I were discussing the greatest Strong Bad Emails of all time (conversations generally find their way around to Strong Bad eventually). My personal favorite is this one where he gives Strong Sad some Sanka. But, I have to agree with Lindsey that his book for children is also pretty good. Gregor is a weird name but mine is "Gregory."

Inspecting the mouths of gift horses

The Washington Times is carrying a story today of U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland (Norway) and his response to the United States' pledge of 15 million dollars in relief to aid those struck by the tsunami in Asia

"...U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland suggested that the United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, saying there would be more available if taxes were raised."

Source: Washington Times (emphasis added)

This guy from Norway thinks we could give more money in relief aid if we were just taxed a little more. Maybe he doesn't realize that Americans are already seeing 30% or more of our incomes vanish into a wasteful government bureaucracy. I realize that this nation is the world's wealthiest but it's people have to work from January to March just to cover their taxes every year. The idea that the solution to the World's problems is just to tax the Americans a little more is ridiculous.

The really absurd part of this is that American's will give way more than 15 million dollars to the effort through non-governemental relief organizations. We always have.

Charity isn't charity when it's coerced by the government under penalty of prison through a tax system. If the World leaders in the UN think otherwise then maybe it's time that the United States defunded it. Redirect THAT money to the relief effort in Asia.

The Doggie Dilemma

So last Friday I picked up a 6 month old Golden Retriever puppie and brought her home. The deal was that we were watching the dog while her family was travelling and we would decide by Wednesday whether or not we would keep the dog after that (her family can't keep her so they're looking to put it in a friendly home).

Things have gone well with Cali (the dog). She has only messed our carpet one time and that was easily fixed because we've had the carpet shampooer on standby all weekend. The problem is that we are a pretty active family. Carmen and I both work outside the home. We're over at the church at least three nights a week. Angel is in Upward Cheerleading one night a week. Our lifestyle leads to a lot eating on the run and very little hanging around the house.

Cali is "crate" training. I think it's called "crate" training because it sounds a little bit nicer than "cage" training. Basically, when we are not at home she is in a cage. As far as cages go it's very roomy. But it's a cage none-the-less. Once Christmas vacation is over and Carmen goes back to work the dog will be alone in the "crate" for 9 hours every weekday. At least two nights a week we'll get home and quickly feed and walk the dog only to immediately run back out of the house to other obligations. Once the crate training is done (1 year old) supposedly Callie can be left to wander the house and we won't need the cage anymore. But is it ok to keep the dog caged up for 9 hours a day for the next 6 months?

2004, The Google Perspective

Gooogle has released their 2004 year-end zeitgeist. It's an overview of some of the interesting search stats of 2004. "Brittany Spears" tops the list of most popular searches.

2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

New Girl in the House!

Little girls get attached to golden retriever puppies in about 2 seconds.

Do you believe in miracles?

Your doctor probably does:

"A national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City over the past weekend, found that 74% of doctors believe that miracles have occurred in the past and 73% believe that they can occur today.

The poll also indicated that American physicians are surprisingly religious, with 72% indicating they believe that religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life. "

Source: Business Wire

The article does not say how the survey defined a "miracle" but 68% indicated that they believed that the Bible was either written by or inspired by God. When a solid majority of people who work in medical sciences acknowledge miracles and the existance of God why is it that so many others reject Him out of a "lack of evidence?"

That's a Wrap!

After a whirlwind afternoon of light construction, scrambling to pull together the last of the props and reading through the script with a new ending and sound effects for the first time, we can finally relax. The Christmas Drama "A Teenager's View of Christmas" is finally done. The final performance was the best by far and all the actors seem to have dug in a little deeper to really bring out their parts. Initial reviews seem to be very positive (not entirely positive but still overwhelmingly so). Maybe we'll take the show on tour next year. Contact me for booking. Slots in November and December will no doubt fill up fast.

I'm just kidding.

The play is story of a teenager who is assigned to write a church Christmas play and decides the original Christmas story needs some... uh... embellishment. In the end she decides that her play is way off track and entirely misses the point of the real meaning of Christmas and she ends up back at the stable cradling the new born baby Jesus. I meant to snap some pics with the phonecam and send them over to the Blog live but I was just too nervous to fumble with that, sorry.

Chris made me get up on the stage and accept some credit for the production but It wouldn't have happened at all without the help of Pam, Debbie, Carmen and of course Dianna in the role of the cow. Oh, and Dar Draper of Bee Creative and Company who wrote the original drama. So to them and the whole cast, if you're reading this, I love you guys, you did an awesome job!

New Web Host

My mail has been down for a day.

I've moved the hosting for MiamiChurch.org to DreamHost. So far it looks like it's going to be a pretty good move. For the services I'm getting I can't beat the price. I had some DNS problems that had my mail down all day yesterday. I think the problems were related to Roadrunner's strange DNS caching and not anything to do with DreamHost.

Everything is back up now though. I'll have Chris' Blog back online in about an hour.

Survivor Vanuatu: Final Analysis

Well it's over. My Fantasy League team ended up with 1872 points. That's number 1 on my private tribe, number 7 on my public tribe and 163 points out of the coveted top 100 overall leaderboard. There's always next season... Stupid football.... Let's get that Superbowl over with so we can get back to some REAL competition!

My two early picks, Dolly and Brady, didn't even make the jury but I was glad to see Chris beat the odds to end up on top when it was all over (especially after his embarrasing performance in the first episode). The most shocking thing this season was the over-dramatizing of Twila swearing on her son then going back on it. Anyone who has watched the last half of any season would not have been the least bit impressed by that play but this season the self-righteous indignation over that lie was completely over the top. C'mon! Lying is the prime strategy of half the people playing the game!

Here are some Fantasy League stats for you. If you want to be on my private tribe for next season (8 spots are available) just drop me an Email sometime.

"A Teenager's View of Christmas"

The Christmas mini-drama is finally coming together. It's one week until our debut and we finally have a Joseph. Justin Hartsell was great right from the first reading and his sister rounded out the cast as our third wise... person. :)

The drama is called "A Teenager's View of Christmas" and was written by local author Dar Draper. We've adapted it slightly but it's the story of a young girl who is assigned to write the "Ultimate Christmas Story." The curtain goes up (metaphorically speaking) at 6pm this Sunday.

Pocket Blogging

This message is just another test. I'm trying to blog from my Pocket PC on a wireless connection. If you're reading this then it worked!

Edit: Well obviously the message went through just fine. Some people might be wondering how this is done. It's very simple really. Blogger supports posting by e-mail. You go into your Blogger settings and look under "Email". There you can set up your Mail-to-Blogger address.

On the Pocket PC side I just use Pocket Outlook to to send the post to my Mail-to-Blogger address over my home's wireless network. I'm sending it through my Gmail account but you should be able to use any Email service and any wireless connection.

Rocking for Christ?

60 Minutes had a special program on Wednesday about modern Christian music. I missed the program but I did find a summary online

Survivor Finale!

This season is almost over and the final four has come down to an unlikely group of dark horse players. Everyone is invited to watch the finale with me Sunday night! As usual, I'm kicking everyone's tail in my private tribe on the Survivor Fantasy League but I'm still 187 points out of the overall top 100.

Merry Christmas

Ahh... nothing gets me in the holiday spirit quite like this song!

Wireless

Miami Baptist Church has wireless internet access. Hallelujah!