Tonight I was thinking about the story of Naaman from 2 Kings 5. Naaman was a great soldier, and well respected by his king (the king of Aram), but he was a leper. He went to the king of Israel because he heard he could be healed by a prophet, then Elisha told him to wash in the Joradan River seven times. He thought the idea was rediculous and was about to go back to Aram when his servants encouraged him saying:

“had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”

He washed in the Jordan and was healed.

His healing was from his act of faith — but to wash seven times. If he had washed 2 or 3 times, gotten fed up and left, he would not have been healed.

I believe that God is making me stronger through my suffering, or calling me to trust in him, to depend on him. I have not dipped seven times in the river.

I am not through with this pain, because I have not learned what it is he wants to teach me. Not yet.

Links to Follow: The story of Naaman | Streams in the Desert Article

Our Flickr account is created, it’s linked over there                    ——>

So I’m pretty excited. The only thing that’s kind of strange is that it has Windows Vista, which at first I wasn’t liking…and I still don’t know how I feel about it, but after changing some quick settings, it doesn’t appear to be much different than XP. We’ll see, but anyway, I have a new computer and I’m freakin’ stoked. It’s fast enough to do anything I want to do, and that’s awesome.

let that be enough…

I always have loved video games. When I think back on my childhood, I have strong nostalgic feelings for the days of the Nintendo (or Intendo as some of my younger friends called it). It wasn’t until 3 months before the Nintendo 64 came out that I owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment system because my failure to manage, let alone save, money inhibited me from obtaining the money to purchase one.

Ok, enough back-story. I bought an Xbox 360 in November of last year, and as some of you know, this pretty much invalidates an original Xbox. Well, I am happy to say I have revived, no no, re-invigorated my Xbox. It is now more powerful than ever before, and can do so, so much more.

By using a handy software modification, I was able to transform this waste of space to a fully funcional entertainment center. Where before it only played Xbox games, it now re-lives the days of my youth. Here’s what it did before the mod:

• Play Xbox games (and DVDs with a remote).

After upgrading the hard drive to 200GB, here’s what it can now do:

• Copy Xbox games to the hard drive for play without the disk.
• Emulate the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/CD/Master System, Nintendo 64, Playstation (one), NeoGeo, You name Atari System it can play it, Intellivision, Vectrex, older PC engines, and don’t forget Multiple Arcade Machines/Games.
• Play *just about* any digital video format.
• Store and View Pictures
• Store and Play music / Rip Music from CDs (even accessing CDDB).
• Play DVDs (without the remote)
• And so much more that I haven’t even figured out yet.

So, now I’m knee deep in nostalgia, and really enjoying video games in new and different ways — and I’ll tell you this: Good graphics alone do not a good game make. I’ll end with this: Contra seems HARDER than it was when I was a kid, and Tetris never gets old.

Farther Back:

Tim’s desk:

View from tim’s desk:

The coffee shop downstairs:

The pizza shop across the street:

Misc office pictures:

I had forgotten how cool our downtown is. Granted, it’s not New York City or anything, but it feels fresh, and old at the same time — the air this time of year is crisp too, which makes it even more invigorating. We started the day with coffee from the little coffee shop in our building, and had lunch at the pizza place across the street. I’ll post a picture of the view from my office below.

Stay tuned; there’s more to come soon!

Every day it gets better, and more exciting. She’s just started to mimic our facial expressions, so if you stick out your tongue at her, she’ll do it back (or do her best to).

It’s so exciting to see her grow so fast. Her development is so rapid that literally each day there’s something new she’s doing. Her eyesight is improving and she now follows objects and people with her eyes. She makes frequent eye contact, and laughs a lot more.

She still cries a fair amount, but at this point it’s nothing like it was. She really is adorable, and I keep expecting someone to come and take back this beautiful thing we’ve been keeping. It’s hard to believe that she’s our daughter. I feel very lucky.

In WWII, our country made sacrifices to fund the war, we banded together, we fought the enemy, it was long, and grueling, but we won. Everyone felt the weight of the war. The whole country was united in bearing the burden.

With the Iraq war, that’s not the case. Instead we go about our lives, watching the war on TV, not even too interested any more because we’ve seen it for so long. We complain about high gas prices, the high cost (economically and environmentally) of energy, and bicker about the solutions. All the while, we are going deeper and deeper in debt to fund a war hardly anyone understands, and most people disagree with.

We’re not going to change the middle east, because we haven’t stopped to consider the cost. It’s that same “Great White Hope” mentality that I abhor in the mindsets of American churches that want to send a team to whatever foreign country, save souls, then come home and everything is fine.

The truth of the matter is that the change must come from inside people, then inside governments, then nations. That is not a goal that can be achieved militarily, no matter how hard we try.

In the way of Missions, I do believe that Jesus Christ is the answer to the world’s problems. The solution to war is forgiveness, to hatred peace and so on. Where I disagree with the American mindset is to set small, unrealistic timetable and expect results. We can’t expect results in that manner, nor can we expect those types of results in Iraq. We have to realize what that change would really mean, and how long it would really take.

The overarching question is, can we afford it? And, is it really making us safer — in the long run?

I was working on a logo design for a friend, and had come up with some cool ideas, but the right one hasn’t quite settled yet. While I was brainstorming and coming up with new ideas and designs…I paused, and smiled. I love doing this stuff. I guess what was never appealing to me was the idea of working for $10 an hour for a design firm that was going to use my design as their own. The lack of ownership in that always turned me off. Plus, I never liked the catty world of design; keeping up with the latest and greatest styles and trends always frustrated me too. Now, I’m not so worried about what others think, so I’m enjoying this process a whole lot more.

Design is beautiful.