Rain, day 3

I'm not into the rain anymore. Sure everything is like super green. Sure water brings life. Sure the rain is good for something, but I'd like to be able to walk down the road without having to watch out for worms all over the road. I mean, I don't want to step on a worm and have my shoes covered with worms guts, EWWWWW.

Besides, when I go outside, I get wet.

Diamond Brite

Okay,
So this past year we bought a new dishwasher, we like it. Our town however has "weird" water. It's hard, and normal dishwashing detergents don't clean anything. So one day some time ago I come home and the dishes are suspiciously clean. I look under the counter and find "DIAMOND BRITE".
I found out that this was indeed the detergent used to render our dishes sparkling clean. I inquired of my wife where we bought it from... she said her friend gets it. Hmmm.....

I let it go, whatever, then we ran out. You can't buy this stuff in stores. The "friend" was out of town. What do we do?!?! We made the emergency call to the friends cell phone. She says "I'll send a guy with it when we get it." So one evening we get a knock at the door and this guy brings 4 bottles straight to our house. He didn't know how much it cost, but that "we'd straighten it all out later".

So I don't know who gets it, where it comes from or how much it costs... all I know is that it's the only thing that works in our dishwasher. Some questions I guess are better left unanswered.

Faith

Today I spoke with a man who may die soon. I listened as he told me about how he feels ready, and I listened as his wife spoke of their 40 some odd year marriage and some of the things they had done. How they had done many things together, and that everyone who's married and sticks it out will have to go through this, that is, one spouse leaving the other behind. They spoke of the visits with family, talking things through, getting ready for the inevitable.
I've been through people in my church dying before, not many, but a few. It's a weird thing for me. There is a part of me that tries to stay professional, that is listening, sharing what I feel God might want them to hear. To walk with them as much as I can. The other part is incredibly numb. By numb, I mean stunned, unable to think of the ramifications of what this family is going through. Unable to process the range of emotions, the weariness, the pain, the fear of the future.
It's then that I pray like crazy. My deepest heartfelt prayer is that God would use something, anything that comes out of my mouth to be an encouragement and a reminder of where God is. I also pray that the really silly sounding things I must say (I know I must say some weird things, I have no clue what they must feel or are facing) go unnoticed, or at the very least they see the intent behind the words.
If you think of them pray for them. God knows who they are, even if you don't. Cancer is a terrible thing. It really, really is a terrible thing.


Oh Lord, bless them, let them know you walk with them and that you are close by. Give them good times together, draw them close. Glorify yourself in their testimony and their lives. Even so, come and let the trumpet sound and take us all home. Amen.

Hoarding...

A quote from Henri Nouwen,

The Temptation to Hoard

As fearful people we are inclined to develop a mind-set that makes us say: "There's not enough food for everyone, so I better be sure I save enough for myself in case of emergency," or "There's not enough knowledge for everyone to enjoy; so I'd better keep my knowledge to myself, so no one else will use it" or "There's not enough love to give to everybody, so I'd better keep my friends for myself to prevent others from taking them away from me." This is a scarcity mentality. It involves hoarding whatever we have, fearful that we won't have enough to survive. The tragedy, however, is that what you cling to ends up rotting in your hands.

I think at some point, many of us struggle with this...

Some of the best 6 minutes on the web

You may have seen this before. I just found it the other day, and I laughed, so I'd thought I'd share.

D40!

So,
We left the house Sunday afternoon and went to Saskatoon. We spent the night at Colony House Bed & Breakfast, a nice little B&B. Tara had a doctor's appointment today. We had intended on this being a bit of a retreat for Tara and I. We didn't really need to spend the night in the city, we could've made the drive in the morning; but it was good. It was nice to have only one kid to worry about. The boys are a lot of fun, but I guess I'm just not able to keep tabs on three kids and be able to enjoy conversation with my wife at the same time. Hopefully that skill will come in time.
We had decided to do some shopping. First stop, London Drugs; where I bought a Nikon D40, a two gigabyte SD memory card and a UV filter. (and for those of you familiar with the Nikon gold boxes, don't worry, they're inside, one for the body one for the lens...) The picture of Olivia in the car seat is the first picture taken with the camera.
Then we got to cruise the new Wal-Mart in S'toon, found some stuff for the house. We also hit Toy R Us for some toys for the boys and Old Navy for some clothes for Olivia. It appears that ALL of the stores in the city of Saskatoon are dangerously short of clothing for little girls in the six-nine month age and size range. It also appears that children who like space ships are out of luck as the only space ship toy we could find at several stores was a Star Wars "transformer". For the Star Wars savy among you , it is a Emperor Palpatine shuttle that transforms into a robot version of Palpatine. It's really more transformer than spaceship. I was disappointed. Why can't they just make a spaceship toy anymore?!?
After a stop a DQ we jumped on the highway and came home.
It's so much nicer to make the drive from Saskatoon to Tisdale without snow and in daylight. We got home and the boys were super excited to see us, which is always fun. The picture of Aiden is literally his first moment seeing me, now tell me does it get any better than that?!

I also got to experimenting with my lenses that was from my old Nikon FE (a virtually completely manual 35mm SLR camera) and found, that YES they are compatible.

At some point I will be creating and posting more pictures on the Flickr site. I'm pretty pumped at getting a new camera.

This picture of Owen was the best pose from trying out the manual lenses.

Oh, and Tara's doctor appointment could've been done over the phone...

God is good....

... and that's a good thing. I was challenged in my reading the other night. I was reading an article by Rockwell Dillaman (for those in the C&MA he was the keynote at Assembly a year ago), in an article he wrote entitled "Ministering the Cross of Jesus Christ" he quotes a missionary, Mabel Francis:

"I had thought that when I was cleansed by the blood of Jesus and filled with the Holy SPirit all the self life was taken away. He showed me that His method of dealing with the self-life was not just cleansing, but crucifixion. I said, 'Lord Jesus, I don't know how to die. Teach me to die.'"

I don't know if I know how to die either...

rambling on....

I've been listening to U2 today as I write. I have looped Hawkmoon 269 (from the Rattle and Hum album) for a little while. Besides making want a fresh pot of coffee, I have thinking through this song and it reminds a great deal of the worship tune by Brian Doerksen entitled "More" (I wonder if James Wharrie's finger have healed from playing that tune for me ad-nauseum?).

The question that both songs are currently bringing up within my soul is: Do I feel the need for my God's love as much as:

" Like thunder needs rain
Like a preacher needs pain
Like tongues of flame
Like a sweet stain
Need your love
I need your love."
(U2- Hawkmoon 269)

-OR-

More than oxygen, I need your love
More life giving food the hungry dream of
More than an eloquent word depends on the tongue
More than a passionate song needs to be sung
(Brian Doerksen - More)

As I write about the church today, my prayer is that each us would begin to yearn so deeply and completely that even those words would be inadequate to express our need for our God.

Ordination, and other things

So I've been slow in posting much on here recently. I am up to my eyeballs in ordination studies. I have one more paper more or less done (need to take the stuff from my proof readers and incorporate them) and I've got a good start on my last major paper.
This is excruciating for me, and I'm not sure why. I enjoy studying most of the time. I like learning, but this is just a big deal for my pea sized brain to cope with.

I am enjoying, but not enjoying spring. I learned last year that I am essentially allergic to EVERYTHING outside in the summer, pollen, trees, grass and whatever else. My eyes and nose are going all crazy again and while I'll get used to it soon, right now it's not fun.

But, Tara and I are going into Saskatoon for an overnight stay for one of her appointments for her thyroid. We're going to stay at a B&B we've gone to a few times. Mostly we're going to have some time for just us. So for our friends in Saskatoon who we likely won't see, sorry, we're just too cheap for a getaway to Hawaii, so S'toon will have to do and we'll pretend like it's new and exciting. Oh, and I may have some hospital visitation to do while we're there too.