Colbert and Congress

more tears...and I also started to run out of breath I was laughing so hard.

You're Not An American

I cried. I laughed so hard...I cried.

Micah and His Many Pacifiers

To see an explanation of this picture - see Tori's blog: Little Sugar Mama / (link in sidebar)

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David's Billboard

David wishes me to advertise his Indian blog. So here it is:

DAVID HAS A BLOG! DAVID HAS A BLOG! DAVID HAS A BLOG!

SEE LINK IN SIDEBAR! SEE LINK IN SIDEBAR! SEE LINK IN SIDEBAR!

HEAD-ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD-ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. (If you've seen this commercial, you know what I'm talking about.)

Camp Story

So I'm back from camp. Whew! That was kind of rough on the old bones. They had those kids going non-stop from 7:30 am to 11 pm and beyond. I usually have a problem falling asleep at night; not this week. I couldn't wait to hit the bed.

Overall, we had about 120 or so campers. I had 11 boys in my cabin who had just finished the 3rd grade. One of them accepted Christ at the end of the week. Ironically, it was the kid I stayed up real late with the first night, because he was crying, wanting to go home.

I had 2 assistant counselors, one was a upcoming 9th grade white boy; and the other a black guy who was going into the 11th grade. I mention the colors because it played a positve role throughout the week.

The age of kids in the camp went up to kids going into the 7th grade, so I had the youngest boys of all. I had them on purpose, because I didn't want to have kids I was going to teach the next year (have to avoid that buddy buddy stuff with that group) and I didn't want the boys who I taught last year; of whom some were there. (Because I don't have a "revenge" death wish.)

Because my boys were so young, they caught the main gist of most Bible stories and cabin devotion times, but sometimes a few things were over their heads. (I was pushed into explaining adultery...that was interesting to put into 3rd grade language.) But the boys did good overall. One very good lesson was the one about Jesus washing his disciples' feet. I washed the boys and the assistant counselors feet, and afterwards, without asking, Shawn, the black assistant counselor washed mine. I think that, along with the story of Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman, was a good opportunity to demonstrate Christian love crossing racial boundaries to the kids (and counselors). That is the kind of experience many of the racist rednecks I went to highschool with should have had as children. I like to tell about when my parents dropped me off at a camp once, where the WHOLE CABIN was black except for me and this other white kid. ...but it did me a world of good, because I was great friends with them by the end of the week; and if more kids got experiences like that it would prevent alot of ignorance I see.

But anyway, eleven kids said they were accepting Christ by the end of the week, and there were more who were dedicating themselves to doing God's will in their lives. It was a good week.

But man...in the pool....those kids were trying to beat the crap out of me. They thought it was funny, because they were all trying to take me down but couldn't. There'd be all these boys hanging off of me and I'd raise my arms and declare my invincibility. And they'd try to take me down, and I'd pretend to not notice they were even on me. And every once in awhile I'd act like I saw them and thought they were barnicles and I'd pick them up, often over my head, and throw them. (Except for one hefty boy, who I just had to push down.) They loved it. I have small, finger sized bruises on the insides of my arms from where they were gripping me.

The camp food was actually really good; which was a nice suprise. ....ok, thats about all I can think of to write about camp. Except that now this will be my last week off, and then I have pre-planning that starts next week.

The End.


 

On day 2, we hiked up a mountain. It took 1 hour and 25 minutes to hike up, I don't know how long to hike down. While there, the kids heard the story about Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden of Eden. (It was supposed to parallel our having to hike out of camp and up the mountain.)


 

I'm Back

Updates to come. I'm in Warner Robins. When I return home tomorrow, I plan to put updates on.

Top 10 Songs of the Lukewarm Church

Blest Be The Tie That Doesn't Cramp My Style
Pillow of Ages, Fluffed for Me
I Surrender Some
I'm Fairly Certain That My Redeemer Lives
Sit Up, Sit Up For Jesus
Take My Life and Let Me Be
What An Acquaintance We Have In Jesus
Where He Leads Me, I Will Consider Following
He's Quite a Bit To Me
Oh, How I Like Jesus
Fill My Spoon, Lord
It Is My Secret What God Can Do

Gone to Camp for a Week

I'm leaving in a couple of hours and won't be back until next weekend. Tori and I are going to be camp counselors at a camp called "Camp Koinonea". I'm not sure if I spelled that right. Its at the camp Pinnacle campgrounds in Clayton, Ga. It is put on by several churches in the community. I will have a 3rd grade boys cabin. I am going to put the smack down. They will be perfect citizens when I get through with them. ...yeah right. Hopefully many of the children will accept Christ this week.

So, I'm off and will blog again when I return.

You ever hang off your bed upside down, and imagine that the ceiling is the floor, and how cool that would be?

Yeah, me too.

Check this out: www.watchman.org/oprah.wmv

Update 7.20.06

Well, 2 big things. Not really in much of a mood to go on forever about it. But here dey is:

1) Mom is in the hospital. Her routine visit, turned into finding out that she was in complete kidney failure. They have had her on dialysis. They were hoping that some kidney function might return, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. They did a kidney biopsy, but don't know the result yet. May be cancer in the kidneys. Her other cancer had spread on her spine, and is causing more pain. But radiation, thankfully lessens that.

2) Apparently it is my turn on the wheel'o'major medical problems. I've suffered the past couple of years from, maybe once every couple of months, waking up at night having what I have discovered is a panic attack. The other night, I had several in a row. And since then I have been sufferring from severe anxiety. It lasts throughout most of the day. So, I've been to the doctor a couple of times in the last couple of days and gotten several prescriptions. But I'm trying to overcome it o-natural, one last time, before I get on all that.

So....with these things happening, I would greatly appreciate your prayers.

Hell's Best Kept Secret

God has been talking to me lately. But what He's saying to me isn't anything new. It's an old Word, but instead of just showing it to me in the Scriptures as usual, the Holy Spirit is taking that Word and repeatedly poking me in the heart with it. It is the prompting to take the Gospel out to the world.

One thing I believe God has been using to spur on my thoughts of how best to go about this, is through the ministry of a man named Ray Comfort. He has a ministry in California called "Living Waters". (This is where Michael's post about the million dollar bill tracks came from.) He has a program called "The Way of the Master". And there is a website called "www.thewayofthemaster.com" and there are links there to "www.livingwaters.com".

I first heard Ray Comfort in the summer of '97. That summer Jared and I worked with the local director of Child Evangelism Fellowship to do Back Yard Bible Clubs in the North Georgia Area. But before we did, we went to a training at Toccoa Falls College, where they talked about evangelizing children. One of the videos we saw, I just now realize, was Ray Comfort. I kept asking for a copy of that tape, but I wasn't ever able to get one. I now know that was him.

Years later, I read a most of a book by him called, "The Golden Key of Revival". And then recently have seen his show "The Way of the Master". Ray is good at teaching others how to share their faith the right way. There is a right way. And unfortunately most of modern evangelism does not do it the effective way.

Look at this quote: Why do 80-90% of those making a decision for Christ fall away from the faith? What is the principle that Spurgeon, Wesley, Whitefield, etc., used to reach the lost? Why has the Church neglected it?

There is a correct method to bring someone to Christ. If we do it the wrong way (I won't spoil it by saying what that is yet), then we can make a convert that accepts a loving Jesus without understanding their transgression of God's law, and thus unrepentant and not truly saved...only to "backslide" later.

At the bottom of this post, I will put a link to a page where you can watch a message called "Hell's Best Kept Secret". What Ray has to say, I truly believe with all my heart is absolutely correct; and it is a MUST hear for those of us who want to share our faith with others. So if sharing Christ is of interest to you...I implore you to watch the message. I promise, it will be worth your time.

BTW - Ray is commended by John MacArthur, Ravi Zacharias, David Jeremiah and many others.

http://www.livingwaters.com/listenwatch.shtml





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Who'd a thunk it?

I gave blood a little while ago. Like I have many times. And for what reason, I'm not completely sure...I started to actually pass out. It was the wierdest thing. I started feeling a lot of anxiety, and then became light-headed, and then slightly nauseaous. I told the nurse, and her and this other guy comes over, and leans my chair back, and starts putting soaking wet, ice cold cloths on my neck and head....they put ice under my shirt...telling me to take deep slow breaths and cough...they kept telling me to keep my eyes open, and then I would, but next thing I know they start closing again.

Didn't like that feeling...not at all.

Jared, I guess this does little to influence you to give blood, huh?

I hate the thought of not giving blood...but I don't know when I'll be up for that again.

Stop the presses!

Archeologists have recently discovered a new post on Jared's blog.

Unfortunately, Pharoah Jason-Tut Amenhotep III's tomb was found empty.

Last Words of Famous People

Last Words of Famous People

Fearful Last Words:

Cardinal Borgia: “I have provided in the course of my life for everything except death, and now, alas, I am to die unprepared.”

Elizabeth the First: “All my possessions for one moment of time.”

Kurt Cobain (suicide note): “Frances and Courtney, I’ll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: “Too bad, too bad! It’s too late!”

Thomas Hobbs: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

Anne Boleyn: “O God, have pity on my soul. O God, have pity on my soul.”

Prince Henry of Wales: “Tie a rope round my body, pull me out of bed, and lay me in ashes, that I may die with repentant prayers to an offended God. O! I in vain wish for that time I lost with you and others in vain recreations.”

Socrates: “All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.”

Sigmund Freud: “The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.”

Tony Hancock (British comedian): “Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s the bitterest blow of all.”

Phillip III, King of France: “What an account I shall have to give to God! How I should like to live otherwise than I have lived.”

Luther Burbank: “I don’t feel good.”

Voltaire (skeptic): “I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life. Then I shall go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!” (The talented French writer once said of Jesus, “Curse the wretch!” He stated, “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror ...Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”) He also boasted, “In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.” Some years later, Voltaire’s house was used by the Geneva Bible Society to print Bibles.


Philosophical Last Words:

Aldus Huxley (humanist): “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try and be a little kinder.’”

Karl Marx: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”

Napoleon: “I marvel that where the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations.”

Leonardo da Vinci: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

Tolstoy: “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

Benjamin Franklin: “A dying man can do nothing easy.”

Grotius: “I have lived my life in a laborious doing of nothing.”


Unexpected Demise:

H. G. Wells: “Go away: I’m alright.”

General John Sedgwick (during the heat of battle in 1864): “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist——!”

Bing Crosby: “That was a great game of golf.”

Mahatma Ghandi: “I am late by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the prayer punctually at the stroke of five.”

Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales: “My God. What’s happened?” (per police files)

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: “Never felt better.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I have a terrific headache.”

Sal Mineo: (stabbed through the heart): “Oh God! No! Help! Someone help!”

Jesse James: “It’s awfully hot today.”

Lee Harvey Oswald: “I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you.”


Unusual Last Words:

Vincent Van Gogh: “I shall never get rid of this depression.”

James Dean: “My fun days are over.”

Oscar Wilde: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go . . .”

W. C. Fields: “I’m looking for a loophole.”

Louis XVII: “I have something to tell you . . .”


Assurance of Salvation:

Jonathan Edwards: “Trust in God and you shall have nothing to fear.”

Patrick Henry: “Doctor, I wish you to observe how real and beneficial the religion of Christ is to a man about to die . . .” In his will he wrote: “This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ which will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

John Owen: “I am going to Him whom my soul loveth, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the sole ground of all my consolation.”

D. L. Moody: “I see earth receding; heaven is opening. God is calling me.”

Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur): “Thy will be done.”

Alexander Hamilton: “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy.”

William Shakespeare: “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it was made.”

Martin Luther: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth.”

John Milton (British poet): “Death is the great key that opens the palace of Eternity.”

Sir Walter Raleigh (at his execution): “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.”

Daniel Webster (just before his death): “The great mystery is Jesus Christ—the gospel. What would the condition of any of us be if we had not the hope of immortality? . . . Thank God, the gospel of Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light.” His last words were: “I still live.”

General William Booth (to his son): “And the homeless children, Bramwell, look after the homeless. Promise me . . .”

David Livingstone: “Build me a hut to die in. I am going home.”

Charles Dickens: “I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try and guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament.”

Andrew Jackson: “My dear children, do not grieve for me . . . I am my God’s. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and ...I hope and trust to meet you all in heaven.”

Isaac Watts (hymn-writer): “It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon.”

Morbid Curiosity

I have always been very interested in looking into the minds of crazy people. I just find it fascinating (not in a "fun" way), just in a interest in what makes the crazy mind tick. "What were they thinking?" "What influenced them?", etc. So when this (very long) collection of documents from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (Columbine shooters) was released, I looked through it. Very interesting stuff. It's kind of like finding their school binder on the floor, and getting to go through it to see what they were thinking.

It's in PDF format if you care to take a look here: http://www.9news.com/pdfs/columbinedocuments-070606.pdf

Take a look - and bookmark

http://www.livingwaters.com/witnessingtool/browse.shtml#djw

You should all bookmark this link - and read through it. It is a resource of a curriculum I am looking into.

Really, really good stuff.

Sociologists estimate that over 1 billion man-hours have been devoted to playing the computer game "The Sims."

I did some research and this Onkyo system was good quality for the money I wanted to spend. You can't see the two surround sound speakers in this picture, but you can see them below. All the wiring that came with this, though, I had to trash to get a thicker, lower gauge. So says the experts, so thats what I did. All in all, I ended up spending about $360 on all this. Which is more than what I thought I'd spend at the beginning, but I had to spend more to finish up good wiring. So, anyway, I am pleased with it. It is a nice addition to getting satellite, because now I play the music channels on here and it sounds great. Plus as usual, bass makes all things better. (Even video games). I need to get a good lighting protecter thing-a-ma-bobber, because now I have SS Receiver, Xbox 360/DVD player, VCR and a Satellite Receiver box, all on this entertainment center. So one blow of lightning could really put me out of business.

Receiver and Center Speaker (Also has a remote)

Mr. Sub

Surround Left

Surround Right

Here is a picture of me making sno cones for peeps at the 4th celebration our church put on at the fairgrounds. Tori put this and more on her blog. See "Little Sugar Mama" link on sidebar. (Comment while you're there.)

We're going to a thing our church is putting on at the fairgrounds this afternoon. They have free food, car show, Christian motorcycle clubs, petting zoo, musical etc. My sunday school class is rotating on the cotton candy and sno cones machines. After that we're going to my parents house for a very short trip. We'll be back Monday night.

Hopefully then I'll be able to put up some pictures of that event at the fairgrounds and also some photos of my little surround sound system I've installed.

--peece.