Thank you for any and all prayers over the last couple of days. The funeral was quite tough, especially since the prayer service the night before was almost exactly the same as the funeral on Wednesday, essentially creating two funeral services with the same amount of emotional impact back to back. My cousin Shannon was quite strong through most of it, but it was just too much for too long. I have never felt so much loss as I did standing there watching her with 1.5 year old Megan as the casket was lowered into the earth...

Prayer Request

Please pray for my cousin Shannon if you remember. Her husband, Russ, died in a car accident last week and she is left with a small baby and possibly another on the way as they were trying to get pregnant again. I'm heading to the funeral in Two Hills tonight and tomorrow so please pray for Shannon and the rest of my family as well. Russ and Shannon were planning on moving to Edmonton in a couple of weeks and if she is still coming nothing would please me more than to see my friends and family here support her.

R & D

Woohoo, 100th post!!!

And what better way to fill that post than to rip off someone else's material instead of writing my own? I found this while looking for an owner's manual online. You may want to be seated whilst reading this, preferably out of public as you may received strange looks.

1962 Safety Rules from Honda

Taken from a 1962 Honda Motor Cycle Owner's Manual.
Translated by Honda for the American Motorcycle Rider

1. At the rise of the hand by Policeman, stop rapidly.
Do not pass him by or otherwise disrespect him.

2. When a passenger of the foot, hooves in sight,
tootel the horn trumpet melodiously at first. If he
still obstacles your passage, tootel him with vigor and
express by word of mouth, warning Hi, Hi.

3. Beware of the wandering horse that he shall not take
fright as you pass him. Do not explode the exhaust box
at him. Go soothingly by.

4. Give big space to the festive dog that makes sport
in roadway. Avoid entanglement of dog with wheel
spokes.

5. Go soothingly on the grease mud, as there lurks the
skid demon. ! Press the brake foot as you roll around
the corners, and save the collapse and tie up.


I always forget to avoid entanglement of dog with my wheel spokes!

Blargen!!!

Hmm...Communist-run country, which doesn't allow free practice of religion (despite what they say), where we would be under constant threat of arrest (or worse?), where spirituality has been quelled to the point of non-existance, culture shock, new language, poor living conditions, moving away from family, bad coffee, even worse music, 1.5-2 billion people, dog (enough said), an entire generation taught not to think for themselves...for some reason this sounds pretty good to me right now!!!

Pesky Thoughts

Ever notice how certain ideas or thoughts seem to come from nowhere and then manifest themselves in completely unrelated areas of your life. For instance, over the last week I have been part of various discussions on language as pertaining to religion, both in the philosophical and practical realms. One of Ali's latest papers touched on the subject of the impossibility of using language to describe the indescribable, the divine. The idea being that once we apply a term to an aspect of God we create a symbol out of that term (i.e. omnipotent or "God is love"), something to capture a glint of God. But the term falls short of God and if we hold to closely to these terms we miss the mark and end up worshipping mere idols instead of the true God.

Then I had a conversation with an old friend who was having difficulty discussing God with his youth group. He was bemoaning the fact that it was so difficult to know where a person is in relation to God. Do they KNOW the same things about God that I do? Do they have the same understandings of the faith in the absurd? Then there's the difficulty of trying to relate your own faith and knowledge of God to others. How can we even talk to each other if we can't fully express our own understandings and we can't fully understand others' expressions?

Then I had another philosophical conversation later with a friend along the same lines. Funny how certain things just seem to stick around when you're thinking about them.

Hmmm...

"Just passing through" - Dabar Customer #1