my best kept secret
This amazing resource allows you to travel the globe from the convenience of your computer desk. Granted, you won’t get the full effect of having visited the countries you “travel,” but I promise you’ll be impressed by the speed of the plane rides, and the selection of tunes you can listen to while you move about (see your own personal music folder). Now, I’d like to give just two examples of things one can do with this program:
Look around the 10-40 window, or any other windows you may have come up with:
Even take a satellite view of your house:
So that’s that. I thought it was amazing. There are many other features on there, lots of labels and things you’d never really imagine. So I encourage you, go ahead and download it, see if you like it, and leave tons of comments on my blog. cheers.
friday night excitement
I’m sure I haven’t fooled anyone into thinking that my life is actually entertaining, and if by some small chance I have, rest assured it isn’t. Here I am on another Friday night, alone at my house not doing anything fancy. However, I have no complaints, for I have received a returned phone call (one of the simple pleasures in my life), and I’ve been lost in an AMAZING book, which is ultimately the reason for this post. What book has me so enthralled in it’s content you ask?
The Heavenly Man - This book is basically the autobiography of a man named “Brother Yun.” He was born and raised in China, became a Christian at age 16 (if my memory is correct) and just lived the craziest life he could for Jesus. He spent a lot of time talking with God, and whatever God told him to do, he’d do. Being that China doesn’t take well to Christians doing what God wants them to, Brother Yun went under some astonishing tribulations and witnessed some miraculous works in his life, and a decent portion of these are captured in this book. I also think it’s a good read to allow American believers a chance to see that persecution really does still happen, and that the gospel thrives (arguably) more with it than without it. I recommend this book with some thumbs up and everything.
laying out aka lawn mowing
I’m quite certain that nobody comes around these parts anymore, but I’ve been really inspired by my good friend Josh Langston and his blog, with the hilarity it provides. So I figured I’d keep it up, see how things go, and hope that those who visit (if any) will leave comments so as to better inform me whether or not I’m wasting my time.
That said, I thought I’d share my first non-China story of the blog. Not long after arriving in College Station, I noticed the inevitable had happened, the grass on both sides of the house had grown, and was in great need of a mowing. The day I designated to mow said grass turned out to be the same day that God designated for rain. That day and the 4 or more days that were to follow. Finally, it was dry enough on Tuesday to mow. The rain had finally stopped long enough that my swamp of a front yard had mostly dried. After a mere hour and a half of hard, manual labor of mowing my yard (front and back, mind you) my back (and not front) looked as red as an obnoxious Texas Tech fan at a football game. The picture says it all, so I’ll stop saying things… now!
how blessed is D.O.?
well let me tell you. FYI, today marks the one week anniversary of my being back in these United States.
It’s also the Lord’s day, which means I had the great opportunity to go to the Lord’s house and worship Him with fellow believers. I actually also went to the service last night because a friend, Click, wanted to go (Click is my friends name, it’s not a link… you can click it, but it won’t do anything). In the time I spent at church so far this weekend (3 services), I’ve had 5 or 6 different people come up and tell me that they missed me and that it’s good to have me back, and they said it in the absolute most sincere way. About 4 families asked me to come over for dinner and tell them about my trip. I got to hug my pastor Butch and as we held each other he said, “it’s so good to have you back.” Also, many many people told me how they have been praying for me while I was gone. I was seriously just in awe of how amazing the Body of Christ is when it is working the way it was created to. I got to tell people about my trip, listen to them talk about their summers, and just be blown away by how unworthy I am to know these people, both young and old.
After the 11:00 service I went to lunch at, of course, Wendy’s. The blessings continued to pour out from the heavens as I walked in and half the staff erupted with excitement on seeing me. They said they had been talking about me the other day, and they missed me. Then one of the new staff members asked me where I went to church and where it was! The staff always sounds interested in going to church, but they’ve yet to come… I truly believe that some of them are going to come in the near future. God’s so good to use me to demonstrate His love, though I don’t come closing to doing it justice.
And above all, I’m overly blessed to have the Creator of the Universe love me perfectly as He does. Today I thought of the day in the future when I’ll be in His presence, and how He too may hold me in His arms and say, sincerely, “it’s so good to have you home.” Oh man. So tight. Now for a Sunday afternoon nap.
things I missed while abroad
I got back to the states to find out some things that have been going on, some of them made me happy, some I was indifferent about, but I thought it interesting that so much can go on in one month, so in case you haven’t left your toilet in the past month (but still have internet access), here’s some stuff that happened:
- le Tour de France is underway, with Lance Armstrong - sick cyclist and not that tight a person - attempting to win his unprecidented of 7th Tour
- the Wimbelton came and went, and Roddick lost…
- Kenny Rogers went ahead and lost his temper for the entire nation to see
- a Supreme Court Justice peaced out on the job, making it an interesting story as we see who fills the void.
AND THE KICKER:
- tons of faith-based and anti-poverty organizations have united to fight world poverty and AIDS in the well advertised ONE campaign. I’m sure this was brewing long before I left, but I didn’t hear of it until I got back. I’m not going to tell you whether to support it or not, but I would encourage you to check out their website, read around, and see where that leads. The link is at the top of this post (click on the post’s title), and over yonder on the sidebar, where it will rest. I mean, it’s just one.org… not hard..
back in the ussa
well after many hours on airplanes and in airports, I made it back to the States with all my bags and body parts. And just when you thought the stories from the trip would be over, something happened on the plane that I really do think everyone will enjoy…
(excerpt from D.O.’s journal 7.03.05) “The setting: about 5 hours in to the flight from Tokyo to DFW, the plane’s cabin is dark and quiet as most people are sleeping or wishing they could. The story: Jon reaches into the overhead compartment to fetch Emily’s backpack so she could take her medicine. I asked Jon to ‘accidentally’ drop the medicine on the floor a few rows back so we could see what the man back there was watching that demanded so much of his laughter. In the process of trying to grab the backpack and simultaneously discover what movie was spawning the mystery man’s outbursts, Jon pulled the pack a bit too hard and at the entirely wrong angle, causing a complete Majiang set to come plummeting to the airplane floor with a crash nearly as intense as the waiter-in-training dropping everyone’s glasses of iced tea at Black Eyed Pea. This obviously paved the way for me to laugh unacceptably loud with my obnoxious outbursts, and this calamity caused all the formerly happy, peaceful, sleeping passengers to turn and glare with much disdain in their eyes. I don’t even think the laughing man 2 rows back laughed. And we still don’t know what he was watching.”
Now that the light-hearted story is out of the way, on to the serious stuff. I sincerely thank everyone of you who have visited this site and lifted me and my team up over the past few weeks. I’m so blessed to know you guys. And the answer to the question nobody’s asking (is this the end for D.O.’s blog?) is, no, probably not. I’m sure I’ll keep posting stuff up on this, though likely way less frequently, and I have no idea what kind of things I’ll be posting. If you stay tuned it’s probable that I’ll post pictures from my trip, or at least post a link to a website that I’ll post my pictures on. Other than that, it’s anybody’s guess. Thank you guys again, God bless! (I’m back in the States where we can say stuff like that!)