My Quest for Truth and Liberty
Posts tagged Just for Fun
Church Moving!
Dec 2nd
Our church is moving from North Alpine to Guilford. 6310 Guilford Rd, to be exact. We’re moving into what is (until tomorrow) Shiloh Evangelical Free Church. Then on Friday it will become Grace Reformed Baptist Church. So last night we finished packing and getting everything into the trucks in preparation for Friday. It was really difficult. First of all, the pizza was extremely good. I couldn’t stop eating it. And then there were the Oreo’s…and between standing around doing nothing I was forced to stand around holding a place of delicious little cakes and candies in an attempt to get people to eat them all. And of course I had to my part and eat some as well. The spice and nutmeg petit fours were especially good. I had to try one of each, you know. It was my duty. And then when I wasn’t eating pizza or petit fours or standing around talking I was helping the little kids dust the church. Actually, it was more like I was trying to keep them out of the way and somehow occupied. They each had a duster and dusted everything (even though practically nothing in the church had to be dusted…yeah, we keep it super-clean) and they weren’t exactly efficient, for a while I tried to make sure that 2 or 3 kids didn’t dust the same thing, and then realized that my goal wasn’t efficient dusting but rather a job that took up a lot of their time, so after that I just let them dust anywhere, even though it had been dusted multiple times already in the past 5 minutes. It was very hard work. I actually felt a little bad that I wasn’t really doing anything (yes, I do have a heart after all!) but there were already so many people and so much stuff in the room that I was mostly in the way. So I went back to eating petit fours. 
And that is how I helped with the church move.
Disclaimer: We got to church early and we actually did do some work then. We had to carry like 40 boxes upstairs to be loaded on the truck. It was me, my sisters, and another few little kids. So it was a little tricky to organize all of them (and make sure one of them didn’t take the box labeled “Fragile”!) and yet carry things up myself…and do it all rather quickly as the guys were waiting to load the tables on which the boxes were. And then we had to take a bunch of chairs upstairs. Imagine 7 little people going up the stairs with these chairs that are bigger than they are. Yeah, that’s how it was. So I’ve got this stack of chairs and I’m trying to get up the stairs and the kids have created a sort of roadblock because they can’t get the legs of the chairs up to the next step. So I had to try to help them all (actually a couple of my older sisters helped too) get up the stairs. It was really, really cute. They were trying so hard to help out and were so excited about it. So lest you think I did nothing, I did help, but that was before most of the people came and took my job.
A Sunday Afternoon Adventure
Nov 29th
I promised my friends that I would make this into a blog post, so we’ll see how I do…
Our church in Rockford is starting a church plant on the south side of Chicago, around Tinley Park, to be exact. So yesterday I was generously given a ride there by my pastor’s family. When we reached the residential area of Tinley Park the boys in the back began shouting, “Christmas lights!! I see Christmas lights!!” in a very loud voice. And then…”Christmas lights!! I see Christmas–I see a family eating dinner! With spiked hair!” I assume that it was the family (or perhaps just one of them) who had spiked hair, and not that the dinner had spiked hair. So that was an amusing variation…but we were soon back to, “Christmas lights! I see Christmas lights!!”
We were rescued from a fate of Christmas lights when we reached the building where the church is meeting. It was a very nice study, they are going through the London Baptist Confession of 1689. I think 1689. Maybe it is 16??, but I’m not sure. Anyways, Pastor Y. (who will remain Pastor Y. lest anyone search him down and say, “so it was YOUR son screaming ‘Christmas lights!!’ all through our town on Sunday night”) taught on the Providence of God and how this relates to some tough questions like, “If God has everything planned, why should I bother doing anything? If God wants me to get a job, why should I bother looking?” and others.
Afterwards we had a fellowship time and some snacks. My friend Elizabeth M. made the most delicious snickerdoodle cookies (she will remain Elizabeth M. lest anyone kidnap her and force her to make 1,000 snickerdoodle cookies in order to gain freedom. Yes, they are that good) which I heartily enjoyed.
And then we had a nice long ride back to Rockford. This time seemed to fly because I was busily engaged in critiquing possible presidential candidates. So Pastor Y. asks, “who would you vote for in 2012 as president?” and my answer: “RON PAUL!!!” (all-caps and 3 exclamation marks means that I was practically shouting this.) And Pastor Y. is a sensible person and so realized there isn’t much chance that Ron Paul would actually be elected president. So he thought perhaps I should have some other backup possibilities. “Sarah Palin?” Me: “NOOOO!!!!” (this means that I was very loud and emphatic) “She’s a neo-con!!” And then, “John Boehner?” Me: “Um….” (this means I was thoughtfully thinking) “I don’t know much about him. He must be a neo-con.” So their family was quickly introduced to what neo-con means, and they soon discovered that if a person is not Ron Paul or super-liberal, they are a neo-con…at least in my mind. They were informed that if anyone was on Fox News (besides Judge Napolitano) then I could definitely not support them, for Fox News is NEO-CON!!!” And by the end of it all he was trying to come up with the most neo-con-ish of all neo-cons in order to hear me exclaim in a horrified voice, “no!!! Not that person!!!!! They are NEO-CONS through and through!!! There isn’t a drop of blood in their body that isn’t tainted with the poison of neo-con ideology.”
All in all it was a very enjoyable time, my family rarely lets me rant and bash all the politicians like I enjoy doing. And attending the study and fellowship time at HRBF (Hope Reformed Baptist Fellowship, soon to be Hope Reformed Baptist Church) was very fun and interesting. At Grace Reformed we’re on Chapter 20 of the 1689 Confession, and at Hope Reformed they are on the early chapters…I don’t really remember going through those chapters at Grace, which means that 1) I heard it, but it was so long ago I don’t remember or 2) they haven’t even taught on it since we’ve been there. I think possibility 1 is more likely, but it doesn’t sound quite as good for me.
So if you happen to be in the Chicago area and want to hear a most interesting and knowledgeable pastor teach on the doctrines of the Bible (the pleasant and unpleasant ones both)…let me know, and I’ll give you more details. There should be a website up soon I will link to as well.
In conclusion, I had a wonderful Sunday. Good preaching, good food, good times.
A Good Week
Nov 24th
I hope you are having a good week because mine is going just great. I’m actually sticking to my schedule pretty well and doing what I wanted to accomplish. I’m reading the first couple chapters (or sections in chapters, depending on how they are set up) in four different books, “Conceived in Liberty,” “Man, Economy and State,” “Democracy: The God That Failed,” and “The Great Gain of Godliness.” I have yet to tackle Man, Economy and State. Usually I read in bed right before I go to sleep, and it is a little cumbersome to hold that large volume and the study guide. So I’ll do it today at my desk.
I’m also hoping to have my novel finished this week so I can send it to the proof editor. When I used to play piano (I still do, but I don’t have a teacher…it is just for fun now) whenever I would finish a song, my teacher would say, “that’s really good. Of course, there’s always more that could be done, but this is good.” That’s something like how I feel about my novel. I keep messing with it. A little change here, a little of this, a little tweaking there, so I’m trying to get all of that done this week and then just leave it alone and let the other people do their job.
Spanish is getting a little boring, I think I need to speed it up a little. I usually “get” it before the lesson is done, so I’m doing a ton of boring review on things I already know. When it becomes harder I’ll probably need all the review I can get, but right now it is fairly easy. Last night I also learned how to balance chemical equations. It is pretty fun, if I really didn’t have anything else to do.
All for now.
Lessons Learned
Nov 16th
So the site has another look (again) and all has been recovered from the devastation of the weekend. Don’t thank me, thank Bluehost. They just did everything for me. I basically said, “help! HELP!!” and they repaired all that was wrong. And very quickly too. And although this is slightly unrelated, Bluehost has unlimited storage which is going to be really great. So if you are thinking of getting a website, I would recommend Bluehost. I have had very good experience with them. But even so, I had about 24 hours to contemplate my stupid mistake and long for someone to repair it. In light of that, I’ve made a list of the lessons I’ve learned through this ordeal.
1) Double check and triple check before deleting anything on your website. Be absolutely sure that you are only deleting what you want to get rid of.
2) Never, ever, delete the “public_html” folder, even on accident. I realize that if it an accident you couldn’t prevent it, but I am telling you to do the impossible and don’t let that accident happen. It is horrible. You never, ever want to delete all the contents of that folder, unless you happen to think that a blank white screen makes an interesting site.
3) If something is going to happen to your website, just let the government do it. I mean, it would be so much more glamorous if I could say, “yeah, I’m sorry, the Feds took my site down for the weekend. We managed to dig it out of their claws, it wasn’t easy, but here we are now, a bit scratched up and exhausted, but the site is safe from tyranny…for the moment.” Your readers will also have more pity for you than if you say that you were being careless and made this absolutely stupid mistake (that’s the only way I can truthfully describe it).
4) A website is very vulnerable. It also makes you very vulnerable. I didn’t realize how important my site was to me until it was gone. Always remember that with a simple push of a button it can all be destroyed. It was so easy to make it disappear. Too easy, I think, but that leads to the next point…
5) Some people have a knack for knowing what to do. You know how some people can manage to do everything? You watch them juggling so many things (literally and metaphorically) and wonder how they do it without messing up. Well, if you are not that type of person, then I recommend that you never go near the backend of your website. It is far too dangerous. You are just playing around, having fun and BOOM! it is all gone. You just have to realize that your talent lies in another direction and that you do have limits.
6) This isn’t really a point, I ran out of lessons, but wanted it to look like I had learned lots of lessons. I’m looking forward to messing with this new theme and learning how to use it. I think I will like it.
7) Do you?
