God at work

So there have just been a ton of awesome things happening at Mines that I have yet to blog about. And then last night our internet blocker at home randomly started blocking Blogger, so I guess I will only blog at work or at school. Which is ok I guess considering how often I blog anyways. But, on to the meaty part.

Our InterVarsity fellowship at Mines has been seeing God work in really amazing ways. In past years our focus has been very much on having in depth Bible studies for Christians and having a lot of discipleship with the staff members and stuff like that. This semester has been inherently different in that our focus has changed. We are starting a weekly large group that is geared more towards the Christians in the group being fed, but during the rest of the week it is a whole different story.

All of the Bible studies that we had last semester have broken off into smaller groups and are leading what we "affectionately" call GIGs (Groups Investigating God). These are specific Bible discussion groups that are focused on being a comfortable place for non-Christians to come and just talk about Jesus. Since we have started this approach to Bible studies we have been seeing God move in amazing ways. Each of these GIGs has had about 3-4 non-Christians show up every week for the last 2-3 weeks. And then on Friday night we had a special event called Smelly Left Sandal (I know IV sucks at coming up with names) which was basically a special night of discussion and teaching. There were maybe 110-130 students there from like 10 different schools. The amazing thing was that almost 30 of those were from Mines, and we are the smallest school there!! And I believe that about 18 of those students from Mines were not Christians. How amazing is that. God is so good.

So this week I am just continuing to pray that the 4 guys that we have invited to come to our GIG will show up this week. But all in all, God is moving, and it is just cool.

Innovation at its best...

This amazing piece of machinery that you see before you is the next generation in gaming. Not PS3, Not XBOX360, but the Nintendo Wii. Wii is just a creative spelling of the word "we" that indicates "we the gaming community".

The day after the Wii came out I was over at a friend's house and he had gone to Target very early that morning to get a Wii. It was the most amazing thing I have seen in a long time. And there have been a lot of cool things that I have seen in gaming recently. Stellar graphics, amazing interfaces, incredible environment interaction, etc. But this takes the cake by far.

Imagine being able to pick up the sword and shield of the legendary Link from the classic Zelda games. Imagine swinging that sword at enemies in your path. Imagine holding up your shield and blocking blows from the enemy. Imagine playing a game and getting your daily exercise at the same time. What will happen to the good old days of lounging around on the couch playing games you say? They are gone with the winds as the Wii takes the gaming community by storm.

All the things I mentioned above are completely accurate. The two controllers used to play the Wii are gyroscopic, meaning they detect motion. This means that when you hold the Wii remote you may as well be holding Link's sword because it moves with your hand. And when you pick up the Wii chuck (the other side of the controller) you are picking up the shield of Link.

And this is just one of the incredible ways that this technology can be used. Also imagine playing tennis, or bowling, or golf simply by using the Wii remote.

The cababilities are virtually endless.

This my friends, is why Nintendo is making millions while Microsoft and Sony are barely breaking even.

We are witnesses of a drastic shift in gaming. Perhaps not in the fact that Nintendo is going to become the dominant force in the market, but this will certainly redefine the way that games are made. Prepare yourselves for the next generation in gaming.

And if you are convinced that games are the devil, read this blog that a friend of mine wrote.

For all the rest of you, I will see you on the other side ;)

sbombalicious

So I decided that it was high time to update my blog. And what better topic than one of the awesomest things that happened this summer. I am still kinda processing through some of the stuff that happened in Peru, so maybe I will put some of my thoughts about it as they come up. But anyways, that isn't the topic here.

If you aren't on Facebook or Myspace (or even if you are) you may or may not know that I have a girl now =D I met Lauren at InterVarsity spring conference in February and thought she was pretty cool. I got her email (which was a knee shaking experience) and we emailed a little bit and found out that we were both planning on going to Peru on the IV missions trip this past summer. So that was pretty cool. We emailed quite a bit and then went to IV chapter camp together in May which was pretty cool. At one point she invited me to be her "date" to her sister's wedding reception with (supposedly) no relationship strings attached. Which she realized later was not really possible. Inviting any friend to a wedding is kinda immediate strings attached lol. But anyways, I went and it wasn't nearly as awkward as I thought it would be.

Three days after said reception we both arrived in LA for training for Peru. The entire 5 week trip we did our absolute best to focus on what God wanted us to be doing there and not hanging out with each other as much as we really wanted to. I think we succeeded as well as can be anticipated. But anyways, about a week after we were both back at home I called her house and asked her dad permission to date her and he said yes =D And yeah I know that it is kinda wierd to ask dad about dating, but hey, when I am a dad I would totally think that was awesome so I did it anyways.

So we have been together almost 2 months of awesomeness now. My mom laughs at me when I am on the phone almost every night (she lives in Greeley - 1hr away). She laughed even more when the minute bill on my phone was like 2400 minutes for 1 month. For anybody curious that is like 36 hrs or something like that.

Ok so all of that is the main story. Now I'm going to go back to the title. Sbombalicious is a word I made up to describe the awesomeness of us. When I got the email about being invited to the wedding reception, I was texting one of my good friends and was trying to come up with a phrase that would adequately describe my emotions. What I came up with was

"sheiza-biscuits-of-the-mother-bloody-hell" where sheiza is basically the S word in another language lol but I can't do the special b looking letter to spell it right. So anyways, later on I decided to abbreviate it as SBOMB. Which I used a few times, but didn't quite capture the whole essence of the word. So later on I was trying to come up with another word, and my friend Tom came up with "biscalicious" which I thought was incredicaly awesome, but coutldn't quite capture the full meaning either - mostly just because he had come up with it and not me. So later on I realized that I could apply the same suffix to one of my own words, and sbombalicious was born - fit only to describe the awesomeness that is this gift that God has given me =D

Till next time (hopefully soon) peace...

New Website

After a week and about 6-7 hours with tech support I finally have my website up and fully functional. Yay!! I have some of my drawings up, some of the songs I have written/recorded, as well as some pictures from my Peru trip this summer. So feel free to take a looksy =D

http://www.masterofthesword.com

scary...

So I was just checking out the news and looked this story up. It particularly caught my attention because I just finished reading "Piercing the Darkness" by Frank Peretti. But here is a part of the article:

"But they [the woman's attorneys] said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her and was trying to save them from hell."

So I understand this is the media and they would never print anything like this, but I wonder how many people actually understand what most likely happened here. There is such a thing as demon-possession, the Bible states clearly many times that Jesus and His disciples cast demons out of people. Are we just trying to kid ourselves into thinking that that kind of thing only happened in Jesus day? Heck no!! After Jesus death Satan is working all the harder because he knows his time is limited. The battle is on. So are we going to realize that we are in spiritual warfare or just come up with more fancy names like "postpartum psychosis" so that people think it is just a medical thing? Seriously, I bet even alot of Christians believe that crap.

Oh so yeah the connection to "Piercing the Darkness" is that in that book a woman had drowned her only child in a bathtub because of a demon possessing her. So yeah it was just kinda jarring to realize that that kind of thing (even the same exact situation) doesn't just happen in novels.

Anyways, I think I am done venting for now. This blog definately started off as a more informative thing, and definately turned into more of a rant about people being naive. So yeah I'm done.

Back in Colorado

So after a 5 week adventure, I finally got back to Colorado at about 10:30 on Friday night. It was a really intense experience and I have more stories than I can count. I have pretty much told stories to my folks non-stop since I got back and there is no way I have gotten through more than a sixth of them. As I remember some of them I will try to post some of the cooler ones. Don't expect all of them though. If you want some more general stories you can check out the journals that I wrote during the trip. They are all up on http://www.urbana.org/feat.trek.2006.cfm?recordid=767 on the right side where it says "Journals." If you haven't checked them out yet you should. But anyways, I am slowly recovering my sleep and energy. I am back at work today, although there is still nothing for me to do :( Oh well, I won't complain too much. I see it as a little more of a blessing to have my job after helping people sort recycled trash (that's how some of the people we were with make money). I am still trying to figure out what all happened to me, but I trust that God will be faithful and show me things that I learned when I am ready to see them.

I am also working on a small scrap book of some of the cooler pictures. I figure not everyone wants to see all 600+ of the pictures they gave us. So Hopefully I will have that together soon, and maybe if I can find somewhere to put it I will have on online version, but don't get your hopes up. Anywho, ta for now.

2 days until Peru =D

Well on Monday I will be flying to LA to meet up with the team that I will be going down to Peru with. For those of you I haven't talked to, I am going on a 5 week missions trip to Lima, Peru with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. I am really looking forward to it (although I am still not packed yet).

But anyways, if you would like to follow what is going on there will be periodic journal updates (and I think pictures as well) posted on www.globalurbantrek.org under the "Peru" link. So feel free to check that out. Anyways, I appreciate all of your prayers and look forward to being in Peru for the next five weeks. Tata =D