Just found out today that the Clinicals for the last two school years in the Nursing Program here at SPU (which I have not yet even completed prereqs for, much less been admitted to) are 15hrs per week, on top of 10 more hours of class time, not counting homework. That's 26 hrs/wk. I also work 40+ hrs/wk. Now, I know all things are possible with God, but I wonder if all things are prudent. I don't want to neglect my family any more than I already do. (Well, I'd rather not neglect them at all...)

I believed and still believe this is where the Lord's leading is, or at least that I've not had any restraint 'til now - which coupled w/ an initial desire seems to be the mechanism by which I'm normally led - so I'm going to keep going for it.

If this (Nursing) falls through I don't know what else I could really do in the way of securing solid training for future employment that would also provide me with enough free time to plant a church here. I've seen enough churches fall apart or fall on hard times not to want to rely totally on the generosity of God's flock for provision for my family, who all enjoy having roofs and beds and food and such things. At least Paul had tentmaking as a fallback or supplement, and he was single. I am not single, I'm not even double. I'm quintuple-no, Brandy's pregnant, make that sextuple. So with this small tribe relying on me for sustenance, I DO desire (and I don't think this is lack of faith) some sort of resilient qualifications of the sort that could allow me to provide said sustenance. A Classics degree doesn't exactly fit that bill.

Prayers appreciated.

We have the van back!

Its Babylonian captivity is over. I went to write a review of "Premier Transmission" and found quite a few scathing reviews from the past month or so written by other customers/victims. After having read some of the reviews I became much more certain that our situation wasn't a fluke, and felt a lot better about writing a "never go here" review.

Thankfully, TJ & Destiny (friends from work) have been kind enough to lend us their Toyota 4runner (nice car by the way) for the past two weeks, so we've at least been able to get around.

Still trying to get a home fellowship off the ground. The meeting time for HF 'leader training' is Sundays, (2 in a row) 12-4pm. If I were to go, I'd be going to work Sat. night at 9pm, getting off at 7:30am, going to church, staying til 4pm, and going back to work for another 10hr grave shift at 9pm Sun, and starting classes as soon as I got out of work at 7:30am Monday morning. Sooooooo, I don't think I'll be doing that. Lord willing it'll work out so I don't have to, I spoke to Pastor Jack down here at the Wallingford campus and he sympathized with my situation. If they end up not letting us do the HF for that reason, I figure I'll just start a bible study out of the house and start inviting ppl from school/work/apartment.

Pastor Wayne spoke out of Luke today, where Jesus says "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" and goes on to tell the parable about the rich man who wanted to build bigger barns. I felt convicted about that, as I've been developing a buyer's impulse with my student Amazon.com account. It gives me free two-day shipping, and that's been such an incentive that I've found myself searching Amazon for "needs" that qualify for the aforementioned free shipping.

So, instead of being given to Gospel for Asia or needy acquaintances to 'make friends that will welcome me into eternal dwellings', my filthy lucre's been poured out in sacrifice to the inflamed lust aroused by free shipping. Lord forgive me.

I almost went down to the front for prayer after service, but there was only one guy praying and a man who looked even needier than I was in the process of voicing his requests, so I went out and helped Brandy herd the monkeys instead.

What's up with customer service in this country? I bought a copy of N.T. Wright's "New Testament and the People of God" and it took them three weeks to send me the wrong book. Then there's our van which has been in the shop for a month and a half, the half is because they put a bad transmission in it to begin with, and I had to take it back after it crapped out on me during the drive home. Ever since they've been stringing me along with promises that it'll be ready "In two days, maybe tomorrow" for the last couple of weeks. Their "call center" consists of one guy that treats you like a pest whenever you call in, and it seems like his job description is to keep you from learning anything about the status of your repair and to deter you from ever calling again. When I did pick it up after the initial (faulty) 'repair' I noticed a chip in the windshield that wasn't there before. I asked about it and they suggested that I go to a glass repair place that would fix it for free with most insurance.
The booksellers let me keep the book, and are issuing a refund. I'm more than satisfied with that. I've tried multiple times to get in contact with the manager at the Auto place and have yet to receive a reply.

I keep thinking of proverbs 24:29: Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

But man, "the man" sure has been ripping us off! I think I at least need to leave them some reviews letting other customers know what they did so that they won't be screwed over in the same way. Is it possible to do that out of concern for their potential customers without it being mixed with a desire to hurt their business in retribution for how badly they've treated us?

I guess that's what I'll need to aim for, but it'll take the Holy Spirit & conscious effort.

The great dragon of Student Aid, the FAFSA, has now been vanquished.
It wasn't really that hard, in my case it was a pretty small dragon,
maybe closer to an iguana... Brandy lent me the sword of our 1040A
with which I slew the paltry beast, and it only took about five minutes.

It's funny how many things I procrastinate on because as soon as they come to
mind I immediately overwhelm myself with imaginations of difficulty, and then
when I finally buckle down to do it it's like it ain't no thang.

God make me a man of action please, it would save so much time.

I never heard a wage-based insult until I started working at a private (Christian[?]) college. A co-worker of mine was insulted between swear-words the other day with "you make $8/hour!" (we make considerably more). The inebriated speaker apparently thinks that making 8/hr is a reason to hang one's head in shame, probably because his daddy's patched his every boo-boo with a big fat check. The poor kid somehow equates wage with intelligence, character, or ability.

I pity the fool who thinks that this (wage=worth) is the case. I'm making close to twice what I've made at most of my previous jobs here, yet I don't think of myself as any more or less worthy to walk the earth because of it. It's a job that I enjoy and that I'm grateful for, and that's it.

How do these people live? Even more puzzling, how do they remain in the upper classes of society? By pure snob power?

Part of me longs to fulfill the proverb "Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence". Unfortunately, most institutions of learning have abandoned this effective teaching technique.

And so, I am left to apply the message of my last blog. Even though it wasn't even me being insulted.

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On another note, the other day I had to go down the hall and confront the hispanic gangsta-guest-of-our-neighbors that's been ogling my wife when she does laundry. It's hard to warn people who don't speak English, but I think he got the idea.
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Well, I just got out of the night shift, and now need to write a paper on the difference between Romanesque and Gothic art for a class I have in two hours. Tuesdays are rough.

I have a headache. But the aspirin is casting it out slowly.

The day after tomorrow I am being sent to "Fire Academy" where we get to play fireman out at some Firefighter training academy up in the mountains for some 12 odd hours - dressing up in the gear and putting out fires. It's for work, since we're the first responders for fire emergencies as well as medical and pretty much everything else.

This is an interesting job, in a lot of ways it reminds me of being an on-call chaplain in St. Paul. Last week I had to respond to a call where a girl was cutting herself to relieve stress and ended up doing a worse job than she'd intended. NOT what I'd want to see, but I guess I'd rather it be me than someone else responding to it. I got to talk to her boyfriend a couple days later and he was very grateful for what we did, and said that she was doing better now. He said I was very "calming".
I seem to have that effect on many people. It's almost like I'm a sedative or something. I remember when I was little my mom would have me read to her to put her to sleep, which was very annoying to me because I want ppl to enjoy a book with me if I'm reading it to them, and if they're asleep that's hardly what I had in mind. Brandy falls asleep when I read to her too.

The first round of Layoffs @ SPU is over, and Safety and Security got through it unscathed, as far as I know. Next year they'll reassess and see if we need to lose more ppl. Praise God I kept my job, I really do like it here. And it's nice being at a job where I expect to stay for longer than two years. I wonder, it would hardly do for them to lay me off now that I'm accepted to go to school here, since I'll (Lord Willing) be bringing in more money with grants etc... than they pay me in a year.

Brandy & Theresa caught a crab at the beach on accident while gathering shells two or three weeks ago. it's a little tiny shore crab (about as big as a dime) with a white carapace. Brandy decided to keep it as a pet and got rocks and sand and a round fishbowl thing to keep it in with barnacles and krill and other tiny sea creatures that came along for the ride in the bucket. She goes to the beach every couple of days to get fresh seawater for the new "aquarium". Then night after she decided to keep it she had a dream where it grew huge and got out of the cage and I was trying to catch it but it was too fast, and then it turned into a dog, like the Scrunt from "Lady in the Water". Hopefully that doesn't happen. When Theresa found it she was washing shells in the sink and it jumped out, and she tried to hit it (Brandy & Theresa like to kill small things that crawl) but only succeeded in knocking off two of it's tiny legs. But yesterday it molted and its legs grew back. Brandy says it looks a lot bigger now, and I laughed and said as long as it doesn't turn into a dog we're all right. She laughed because that's what she was thinking about too.

Just listened to Andrew Petersen's "Far Country" on the drive in tonight, made me tear up. I haven't listened to that album in a long while, but it's so good, especially "Queen of Iowa". His voice is kind of nasal, but the words and the passion make up for it. I remember when Dominic got me that album off Itunes he said it reminded him of me. That whole year it seemed like everything I was reading and listening to had to do with Heaven, the New Heavens and Earth, and the Resurrection. That was a good year but intense. I want that kind of intensity though, I want to be urgent in everything that has to do with Jesus and the Gospel - even if it gives me ulcers. Like the four month period (more like a year off and on) where I was trying to reconcile the accounts of the resurrection in the gospels & that was a huge issue because it would decide whether or not I would be able to believe in the inerrancy of scripture. I want to take all these things seriously, because if they're real, they're pretty much the only things worth taking seriously, and if they're not, than they're not worth "taking" at all.

The last couple weeks I feel like I've been in isolation, all I've been doing is working, I hardly feel like I've been able to spend time with Brandy or the kids, but I haven't really done anything with anyone outside of the house.

Well, that's not entirely true. T.J. and I have been working out about once a week, and I'm almost to the level I was when I'd stopped working out in college! It makes me happy. Although I ran two miles on the treadmill this morning and it took me 18 minutes!!! that's terrible - more of a jog than a run. AND I dropped my Ipod.

But I do want to DO something. Something important. I really need to start getting some bible studies ready.

TJ and I had a long talk about the upper middle class after working out this morning. I don't like the upper middle class, and he wants to be the upper middle class. I guess for me when I think of the upper middle class I think about the seed sown on the thorny ground, where the thorns which were the cares of the world and deceitfulness of riches grew around the plant and choked it. But that doesn't give me any right to dislike them I suppose, I should love them... But I don't trust them.

Almost finished with a book cover for Beth that I promised to do at the beginning of the year...horrible - why do I take so long with everything? I finally got the scanner at work to work and was able to get the image on my computer. T.J. looked through my sketchbook and spent the rest of the hour trying to convince me to go into freelance graphic design and make lots of money. I thought that was funny. Also, it seems like every time I draw people, the guys I draw look like me. I've got to start drawing other guys out of magazines or something to get out of that rut. It comes from having to use myself as a model and getting facial proportions off myself for my concept of what the male face looks like. But it's odd, I don't try and make them look like me.

I want to read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, after reading "Anthem" I really want more. Apparently they're making a movie of it too.

And now I've got to get to work.

I watched "Expelled" some time last week by myself at the School, and then ordered it on Netflix so that Brandy & I could watch it together. When it arrived, I remembered that for the past two or three weeks, our computer hasn't been reading DVDs. But in the spirit of persistance I put it in anyway, and the laptop spit it out, and I put it in again, and again it was regurgitated, and another ten or more times, then I went into the bedroom to the other computer and tried it in that one, and to my surprise that one wouldn't take it either! SO I washed it off and cleaned it, and tried a handful of other times, then handed it off to Brandy and left the room to let off some steam. I asked God what was up with this-especially as it's something I figured he'd approve of us watching, and then he birthed the realisation in me that I hadn't really consulted him at all so far-I'd been trusting in the law of averages. So I went outside where Brandy had put it in the laptop for the fifth time or so since I'd left, and grabbed her hand and said we should pray. So I prayed and asked God to make it work, seeing as this is probably the first really edifying thing we've watched in a while, and asked him to make sure it was an edifying watch. As we said our "Amen", the DVD 'took' and the menu screen came up. After a short and heartfelt prayer of thanks, we watched the movie (which, by the way, was excellent). Then we had a good long conversation springboarded off of the topics touched on in "Expelled", and I decided that this was the first time in a while I'd prayed for something supernatural with the expectation that it would happen. Brandy objected that she does and has fairly recently prayed in such a way, and I said that I do too, if it counts prayers for the universe to be rearranged to avoid inconveniencing us (for our car to run, for us to get more money, for our health to be good) But when was the last time we'd prayed for God to work a miracle that would be to His Glory for the purposes of His will being obeyed and accomplished?

As a result of that conversation I've realised that prayers for cars to start and money to appear can be pure superstition, on the level with rubbing a lucky rabbit's foot, as opposed to prayers which seek the will of God to be supernaturally worked out with our cooperation. One starts from the nature of Christ - For God's will and Glory, and the other starts from our desire to be comfortable - loving our life here in the world. I definitely think that God's will and glory can result in our comfort, but I don't think that the comfort should come first, and I think I've been relegating the power of God to disaster relief lately.

It's 3:51 AM and I've got an hour and a half to go.

This is the busiest night I've had so far, since I started the grave shift. I found an alarm going off in the Science building lab, a controlled temp room was overheating... Could've been explosive volatile chemicals for all I know, called in to dispatch and they called the on-call engineer to come take care of it. Then I found some chocolate covered almonds set out in the lobby and fulfilled their purpose for existing.
Then there were the two inebriated dikes walking their four dogs across campus, and whistling for the pit-bull they just lost. I got their info & let them know we'd call them if we sighted their animal.
Then I confronted a suspicious guy (not really) in a biodiesel truck to make sure he had a work order before removing barrels of cooking fat from Gwinn (our cafeteria) to convert into diesel fuel.
Fun fun fun.
Here's a link to where I work
Seattle Pacific University
It's pretty. It gets pretty eerie checking in long basement hallways and empty corridors at night with all the lights off, no one to hear you scream and all that...but I don't think I would scream, I'd probably die fighting silently if it came to it.
Well, well, it's the first. I just checked my bank account and the amount being direct deposited into it for payroll is NOT right, I hope it gets fixed before tomorrow morning, I don't want to have one more thing to add to my list, :"gripe at employer about payroll mistake"
Oi Vey.
(which I think is hebrew for "my enemies"-I should check to make sure.)
Reading "That Hideous Strength", I swear, or would if it wasn't forbidden, that book gets better and more enlightening every time I read it.

I missed a chance to give an old lady (well, middle aged) in a walker a quarter...:-(
and I lied without thinking about it. I told her I didn't have any cash - when I did, I had seen a quarter floating around in the bottom of my bag 15 minutes earlier. I don't normally carry cash, so "I don't have any cash" is my stock response to ppl asking for money. My MO is usually to NOT give people money, especially physically well men, but this woman I would've made an exception for if I had been thinking right. Bummer.
AND I lied.

Glory!

If you prayed for me about the apartment's response, I bless you. And may the Lord bless you.

I just called our apartment manager back today at lunchtime, and she informed me (in a very kind voice no less!) that she had credited our account for THREE HUNDRED dollars! That's like 50 dollars more than what I invoiced them for! I told her they didn't have to do that, she said 'no, we're happy to, since you've done the work and all' WOW! That was the opposite of what I was expecting. I am happy. My heart is full of happy juice. A crap free deck and money in the bank! life doesn't get much better.