Moscow Trip, Part 2 - Homecoming and Halloween

We started the day with the University of Idaho Homecoming parade... which includes all sorts of community groups as well as bands from all over the area. Claire wore her monkey costume and joined with her mom, nanna, sister and many others to make up the University Children's Center entry. They were entry number 11 I think, so they finished early and watched the rest of the parade. Kaleb walked along with other kids from the Youth Hockey Association, and they were entry number 102, near the end of the parade. All had fun, and there were lots of people along the route. Here are some shots from the morning.

Today was also Halloween, so Kaleb and I carved a Jack-O-Lantern, and Nanna and I took the kids out Trick-or-Treating.

Kaleb and I begin the grisly task!

The finished product... totally designed by Kaleb.

Kaleb and his creation, complete with candle.

Claire's monkey costume did double duty today, and she was deemed one of the cutest to hit the Trick-or-Treat circuit tonight.

Kaleb as the Grim Reaper... pretty convincing if you ask me!!

The obligatory front porch photo before heading out in search of candy!!

Moscow, Part 1 - Hannah's Birthday

Our flight to Spokane and drive to Moscow went well. It's a bit cooler here than at home, but not bad. It was really special to arrive today because it is Hannah's 1 month birthday!! Evidence below. :-)

AAhhh... the good old Arkansas chocolate sheet with plenty of cinnamon! Kaleb did a nice job of spelling "Hannah" with the candy corn.

Posing... Claire loves to say "cheese."

One more.


The birthday girl with her Nanna.



And getting a much earned rest.


And Claire decided to celebrate with stickers.

What Happened to Those Dinosaurs??

Those who believe in a really old earth say the dinosaurs died in some cataclysmic event millions of years ago.

Those who believe in a really young earth say that either there really were no dinosaurs or that they died off more recently.

Here's one more theory, courtesy of my friend, Wendell.

Philosophy of Quotations

Finally... a quote that helps me undrstand why I love quotes!!

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." - Josh Billings

Won By One

Virginia picked me up at the airport Friday night and we headed home to finish getting ready for "company" to show up in the wee hours. The singers in Won By One, Pepperdine's accappella six person singing group, were heading north to participate in the annual Scary Monsters youth rally at Martinez, and we love to have them stay at our house. Their concert Saturday night was great, and they sang on praise team with us Sunday morning. Here's what our Sunday worship assembly looked like:

Arise and Sing
I Sing Praises

Welcome and Family News

O Worship the King
Days of Elijah

Prayer

Reading: Zephaniah 3:17

We Shall Assemble
The Lord Thy God

Reading: 1 John 4:7-8

I Love You with the Love of the Lord

Communion: Sharing His Love
Why Did My Savior Come to Earth
A Common Love

Offering

Children’s Sermon & Invitation to Children’s Church (age 3 – 3rd Grade)

Jesus, Draw Me Closer

Sermon

Lord, I Give You My Heart

We Are the Body of Christ

Shepherd’s Blessing

I'm enjoying a few days in Cabot, Arkansas, visiting my mom. It's been a pretty soggy day today, but rain doesn't interfere with cups of coffee, whole wheat muffins, and long conversations... even a trip to WalMart.

Last night we headed up to church for the weekly Wed night meal and Bible class, so I got to see a few familiar faces. Hard to believe it's been 19 years since we moved away.

Thanks to my laptop and Mom's wireless network, I can even get some work done as well.

Heading home Friday afternoon.

Sunday Musings

I love this quote from Heartlight: "Any concern too small to be a prayer is too small to be a burden." (Corrie ten Boom)

Within the last couple of weeks I heard a couple of news stories that really bothered me... as an individual... as a believer... as one who is seen by many as a "face" of a local church. On pretty much any theological scale, those of us in the Stone-Campbell tradition fall somewhere on the conservative side of the scale. We believe the Bible is inspired, trustworthy and speaks of a living God who loves us enough to send Jesus as our redeemer. We accept what few commands there are in the NT as authoritative, and we attempt to follow the practices of those ancient first century believers where they make sense culturally and theologically. Those on the so-called "liberal" end of the scale do not necessarily accept all of these things. And, of course, there are some believers who are much to the "right" of our group. Well, with that as a backdrop, I'll share those two news stories.

The first one was about a Christian group in the southeast somewhere who had decided they needed to burn all the Bibles they could find that weren't the King James version (KJV). They were also going to burn Christian books written by such "liberals" as Billy Graham and others as well as CDs by various Christian artists. When someone interviewed the preacher who was leading this crusade, he said something about any translation of the Bible other than the KJV being from the Devil. Oh my... I have neither the time nor the desire to write about all the reasons why the KJV is probably the least reliable of the major translations, so let's just say that any translation that has been done under threat of punishment, if it doesn't come out reflecting critical party positions, has problems from the get go. Alexander Campbell, one of the founders of our particular Christian tradition back in early 19th century, thought the KJV was so bad that he did his own translation called The Living Oracles in 1826. I can hardly imagine the level of ignorance and pride stirred together it would take to get to the point of the preacher above. Sigh...

The other one was also a radio story I heard while driving. It seems there is a conservative group (as in conservative politically and economically) who are planning a new translation of the Bible to emphasize things they think are important that other translation groups have left out or gotten wrong. They say that other modern speech translations have a "liberal bias" and they want to correct that. They plan to emphasize, among other things, a logical doctrine of Hell, free market principles (is that a goal of the NT writers??), and the elimination of gender neutral language (like going back to "every man needs to repent" instead of "everyone needs to repent"). Here's their web site link. Now, I'm all for Bible translations, but the best ones have generally been produced by committees of translators from across the theological spectrum to minimize bias. It seems to me that these guys are purposefully starting out with a particular bias and are going to look for ways to translate the scriptures that will support that bias. That doesn't mean their entire product will be lousy (even the Jehovah's Witnesses translation has some some good parts). I just believe that anyone who uses this translation will need to spit out plenty of "bones" to get at the "fish." And... beginning with such a bias can hardly yield a result that is equal to or better than many other translations, and I fear some will actually use it just because it has the word "conservative" in title somewhere. When will we learn that the beauty of Christianity is (at least in part) it's ability to live and grow in any culture and any economic or political system? We'd be better suited to let Christianity influence our nation instead of nationalizing our expressions of faith.

Back to the Hills

This morning Virginia and I headed off to hike in the hills again. We really love it when we have time to get out there, and this makes two weekends in a row. Today, in order to get farther into the hills, we drove to the trail head instead of starting from the house. It was a beautiful day and not quite as warm as last Saturday. The rain earlier in the week meant damp ground and some humidity, but it wasn't bad. The shot above is looking back toward the city, the river and the Antioch bridge. I love the panoramic view from some of the trails. We then hiked on higher up to the Ridge Trail.

Mt Diablo in the distance.

Back toward the river and city from the Ridge Trail.


From the Ridge Trail we headed down a narrow, windy one called the Corchran Mine Trail. VJ always takes advantage of the shady spots.

Ranchers still run cattle in the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve grasslands, and the corral below is kept in shape for use, although I've never actually seen it in use. Usually we'll see cattle at various spots just grazing. From there we headed along the Stewartsville trail (actually sort of a gravel road) back to the trail head and took the car home. Great way to spend some time.

Odds and Ends

I was leaving the Kaiser Deer Valley Hospital after looking in on one of our members and was struck with this view of Mt Diablo, shrouded in clouds left over from our storm, so I took the shot below with my phone. Doesn't really do justice to the view, but maybe you get the idea.


As I entered the locker room at the gym today, another guy who was getting dressed to work out looked at me and asked if people ever asked if I am Norv Turner, current head coach of the San Diego Chargers. I said he was the first, and we both had a laugh. Sooo... check out the pics below and see if you can find Norv.

Finally, I heard today that the group who is trying to purchase the St Louis Rams decided to drop Rush Limbaugh from their number due to the controversy of his involvement. I guess I have three reactions to that news:

1. Rush is actually being held accountable for what comes out of his mouth?
2. A media campaign and more or less threatened boycott of the Rams by some NFL players brought him down... talk about one's own medicine!!
3. Maybe Donovan McNabb isn't so overrated after all, Rush.
   

Rain... Rain... Rain...

As most of you know, California has been in an increasingly serious drought situation over the last few years, and, while yesterday's deluge did not reverse that trend totally, the rain we had yesterday set records all over the area. I'm not sure how much it rained here in Antioch, but probably 3 or 4 inches based on other areas nearby. Many spots set records for rain in October or rain in a 24-hour period. One area in the Santa Cruz Mountains got over 8 inches, and I heard of one spot (not sure where) that got 20 inches... that's a lot of water anywhere.

Of course, hilly areas that had fires recently or even a year ago are particularly susceptible to mud slides, so there's a lot of preventative work done there. We're in good shape at our place.

We had some "flooding" in the fellowship hall downstairs (sort of a half-basement). The drains and sump pump were clogged and the overflow seeped into the youth room and hallway before one of our members got it cleaned out. As a result, Brice, Kyle and I spent some time with shop vacs, sucking up water, and we have fans running, trying to get the carpet dried out. This has happened numerous times over the last 30 years, so it's nothing new.

Totally unrelated, today is the birthday of Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in WWII and 34th President of the United States. Most consider him to be an outstanding military commander, and opinions about his presidency run the gamut, usually along party lines. One of his most noble ideas was to grow the Republican Party from one known mostly as a "rich men's club" in those days to something more inclusive. It was known as a "big tent" approach... to more or less compete with the Democrats, "the party of the common man." Not sure how successful he was, but I heard a related quote the other day from my daughter, which paraphrases something like this, "The Big Tent of Eisenhower, has become a one ring circus today." Not sure if those of you reading this will agree with that, but I thought it was a creative quote for Ike's birthday.

Time, time, time...

Simon and Garfunkel's song, "A Hazy Shade of Winter" begins:

Time,

Time,

Time, see what's become of me

While I looked around for my possibilities.

Brice has been talking about our schedules, how we use our time and our relationship with God. Good stuff... challenging stuff. Here's what our assembly looked like today:

O Come, Let Us Adore Him

Come Worship Christ the King
Welcome and Family News

Shout Hallelujah

Prayer

My Everything
Responsive Reading: Psalm 42:2-5

As the Deer Thirsts

Here in this Place

Communion: Giving Thanks Together

Boundless Love

You Have Been Good
Offering

Children’s Sermon & Invitation to Children’s Church (age 3 – 3rd Grade)
Nobody Fills My Heart Like Jesus

Sermon

More Like You

The Joy of the Lord

Shepherd’s Blessing

Hike in the Hills

We've had really nice weather of late... you know... that "California weather" that includes lots of sun along with cool breezes and temps in the 70's. So, Virginia and I decide to go for a hike in the hills that begin just south of our neighborhood. We walked over that first hill down into Contra Loma Regional Park, and continued on over the next set of hills to some of the trails in the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. It was a hilly hike, taking a little over 2.5 hours and leaving us both leg weary. But it was fun, beautiful and a great time to just talk. Here are some shots from our phone cameras.

Looking back at the Contra Loma Reservoir from the Lake View Trail.

From about the same spot.

At the beginning of the Homestead Loop, on which various small farms were back during the coal mining days and long prior to this area becoming a preserve.

They still run cattle back in the preserve for grazing, which means providing water as well. I liked this shot... 19th century windmill technology replaced with 21st century solar technology to pump water... or it could be some odd hybrid.


Yes, we just did hike up that trail, Virginia!!

Downhill most of the rest of the way home!!

Nanna's Trip Pics

Wow! Virginia flew home Friday evening and both Saturday and Sunday were pretty full, then the week started again... soooo I'm just now getting around to posting some pics from her trip to Moscow for Hannah's birth.

Also, Claire is really starting to enjoy singing. Here's her version of the Julie Andrew's favorite, D-Re-Mi.

Hannah Gah-Yan Johnson Leung

September 30, 2009

11:17pm

8lbs 4oz

21-1/4 inch

Hannah and Jennifer and the whole family are doing great!!