Well, the youth and I lead worship today.  It was a great service and I preached, for the first time in a long while.  I knew it was going to be a great day no matter what, but I really wanted the sermon to be spot on and well delivered.  I can honestly say that I have never been as proud to preach as I was today.  So I am putting my sermon her in blogger history.  I may even record it in audacity and have Chad show me how to post it on our site later on.  Anyway here it is for your reading pleasure, but I think it will be even better when you can hear it from the horses mouth :)

I've always had a love – hate relationship with this scripture, “The Great Commission.”  I can even remember being rather young and not really liking the passage.  Maybe it was because I had catholic friends that didn't really think my baptism had stuck, or it could have been our family's Pakistani friends whose Muslim faith we knew to be as strong as ours.  Perhaps my struggle with this scripture was solidified later still as an adult when I discovered that my own denomination had made a decision concerning baptisms of another faith that I simply couldn't agree with.  What ever the reason, I love Christ's words to the apostles that Kara spoke today more so from having struggled with them.
Will you pray with me:  Loving God, Heavenly Creator.  Bless our time together with you and each other today.  Let us hear the truth that you desire for us and let us know and understand what to do with it.  Amen.

I just can't help thinking that once again, the American consumer is getting gouged illegally by the oil companies. Every year they gouge us during the summer. But now, with record profits, while the rest of us suffer with gas prices. Well that really takes the cake. I hope all of them cease to exist in a few decades when they are dinosaurs and new green engergy companies take their place.

I'm sure that is very naive of me, but hey, a man can dream can't he?

I've been podcasting with the Lords of Tyr gaming group that I'm a member of for the last 6 weeks or so. If you are interested in Dungeons and Dragons (especially with the new 4th edition coming out in a few weeks), then you should head over to http://lordsoftyr.com/lordsoftyrpodcast and listen to our latest podcast.

Here
is an article from the sfgate.com website.

"Today the California Supreme
Court took a giant leap to ensure that everybody — not just in the
state of California, but throughout the country — will have equal
treatment under the law," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who
argued the case for San Francisco.

This isn't an issue that will go away quietly or quickly, but it
is inevitable that gay people will be treated equally. Why do I say
that? Because unlike the old fogey conservatives and totally
misguided "Christians" that oppose this, every generation
of free people in the world becomes more used to the idea of freedom
and equality.

Let's be honest. The process is still happening for African-Americans and
women and they where both "freed" or given the ability to
vote well over 100 years ago. Even with all that time, there are
still
completely misguided idiots like Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) who
haven't been informed properly of this and say horribly insensitive
and derisive things like "tar baby" in a document regarding
Obama.

Stephanie and I have been doing lots of things over the last few years to live greener. But that was in the past. There is always something new you can do to reduce your carbon footprint and make the world a better place. With that in mind, we start planting our first garden together and we installed a backyard composter.

The garden startup costs were about $150. Unfortunately I did't already have a composter. The composter is to help generate some soil improving rotten vegtable matter for the garden of course.  Without that I needed some good top soil, some good manure mix and some peatmoss to mix in. We purchased some rough lumber to create an 8'x8' encloser and some 3' high fencing to keep our two dogs and the rabbits out. We also bought seeds for tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, pole beans, onion bulbs, and a few everbearing strawberry plants. 

The great thing is that this startup cost will be easily paid back for in food. Aside from the seeds won't have to purchase any of that over again. So next year we will really reap the benefits. I'll post some pictures as we start putting the garden together over this week. We installed the frame already, but I have a few more bolts to drill in to make sure it all holds together. 

The next step is pulling out the grass, which I am going to use to resod over some lovely mud holes our dogs have dug. 

From the Raw Story article on "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".

I've been watching the news on this so called documentary for a while now. I'm not impressed. I fail to see where Science excludes religion or vice versa. Yet dogmatic idiots from both extremes continue to argue about something that clearly cannot be arguable. I'm glad that evolution is being shown first hand with this insane movie. Survial of the fittest is ensuring that movies like this will not be made as often or at all. This movie was certainly certainly not natrually selected and its branch of evolution will die.

Hey Christian extremists! Guess what? There are huge parts of the Bible that are just plain made up and don't fit into what you are demanding to be called "Historical Fact". The Bible was written by people. People are failable. People make things up when they don't have a good explaination. I believe God did create the universe, but I will never be hauty enough to claim that I know how God created it. I especially don't believe in made up stories to explain the creation that include Adam, Eve, and a talking snake. Especially when there are actually two different creation stories in the Bible in Genisis. that contradict facts between each other. Which one is more right?

Okay, I was a competetive swimmer for ten years of my childhood. I was always bigger than the other girls: up top, muscularlly everywhere. While I was swimming I was not obese, I was not fat. In fact I was in top shape. I was just bigger. Then I quit swimming. So sue me for wanting to have a life out side of a pool. My eating habits suddenly didn't match my lifestyle. Pasta & veggies seemed to pack on the pounds more than I was expecting and since I wasn't over training my body, I wasn't maintaining my weight let alone loosing any. (In hind sight I was also dealing with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome which is a metabolic disease that can make it very difficult to loose weight). Fast forward to post college graduation, just found out my little sister from ZTA is getting married, she wants me to be her maid of honor! Oh yeah, I'm obese at about 240lbs but I carry my weight so well. I start weight watchers. Two months later (about 16lbs lighter) I meet Chad. Ooh Aah, it's love at first email . . . I mean sight. Five months and 34lbs later I am planning for my own wedding. By the time Chad and I got married I was at the lowest weight I had been since I quit swimming (169 lbs). The two weeks before the wedding I was also still tracking my points (or caloric intake) religiously and working out twice a day. I was on winter break from seminary and had nothing else to plan for the blessed day so that's what I did, besides keep house.