Here They Are!

Alright Everybody, here are the promised D.C. pictures. Once again, they are from the trip that our Generation Joshua club took to Washington. We had meetings with the offices of several congressmen related to the Parental Rights Amendment. These are from afterwords when we toured around the capitol. I hope you all enjoy them![This is Library of Congress from across the street].This is the Capitol

This is the Grace and Mrs. Gunther at the Supreme Court Building.

This was from in between the columns up on the "porch" there.

This is most of our club on the steps.

Here's Matt and Andrew.

Here we are in Arlington National Cemetery.

Here are just a few of the many headstones at Arlington.

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers

We got to ride the Metro!

Alright guys, that's it for now. Thanks for looking at 'em! Feel free to leave any comments.[Just don't say that I never should have been trusted with the camera:)

O.K. - I'm Back.

Hellooo. My last post was Thurs. night and I've been pretty busy for the weekend and everything. But hey, now we're kind of back to normal schedule for the week and I'll get back to business. Alright, updates: I got some great news through my informers the other day. After our trip to D.C. that I keep talking about, we recently got the encouraging news that every single Republican Congressman in the state of Virginia became a co-sponsor of the Parental Rights Amendment. This isn't just that they said they agreed with us or liked what we were doing; but that they actually put their names on the bill. This is a lot more meaningful than just verbal support because this is the equivalent of a line in the sand that they have crossed to say," Yes, I believe that the rights of parents to lead and direct their children are valid, important, and worth protecting from the real threats that we see on the horizon". I commend each one of our congressmen who believes that and is not ashamed to let their standpoint be known. [Now just to make it clear, I know that God is the one who works in the hearts of our leaders but I'm so thankful that He wants to use us as His tools!] Next on the list, our youth gathering was as Mom put it, "a smashing success". Thanks to everyone who came out and joined us! To those who couldn't make it, we missed you all and hope we can do it again soon. We played some volley-ball, Mrs. T jammed her finger and I tried to tape it up right. [thankfully a Dad that was dropping off his kids was a paramedic-type in the military and he showed me how to really do it.] [So now I'm secretly hoping that I play one of you guys in a volley-ball match soon and you jam your finger and I swoop in and save the day by astounding everyone with my super-amazing sports medicine knowledge on how to tape up fingers:) Well, not really, but if I ever am in that situation again, maybe I'll do something better than a duck tape bandage with a splint made of pencils. We also played kickball, some acting games, had ice cream, etc. The last people left at 10:46pm and we stayed up 'til about 12:00 watching the video we had taken. In the morning we went to church and I had been asked to bring something to share during the teaching time. I was thankful for the opportunity and the Lord allowed it to go pretty well [I didn't pass out or anything:) Mr. Scott and Aaron also spoke and the whole time was a blessing. It was all wet and squishy in the yard, so we mainly played some Catchphrase after lunch. All in all, we had a really good weekend. Today we started our yearly aerating and seeding for our lawn customers. The Wilsons let us borrow their Yanmar tractor to pull the tow-behind aerator since our ATV has a serious transmission issue. The tractor is working great though. Thanks guys! I think tomorrow we'll continue all that kind of work so that all the customers get their seed down and growing. Hey! Here's a shout-out to some new followers: Thanks to "Pckldr7" and "Shawn-tisha" for followin' along on this 'umble little blog:) Okay, pictures are in the works [and probably more than just D.C.] Okay, I hope you all have a good night and I'm gonna sign out here!

Heads up

One more thing- Rachel and Sarah posted a blog today with a really great world-view statement about history. You can check it out by going to http://ourfamilyviewfromustwo.blogspot.com It's a really well written thought about a subject that should be very dear to us as Christians. See ya' there!

Thurs. Night

Good evening to all my readers. Hey- do you want to hear my cheesy joke of the day? Well, seeing as you can't really answer me on that one, here it goes: What do I feel like after listening to Klove's version of " Lord I Lift Your Name on High"? PETRA-fied :) ;) [hey I know it's cheesy, but you can't say I didn't warn you.] Matthew's probably groaning big-time right about now:) Okay, moving right along. If any of you have any favorite jokes or the like, feel free to post them as comments. If a lot of people do, maybe I'll post some of the funniest ones on the actual blog. Hey, some of you may have heard that Rachel, Sarah, and I, worked on some commercials for the Parental Rights Amendment video contest with the Tates and their friends. [some of you all were in them yourselves.] This week is the week that we're supposed to hear about the results from the judges. The biggest prize is $250. Whatever the turn out is, they were a ton of fun to work on and it was my first chance to work from a script. [By the way, we were just helpers, the script, score, and shot layout, etc. were done by Grace and her friends]. Anyway, it was still a great experience. Oh by the way, after the GenJ meeting the other night, we reconvened for about 2 minutes and I got elected to be the media relations kind of guy. [It was neat for me at least:) Speaking of that, I know I said I'd get some D.C. pictures on here. The deal is, I have to get them from video I took up there. I've loaded the video onto my computer, and now I have to grab frames and turn them into Jpegs. Then I can put them on a flash drive and bring to the office computer and load them onto here. But I'll get to work on it. Alright, I'm gonna get going. Looking forward to seeing some of you at least on Sat. for the youth night. Bye!

A Differing World-View

Hey everybody, how's it going? It's Wed. morning and I thought I'd take a minute to post some thoughts I've had recently. I'd been thinking about our trip to D.C. last week [that you can read about in a previous blog], and about some of the meetings we'd had with the different staffers of different congressmen. One guy in particular really did not seem too excited about the idea of the Parental Rights Amendment and what ParentalRights.org is trying to do. After we'd explained to him why we were there and told him all about the PRA and the CRC, he looked kind of confused and slightly irritated and basically said, "So why do you need a constitutional amendment? I mean, this is America, we wouldn't let anything happen that would really be detrimental to our society. And even if we did ratify the CRC; laws and decisions would still have to come past the Senate and we could just stop them then." We did our best to explain to him that for one thing, the CRC is already being cited by some of our judges as international common law and is already affecting our judicial decisions. As well as the fact that the reason we want a constitutional amendment is that we see very real and practical threats to the safety and well-being of parental rights and thus the rights of the family.[uh, sorry about the run-on sentences. Don't tell my teacher:) He heard what we had to say and finished up by telling us that the congressman he represented would probably have a philosophical difference with us on the subject. What I realized afterwords was that he was coming from a completely different world-view than we were. Take, for example, his argument about us not letting something like this happen in America. 50 years ago, you would have been laughed down the street if you had voiced a concern about the definition of marriage. Now, however, we know that sadly it's a real issue. We can see that "stuff like this" does happen in America. Left to our own fallible devices, human nature will never get better, but worse. The opposite world-view is that human nature is basically good. When we come from that standpoint, there is no real concern to be watchmen in our country for things that would be destructive to families. This world-view leaves God out of the equation and leads us to put our trust in the fallen state of humanity. As Christians we must not embrace these lies that would water us down to complacency and render us ineffective as ambassadors of Christ to our nation. Let us put our trust in our Lord and Savior and follow Him to final Victory. I pray that each one of us would be emboldened and encouraged to be lights in every arena of our culture and not shy away from this honor and privilage. Thanks for reading and I hope that you all have a great day:)

Good Morning!

Good morning to the various and sundry readers! How many of you all have heard of Generation Joshua? It's an organization started by Michael Ferris [as in HSLDA, Patrick Henry College, etc]. Our friends the Tates started one of two clubs in our entire state about one and 1/2 years ago. I got involved back in Februaryish and I have really loved it and learned a lot from it. God has been working in my heart for quite awhile about our role as Christians in the country that God has placed us in. May we not shy away from or avoid carrying His Crown Rights into what are really raging spiritual battles for our nation's heart. For any of you who have felt similar stirrings or really don't know what you think about "Christians in politics", I would strongly recommend a c.d. set by Doug Phillips called, " Biblical Principles of the Ballot Box". It's kind of a wordy title, but an excellent message. Hey, if you see me soon and want to borrow it, feel free. [It's actually being borrowed out right now, but I expect it back real soon] p.s. I won't make you fill out a tape report:) Anyways, GenJ has been a wonderful tool in shaping my worldview related to this topic and giving me practical avenues to live it out. Big thanks to the Tates for all of the energy, rides, scheduling, emails, phone calls, etc. A GenJ club is only as good as you make it, and ours is great! Any questions or anything, feel free to leave a comment or give me a call. [I think most of you have my number so I won't leave it for the creeps that are probably swarming all over this blog;) Oh, the reason I've expounded on the virtues of GenJ this particular morning, is that our next monthly meeting is tomorrow night. I guess I'm excited. If anybody knows anything about the Warne Fellowship by the way, I'd love some more info on that. Hey! We just got word that our Uncle and Aunt in New York want us to come up and see them again this winter! They've been extremely generous in flying us older kids up to spend a vacation week for the past two years. We're really looking forward to it! I also hope to go to the San Antonio Independant Christian Film Festival next October. [I was supposed to go in Feb., but they moved it to Oct. 2010] Oh well, maybe the extra time will give me a chance to enter something in it. Well hey, hope you all have a great first day of the week and say hi to your families for me!

Fall

Hey everybody, hope you all had a good Sunday and/or church gathering this morning! We went over to the Wilson's and had a good time of worship and teaching and Ultimate Frisbee [afterwords]. Mr. Tracy got back safe and sound from his deployment, and it was great to see the whole family all together for the first time in a while. We stopped by the Slurpee place on the way back home, and got some nice cold drinks for our ride home. Later on, I took the girls and Benjaming over to the final hours of the fair to pick up the chickens and pack away the 4H setup. We also got some great deals from the vendors who needed to clear out their stock. Anyway, so ends the fair. It was a fun time. Oh, by the way, today is the week anniversary of this blog! You can send all your cards and felicitations to my mailing address, it's fine if they get there a little late;) Hey here's an announcement for any of our church family that didn't make it out to the Wilson's today: In October we're going to start up a Bible Drill class for a bit of time after lunch on Sundays. Back at our v.b. homechurch, I led the kids in a similar thing that we had a ton of fun with and learned alot from. It's a really great tool for learning about some practical Bible navigation skills as well as memorizing some part's of God's word to have in our hearts. I don't have all of the final details, but will advise through email, etc. as things are firmed up. By the way, the reason that I called this post "Fall", is that I don't know about the rest of you, but I can just feel the change of seasons in the air. I have always loved the Fall and Winter and I look forward to this time with excitement all the year. Hope you all are enjoying it too. Alright, I'm gonna' sign out now. I'm thankful for each and every one of you guys, and hope you're doing well.