"You too now begin to be a magician"
The year has flown by; between full-time work, full-time doctoral studies, and family life, I sit here, finding myself on the brink of 2025. I continue to surprise myself by each and every year I cross the finish line.
There have been a lot of changes this year overall, the most significant being that my middle son married. Life continues to roll along. I may or may not have time to reflect on 2024 before ushering in the new year, but for now – Merry Christmas.
In Excelsis Deo!
My new watch keeps warning me every time I take the harley out that it is going to make me deaf.
Funny, because every time I take the Harley out, I’m thinking, “Why isn’t my motorcycle louder than this?”
I guess the watch is right.
Amanda and I went to watch Sound of Hope this weekend. It is a story that hits close to home.
In 2008 I took on a position in a Missions board within our Church family. While I grew up dirt poor (e.g., no plumbing or running water), I still lived a sheltered life where God always provided for us, and to be fair, “poor” is a subjective word. We were money poor, but we were family wealthy.
When I became involved in the Missions board, a whole new world of poverty, true poverty, pain, and suffering opened before me. In 2008, a visiting bishop from Kenya prayed over our family, asking God to give us strength in the decisions we were about to make. What decisions?
My wife and I left from services with a heavy heart that drew us, unbeknownst to each other to go home, separately jump on our computers, and still unknowing to the other, we both started searching for children in need. A few days later we finally got the courage to speak out the plans that God placed in our hearts, and providentially, we had both found the same little girl from the same orphanage in Haiti.
Like John, (although somewhat figuratively) I could fill a scroll that stretched from one end of the heavens to the other in describing to you all the wonderful and amazing “God moments” we had over the next two years; it is AMAZING to see God’s power manifest in front of your eyes, and I can tell you with unwavering commitment that God performed many powerful miracles along the way – His only ask for us, was to trust in Him.
Whenever our hard work and efforts came to a dead end (so many times!), whenever we got to the end of our rope, once we gave up and let God take control, the miracles flooded in. It’s funny, looking back, how many times I would try to do things within my own power and strength, only once again having to turn to God in humility and ask. That’s all it took. Ask and you shall receive.
Adoption, is not an easy thing though, with it comes struggles, physical, emotional, and financial. There are so many adjustments needed, there is often brokenness there can be feelings of abandonment, and even medical and psychological issues. But God is good, and what better way to truly understand what it means to be “adopted” into God’s family. Sometimes when the tide of grief comes over one of our adopted children, I have to remind them, that we chose them, how much more so is that powerful bound, where we chose them, just like God chooses us.
Sound of Hope was a tear-jerker through and through. It didn’t just show the happy side of adoption, it showed some of the hard times, the bad times, and maybe even a little bit of the fringe of the ugly, but God is good, all the time.
I commend this movie to you, and hope it will be an inspiration wherever you are in your walk of life and your faith. Perhaps you are already involved in some way in caring for orphans and widows, perhaps this movie might plant a seed to stir you up for even more noble things.
https://www.angel.com/movies/sound-of-hope-the-story-of-possum-trot
Thank you for letting me share a little bit of my story, maybe someday I will share more!
I received the following picture related to my dinner delivery.. I think my response was spot on.
This week I had to (e.g. had the opportunity to) travel from the east to the west, and back to the east (California trip); the trip back, starting 3AM Thursday morning to 12AM Friday morning, where I eventually ended up outside of Liberty for a college experience tour with our two youngest. I also stopped in the office towards the end of the day to get my own physical student ID card!
The campus of Liberty was beautiful, well kept, and well organized. We were so impressed by the safety of the area, and even more so, in the investment in community and safety as a whole.
Convocation was a humbling experience, witnessing thousands upon thousands of creatures connecting with their creator. We even stood on the 17th floor of the Liberty tower while the bells struck the top of the hour.
I am super exhausted, and now trying to get caught up on my doctoral assignments that were extended for a few days, but still due by the end of the week.
God is good – all the time, it just so happens, that this week resulted in experiences that were immediately recognizable as great and gracious.
I’ve been staring at Ben’s videos for the last 6 or so months and really wanted to dig a little deeper.. however, with as much knowledge and experience as I have with technology, I really don’t (didn’t..) understand electricity at all, except for the experiences I’ve had with accidentally grounding out light switches in the gang box, because I didn’t realize the electrician had sourced multiple circuits into the same box.. *poof*
What I did know, however, is that electricity is dangerous, and while I had a basic level of understanding electricity, and a pretty solid understanding of how digital circuits work, and how a computer is pieced together from thise circuits, I had no idea how actual electricity flows through all the different components to build up to a functional computer.
For example: what is a transistor, how does a resistor work, what about a diode, or a FET, how do capacitors work… how about electrical flow in circuits that are parallel, or in series, how do you “size” your circuits correctly?
I understood high-level differences with AC and DC, but how do you convert from one to the other, and why use either? The list goes on and on and on.
So, I started with an 11 hour course on Udemy from Ian Juby, on Electricity and Robotics, then I spent hours and hours and hours on youtube watching follow up videos, and demonstrations around Ohms law, impedance and the likes.
Now, I finally feel ready to start on my 8 bit computer from Ben, and confident I won’t electrocute myself. I’ve even started soldering components for the first time on my life – the first time was pretty ugly, but I quickly leveled-up.
I’ve also chosen to use lead-free solder; I don’t spend all my free time trying to boost my brain capacity just to smear lead all over my hands, which means I’ve had to run my soldering iron at 750 degrees!
Anyway, I’ve got a pretty good start on the 8-bit; I’m likely to spend most of my vacation working on it.
Some things never change – this is what my vacations usually look like:
It’s been a trying few weeks; so many challenges as children transition from young adult, to adult. On some evenings, it definitely feels like everyone is not growing up fast enough, and yet, still other evenings, it still seems like they are growing too fast (and we are aging) way.to.fast.
But in the silence of the peepers and the wind chimes, I sat here and realized that soon, in the proverbial “tomorrow”, they all won’t be around; so tonight, I’ll just be thankful that I still see this.
I love this little dog. but I also kind of wonder if she wakes up every day, realizing life will be the same story over and over until she moves on from this life.
Wake up, walk, nap, scrounge for food, walk, sometimes chase the cat around the living room, then bed again.
I mean, at least I get to work 9+ hours a day too.
#RatInACage
I took a break from breaking into computers, with some of my children, to play an accordion with others of my children. I was too tired to pull out the Cordovox.. it’s heavy, and I’m old!
Yep, I am the head of a really weird household.
NOTE: Braeden is holding the accordion I started playing when I was 6 years old, Donovan is holding the accordion I started playing when I was 11. 😱
