Anna Scott turns 4. Click here for pics.

Pepenadores in our Back Yard. Here is a good article in this morning's Miami Herald about children in Honduras who live in the garbage dumps. The Herald interviewed a YFC missionary there; imagine that! In addition, the Herald also suggests How to Help, (scroll down the page) again mentioning YFC. Amazing. Praise God!

"Meeting a friend again after thirty years."

Take off that mask. I know it's you.
Those wrinkles, sunken chin,
And goggled eyes can't quite disguise
Your wry familiar grin.

This is our mutual Halloween.
As though we mean to scare,
We face each other through a screen
Of fake teeth, whitened hair.

-X.J. Kennedy in the September 2006 issue of The New Criterion.

A Scots-Irish Victor. Instapundit points to this piece about James Webb. Didn't they read his book? The left in Virginia gets this election season's "Well-Duh!" award. Runner up, the left in Connecticut.

Jury Scam. Watch out for this. Not an urban legend.

Thursday Morning. I like Sean's comments on the election. I hope Sean doesn't mind (and Scott too), but I find Lindsey Graham insufferable.

At our Luke study last night, still in Chapter 1, we discussed how much gentler Gabriel was with Mary than he was with Zacharia, when both expressed a degree of uncertainty about how God was going to do what Gabriel said he would do. Mary was young and innocent, and Zacharia old and cranky. Mary was concerned about method and Zacharia may have had some doubt as to God's faithfulness, and should have known better. But I liked the answer that one of the men gave: Gabriel was not going to mess around with Jesus' mom!

We are back on line at Dove Avenue. What a difference it was to be disconnected at home from cyberspace, and not an altogether bad one.

One of my clients died this week. I had helped her for many years, and knew her family well. We will be helping them with her estate. I try to be professional about these things, but lately I have been seriously saddened when I lose such fine people. I have some really wonderful clients.

Upside-down courtship. This week's scripture in our Luke study is Chapter 1, verses 26-38. This is the section that contains the "Annuciation", Gabriel's visit to Mary to fortell Jesus' birth. It contains Mary's subsequent visit to Elizabeth, where "the baby [John the Baptist] leaped in her [Elizabeth's] womb" when Mary enters her home. And it also contains "the Magnificat", Mary's song about what God has for her. Lots of good stuff here.

What struck me on my first (this time) reading was the "upside-down" courtship practices of the Jews during this period of time. I had cross-references to Matthew handy as I read this section. In Matthew we hear about Joseph's reaction to Mary becoming pregnant. My NIV notes at Matthew 1:18 describe the betrothal customs:

There were no sexual relations during a Jewish betrothal period, but it was a much more binding relationship than a modern engagement and could be broken only by divorce (see v. 19). In Dt 22:24 a betrothed woman is called a "wife," though the preceding verse speaks of her [Mary] as being "pledged to be married." Matthew uses the terms "husband" (v.19) and "wife" v. 24) of Joseph and Mary before they were married.

At least generally in our culture, engagement or even something less "binding" seems to license sexual relations. (Or maybe not much at all.) In Jesus' time, young men and women made a social, religious/legal commitment first, one that extended for some time, before the wedding authorized consummation. It is interesting to think about the implications for the relationship between the two young persons with each other individually and for the relationship between the two of them as a couple with their families and larger community that arose from such an upside-down approach.

With there apparently being so "few good men" out there, what pressure there must be for a young woman, once she thinks she has found one, to give herself up early, before much more than a whispered committment is in place. Is that pressure first cousin to the pressure Sarah felt when she finally gives up Abraham to her maid as she despaired for a child of her own? Here is faith really put to the test, I think.

Yes, I know; it's easy for me to say. But it's worth saying.

Keepin' an Eye on the Border. Leave it to Texas. (By the way, I signed up.)

The "But I didn't inhale" Defense. Or, maybe, the "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman" defense. I don't completely know what to think about the Haggard scandal, but I find his explanations pretty lame.

Apart from that matter, the scandal raises several questions for me, which include the following:

1. Assuming that this is a set-back for the Kingdom, as surely it is at least on a short-term basis, does this suggest that Christian celebrities should stay out of politics? Is the Focus-on-the-Family sort of push into the political arena, now well over a two decades old, really worth all the risks to the propagation of the Gospel that are involved in such activities as leading the charge in Colorado against same-sex "marriage".

2. How long did people on the Gay rights side know about this? Was this a sort of October surprise tactic?

3. Is it "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved - you and your household"? Or is it "Clean up your life and, in particular, get out of that immoral relationship, oppose abortion, support the war, change your party affiliation, embrace the free market, unpierce yourself, and believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."? By that question I mean this: Exactly what Gospel has Haggard betrayed? Is it the Gospel that Paul preaches to the Galatians or is it a Gospel that has more affinity with that of the Judaizers in that letter?

UPDATE: Here's the post to which Sweetpea refers in the comments.

The Lebrons

This commercial is awesome.

More of our continuing "Women and Bears" series. Here. (See previous post here.)

The Departed

I've seen The Departed twice, and I'm ready to go again.

I'm no movie critic, but I vote the green ticket, and I punch $16 to $24 dollars for that bad boy.

Honor's Arrival
I thought I would let you all know that Honor is scheduled to be delivered via c-section at 8am central standard time on January 16, 2007. There is always the chance that she could decide to come before then, but if not, then she won't be any later than the 16th.

I had my routine check-up today and most everything looks good. Honor's heart rate continues to be in the 150's and my blood pressure continues to be somewhere between 50/100 and 60/110. These are good things. The only possible concern is my platelets. They are still within the "normal" range, but apparently they are on the low side of normal and so my doctor is ordering me to get blood tests more often to keep an eye on this. To be honest, I am not entirely sure that there is anything they can do to get my platelet levels to go higher. Does anybody know anything about this?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN



So, Aidan decided to dress up like a pirate this year. After some play as a pirate, though, he clearly decided that what he really wanted to be was a pirate who fights fires.

When we went around the street to go trick or treating, one of our neighbors dressed up as one of my Star Wars Favorites!

Unfortunately, this scared the little ones a bit, and it took a lot of prompting to get them to knock on any more doors!

Still Outside of Cyberspace, at Least at Home. Having apparently broken our DSL modem in the emptying of our den, we continue to be outcasts from cyberspace at home. Furthermore, the tv is very difficult to reach, turn on, and watch, not that watching it is a big item (no cable). But these setbacks, of course, are not all bad. In fact, they may be mostly good. We have conversation in its place.

In the July/Aug 2006 edition of Mars Hill Audio, there is a conversation with Stephen Miller, "on the factors that sustain the art of conversation, and why it's a dying art". Miller is the author of Conversation: A History of a Declining Art.

Did I report that I now have a subscription to The New Criterion? I am working my way through the September 2006 issue, and I am thoroughly enjoying the essays. I know I am in a honeymoon period with this magazine, but it seems to be every bit as interesting as First Things, without the Roman Catholic evangelism (not that the latter is all bad).

Carol's Wednesday Women's Bible Study is going very well. She is teaching a Beth Moore study entitled "Patriarchs". The format consists of weekly sessions that alternate between the Beth Moore video segments and discussions. A number of women who are not part of the regular church attenders are coming. All the prayer you can spare for Carol in this venture would be well offered.

My Wednesday night men's group started on a study of Luke last night, having finished Galatians. I think Galatians will turn out to be a good pre-Luke exercise, because Luke himself is believed to have been a Gentile, was a close friend of and fellow-traveler with Paul, and the Gospel he writes is for Gentiles. So Galatians, which is a sort of Declaration of Independence from Judaism (or, as the Baptists among whom I was raised referred to it, "The Magna Carta of the Christian Church"), is a great platform from which to leap to a consideration of Jesus' life through the eyes of such an author as Luke.

We considered verses 1 through 25 of the first chapter of Luke. So much there! But I must mention two points. The first is what Gabriel says to Zacharia about what John will be to Zacharia and his wife. "He will be a joy and delight to you . . . " When moderns talk of children, the burden of them often characterizes the conversation. But here a child will be "a joy and delight". I consider that idea, "joy and delight", to be a much greater idea than what Zachararia and Elizabeth will experience with John; I consider "joy and delight" to be the ultimate gift that God in his grace will give us. Zacharia and Elizabeth get to experience "joy and delight" in a significant respect during their lifetimes, but it is simply a down payment on what we will share in eternity. (The joy and delight we share in our children is both a gift all its on and a down payment as well.)

The second point is how God rewards the faithfulness of Zacharia and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, being "barren" at middle-age, suffered "disgrace among the people" for it. Yet she and Zacharia "were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly". By the time Jesus is born, the culture links good works with good fortune (Never mind the book of Job). People would ask of the situation they observed in Elizabeth and Zacharia, "Who sinned here? They cannot really be as righteous as they seem!" There is a "disconnect". What a temptation faced Zachariah and Elizabeth to become bitter with God. But they "kept on keeping on", as it were. God is, after all, faithful.

Which takes me back to the Beth Moore series that Carol is teaching. I watched one of the videos with Carol the other night, the one that dealt with Abraham taking Isaac to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him. What faithfulness Abraham exhibits. (And what an effective presentation by Beth Moore.) How we honor God when we, as parents, "give up" our children to his plans for them.

Hello on Monday. No blogging over the weekend, as Dove Avenue is disconnected from the internet. We had to move out of the den last week, as the renovation moves on (even a snail's pace has forward movement, given a hundred years more or less). In pulling the computer out of the den, I dropped the modem. So when trying the hook up from elsewhere in the house, we could not get the modem to work.

However, last week did see the kitchen progress to the point where the kitchen people could actually come in and make their final measurements. And then, with the measurements in hand, yesterday we spent most of the afternoon with the kitchen specialist at Home Depot with whom we first worked well over a year ago, finalizing those plans. It will be at least four weeks before the cabinets are ready to ship. In the meanwhile, we need to get back with the tile company and see just when we can get them over to do their work.

Last week the plumber finished his outside work, connecting the bathroom in the new bedroom to the sewer line. (Sewer line entry point on NE corner of lot. New bathroom on SW corner of lot. House in between. Of course.)

We understand that the rarely seen bird in Miami Springs, the building inspector, came by last week and approved the drywall installation. Now we wait again for the plasterers to come and do their work.

Friends of ours have a publishing company which publishes, among other things, the River Cities Gazette. Their building burned to the ground last week with everything in it. Two of their staff, fortunately, had a lot of data on their laptops and the laptops were not there at the time. But they have no place to office, no computers, and a lot of their management data went up in smoke. Carol thinks a lot about what a disaster would do to our office, and we fully back up everything each day, taking a tape home with us. We will probably do more. Many large firms have duplicate computer systems at a branch office out of Miami. One can spend a lot of money on disaster planning, but what has happened to our friends make us think that a reasonable amount of money on such contingencies is well spent. But what is "reasonable"?

I was able to spend some time with the Elecraft. I have by now populated two of the three major printed-circit ("PC") boards with their respective components and am at the point where one is to pre-assemble the PC boards for some test and alignment steps, preceded by the "smoke-test", as I reported earlier. So this weekend I did the pre-assembly, and I plugged in the unit - no smoke! Instead, I heard the relays do their preliminary boot, I saw the proper read-out appear on the front panel, and my subsequent button pushing and knob twisting, as required, yielded the appropriate results. (There are many buttons and knobs on the front panel - oh the joy of it!)

The next part of this particular stage is to assemble some test probes, and I completed one of them, an RF probe. This is a device that one connects to his DMM (digital multi-meter). (A DMM is a store-bought unit.) When one touches the probe to a particular point in the circuit, where RF (radio frequency energy) is supposed to be present, the probe detects the RF and converts it into DC voltage. The voltage runs along the leads to the DMM, and the DMM measures what has been detected.

One of the very interesting thing about this kit is that it supplies such probes. The creators of the kits think enough of their product and of the people who build them to provide a means for us amateurs to be so deliberately involved in the construction. Once I complete building these probes, I will use them to test various parts of the circuits I have built to date, to see whether the appropriate voltages and currents appear in the right places.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AIDAN!!!!



Per Scott's request, here are some pics from Aidan's big day. You get to see him blowing out the candles with his daddy, which was actually quite funny. Aidan only blew out one candle, and then the smoke from that candle wafted back into his face. This was something that Aidan did not like, and almost made him cry. Then Macon bravely stepped forth to help vanqish the fire from the second candle and the smoke from the first. When it was all said and done, Aidan was happy and glad to eat cake with ice cream. This cake was a red velvet concoction which I baked in a bundt pan. I don't know how many of you have ever tried to decorate a bundt cake, but I found that this can be particularly difficult. I need to invest in some normal cake pans...Anyways, after scraping off my first two attempts, we ended up with a red velvet bundt cake covered in cream cheese frosting with little blue dots all over. It looked like a gigantic donut with blue sprinkles!

Moving on--in the second photo you can see many of the cousins and a neighbor gathering around as Sue Sue helps to open a new present. And, last but not least, the final pic is of Aidan (and others) enjoying his new sand and water table. Can I get a "woo-hoo"?

"I love my Mummy"


In case you can't make out some of the details in the pics, here's a guide:
1) Will's shirt says, "I love my Mummy"
2) Will has two front teeth (lower).
3) Anna Scott's attire was picked solely by her and includes a black "Sweet Heart" shirt (the candy corn makes the heart), pink skirt and orange/black tights. Not pictured: purple/pink-ish cowboy boots.

Anna Scott turns 4 on Nov. 12; Will is 9-months old.

Cross posted here.

Where is Kenya? I was talking to my friend, Joe, WA4ONV, via the repeater network the other morning on my walk. He was asking me about the Ethiopian-Somalia problem, which he had read about. (Somehow, even though he leaves for work about 5:50AM, he has already read the paper, checked the weather forcast, and so on. He is sort of like the ham radio version of the Today Show.) He asked me where Ethiopia is in relation to Kenya. (He knows about Mary being in Kenya and sometimes reads the K&K blog.) I am embarrassed to say that I could not remember. I told him that I thought that it bordered Kenya, but I was not sure. I also wasn't sure where Kenya is respect to the Sudan, although I knew Somalia was on the NE border of Kenya.

Anyway, here is a link to a map of Africa. I'm going to put that link over on the right side of the blog, so it's readily available.

Emergency Contact Information. If you live in Florida, you can go online to a State of Florida website and enter two emergency contacts on your Florida Drivers License record which can only be retrieved by a police officer. I am told that this came about as a result of one woman's teenage daughter being killed in a car accident, and the authorities having to take over 5 hours to locate the mother.

The website states in part:

"This service will allow you to provide emergency contact information to law enforcement in the event of an emergency. This information may save crucial time if ever it becomes necessary to contact family members, or other loved ones. This service is only available to individuals holding a current Florida Driver License or Florida Identification Card."

There may be a similar service in your state.