Sunday Notes

BECCA FARRAR, the high school freshman who plays violin on our music team, bought a new electric violin yesterday. It sounds sooooo good -- even when she let me play it. I'm surprised that an electric could have such a mellow sound. Now, I'm tempted. I'd get the deluxe sunburst with the maple top. However, much to Cheryl's relief, I'm sure, I will restrain myself and enjoy listening to Becca play. Besides, even if I practiced all day I'd never sound as good as she does.

I BEGAN PREACHING through the Gospel of John on January 4th, 2004. I finished this morning. Of course, there were breaks in there on numerous occasions over the past 20 months. But we inched our way through it. That was fun.

DURING OUR AFRICAN THEME Vacation Bible School a few weeks ago we challenged the kids to bring in 50 pounds of coins that could be used to help children in Congo buy school supplies and to fix their school. They exceeded the goal by bringing in 68 pounds.

We had to cart the money around on a hand truck. And I took the hand truck with me to unload it at Annette Hermanson's house. She, with some help from her 20-something son, Scott, have been rolling the coins. The task was completed last night.

The grand total contributed by our 100 VBS kids (over half of whom were community children not connected to our church) was -- (drum roll, please) -- $487.80. The money will be channeled through the Paul Carlson Partnership.

For me this is the icing on one of the best cakes we've ever by the grace of God baked.

STEVEN EVANS, who blogs as theultrarev is announcing his resignation today. He is a Covenant pastor who has been serving in an Episcopal Church.

GUIDELINES FOR VISITING AN ORTHODOX CHURCH -- Sarah Wagner, in Shroro, the Syriac Orthodox Christian digest, has a good introduction for Evangelicals and other Protestants who would like to visit an Orthodox Church.

SINCE GUAM IS ON MY PERSONAL RADAR these days I picked up on a story about invasive species. The brown tree snake, which has decimated the bird, bat, and lizard populations on Guam -- and is the cause of ongoing power outages -- is the iconic example of how damaging alien species can be. The Guamanians have just received some government funding to eradicate the species. Many people, including experts, are doubtful as to whether it can be done.

YOUR NEXT MAC COULD BE A PC! Hackers have figured out a way to run the next version of the Mac operating system on a PC natively. And it runs faster than on the actual Mac machines. Of course, the whole thing is illegal at this point. But the knowledge that such is possible is going to put incredible pressure on Apple and might perhaps actually make the system more competitive with Windows. Whichever way this spins it means more pressure in the market and cheaper OS software. Link

THEY'VE GOT YOU PEGGED! A new study shows that blog readers are younger and richer than the average Internet user. I'd add, smarter, too. (I'm not above toadying.)

THERE IS A HINT OF FALL in the air this morning -- a pleasant coolness. Unfortunately, there is more than a hint of smoke filling this part of the Valley -- although the fire map isn't showing anything really close.

DONALD TRUMP thinks he's the new Solomon. Link










A CERTAIN PACKAGE DELIVERY COMPANY (which shall here remain nameless so they don't hassle me) has sent a cease and desist letter to a guy who has built furniture out of their shipping boxes -- and put up a website about it. A smart company would figure some way to embrace the project (while protecting their property) and perhaps milk it for some free good-will publicity -- as the duct tape people did when high school students started making prom attire from their product.