Uncommon sense on climate change

Katharine Hayhoe: Climate Change Evangelist

In case you haven't seen this, yet. She's solid.

The storm

A blast of humid air instantly coated the lenses of my glasses with fog as I left the store with my ice tea purchase. That doesn't happen often in the desert. It immediately brought back favorable memories of life in the tropics.

After last night's monsoon storm, which dumped over 9 cm of rain onto Laveen in less than five hours, there is a lot of standing water -- and 70% humidity -- which is quite high for us.

The canal picture above shows where one of the breaches occurred when the ditch was overwhelmed with water creating a rushing river along Dobbins Road. Wanting to check on the building, I had driven to the church meetinghouse on Dobbins once the rain had stopped. No damage -- although the rising water came within one inch of entering the structure.

However, while I was there the water on the street rose rapidly and I was briefly stuck in the flash flood. I'm still not sure how but I managed to maneuver out of it. The fire department ended up rescuing 20 people within a few block stretch of where I was. One traumatized man died after suffering a heart attack during the event. But everyone else is okay. Our car did not sustain any damage. I'm sure that some will be obtaining salvage titles.

This morning I returned on my bike and discovered that part of Dobbins Road, a block east of the meetinghouse, is still closed. Our parking area behind the house has some standing water but is still usable. The animals are all fine. 

MasterPiece Church purchased the house and is in the process of getting a special use permit and is remodeling it to be used as an ag-themed child care center. Eventually, we hope to also operate a small school for special needs kids in the community there. We'll use it during the off hours for congregational gatherings and ministries.

Random

> Oops ~ BBC

> David Letterman's improv about Guam ~ YouTube

> Alison has a new free online course -- "21 Steps to Building a Web Business" ~ link

> My new favorite grocery store candy bar -- 3 Musketeers Truffle Crisp Bars. And they are only 85 calories per bar.

> La Niña = drier, warmer winters in the Arizona desert (normally). Come on down for some winter sun. ~ KTAR

> "Dick Van Dyke 'saved by porpoises'" They were obviously fans. ~ Telegraph

> If you're taking my PIU church planting class spring semester the two texts are: Discovering Church Planting (J.D. Payne) & Viral Churches (Ed Stetzer, Warren Bird). You're welcome encouraged to start the reading early.

> Fr Tom Hopko, one of my favorite living Orthodox theologians, has a great common sense approach to Bible study in his November 8th podcast. In particular he talks about reading the Old Testament and explains the role of the Septuagint in the Church. Sometimes he doesn't really understand what the Protestant Reformers were saying but generally speaking he is pretty spot on.

> Study: whales suffering from sunburn possibly because the damaged ozone layer ~ Time

> "An outbreak of polio in Congo-Brazzaville has killed more than 100 people and paralysed hundreds more..." ~ BBC

> Google Instant Preview is showing up on my searches sometimes (and sometimes not). So far I'm liking it.

> Is there a common Nordic state on the horizon? "Nearly half of all Danes, Finns, Norwegians, Swedes and Icelanders would like their countries to unite in a federal state, according to a poll published as members of the Nordic Council met Tuesday." ~ The Local

Random

• WELL... the Holy Bible: Mosaic blog tour was supposed to stop here today. But I'm still waiting for the door bell to ring. I'm guessing that the good folk from Tyndale got lost somewhere in the neighborhood.

• NOW online NLT/Greek Interlinear New Testament. Initial response crashed the server today. But it seems to be functioning smoothly now. ~ link

• "JOHN J O'Connor III, the husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has died." ~ link

• WHILE some are talking about vibrant new designs for NFL helmets, others, perhaps more level headed people, are suggesting that the number of head injuries in football would be reduced if they got rid of the helmets altogether.

• MALAYSIA has enough internal strife. Now they've annoyed Indonesia again -- which seems easy enough to do. ~ link

• WE are supposedly in an El Niño pattern but Arizona weather continues to be wacked out in the opposite direction. Things are supposed to be wetter than normal but there is no rain in the forecast for the rest of November. It may briefly get cooler than normal next week. So far, though, we're still doing days in the upper 80's and lower 90's (!). ~ link

• FABULOUS colour video of London in 1927 ~ link

• GREAT Veteran's Day link -- dogs and children welcoming their soldiers home ~ link

• GOOGLE has slashed the price of additional online storage. I'm at 94% of Picasa/image storage capacity (used by blogger) so I may eventually have to breakdown and spend 41¢ a month for more. ~ link

• SETH Godin's post on choosing customers is highly adaptable to church planters. Relax. Take some time. Discern who God is putting on the team. Don't chase people down just because you need warm bodies to create critical mass. It will come back to bite you later. ~ link

Random

• More fun hamming for Google Streetview -- Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh ~ link

• Quotable -- This is just a sample -- Skye Jethani writing on Mission and Recession -- great article:

Leisure-time based mission explains the 20/80 rule seen in most churches: 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. Many pastors lament this statistic, but I don’t believe the 80 percent who are not engaged in the church institution are all lazy Consumer Christians. (Some, yes, but not all.) More likely, the 20 percent who are heavily involved simply have the most leisure time to spare. ~ link

• Eugene Cho thinks that Dong Yun Yoon's gracious words and witness following the tragic loss of his family, killed by the crashed fighter jet in San Diego, have been ignored because he's Asian. What's your sense? ~ link

• It's still gusty outside but I just checked the radar and it looks like most of Tropical Depression 27W has moved beyond Guam. It may develop into a tropical storm (level below typhoon/hurricane) out over the Philippine Sea but the experts aren't expecting it to morph into anything major. Stand down.

Random

• It's just the idea that you can take something ubiquitous, inexpensive, and reuse it in so many creative ways -- the recycling lifestyle. More clever homes, offices, and stores made from cargo containers ~ Link

• Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic High School is a new college-prep scheduled to open on Guam next school year -- and they're looking for teachers. ~ Link

• Firemen from three stations rushed to a church in central Jönköping (Sweden) on Monday to put out what at first appeared to be a fire. But on closer inspection the smoke billowing from the steeple of Sofia church turned out in fact a swarm of gnats. Yuck! ~ Link

• The storm that blew over Guam yesterday has now organized itself and it even has a name -- Tropical Storm Nakri. Nakri is projected to become a category 1 typhoon (hurricane) by Thursday. But it looks like it will stay out at sea.

• All those new pictures "from Mars" look amazingly like the area a bit east of El Paso. Not that I want to feed the conspiracy-nuts but don't you sometimes wonder -- even just a little?

• I've been preparing to teach a class in the fall on religious movements and groups that one might find in Micronesia (Hey, it's all pretty much here -- and a few you've never heard of). And I came across the Sacred Tribes Journal -- a great resource for studying new religious movements. ~ Link

• Try fasting to prevent jet lag says a Harvard researcher. Yeah, right, like that's going to make the trip even more fun. And it always seems to be more of a drag flying to California than flying to Guam. (Although if you think about it -- 16 hours of travel isn't so bad when you consider that you're going halfway around the world.) We leave at 6:25 a.m., Tuesday morning (arriving in San Francisco at 5:42 a.m., Tuesday -- nearly an hour on the clock before departing) for a six week whirlwind tour through parts of California, Arizona, Illinois, and Wisconsin.