Joseph

Joseph's Story

Joseph was called by God to a desolate, unreached area of South Asia. Year after year his self-sacrificing labor took its toll on his body. He endured beatings, stonings, insults and hunger for the sake of the Gospel. Despite the incredible hardship, he refused to give up. And today, Joseph has planted 25 thriving churches and 28 mission stations.

Joseph is just one of more than 16,500 Gospel for Asia missionaries, each with his own story. By sponsoring a missionary you can partner with one of these faithful and fruitful believers to impact Asia.

Help support a missionary like Joseph for $30 a month.

The video and all information borrowed from the Gospel for Asia website.  You can see the original page here: http://www.gfa.org/joseph

What's in a name?

Well, Juliet, quite a lot goes into a name actually.

Don't get me wrong, I love thinking about names for my son and trying them out to see how they will sound. But it's complicated. For those of you that are parents, this is probably old news to you. Even for those of you who aren't parents, I know that most of us have thought about names and what all goes into a name. But it becomes quite real when you realize you have three months left to decide on a name that somebody will carry around for the rest of their life.

Let's review some of the pitfalls of naming that I've been warned about by others--many of these following the basic can-a-5th-grade-kid-make-fun-of-your-kid-because-of-his-name? rule:

1) no body parts or bodily functions as the name or part of the name.
2) no name or part of a name that can rhyme with unfortunate body parts or bodily functions ("Bart-fart")
3) opposite gender sounding names (this has become less of a no-no due to all the unisex names recently, but there is still an inherent danger of lots of teasing if you give a boy a very girlie name or a girl a very boyish name)
4) names that no one will be able to pronounce correctly on the first try (again, not a complete no, but you have to weigh the benefits of the name against the annoyance he'll have of telling every single person he ever meets how to say his name)
5) name combinations that cause their initials to be something bad. For instance, no one in our family will have a first name that begins with "S" and a second name that begins with "T". The resulting initials would be "STD"...

And those are just some of the things to avoid. When you get into this naming thing you start thinking about what the name means, how it sounds rolling off your tongue, etc. And you don't just want this to be any old name, you want it to be a good name, heck, a GREAT name. After all your kid is gonna be wearing it for a good 80+ years (enshall-yah).

Now that I've written an entire post about the difficulties and dangers of naming a kid...anybody have any suggestions?   :P

You don't have to give me the name you've secretly been hoping to name your first boy or anything...just some names that you like. We have some ideas for names of course, but I want to make sure I'm not overlooking any name or groups of names in the consideration process. It would be fun to hear why you like the name too, if you have a specific reason.

Seeing Pam in labor makes me wonder what our experience will be like

Provoke Your Own Mind

"Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives the expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."


-- Oswald Chambers

Google Search: "how to hang cabinets on the wall"

Researching skills that I had once upon a time in order to build some kitchen cabinets for my mother I came across the following article using the Google search from the title. I wish that I could say that I wrote this very funny piece, but since I didn't I will quote you an excerpt from the beginning of the article and then give you the link to the article so that you can read the rest:

How to Hang a Cabinet

"...recently I realized I needed a new medicine cabinet for my bathroom. When the salesperson at Medicine Cabinets Party Town Discount Superstore told me how easily I would be able to assemble and hang this piece of furniture, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a little bit of home improvement, and then brag about it unrelentingly for the rest of my life.

The salesperson assured me I would be able to assemble and hang the medicine cabinet with a few easy steps, in about 15 minutes. His estimate was off by only 13 weeks, two days, nine hours, and six minutes..."

The rest of the article can be found here How to Hang a Cabinet

The Danger of a Single Story

I saw this on my friend Dan's Facebook wall and thought it was worth re-posting. It's 19 minutes long, but it's worth it, so find some time and watch Chimamanda Adichie's talk about the Danger's of a "single story". In what areas and about what people do you only have a single story?

These aren't your Grandparents' Christmas decorations

Every year around Christmas when the houses start getting decorated with Christmas lights I remember how much I like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's rock versions of Christmas carols.  Why do lights remind me?  Most of you probably already know...

Sometime a while back (I think I was in junior high?) someone decorated their house with a ton of lights and set them to light up in time with one of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's songs.  And then posted the video on the internet (or was it far enough back that it got spread around as filler news on nightly newscasts?  I don't remember).  Ever since then it's been the thing to do for people who have too many Christmas lights, too much money, and too much time on their hands.  The results are often amazing. 

I found what I think to be probably the best video I've seen of a Trans-Siberian Christmas House this morning, so I decided to share it with you: