Tuesday, August 30, 2005

A learning experience

Well, I guess I went and wiped out all of my comments on my blog. Ok, there were only three, but I did wipe them out. I was trying to teach myself something and added some stuff to my template to allow me to do trackbacks and it reformatted my comments. It’s ok, I have them in my email as I have Blogger email them to me when I receive one. It would have been nice if I would have noticed that it was going to delete them. I did have Haloscan backup my template so I might be able to bring them back in, but I probably won’t.
I will just call it a learning experience as I am still trying to learn the different aspects of blogging. One of these days I will break down and pay for a hosting provider and use one of the several blogging packages out there that has a lot of these features built in.
By the way, anybody have an idea on how to reduce the font size of my blogroll?
dj

Blogging church

Well, if your church is interesting in knowing how a blog can further promote your church and your vision, Brian Bailey and Terry Storch, two very enthusiastic bloggers, have created a new blog to promote their upcoming book about using a blog in church. You can see Terry's announcement here.
Quoted from Blogging Church, “This blog will serve as the starting point of our own conversation with all of you who share our passion for blogging, as well as those who are still skeptical. We want to hear your stories of how blogs have impacted your churches, the obstacles you have overcome, and the roadblocks that still stand in your way. This is a community effort and we look forward to your ideas, experiences, and criticisms.”
I can’t wait to see how other churches are using blogs and see what works and what doesn’t. They expect their book to be out next year and they have a podcast to describe the history and what to expect.
Dj

Monday, August 29, 2005

Super Sunday

What a Sunday. Six church services at five churches and only left my house for a couple of hours.  Ok, I didn’t really attend that many churches, but I did attend one and it wasn’t mine. I went to Southland Saturday night as my brother and his wife wanted to go and Misty had the night off. After going to dinner with them after church we got the twins to bed at 9:45 which is very late for them. So, I decided to stay home Sunday morning to let them rest as much as they could and not have to be drug back out.
I started by watching the service from Bethel Harvest here in Nicholasville. Technically they are located between Nicholasville and Lexington, but I think they are in the city limits of Nicholasville. After their service went off, I found Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, Texas just outside of Dallas, where Kevin used to be on staff. Prestonwood was part of the America at Worship program. After Prestonwood was Marble Collegiate Church in New York.
By this time the twins were waking up and after going upstairs to get them, I turned to the Southland Hour. We broadcast a week behind which was good for me as I missed all of last week to take the boys down to my parents house to give Misty a weekend break. I finished my morning marathon by watching my friends church in Lexington, Immanuel Baptist Church.
It was a good morning although I didn’t really get to see all of the broadcast due to watching the twins more of the morning. They didn’t get a good nap in so I was putting them to bed while Bethel was finishing and they were up before Southland came on but that’s another story. It’s interesting though to see how each church does things differently but still get across the same message. I wish I had gotten to see more, especially Marble Collegiate as it seemed their pastor was a really good speaker and teacher.
Now that’s five services from five churches. My friend who attends Immanuel was ordained as a deacon there Sunday evening so Misty and I attended his ordination service followed by a small fellowship time. It was good to see his family again. We practically grew up in each other’s home so our families are great friends with each other.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

More Instant messaging

Do I really need another instant message client? Google has pretty much turned on their instant message client and anyone with a gmail account has an account. I guess I am just weird in wanting to stay in contact with anyone I know. To an extent that is. I have accounts on Yahoo, MSN, AIM and now Google. Google is supposed to announce their messaging service on Wednesday and the rumor sites have been talking about it all day. Google must have turned the service on sometime tonight. I ran across a Slashdot article talking about it and found instructions to configure it for Trillian at Big Blue Ball

I guess it’s just something new to mess with and see who I can chat with on there.

Dj

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

New Direction?

Over the last month or so, I have really been reading other blogs, mainly in the area of IT in churches.  I love seeing how others working in IT have put their God given skills to help other ministries in their churches. Some of the blogs I have been reading are:
Jason Powell at Granger/
Terry Storch at Fellowship/ - although Terry is no longer in IT
http://www.churchnerd.com/blog/index.php?blog=1
http://churchtechmatters.com/
and http://www.betachurch.org/


Since moving to Nicholasville and working with Southland’s IT department, I have an urge if you will to move into that area. Where? Who knows? Only God does. I know that everything is in his time and the last week has really been frustrating. Not with just the timing, but other factors as well. Nothing bad, just a rough week. I feel like I am not doing enough for God in the IT area and have a desire to do it full time, just where?

Kentucky is not known for it’s IT hotbed of jobs, so is a move in order? In some ways I hope not as we just bought a town home here and would have to sell it. Not to mention the cost of moving and any other financial expenses.

I guess right now I am just looking for some clarity in my time with God which I need to do more of here lately. Three kids and ear tubes tend to take a lot of time away, but that’s not an excuse. I just need to take the time at work during lunch and just close my door to the world and just open up God’s word and let Him speak to me.
dj

ps I am trying the new Blogger tool for Word. Seems to work pretty good so far. I will see after I publish this post.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Success

Well, the twins ear tubes went in with no problems. In fact, Gabe only needed a bottle and about 10 to 15 minutes of sleep to recover. Zack on the other hand is still sleeping:) Both should be good to go after lunch and ready to face the world with no more ear aches. At least we pray no more. I just want to thank all out there for your prayers. You can tell they had plenty of prayer as neither one was fussy from hunger while waiting. Usually they are going crazy at 6:30 in the morning if they haven't ate. This morning at 8 they were fine.
dj

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Surgery moved up

Gabe was acting Monday night that his ears were bothering him so we have moved their surgery to this Thursday, Aug. 11th instead of waiting another week. If they feel good later that evening, we will attempt to go to the baby dedication at church. We will see :)
dj

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Left Over Vegetable Soup

2Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him. Ephesians 5:2 (NLT)

Time flies when you are having fun. It was three years ago today that my first son Colby was born. We had tried for about a 1 year or two to try and have a baby, but it just never worked out so we quit trying. We didn’t try not to have one, just quit trying to have one. I will never forget the day Misty told me and the following weeks as we waited to tell our families.

Over Thanksgiving weekend Misty was not felling good and felt sick. We didn’t think a lot about it that weekend, but we were starting to wonder. We decided to wait another week before we did anything to see if anything changed. I guess Misty just couldn’t wait :)

We had vegetable soup one night and the next evening when I came home, Misty met me at the door and all she said was we are having left over vegetable soup for dinner and I’m pregnant. Man, what a way to be greeted at the door.

We decided to tell our families over the Christmas holiday. We found a grandparent’s frame and put a note in it saying Merry Christmas mama and papa see you in Aug. and let my parents open it up as a Christmas gift. Misty took a similar note and attached it to a present for her grandmother. At this time, we still hadn’t been to the doctor’s office yet. That wasn’t until Jan. 4th.

I will always know that date as I keep the calendar page from my page a day calendar for that day. It was from the Life Application Study Bible calendar and the above verse was what was on the page.

The study notes for that day: “Just as children imitate their parents, we should imitate Christ. His great love for us led him to sacrifice himself so that we might live. Our love for others should be of the same kind – a love that goes beyond affection to self-sacrificing service. Let your love be self-sacrificing, like Christ’s.

One thing around our house is that it’s boring. Colby is always doing or saying something that will keep you laughing and sometimes, trying not to laugh as he is doing something he is not supposed to, but the way he says it just makes you turn your head. One day I was trying to get him to do something and he wanted to argue with me about it and he let me know. “I am arguing with you,” was his comment.

Kids always find ways to remind you that you are truly a parent. Colby is doing a great job with potty training and one evening at a restaurant, he reminded me again about parenthood. He just came back with Misty from the restroom and he let me and all of the restaurant know that he went. Misty told him to quit down some. He told her that he only told me. :)

Friday, August 05, 2005

Feed changes coming?

I am trying to learn different aspects of blogging so if you by any chance are subscribed to my feed through Blogger, don't be suprised if it goes away anytime soon. I am messing around with FeedBurner trying to figure it out :) So, please use the feedburner feed which you can find below in the sidebar. Thanks.
dj

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Surgery on the 18th

Well, the twins are set for ear tube surgery on the 18th. We have to be there at 6:30 a.m. which is not going to be fun. They can't eat anything after midnight and these two eat like crazy. After bottles at 10:30 at night last night, they both woke up hungery sometime or other, Zach at 3:30 and Gabe at 5:00. Once they really get hungery, they become unbearable. That waiting room is going to be very loud :( Hopefully, that will make them go first and we can get it over with.
dj