Ventosus Veritas

The Children

2012-01-12T10:28:00.000-08:00

The oldest got married last February as noted in the post, "The Wedding". Zach married his high school sweetheart after 5 years of annoying her. There were a couple of years in there where they were not dating, but you'd hardly know it from the phone minutes and long conversations at the weekly parties etc. I would note several ironic points in this period of "not dating" is that even when Zach made a few attempts with other girls in his circle they would tell them "Oh I couldn't date you, You and Chrissy aren't done yet." Well their prediction came true and they are now married. They live in Jacksonville, NC where Zach is still stationed at New River Air Station. Chrissy is a daycare teacher at a local daycare. They have a nice duplex there which is now filled with the sounds of a baby....kitten. Well and also Momma Cat, the stray cat that adopted them and likes to produce kittens. We got to visit with our grandcat and great grandkitten over Christmas as they came with Zach and Chrissy for the holidays. Zach has 1.75 years left with the Marine Corps and is looking forward to getting out. He is working on an entrepreneurial venture that I think has some promise and hope that he can launch right into it.

The middle child. Oh good Lord, the middle child. Since Katie graduated she has been working as a daycare teacher. First she was at a large daycare center in Muskego and now is at the School of Early Learning at St. Paul, Muskego, the latter situation being a much more pleasant environment. She has been much happier at SOEL and the higher standards, more attentive ratios, and just overall dedication to the kids there. However these positions have only been a temporary stepping stone to Katie's choice for a future. On March 27th, Katie is leaving for Basic Training for the Air Force in San Antonio, TX. She has been waiting for the right career within the Air Force to open up and she finally got it. Her position will be as a Linguist. We don't find out the language she will be assigned until just before going to the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA after Basic training is done. It is a tough school and position. Depending on the language she could be there for a year to up to 20 months for the most difficult languages. She tested very high so she could get any of the top tier (difficult) languages such as Korean, Chinese, or Arabic. Arabic has been the most common assignment out of those three, but Korean might be a significant focus these days. After Katie is done with school she will fulfill a 6 year obligation sitting somewhere in the world, or in an airplane above the world, listening and reading conversations and translating them for Air Force intelligence. I have said this before that God created something that naturally tells both the child and the parents when they need to leave the house. That time is now. For Zach it was 3 months before he graduated from high school. I realize that in modern society children don't leave well and they come back etc..modern society is stupid. In any case I'm proud of Katie for sorting out what she wants and taking control of her future and just going for it. It is nice to have a multi-branch family as well. There are more marathons to run now.

Ike with his ever present Michelle, a Psuedo child of ours and

Ike's best friend in the world

The baby has been on cruise control. He continues his online high school. It is going well. There is always a little butt kicking needed to make sure everything is in by the last day of the semester but in general it is going well. We accelerated his classes so that he can finish high school in three years. That means that this year he is a Junior. This also catches him up a bit to his age group and all his friends who are Juniors and Seniors as well. He has worked at a sports card shop for a while and now is a dishwasher at a nice restaurant in Hales Corners. When not working or doing school he spends a ton of time with his friends. For a kid who is not in a brick and mortar school, he far exceeds the other kids in his social interaction. He had a girlfriend there for a while but he is a picky and particular person and only the right person will do. Ike is planning on joining the military as well after high school. However he should not exceed God's natural desire for him to leave the house at the appointed time. That time is no later than July 15th, 2013. The question will be which branch will he join. I don't think it will be the Marines but it might. It might be a toss-up between Air Force and Army based on which has the best career paths. The Marines might make it in there even if Zach is a negative Nancy on the concept of the military life in general and Marines specifically. It is true that a passive aggressive, technical minded person who is not a "Moto-Marine" may not appreciate the structure they provide for the common jarhead, however, Ike is a different animal in this respect and very well may be more Marine-like. However if Ordnance Disposal doesn't work out perhaps he can work as the activities director on a cruise ship.

Further Thoughts on Corporate IS

2012-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

NM is a great company. I won't deny them that. However, in the nearly 10 years I was there the majority of IS has changed into a very heavy, process driven, risk averse, department that is greatly hampered by their consensus driven approach to development. There are pockets of some "entrepreneurial" software development and experimental projects and of course the Architect group itself that I would have liked to get into but these positions are few and far in-between. Ultimately you are still part of a larger organization that is becoming sloth-like and fat.

I think a big thing for me was that philosophically I was not anywhere close to where NM has gone. NM IS has gone totally post-modern. If you want to talk about the art of framing conversations and understanding one another by creating a shared understanding well This is the place for you. There is no right or wrong (but you are wrong if you act without a shared understanding) and hence decisions cannot be made unless the entire team has come to a common understanding. That's at the project level. This drives me insane. If we were agile we could make the call, get something out there and iteratively improve the idea as it is flushed out or change it if needed. Instead we talk about it for weeks till we all feel warm and fuzzy inside.

At the IS management level it includes coming to a common understanding on the process we follow. They tried "healthy Conflict" as an IS virtue for a while but that was squashed quickly along with the new innovative VP they brought in who was advocating it. So depending on the manager of course you either go with the flow of this happy land of consensus building and creating shared understandings or you are not onboard with the program and anathema to IS. I had some good managers in the past that appreciated the "healthy conflict" I brought to the table but those managers have all but disappeared. What I ended up with was a dyed in the wool, 100% post-modern loving, company woman who just got her masters in something as well. Being a new manager, she only read the company line out of the manual. We did not have a shared understanding. So it was just as well I moved on because there would be no joy in continuing our relationship. I understand the kind of person I am. I know I was not what NM IS wanted and was continually forced to decide whether I should just play the game or not.

I am what a small shop wants because they need to make a profit and meet deadlines on limited budget. I like to surround myself with people who are opposite myself and argumentative. No shrinking violets and wallflowers please. No one who is timid, shy, or intimidated and for heaven's sake...this is software development...it's not personal. You don't need to cry if we don't like your idea or we change it or shred it. Better luck next time. One of the best development situations I had at NM was with a friend of mine from Russia. He is cantankerous, blunt, and very talented. He had no problems telling it like it was. I can always hear him in my head in his Russian accent saying "That's just stupid.. you should design it this way..." In another conversation with a Manager and a Director in the room he said something to the effect of, "Let me make this simple so a manager can understand..." It was beautiful. I think the accent is what I need. I could say anything with an accent and then I'm just eccentric.

I guess it goes to my nature that you should stand for what you believe in. There is right and there is wrong. When something needs to be done...the most important thing is to do something. If it fails, I'm fine with that and I'll take responsibility if it needs to be taken but then go forward and try it again and learn from your mistakes and keep trying. Everything is not personal. You don't need to make me feel warm and fuzzy to go ahead with something. Actually, I find that the best people in the various roles are the ones I dislike the most and would totally hire myself. That project manager who bugs the crap out of you for statuses and updates yet has a handle on every deliverable and dependency? Love that PM even if I hide from her and physically cringe when she pops up at the desk. Combative App Engineer who tells you your designs are flawed? Love it. However I think the large corporate atmosphere is totally self-absorbed into the post-modern thought and these kinds of things literally blow their minds in an era where we should be about toleration, consensus and accepting.

Well in keeping with the theme, the most important part is that I'm happy right? ;-) Well I am and it really has made a difference in how I feel.

The Job

2012-01-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

2011 was a big change for me in the career front. Well the change was really only for the last two months but changing jobs was a big deal. For the last 9.5 years I have been working at Northwestern Mutual in essentially 3 different roles. The first 3 years I worked in Enterprise Business Intelligence designing large enterprise data warehouses and reporting databases. The next 3 years I spent reverse engineering, re-engineering and improving an enterprise content management system consisting of a diverse mix of technology making it intricate and almost exciting. The last 3.5 years I spent as an application architect/application engineer working on various projects from batch run web services, and a number of Websphere applications.

Although those last 3.5 years started out promising with interesting web apps to create with a good amount of autonomy and even a touch of cutting edge that was quickly derailed when the economy tanked. NML froze most every new project I was to be working on. As a way to preserve local employees, they sent a few hundred contractors back to India and diverted resources such as myself, who had no projects to work on anymore, to fill the gaps left by departed contractors. This started a 2.5 year slide into software development doldrums. I got some roles that were not a great fit for an Application Architect and subsequently lost a lot of interest in the field. For a while there, I would have taken a job at Walmart and been happier. Add on all the new direction for IS, the little box I was relegated to with the use of "Career Frameworks" and the heavy move to what I guess adds up to any standard big company process driven overhead BS, and I just was dying inside.

So after years of being hidden away and never having a thought of looking for another job, a former acquaintance hooked me up with a company looking for a .NET Web Solutions Architect. It sounded great but I had one phone interview and hadn't heard anything for a while. The thought that I could look elsewhere did fuel my interest in checking out the job market and seeing what was out there. Well in the realm of technology there is not a job shortage. I put a resume out there and I was getting calls daily for contracting positions in various technologies. I applied for a few permanent positions at the behest of various headhunters and had some phone interviews for a few of them. This was handy because I was going to be picky and I didn't want to settle plus I needed the interview practice. I found that often the job as initially presented is not what the job really is. The position at Kohls was just NM but even more limited in scope. The position at Heiler, although work from home and well-paying, really was nothing than a road warrior java coder. The position at nVisia seemed decent but I was interviewed by the Java guy for a .Net position.

In any case, the first position I interviewed for called back and we arranged several more interviews and after another long wait I finally got the call while I was out in Washington DC for the Marine Corps Marathon. In getting to know this company, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for and that I would be able to yank my career right back to where I had wanted it to be in the first place. I now have an architect position, I am free from most corporate BS. I am rated on my ability to deliver on scope schedule and cost and I have the decision making authority to make the call and it...it just happens. It still blows me away after two months. It shows the level of how entrenched I was becoming that it is like a new miracle every day that what I do directly impacts a project or that I can just make the call and it is acted upon. Such a great relief.

Ghetto Running

2012-01-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

My winter routine this year is that each day I run the 7 miles from my downtown Milwaukee office to home. Most of this run is through a questionable part of town which gradually improves as I increase the street numbers. Early in my run, I was amused when I apparently quite stealthily ran around three teenage girls in the Third Ward and one of them screamed a piercing scream as only a teenage girl can. The other two just laughed. I laughed too.

However, midway home I had my first incident in two years of running/biking this route. As strange as it may sound, a stereotypical ghetto car came along and a stereotypical gentleman with traditional ghetto garb that seriously lacked a belt, leaned out and whipped something at me. It hit me squarely in the back of my backpack thankfully and bounced off. He was not aware that I am aptly protected by my tablet and I'm pretty sure my laptop can stop bullets.

I give my less than civil, small minded ethnic friend 3 points for the well placed hit. Nailing a target from a moving vehicle to that degree of accuracy was admirable and they might consider any offers the Brewers might make to augment their pitching staff. However, I have to deduct 5 points for using his welfare baby's gerber peas as the projectile of choice. So I salute you my friend and tonight I will toast your future with a 40oz and a bucket o' chicken as you so carefully pelt those who excercise with your baby's food.

The Health

2012-01-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Continuing my recap of 2011 I wanted to cover my hobby that consumes the most time which is running and biking. I had started the process of losing 65lbs on March 15th, 2010. On September 15th, 2010, I accomplished that goal. Since that time, I have been maintaining my running and biking habits. From April to December I bike 100-140 miles a week. I run year-round about 35 miles a week unless I'm training for a marathon. I have become partial to doing Duathlons which is a combination of running and biking but I also do fun runs and a winter running series of 10K's. In May of 2011 I ran the Madison Half Marathon. In July I did a 175 mile bike ride for Lymphoma. In October, I completed the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC.

I am now two races into the 5 race Winter running series but am not performing as well as last year due to some recurring calf pulls that come and go ever since the marathon. In any case, I am staying in the routine and maintaining my weight around 180 and my health numbers are all great. Here and there I throw in the snowboarding and this year I would like to get that in a bit more. It feels good to reclaim my health, and breath, and energy but I can tell the moment I stop it will not go well. Guess I need to keep it up for life.

The Wedding

2011-12-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

So one of the big events occupying the first part of this year was my eldest son’s wedding. I know I previously posted back around Easter 2010 that Zach proposed to Chrissy at the beautiful Orton Plantation. Although I have a lot of pictures of the plantation you might want to watch Firestarter with a very young Drew Barrymore and note that the compound she blows up and destroys at the end of the movie is Orton Plantation. You will be shocked to learn that she didn’t actually blow it up with fire created in her mind.

I must admit that I pleasantly avoided most parts of wedding planning. From what I observed this is a grueling exercise and should not be attempted by men. I simply needed to recover from the carpal tunnel created by checkwriting. I advised Zach to stay away in Jacksonville and avoid as much input as possible. I'd have to say that other than answering the question as to whether she looks fat in those jeans that offering wedding plan input is the next worse trap.

The wedding was February 26th and of course it snowed a couple of inches that day. There were no real hitches though and everything was beautiful. The service was great, the flowers were beautiful, the food was awesome, and my dance moves were the envy of the room. I apologize to all the people I did not really talk to. I admit that I spent most of the time on the dance floor and not mingling and chatting which is highly unusual for me. I wanted to enjoy the party though and I did fully. After the reception, I of course went to George Webb’s for a breakfast skillet and coffee with friends to help sober up before going to bed at 5:00am.

The next weekend, Ike and I as well as Chrissy’s brother-in-law Chris, assisted loading up all of Zach and Chrissy’s belongings and furniture in a trailer, pickup, and two cars. We headed out as a caravan to Jacksonville, NC where Zach had secured a duplex. It was an adventure in moving as of course it started raining from 3 hours before we left covering the entire route to NC until about an hour from Jacksonville. This forced us to use a tarp on the pickup to cover the furniture and it also caused a good 4 hour delay in travel time stopping to fix the tarps as they came loose so many times. Then of course there is Zach’s OCD car window cleaning problem and gas filling organizational issues that made for an extra hour of travel time. We did make it there and get them all moved in. Within a couple of days the house was in pretty good shape. I shall simply state that Zach didn’t exactly prepare the duplex for a fitting presentation for his new bride. I’d say his presentation resembled more of what you’d imagine if all of a Marine’s belongings were thrown in a blender and then dumped in various piles throughout the rooms. Chrissy was able to turn what looked like an Afghanistan land mine field into a home quickly.

Seven weeks later Karen and I visited for a long Easter weekend. The house was fixed up very nicely and we had a good time. Karen and I drove down in two cars. Karen drove the new used car we were bringing to Zach and Chrissy because Chrissy’s car had blown its engine a few short weeks after being there. I drove the 4Runner pulling Zach’s RX7 on a car dolly. This is where I comment on the little piece of joy one finds when their children move out and take their stuff with them. That car had occupied a space in my garage for 4 years. NOW that space was cleared up for Katie to park her car in the garage. Sigh.

I'm Back?? Yes I'm Back!

2011-12-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this blog has fallen into severe disrepair. It needs a resurrection. I have to admit the last two years I have been a bit more in a funk than even I was aware of. Life seemed humdrum and on cruise control. If you were to ask me what’s new I’m not sure I could come up with anything. I think my career was weighing heavily on me. Now that my career has taken a new direction I am feeling very different. So now I feel like moderately returning to spewing various bits of randomness. This last year really has contained enough life changes to get one thinking again. So I believe the next posts will be the year in review. However, I will post them in little topical bits and not one large and long post. It’s good to be back!!

Cool Droid Apps

2010-10-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

As most of you know I am a technogeek. I have been exploring the new and exciting land of Droid and the many apps available to Droid smart phones. Here are a few apps I have found that are useful and cool.

Uverse (for those who are ATT Uverse subscribers). - set your DVR for shows anytime or visit the library to download certain shows to your phone to watch.

LogMeIn Ignition - this is an app that allows you a remote desktop connection to your home computer both through the web in a browser window bit also with this nifty Droid app on your phone. This works real well if I ever need to do a quick support task on my web server or access pictures or files on the personal pc.

BeyondPod - This app consolidates RSS feeds for news, blogs, and video and audio podcasts. One of the best apps for feed consolidation where it can handle all the feed activities without having to send you directly to the site.

There are other apps such as ShopSavy that scans bar codes and searchs for the same product online to find the lowest prices. Pretty handy on big electronic purchases. So far though these are the apps that have been useful to me. I guess just the fact that I am entering this blog post from my Droid is a bog deal compared to the old days.

Happy geeking out!!!

Crusader Update???

2010-10-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Alright I have been silent for many months in the area of debating those I affectionately named the Confessional Crusaders. It has been a lesson about be careful the terms you coin, you just might become one.

I have spent the time still observing debates but moreso just studying and absorbing than participating. I would like to announce that my views are quite a bit different and muted than they used to be when I took up the supposed arguments. So to update those who may care, here is a more revised statement on the issues I used to fight for so much in the past.

Contemporary Worship

Indeed we still participate at Victory and are active there. We are active there because I believe Victory is still true to its Lutheran origin. We work hard to maintain our Lutheran hymns in worship despite their being done in a contemporary way. We stick with the basic CW liturgy. We visibly and regularly promote the Sacraments and pastor still gives law/gospel sermons of his own creation (not hijacked from some non-dom site like lifechurch or groeschel). However, I will confess this, as the church grows the dangers of evangelicalism and non-dom’s that many have warned of are there and continually and increasingly require attention. Increasingly I hear comments by newer members who want to reduce the number of hymns and replace it with that ewwy gooey modern crap that use endless refrains to say absolutely nothing. Members who want to be even more contemporary than we are. Basically new Christians (praise God) that want the more emotion based worship (sigh!!) Now we are working on calling a second pastor and hopefully the introduction of a pastor that can work with new members and lead bible studies and congregation education can add more meat and potatoes to the new Christians we are gaining. This is ever so important so as not to develop a church that has no knowledge of what it means to be Lutheran.

Doctrines and Trends

This is my biggest fear. That if the vigor of maintaining Lutheranism ever waned at Victory, that it too will fall the way of other WELS churches that seem to be caving in totally to the non-dom or emergent church model. It is sad enough to see some relatives fall away from the doctrinal soundness of the confessions, and forgoing the benefits of the sacraments, the dangers of decision theology, and focusing on all the sanctified living kind of thing of a Baptist non-dom but at least it is clear because it is a non-dom. You expect a kind of “feel good” church light in doctrine and heavy on goo when you think of that model. It is so much worse if a Lutheran church pretends to be Lutheran but in its essence is a non-dom. That is the sad part of what I have been observing more recently in some WELS experiments.

I think that a number of WELS churches and ministries are starting to cross the lines of Lutheranism. It is sad that we are not doing more to draw some lines in the sand. I have heard some sermons at some of the oft cited synod “bad boys” churches and have to admit they were poor. Basically more about sanctified living and vague gospel notions. No law…very light on the proclamation of the gospel work of Christ as a response to the preaching of the law. I think it is unfortunate these kinds of churches are not called on the carpet more often. There is no excuse for borrowing from other denominations for sermon series. There is no excuse for preaching a watered down message filled with sanctification and “goodness”. It is sad that a church who I think does traditional Lutheran music in a contemporary way probably the best as can be done, then blows it big time with a sermon that is filled with blehhh. However it’s not just the churches the WELS is cropping up all kinds of ministries…particularly on campuses…that if adopted to the WELS mainstream will put the confessional stance of the synod in serious jeopardy.

There is a particular debate that continues nearly non-stop regarding universal objective justification that I must say I have learned a lot about and definitely feel the synod should clean up its position on. Their statements on this doctrine are sloppy and misleading for some. I think most people like me who were confirmed 30 years ago (using the old brown KJV Luther’s catechism from days of yor ) the doctrine is clear and often in the debates we are all arguing for the same thing using different definitions for terms trying to find a way to make the current statement on justification from the WELS fit the doctrines we learned years ago. In this department I have appreciated the debate and the clarification of terms. I regret many of my statements of two years ago and I will say that I have grown a lot in this area. I have elected Joe Krohn to be my spokesman in this area and rarely need to add more.

To one degree I wonder what difference the minute distinctions being made effect the day-to-day life of the WELS churches as so far I have not seen a WELS church take the implications of a poor understanding of UOJ to the ultimate extreme warned about and illustrated in the Blogosphere. However I guess I do see it illustrated in what is loosely called a Lutheran (or even Christian) church, the ELCA. So whereas I don’t see the WELS sloppiness on the issue leading to such dire consequences…it is something to watch out for… just like those members who want to take the church the non-dom route. I guess as I read out there somewhere “What is the harm of clarifying this one up all nice and tidy?”

What does this sum up to? I am definitely a more cautious individual and I scrutinize a lot more. If I hear a song played in worship that reeks of sanctification I call it out. If a sermon is weak in law or gospel I make a note of it. I want to promote the sacraments more. I am studying a lot more and am more cautious about a blanket endorsement of all things contemporary. Restraint and respect for Lutheran doctrine are still necessary and even moreso today. We need to police ourselves better and resist the urge of ecumenism and doctrinal compromise. To undo the statement of Groeshel who said “we must do everything short of sinning to reach people.” I say not true as ignoring doctrine in order to reach people is not doing any Christian a service. So I guess when I use the term Confessional Crusader these days I don’t mean it with derision as I use to. I have found it is indeed something we need to keep close and study or indeed we will lose the truth restored to us at the reformation one little piece at a time.

A Niedfeldt Update

2010-10-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Ahhh…It has been a long time. However I am not writing this today to make any new commitments to blogging more. I doubt my current trend will improve. First and foremost is that I just don’t have the free time to blog. I do have time to ponder things but rarely have the time put them online. Work has been extremely busy the last year. I have also taken on some personal projects that take more free time out of my day.

My main “project” has been my personal health. On March 15th I restarted running after an abbreviated return to running in the fall of 2009 when I re-injured my Achilles (after partially tearing it in the spring of 2009) I ran in the mornings with the track team and added an additional run at night. In June I added biking to work. Followed by running at night. In July I started doing fun runs, and in August Duathlons. I also coach CC at St. Marcus and at HOPE High School to Mid-October. I bike about 120-140 miles a week. I run about 35 miles a week. I have a schedule of fun runs including two half marathons coming up for the winter. When I finally have to put the bike away for winter, I will keep running but will spend more time in the weight room. I have realized now that all the fat is gone that I actually have no upper body muscle. A big throw back to high school days for sure.

All this athletic training has taken up some time to be sure. However, the results have been dramatic. I have lost 66 pounds as of today. I am 4 pounds from my goal of getting to 170. I hope to have this goal accomplished by November 1st. I have changed my diet too to eliminate excessive fat and sugar. Nothing crazy, most of my diet is to avoid the obvious bad stuff and keep the portions in a reasonable amount. These results have been good too in that my cholesterol has dropped from 232 down to 178. My blood pressure is 109/66. My heart rate is 49. My BMI is 24 is in the middle of normal weight.

So now that the weight and health goals are close to where I want them, I have been focusing on the competition of running and the Duathlons (running and biking). I have been improving and placing in the top 10 percent of the races I’ve been in. My best official 5K time is 18:54 where I finished 26th out of 350, although I got 17:53 at the 3 mile mark of the Briggs and Al’s run last week. My best Duathlon has been 1:24:45 where I finished 37th out of 791 but I finished 9th overall last weekend at the Pewaukee Duathlon with a time of 1:10:44 on a smaller bike distance. My goals for next summer are to achieve under 30 minutes for 5 miles. 4:45 for one mile. And 1:17 for a 2/20/2 Duathlon.

The most recent family events have just been Zach being home for two weeks on leave after he completed a 1 month long exercise out at sea. It was a nice visit. He got his RX7 running again after being stored in the garage for two years. We got the turbo in the Volvo fixed from my epic vacation in June. My car had been sitting in the garage unused as I am on my bike for everything. That was a fun repair to do. He finally was able to do the engagement pictures with Chrissy. We also tested a restaurant for the rehearsal dinner. Although Chrissy is dealing with the brunt of the wedding planning, it is definitely a fun thing going on in our lives. I find it fun of course as my role is limited.

Kt is working full-time as a preK4 assistant teacher at a daycare center in Muskego. She works with Chrissy actually. It is a challenging job and Kt spends a lot of evenings napping to recover. She will be attending classes in the Spring semester as well working on early childhood education. Kt and her friend Bonnie are working on a plan to get an apartment together and live some adventures. Right now they are saving money and maybe by summer they will be able to execute their plan.

Ike has been taking to his virtual online high school. He has all A’s and a B right now. That’s a big deal!! He is also on pace and taking responsibility for his assignments. He has said he sort of misses having the social parts of school readily available to him like passing times, lunch, goofing off in study hall, etc.. However he says the education part of it is far better. He is filling in social time by visiting his various friends from various schools and packing it in on the weekends. He also likes being able to do school at night, weekends, stay up late sometimes, wake up at 9:00am or whenever basically. He can run and get a snack whenever he likes or even sit in a “lecture” in his underwear while chewing gum if he so chooses. Ike said the best part has been that he has the time he needs to complete all his assignments. Often his problems in the past were not a product of understanding but more a result of time limits. So far this has been a good thing. It does strip out a lot of the “nonsense” of school and focuses just on the education. There is no dealing with dress codes, tardies, unexcused absences, scheduling, computer labs, cell phone use, teacher access (in virtual school they are available 9 hours a day…and even longer by multiple methods such as email, text, or chat), etc. Even if he is “talking” in an online lecture through chat or voice when he is not supposed to…the teacher can simply disable him and voila …classroom is controlled. In General this choice seems to be working out very well.

So that will have to do for an update for now. Perhaps by Christmas I’ll have another one.

Busy Summer

2010-07-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

Summer has become very busy all of the sudden. The 4th of July weekend was jam packed. I now need my work weeks to relax from the weekend. Saturday I went for a 60 mile bike ride. I thought it might be a stretch but I felt great afterwards. I had been looking forward to it all week from when I invited myself along on a ride with Ron. The Drumlin trail was a pretty sweet trail and it was a pleasant change from the Milwaukee roads I have been riding on.

After that ride we scooted out to Madison for the Rhythm and Booms fireworks in Madison. They are the "Best in the Midwest" for a reason. I experimented taking pictures this year. A few of them turned out pretty good and you can check them out here. We left Karen in Madison with her parents so she could head up to theLake house with them in the morning. Kt, Chrissy and I headed back to Milwaukee.

Sunday morning I picked up Ike at 6:45am and then headed to Wind Lake to pick up a generator from Ron. This is the generator that powers the Victory of the Lamb band float. I did my usual routine of setting up at church in the morning at Showtime Cinema and then afterwards we had to take things down and get some sound equipment on the float for the Franklin 4th of July Parade. This is the 4th year I have been in the parade and it is a lot of fun. I don't have to do too much except make sure tha generator stays on and there is no feedback or harsh tones.

After the parade, we headed up to the Lake house to relax a bit. As we got within 3 miles of the house it began to rain and became overcast. Oh well. I did sleep on the porch so I could listen to the rain. It served a dual purpose of being good for my back that has been sore due to bike hunching and fat man running.

My running and biking are producing some results now. I have lost 40lbs since March 15th from a high of 240lbs. That makes my excercise a lot easier these days. It also makes my clothes fit. I still have a goal of 25 more by February 26th. I'm sure I can make it much earlier than that...I just need to keep my level of excercise up in the winter months. My goal was to be able to get to a level of fitness that would be fitting for a CC coach as well as match the charts as to what my ideal weight should be. That would include a wedding and a 25th High School reunion next year to stay trim for. I have been working on reducing portions on my eating. My goal is just to keep the excercise/diet balance going.

In the short term though I am training for a 5K on July 24th and a 10K on July 25th. Then we'll see about maybe a Bike ride like the Best Damn Bike ride or something. I think the coaching CC at Hope School will make for a very physical fall. without trying to add additional runs in.

The 8th and Final Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

6:45AM, I awake, bu not as lively as in the past. It was only 5 hours of sleep. I go downstairs and say hi to Eric and Luke, his middle child. Eric offered food but we had to get going and I didn't want to put him out. He said he'd make pancakes. Instead I declined but I promised Luke that his dad would make him pancakes.

7:30AM, I prepare to turn on the car and smoke up the entire northwestern quadrant of Broomfield. Nothing...hmmmm. Perhaps the car just needs time to warm up. My mission was to drive to WalMart first and get enough oil to last the day. It was killing me buying individual quarts at $4 each. I pull into what was perhaps the largest Super Walmart I've ever seen. As is my luck, I enter the store the precise longest distance from the Auto department. A mile later or so I get to the oil aisle, This is not to be confused with the oil isle in the Gulf. I purchase three 5 quart containers of oil. In the parking lot I top off the oil with one of my last two remaining quart bottles. We head off. Curiously though I still see no smoke from our car. Not even the little cloud bursts on acceleration.

9:30AM, I stop to check the oil after 130 miles. It is down a quarter of a quart. God bless America...well and Sweden in this case.

10:30AM, We stop one more time. I check the oil. No movement. We are at the border of Nebraska and I hand the reigns over to Ike. He's a man now and I give him the distinct pleasure, honor and privilege of driving across Nebraska. From this point forward I will describe my impression of Nebraska: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

2:30PM, I wake up as we need gas. I check the oil. It's down a half a quart. Our car is healing itself. Later on we decide it is a combo of the sealant taking some effect overnight along with a change in altitude making the turbo not blow so much oil. Back to Nebraska...Ike continues the honor of driving. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

5:30PM, Omaha, NE and we gas up again. This time I take over driving because I am SUPER excited to get Iowa and Illinois for my shift. I will now describe driving through Iowa:

12:15AM, Screw it, I can't come up with anything. A zombie could've driven that stretch. I arrive home. The car made it. I am tired. Karen has arrived home before me from her class in Iowa. She worked herself into a sweat cleaning up all the cat boxes and messes the cats made while we were gone. I unload the car but I will wait until after church in the morning to start on laundry, house cleaning and yardwork. Honestly it will be a welcome change from vacation. If you need some oil, I've got 15 quarts in the back of my car. I'll fix the turbo in a couple of weeks.

1:30AM, I go to bed. I wonder what Bob is doing right now. Will the creepy beach stalker ever find a girl of legal age that likes him? I hope Lisa can survive another year in Cedar City. What is the percentage of Prius owners in California? Are the people stuck on the freeway in Victorville even home yet? I might just have to take a road trip soon and visit all my friends to find out.

The 7th Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

4:17AM, The alarm goes off. It is early....and dark....and early. I get up and start loading the Silverado. I take a few things for the car food wise but leave as much as I can for the girls. Ike is somewhat surly getting up. However for at least 6-7 years there hasn't been one morning where he hasn't been surly so actually this is not unique. I get Kt up too as she has to come with us down to San Diego Airport to rent her a car to use for the next 4 days. Bonnie had purchased a danish coffee cake thing from the store which I take half of. I am finally up early ...but it is too early for inferior waffles.

4:40AM, Zooming into San Diego. Not a lot of traffic now. There are cars on the road though. They are just Priuses.

5:00AM, We check in to rent the car. I get the insurance and was prepared to pay the "young driver fee" to add Kt as a second driver. That of course keeps everything covered for liability and such. However a "young driver" for Thrifty is only down to 21 years old. So Kt could not be a legal second driver on the car. For a moment, I pondered the risk of what I'd be liable for if she smashed it or got hit and I wasn't driving the car....but then I figured "Hey what could possibly go wrong for a Niedfeldt?" So I drove it out of the lot into the very next driveway to the "Evil Gas Station from Hell". There I handed a....wait for it....wait for it...HYUNDAI Sonata over to her ever so cautious 18 year old hands.

The Evil Gas Station from Hell was a risky place to transfer this car to Kt. In this lot a mere 18 months before, nearly to the day, we filled a rental car with gas to return to Thrifty right next door. Literally 20 feet separated our rental car and the Thrifty lot. After filling our gas tank to return the car, my wife backed up from the pump and mysteriously a pylon protecting the Natural Gas filling station rammed itself into the back of our car. After a week sitting quite unimpressed in the American shoddiness of a Chrysler 300 we returned it with its bumper maligned and tailight broken. Thank God for having a legal second driver and the optional insurance. In retrospect I think that was a good indicator of the future direction of Chrysler.

5:20AM, Ike and I head out to return our truck to Cedar City by 1:00pm Mountain time. Can't afford any delays. Ike is not aware that we have headed out. He slept through the drive into San Diego, the car rental, and actually most all of California and wakes up around the Nevada border.

8:00AM, We pass Victorville, CA where an accident on the West bound lanes has closed the highway because of a death. The wanted to open it by 8:00am but that hasn't happened. All the cars are exiting at an offramp. I start watching the odometer for the distance. 9.5 miles later I see the end of the backup with plenty more cars adding on.

9:00AM, I hear another report about how they hope to have the highway open soon. Wow, I believe had I been going that direction that this nice little truck would have been doing some desert offroading. Insanity.

10:30AM, We are rolling into Las Vegas, we have 145 miles to Cedar city and two hours to get there. However, I sure wish I had a Prius because we needed gas. $70 of gas later and two egg Mcmuffins and we were headed eastbound and down loaded up and truckin. Ah we gonna do what they say can't be done. We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there, I'm eastbound just watch old bandit run.

12:00PM (MDT) We hit the 29 miles of AZ. I love God's creation but the AZ DOT has put down some crazy windy roads through canyons with nice drop-offs and they are not as zippy as I would like.

1:02PM we pull up to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Cedar City, UT. There is a HYUNDAI ACCENT...now wouldn't that have been nice to have... sitting next to the office with a vacuum cleaner running near it, and a radio, cleaning supplies, and the car has two doors open, the keys are in it and the car is RUNNING. The sign on the office door says "Be back in 20 minutes" Now needless to say people do not leave their cars open, running, with their vacuums running, in Milwaukee very often. This town seems different that way. The temptation was that if I left them the pickup perhaps they would not remember there was a Hyundai in its place. I was thinking of how excited Bob would be about my new Hyundai.

1:18PM, Lisa shows up having taken another car through the car wash. She was dressed quite nicely and looked about 21. She had long blonde hair and lots of jewelry. She was essentially....hot. Basically there was hardly one thing that made this girl look like she belonged in Cedar City, UT. So as she took us back to Superior Auto to pick up the Volvo I asked her if she was from around here. She said, "Nooooooo, I'm from San Mateo, CA and I'm just here while my husband finishes up college." Her look of despair at being trapped in this little town in god-forsaken nowhere said a lot. She said that when he graduates next May they are moving back to CA. She did not like the weather or the lack of....everything. I told that back home in San Mateo I bet that Hyundai would have been Gone, Baby gone. The only thing more attractive would've been a Prius.

2:00PM, I go to the office to pay for the car. HOLY CRAP! $300 bucks for...wait for it...plugs, wires, and an oil change with air cleaner and oil filter of course. I guess there is an advantage to being in the middle of nowhere. That took care of the misfiring. However there was one problem we had to nurse the car home, They could not fix one remaining problem and it was the one that blew all the white smoke. I had blown an oil seal on the turbo and scads of oil was getting blown into the exhaust. Although the misfiring had been fixed by my replacing my nearly burnt away spark plugs and affected wires, there was still significant power loss from my weakened turbo. With enough oil we could get the car home without cracking the engine block because it used all the oil.

2:40PM, We went 60 miles. We are putting up enough smoke that even BP can't burn that much oil off the Gulf. I check the oil. Down 3 quarts. Holy crap. This is going to be expensive.

3:20PM, We went another 70 miles. Down 3 quarts. I find a product called STP Stop Leak. A thick goopy oil that is supposed to moisterize and gunk up your seals to fill leaks. Only 450 miles to go...TODAY!! Cars now drop far back from us because visibility is poor. When we go up hills the car lacking power often slows to a top speed of 35mph. Cars are careening off mountain passes due to lack of ability to see the road.

4:20PM, Another 70 miles. Down 2.5 quarts. We finally get to a very long stretch of highway with mild hills and stretches in the valleys of the basin. This eases the stress from long climbs up mountains.

5:10PM, We go almost 90 miles. Car is only down 2 quarts. Now the car is relatively smoke free in overdrive and only puts out colorful bursts of smoke on downshifting or upshifting. I felt like a silver, noxious cigar driving down the highway.

6:40PM, 120 miles this time. just under 2 quarts. Looking good as we are about to enter Colorado.

9:00PM, We had some nice valleys to travel in but we are now hitting some of the more aggressive parts of the Rockies. Lots of long mountain highways and we literally crawl over some of them at a top speed of 25mph.

9:20PM, I notice two State Patrol cars have two different people pulled over on this windy mountain stretch. Interesting considering how little police are in the west. A few miles later I see two State Patrol cars with people pulled over on the other side. As I notice this I see a State Patrol in my rearview mirror. I move over to the right hand lane to let him pass only to see him pull behind me. Oh brother. I have a feeling that the problem will be my rolling environmental disaster. Corporal Anderson was a big boy. I call him Corporal Anderson because his title was a Corporal. I called him Anderson because he he looked exactly like Louie Anderson. I swear to God I could have killed the man and ended the entire stop simply by throwing a donut over the side of the mountain. His little partner goes screaming by to catch yet another motorist. Cpl Anderson had two important points to make. First he said, "You were driving in the left lane." I said "Yep" (I have been driving in the left lane for 4000 miles up to this point or more than 500,000 miles in 26 years but who's counting) He said, "Were you aware that that is passing lane and you have to move over by law?" I said, "Nope" (Well of course I know thats a law...and if my turbo was working, passing is all I'd be doing to people and you'd be stopping me for speeding. Plus my wife has pointed out your concern to me for ...26 years...about that very issue). He said, "Do you know your car is also belching a lot of smoke?" "Yep" Cpl Anderson asks, "Where are you headed?" "Denver. Sleeping overnight at a friends. Only an hour and half left." Again his concern is overwhelming, "How long have you been driving?" "We have been on the road for 16 hours." "Are you two switching off driving?" Without missing a beat my son chimes in "Yessir!" (I had not let him drive as I was very pre-occupied babysitting the car and negotiating mountains and oil, etc..) My child was an enthusiastic natural born liar. I was so proud...and scared at the same time. Cpl Anderson wrote me a stern warning about driving in the left lane which to this very day I am pondering and contemplating. Mainly how Colorado legislature has too much time on their hands...OR...the sheer brilliance of getting the idiot slow people out of the left lane. I'm sort of wishing WI would get all our fricken idiot Buick drivers and make them drive on the shoulder or something.

11:00PM We hit the worst of the rockies and the Continental divide...which happens to be in the middle of a tunnel through a mountain. I stop at the top of the last mountain climb and we do one last oil check. Only one quart down after all those climbs. Getting better. Looks like we're going to make it to the flats of CO and beyond and make it home. I think that last climb however took 15-20 minutes with a top speed of 17 mph in spots.

11:30PM, We come over that last rise where the lights of Denver lie spread out before us. What a sight. we cruise up I-25 to Broomfield and pull into the Drs. Brucker driveway at 11:45pm.

1:30AM, Ike and I finally go to bed after telling our tale of woe and catching up a bit with Eric. Eric was/is one of my best friends and was my roomate from DMLC days. He left after freshman year and I left after Sophomore. He went to Univ of CO and then Univ of Texas and Post Doc at Rice University. He has a PhD in Chemistry and is married to Noel, a Pediatrician. They represent two of the very few people with such exceptional educations that are still the coolest, interesting, down to earth, Christian, and warm-hearted people I know. Tomorrow we have a quick 1000 miles to home. But I am going to get my oil in bulk at Walmart this time and save some money. Almost home.

The 6th Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Day 6

9:00AM, I awake to another fine California day. However I again miss the inferior HoJo complimentary breakfast. I decide to run today but in the opposite direction. This direction is a bit more daunting because the first 1.5 miles is uphill. I find the run very pleasant though as there is a botanical garden along the way and at the top of the hill is a pedestrian walkway that provides a fantastic view of the valley on the other side as well as the ocean to the west.

9:45AM, Almost back. Is it just me or are there a lot of Priuses around here?

10:00AM, Quick jump in the pool to cool down and then get ready for our adventure of the day.

11:30AM, We head onto I-5 up to Los Angeles to see Hollywood. As I don't see myself returning to California anytime soon I decided we had better take the time to visit when we can. Traffic was pretty good getting into downtown and we exited at Hollywood Blvd. We turned the wrong direction and ended up in little Thailand. Everytime we see all these potentially awesome places to eat I get sad knowing my family will not be adventurous with me.

12:00PM, I swear every other car on the highway is a Prius. Is this the national car of the Republic of California?

12:45PM, We park at a lot just off Hollywood Boulevard just past Vine. The most immediate impression is the Walk of Fame. I was amazed at how many people I knew. However it is distracting to try and catch all the names when you bump into people because no one is looking forward. It is hard to imagine that anyone would park their stroller on Brittany Speers star.

2:30PM, We stop for a potty break at the McDonalds and by a family pack of McNuggets for a snack. I think I realize at this time that no one in Hollywood is from the USA. Perhaps eastern Europe, Asia, and South America. What is it about McNuggets that are so addicting. I actually determine it is the tightly guarded recipe for their barbecue sauce. I really don't need the McNuggets at all but they won't give me the containers to just use my fingers to eat the BBQ sauce.

3:00PM, I have decided that I was not very impressed with the standard sights of Hollywood. We saw the Chinese Theater and such but the rest of the streets were just shops for tattoos, piercings, weird wigs and Lady GaGa outfits. I would say that it was similar to State St. in Madison but the people were more normal. There was someone every 12 feet or so soliciting for tours of the Hollywood Hills and the stars homes.

4:00PM, We decide to drive to Beverly Hills and check out Rodeo Dr. and the unrestrained wealth of that town. The streets and houses are amazing and the unrelenting stream of $100K cars surrounding our hillbilly Silverado was astounding. I simply cannot comprehend the sheer concentration of cash in one place.

5:00PM, Obviously it was the perfect time to leave downtown Los Angeles. Traffic was good all the way up until the very moment we entered the freeway. Then we got to be in LA traffic for a good while. The children entertained themselves by waving to every single car around us in traffic seeing who would wave back. A surprising number of people did wave back. It would seem they may as well as there is plenty of time to sit around and chat with those around you.

6:00PM I'm pretty sure this should just be called a Prius jam.

6:30PM, Finally we break free of traffic and cruise in the HOV lane.

7:30PM, I pick up noodle bowls for dinner.

8:30PM, Pool and Hot tub time

10:30PM, Time to shower and pack up. Ike and I are heading home tomorrow. We are leaving Katie and Bonnie to fend for themselves and explore San Diego. We need to leave by 4:15am and drive down to San Diego to rent a car for the girls to use. Ike and I need to be back in Cedar City, UT by 1:00pm. tomorrow and that leaves us 7 hours to get there. It will be close.

11:30PM, I go to sleep wondering why I couldn't have rented a Prius and glad that I don't have to commute in LA. I must say my impressions of all the hype about LA were debunked. It is just an overpopulated place.

The 5th Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

Day 5

9:00AM I sleep in late today to celebrate the lack of any need to respond to some emergency. Since I have missed the somewhat inferior HoJo's waffles, I decide to take a run as I have not had a chance to do this since Friday. I head across the interstate towards the ocean to explore our new land.

9:30AM I run along US hwy 101 looking at the unique collection of shops. It would appear there is a pattern. It went something like Surf Shop, Mexican Restaurant, Antique Store, ...repeat. There was what I would describe as a shanty town strip mall. It would appear that the building might have been leaning in odd directions and the roofs looked like tin or tarp. I was amazed at the shear number of people running or biking along this highway. Don't they have jobs? It's 9:30am on a Wednesday. I turned into a subdivision to take a look at the homes on the top of the bluff overlooking the ocean. They stood in stark contrast to the more modest homes...literally on the other side of the tracks. Very nice homes and many were for sale. I was tempted to enter one house that was having one of your typical Wednesday morning open houses. I'm not sure based on the prestige of the home whether they wanted a sweaty fat man wandering through.

A running challenger emerged when I turned onto this ocean front street. I young mother pushing two babies in a runner stroller. She was on the opposite side of the street and she was threatening me. For some reason I just could not let a mom beat me jogging down the street with a baby stroller. I swear to you she was speeding up but I could speed up more.

10:00AM Oh thank God, the end of the street and she turns off as I take a long winding staircase down to the beach. I'm not sure I could keep up that false sense of bravado any longer. The tide is just rolling out and the waves were exceptionally large. The stairways are filled with teenagers...and more disturbingly some 50 year olds scouting out the waves and texting their friend the conditions no doubt. There were probably 40 black dots in the water all waiting for a perfect wave. They were black dots because they all had wetsuits. Basically I was just amazed that the california stereotypes were soooo...prevalent. Dude!!! Awesome!!! I was wondering if the bike racks on the Volvo could be retrofitted for Surfboards.

10:10AM, I run back to the hotel following a loop that makes me pass a small used car dealership. In the lot we 6 cars. 5 of them were silver Volvo's all laughing at me. I despised that little store and I threaten to return with some tools and perform a turboectomy. Teach those cars to laugh at me.

10:15AM, I might be wrong but I sure have noticed a lot of Priuses. What is up with that?

11:00AM, I jump in the pool to cool down. Nice!!

12:30PM, Time for the beach. We head down to near where I had been running. The beach is not over laden with people and we easily find a spot to park ourselves. Ike and I spend some time jumping into the waves and I try lame attempts to body surf. Ike returns to the beach to scan for girls that he will never talk to.

1:30PM, I have noticed more and more boys have arrived at the beach. They all seem to have some gimmick to prance about with their ripply little bodies around the lovely young ladies with me. They of course are quite obviously scoping out said boys. Some were playing frisbee, some were going back and forth with a soccer ball. Others toweled themselves off gracefully. Again the stereotypes were running rampant.

3:00PM, By now we have all burned except for little asian Ike. He sucks because his brown skin doesn't get sunburned. Ike and I return to the water. The girls are strolling near the water.

4:00PM, Ike and I are ready to be done in the water but we notice that a guy we had seen before with a physique much like mine had approached Kt and Bonnie at the water's edge. He was making small talk and asking for phone numbers. I admire his courage and I was laughing like crazy as I could see Kt looking like..."Dad, come and say we have to leave or something." Instead I watched from the waves amused at this brave young man about to be shot down. There probably was something creepy about his statement that it was nice to meet girls of legal age. Rejected he finally left and then Ike and I came out of the water.

5:00PM, Pool again

6:00PM Dinner of porta-tacos. I brought burrito rollups, refried beans, burrito chicken, nacho cheese, and salsa. A very authentic mexican dinner in this very hispanic neighborhood.

8:00PM, Pool and hot tub

10:00PM, Shower

11:00PM I go to sleep very tired. The kids sit on laptops and iPhones talking to people and watching Youtube until unknown hours of the morning.

The 4th Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

Day 4

8:00AM, I awake to a glorious morning in Cedar City, UT. My first task was to find a repair shop that can handle a foreign car. I called one place that had very little description. It turns out it was a Chevy dealer…shudder. I asked for a bailout or perhaps if they wanted these old shares of GM common stock I had with me as payment to fix the car. He declined cooley, however, he gave me a recommendation for a shop called Superior Auto. I called the shop and he agreed to take the car and see what he could do. We pack up the stuff and get ready to go but we have made a very strategic error. We have passed 9:00am. NO WAFFLES for us. Not even some pre-packaged pecan rolls or dried bagels or Raisin Bran from the little dispenser. This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect to the day.

9:15AM, We start the Volvo fogger to first head to the Cedar City Municipal Airport. It is 2 miles away. You cannot imagine the smoke this car put out. We’re talking about every acceleration or downshift putting out a cloud you could not see through. Cars were backing up and moving into the shoulder because I blocked all visibility. I had read an article after my Motortrend back in Billings about the limitations of doing war in Afghanistan with all the restrictive policies put on soldiers to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties. In one such instance the soldiers required a smoke screen so they could relocate under cover of the smoke safely. The people responsible for launching the smoke screen shell fired it too far away to be of any use because they were afraid the canister that falls from the sky after it explodes might hit child or mother who mysteriously are out playing or working in the middle of firefights in the street. I’m not saying the Obama administration is incompetent in fighting wars (Yes, I am) but more importantly I see a DoD contract for about 18 million dollars coming my way for the “War Volvo” where we can provide a smoke screen and comfortable transport for five…including 200 stations of satellite radio to calm the soldiers while relocating to safer positions. It includes a bike rack and I believe has an add-on connector for a Golf 240 or an M50 which can be easily operated through the moon roof.

10:00AM, We have secured a vehicle from Enterprise Rent-A-Car. There are 3 rental companies at the Cedar City Municipal Airport. Hertz had no one at the desk. Avis had no cars to rent but had someone at the desk. It caused me to wonder if Avis was run by the government. Enterprise had one car to rent. A nice 2010 dual cab Silverado. What would it take to find a Tundra? Is this all a conspiracy by GM? What kind of place is Cedar City, UT that when someone want a Hyundai Sonata or Elantra all they can provide is 4000 pound monstrosity. I was pining for the quality and gas mileage of a Hyundai as expressed in Motortrend from my days back in Billings. However we find that there was plenty of room to stretch out and a simple phone call to Ike in the backseat was sufficient for interseat communication.

There is another question as to why there is a such a nice new comfortable airport terminal that only has two flights a day from Salt Lake City. Everything seemed a bit of overkill for an airport that serves barely 80 people a day. Maybe thats why there are no Hyundai's and only Silverados to rent. Everything in Cedar City is bigger.

10:30AM, We drop off the car at Superior Auto. I get the picture now as his lot is filled with Corvettes and Chevy trucks and all types of GM cars that he is restoring for shows and such that clearly I have stumbled into a GM town. However segregated in a small part of the lot are a number of foreign cars. Much like an internment camp I imagine. I give him until Friday to make the Volvo better and vow to return.

10:45AM, Las Vegas here we come. We have until 11:00pm to arrive in San Diego to pick up Kt’s friend at the airport and only a 7 hour drive to get there. With that extra 5 hours of time we knew we could afford a little time in Las Vegas. We were blending like western natives now in our Silverado. I might note that going 85 in a Silverado seems much slower than it is. I constantly was looking down and noticing I was going 95-97. I think this is indicative of GM overstating their recovery and repayment of Government loans using a pile of other bailout money. There was some beautiful terrain in the 29 mile Arizona section of I-15. Beautiful canyons and such. Other than that though I felt frozen in one spot with just endless flat desert and some mountains in the distance on each side of us.

11:30AM, The endless desert terrain prompted me to think about all the good times with my friend Bob from Billings. I wondered why he stopped hunting in his youth and what was the exact specifications because it just could not have been a 6 cylinder for the Hyundai that got 40 miles per gallon even many years later. I wondered if he ever did sell his Honda accord with the faded paint with 220,000 miles on it for $2000. See he didn’t care what the blue book said. He was waiting for the person who wanted a car that ran perfectly to be willing to pay that much because he didn’t care. It was his 5th car after all. I could sympathize. It’s these moments you have to yourself where you can ponder the relationships of life and I was going to miss Bob.

I also pondered my good friend Hamid Patel the owner of the Sleep Inn in Billings. He was only about 32 so I think he maybe needed to experience a little more life so as to not second guess his trusty Night clerk at the hotel. Because basically I only paid $19 more to stay at the Crowne Plaza with a stunning 9th floor view of the oil refinery. His clerk might be right to give those discounts because a Sleep Inn does not compare to a Crowne Plaza. On the other hand…there were no waffles at the Crowne Plaza.

12:00PM, We come over a rise and there before us lies Las Vegas. The sign says its 18 miles away but that seems unlikely as you could see it so well.

12:15PM, What do you know…It was 18 miles away. God how depressing to be able to see something for so long yet be so far away. We park in the hotel parking garage for Harrah’s. We decide to walk up and down the strip and take in the sights and take pictures. I got myself a large soda for $4. I asked my kids if they needed anything as we had not any food or drinks really for the day. They said, “No” We strolled about looking at the sheer decadence of such huge casinos and expensive stores. There were lots of nice offers from people for tours and show tickets. How nice that they conveniently seek you out on the street so you don’t have to try and track them down. About the time we got to Ceasar’s Palace a certain female member of our group got woozy and passed out. I looked like father of the year when I dropped her on the stairs of Serendipty’s to take the picture of 3 cute coeds by the Gumball machine. After the picture they looked somewhat horrified at this clearly woozy, perhaps severely inebriated girl that was falling out of the chair I tried to place her in as I tried to find a place to get a bottle of water. I moved Kt to another table and found a nice outdoor area where Serendipity’s generously sold me a big water bottle for $6. Large sodas were also $6. So after $18 all 3 of us could restock on liquids. I however already had enough foresight to plan my hydration/dehydration cycles when I got my first $4 soda. Additionally we bought a few more waters from the nice gentleman on every street corner selling water from coolers for only a $1.

2:00PM, We head out of Las Vegas to our final destination of San Diego. Gaaaack more desert. Shortly after our entry into the California, the People's Republic of CA has a station to determine if you are carrying any Fruits or Nuts into the country. I told them that I had neither Adam Lambert nor any Democrats in the truck and they let me continue on my way.

7:00PM, We arrive in Encinitas, CA at the Howard Johnson’s. We check in to our room which was nice but did not have the nice beds of the Sleep Inn nor did it have my waffles for breakfast. Ike and I head straight to the hot tub and pool.

9:00PM, Thoroughly pruned we get out of the hot tub and pool because we need to eat something and then head down to San Diego Airport to pick up Bonnie, Kt’s friend from JCP in Milwaukee.

11:00PM Bonnie arrives safely seated safely with Marine Recruits who were flying in for Boot Camp. Fine memories of Zach’s arrival there nearly 2 years ago.

11:45PM, I scan the channels in a last ditch attempt to catch a Back to the Future but there are no more left on TV. Bonnie pulls out a Macbook. GAAAWWWWD!!! the numbers of these things springing up around me is ever increasing. I figure if you can't create scripts and documents in VI or navigate with DOS...you deserve a Macbook.

12:00AM I go to sleep with feelings of relief in that we actually made it to San Diego. I also have a strange sense of accomplishment that I parked a Silverado in a space marked for compact cars only because HoJo's only had like 3 spots that weren't for compact cars. Take that land of Priuses.

The 3rd Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Day 3

6:15AM, I arise early on a glorious Billings morning. The sun is shining brightly off the oil refinery. There is a starbucks in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza in a rare showing of civilization. I walk to the Volvo dealership to make sure I am the first one in line to get my car looked at and repaired. There still is no traffic pouring into Billings. Even the hobos are not on the street.

6:45AM, The service manager is opening the garage door and I successfully get my car booked in right away. I wish I had known the mechanic didn't show up until 8:00am but I'm content to drink my coffee, read Motortrend and listen to Fox News in the background. Apparently there's been an oil spill somewhere in the gulf...at least that's how the news seems to convey it.

8:00AM, I have completed reading a fine comparison of 2010 8 cylinder muscle cars. Apparently Mustangs have edged out the Camaro and Challenger to win most categories in the 8 cylinder rankings. I assume Mustangs perform better because they have less weight due to the lack of bailout packages and bankrupcy proceedings.

8:30AM, Bob the car salesman comes in for a stint at the desk. I'm sure car buying customers will be streaming in soon. We strike up a conversation in the mean time. We talked about a lot of different subjects for the next two hours. First of all Bob went out to his car and got an atlas to show me the best route to get to I-15 as we were now modifying our journey to head straight to San Diego and skip Portland, OR. It was good advice and he did not even have Google Maps on his phone. We then talked about Hyundai's and their vast improvement in the last 25 years. I discussed the Motor trend article I had just read comparing the American 6 cylinder versions of the muscle cars and the new Hyundai Genesis Coupe was thrown in. Well I'll be schnuckered but the Hyundai beat out all those American muscle cars. There it was sitting on the showroom floor too. We then discussed the exploding deer. He told me how prevalent it was and to be careful on the rest of my journey as the deer are everywhere. I was just relieved to know they were not exploded hobos. I learned that Billings has 125,000 people and has grown significantly in the last 10-15 years. Wells Fargo has a large communications center employing a lot of people. Also GE I think he said had a new group there. Before this recent influx of companies most people were ranchers or worked at the oil refinery. One woman about 65 years old came into the showroom as well while her 2004 Hyundai Tuscon was being repaired. She was looking at the 2010 model in the showroom perhaps contemplating a new purchase. I let Bob handle this one despite my research in Motortrend. However I think I did assist Bob when she sat down finally by the magazines and I showed her the articles about Hyundai's and their exceptional reviews. I'm pretty sure I'll get a partial comission on that sale the next time I see Bob. Bob lives approximately 12 minutes away and has two kids. One lives in Butte and the other in Idaho Falls, ID. Actually those were his 2nd wife's kids. Bob had an appointment at the new Honda store on the west side of town at 10:00. I knew where this was because we had exited the highway twice at that location. I was getting very familiar with Billings at this point. I told Bob the next time I came through Billings we'd get together and have lunch. Maybe grill out some Elk or Deer venison. Yummm.

10:00AM, The car is complete. It seems to be starting snappy and I'm very pleased. My children have already packed up the room and we load up and go. The trip of the year resumes.

12:00PM, Did the car just stutter a bit? No that must just have been the road.

3:00PM, Ok the car is stuttering and misfiring. This is not cool. We are approaching Idaho Falls. Kt could you please start finding all the Volvo dealerships in Idaho Falls?

4:00PM, All the Volvo dealerships have been located. There is Boise, ID 150 miles the wrong direction. There is Salt Lake City 200 miles ahead. There is Las Vegas which is 500 miles ahead. We will try to get to Salt lake city before 7:00 and hopefully it will be open.

6:55PM, We reach Salt Lake city. Nice looking city by the way. There are more temples in SLC than Walgreens for sure. Car is losing power on hills more and more and is misfiring more. Dealership closed at 6:00pm. Okay car take us to Las Vegas. We're going to roll the dice and get lucky.

9:00PM We are approximately 200 miles from Las Vegas. The car is now barely getting over the hils at 25 miles per hour. It is straining in low gears to make it. The turbo is stressed and we are losing speed. We are approaching Cedar City, UT and it looks like we have to make a decision. We stop for gas in Parowan about 18 miles from Cedar City and notice a new symptom. We are belching white smoke like a western wild fire. Our fate is sealed. We drag the car to Cedar city and find a Super 8 Motel. Kt has located an Enterprise Rent-a-car where we will just have to find a shop to work on the car and we will rent a car to finish up the trip. Since we have to return this way anyways that gives this theoretical shop 4 days to locate parts and fix this oddity known as a Volvo. A vehicle as yet unkown to those in the west.

10:00PM, I notice the continental breakfast has the same waffle mix as the Sleep Inn in Billings. I am excited.

11:00PM, I scan the channels for any Back to the Future episodes. Finding none I retire for the evening. Kt has been relaxed and stress free this entire time. Ike was unusually chipper and smiley the whole ride. HAHAHAHAHA. Just kidding. I assure them that many of their friends will be very jealous that they were in Cedar City, UT and to just go to sleep and dream of waffles.

The 2nd Day of My Summer Vacation

2010-06-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

Day 2

8:00AM, The alarm goes off. Perhaps our long lost mechanic will call us this morning. I headed to my free continental breakfast for a surprisingly good waffle in the waffle maker. I make a mental note to find the same batter for my waffle maker. Apparently my mental note has fallen off the mental fridge because I have now forgotten the brand to buy.

9:00AM, I start watching Back To the Future. It seems to be what we do when stranded in boring states while traveling. On a ski trip a few years ago we were snowed-in from a blizzard in Omaha, NE and sat in the hotel room all day watching all 3 Back to the Futures followed by Big Mama’s House I and II. Good times for sure.

10:00AM, I head over to the car to fetch our cooler for what I was convinced would be a second nights stay in Billings. What could possibly be done to my car on a Sunday? On the off chance the car would start, I gave it a try and voila, it started and behaved perfectly. I drove it across the street to the hotel and rousted my children to pack up we were going to go hit the road. After the car was loaded and we were going to go I turned over the car. Click Click Click. The battery was too low. I used up my remaining power for the first start of the day and did not have enough left to start. I ran across the street to the gas station and bought jumper cables. I then went back into the hotel to find a suitable donor. Sure enough but the owner of the hotel was there and offered to jump start my car. I figured he might have been a journeyman mechanic because he had a Ford F250 pickup and as anyone knows the ability to fix cars corresponds directly to the size of your pickup. My car did start from the jump and we hit the highway. Not before giving the night clerk a nice endorsement for customer service, however my capitalist friend did not look amused.

10:25AM, We return after two miles of travels we had to deviate back into Billings to a NAPA auto parts store as the same conditions had returned. Repression and ignoring work so much better on humans than cars apparently. The NAPA sent us to the only shop open on a Sunday with mechanics in downtown billings. We head to Expert Tire.

11:00AM, The man at Expert tire says he’ll look at it but feels certain there will be little he can do because he is not a Volvo dealership. However he waited a bit to tell us this just as we were getting to the end of Back To the Future Part II. We now know we are doomed to stay in Billings another night. We scouted out the only Volvo dealership in Montana which thankfully was 6 blocks away and then found a room at the Crowne Plaza which was also 6 blocks away.

12:00PM, We check in to the Crowne Plaza and head back to Expert Tire to get our stuff from the car. We figure it will be a nice looking hobo parade hauling our stuff 6 blocks down but the nice man at Expert Tire just told us to haul our stuff down to the hotel in the shop pickup. This really is not like other places. The keys were of course on the dash and it was truly an elegant brown Chevy shop truck that looked grand pulling up to the Crowne Plaza.

12:30PM, I finish up Back to the Future Part II of course. It certainly is a good distraction to contemplate the complexities and paradoxes of time travel.

1:30PM, Back to the Future Part III has started but the kids and I have a mission. We need to move the car from Expert Tire 6 blocks to the Volvo Dealership. When we last left the car at Expert Tire it again was low on power and needed a jump to get started. Also it seems like it was again having a hard time starting. We were confident that we could push the car a flat 6 blocks due to the combined hard core athletic abilities of the 3 of us. I refused to pay $60 to tow it to a place I could almost see from Expert Tire. When we got there, a determined young man was trying to diagnose the car despite telling us they couldn’t do anything about it because no one has Volvo parts. He gave me the codes though and the problem was an Engine Coolant Sensor and the Thermostat. He explained why the car has a proclivity to speed when it doesn’t know the proper temperature. It sounded like Monday morning would be a breeze to just have the Volvo dealership change those out and hit the road. One last jump and remarkably the car started and instead of pushing it to Volvo we drove it there.

2:15PM, We walk back to the Crowne Plaza. One observation about downtown Billings. Besides being dead to the world on Sundays, it has got to be the hobo capital of the state. Perhaps due to the lack of things like cities and such all the Montana hobo’s have to wander downtown Billings. Per Capita it must be a very high homeless rate but it must suck when you options as a homeless person are limited to like 5 cities in the state at best. I pondered whether perhaps those weren’t exploded deer on the highway but just unfortunate hitchhiking hobos. Thankfully we were able to watch the end of Back To the Future Part III and contemplate the settling of the old West and the unlikely ability to make a train version of the flux capacitor.

3:00PM, Started over with Back to the Future Part i

5:00PM, Toy Story 1

7:00PM, Toy Story II

9:00PM, gaaaaack bored. Time for a glass of Schnapps.

10:00PM, took a look at the Billings night scene. It turns out it is not the lights of clubs or Billings night life or casinos but rather the lights of the Oil Refinery. Hmmmm I guess it’s time for bed. Better luck tomorrow.

Day 1 of Summer Vacation

2010-06-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

In the following posts, I will chronicle my vacation one day at a time. Not since 2001 have I had such an adventurous vacation. You can read about it here (A Journey Interrupted) if you choose. I will make sure to try and paint a vivid picture of my experiences and observations. I might even through in a few pictures.

I had a decision to make about my vacation this year. I could go with my wife to Fayette, IA for a week long class she was taking on campus at UIU OR I could accompany my daughter on a vast road trip encompassing Portland, OR/Battle Ground, WA and then San Diego and home again. Comparing all the activities in Fayette, population 12, or a 5000 mile road trip with two of my kids, the choice was clear. Plus it would seem prudent to chaperone my 18 year old and 16 year old on a 5000 mile road trip event of the year.

Day 1

1:30 AM, The alarm sounds and it is time to leave. By leaving at 2:00am we were set on a course of a 27 hour marathon drive rotating between 3 drivers and set to arrive in Portland, OR in the morning one day later. Our route has been pre-determined to take a northerly route on I-94 until hitting I-90 in Montana. The Volvo had been prepared the day before with new tires, an oil check, I fixed the trunk latch so it could actually open, and I pre-loaded the vehicle with our luggage and food.

2:00AM, We depart on time and head west. Our satellite radio was faithfully producing tunes, two iPhones and one Windows Mobile phone approriately were navigating via Google Maps and GPS. Laptop was available to be tethered to my cell phone for complete Internet access when needed. The last thing you want to do when heading out into the vastness of God's incredible creation is to not be properly connected to the internet. My children contentedly sleep.

6:30AM, Our first stop for gas and McMuffins in Hudson, WI just before crossing the Mississippi River into MN. We have killed 1,276,429 bugs with our car. Katie takes the wheel and I ramp up for the sights of MN. I fall asleep before the Mall of America and wake up as Kt exits the highway inside of North Dakota.

9:00AM, It's time for a driver change and Ike takes the wheel. We pull onto the highway but I vow to stay awake a bit more this time as theoretically I'm supposed to be monitoring the young'n as he drives. As we pull back onto the highway an ambulence with lights and sirens comes on behind us and we graciously let it pass us as the custom goes. However here's where I made an alarming discovery about emergency health in North Dakota. If you have an emergency, you may very well die. We followed this Ambulence for 40 miles before it even exited the highway into nowhereville. Even worse is that with the more liberal speed limit in North Dakota is that we had to stay back our 500 feet and slow down so as not to pass the ambulence. I have decided that I could perhaps become a premier Emergency services responder in North Dakota by simply applying my feet to the gas pedal. If I were in that ambulence having a heart attack I swear I'd climb up front and jam that accelerator down. We may as well risk it because I'm likely to die anyway on the 130 mile trip to the hospital...and it's likely that hospital is a veternary hospital.

Finally the ambulence departs the highway and we resume a comfortable North Dakotabahn speed of 85ish. I advise Ike to put a bungee cord on the steering wheel and set the cruise and he could probably nap or read for 3 hours and check in later to see if anything changes. I however want to report to you the awesome beauty of North Dakota. I will illustrate everything here:

Did you catch all that. I believe I covered it all. even if I hadn't fallen asleep again I'm pretty sure I covered everything.

12:00PM, I take over driving again finishing up North Dakota and entering Montana.

12:35PM, See exploded deer on the side of the road.

12:49PM, See exploded deer in the middle of the road.

1:24PM, See exploded deer on the side of the road.

etc

etc

etc

3:30PM, We make a stop at the outlook in Theodore Roosevelt National Park just before the Montana Line. We take some awesome pictures and even see a Bison nearby grazing. How exciting that with 20 miles left in North Dakota there was something to see. We return to the car to depart, but alas, the car has difficulty starting. I turned it over many times and I could hear it starting to lose power. This is not good as the thought of a tow from this location was far worse than the thought of North Dakota emergency services. Also, God had rendered our communications devices moot as we were indeed amongst the 3% of Americans not covered by AT&T at that moment. However after some prayer and very thoughtful staring and goatee stroking at the engine bay it finally started. We will overlook this quirk and return to the Dakotabahn. Kt takes the wheel.

5:30PM, After having fallen asleep again, I woke up to a concerned Kt fretting and pulling over. Oh No! Our car! Nope that was not it at all. This was our opportunity to met the entire State Patrol of Montana. We believe Officer Janus of the Montana State Patrol is perhaps the only officer in Montana, thereby ruining the reputation of the Montanabahn. He apparently did not sympathize with Kt's carefree expression of freedom of driving 87 in a 75mph zone on her 18th birthday. However Officer Wet Blanket, did not lack the communications and technology to swipe in a license, check the license, and print off a receipt for the $40 due immediately for the ticket. I'll assume AT&T was not his communications provider. Despite Kt getting a meaningless speeding ticket on a stretch of highway going nowhere where the only obstacle seems to be exploding deer, I was very envious of his mobile communication and in-car printer. This is very convenient for the speeder who just wants to get on their way. I think a 7 minute traffic stop is commendable as WI police just drag it out for 20 minutes. I attribute this to WI heavy reliance on unions.

7:30PM, We arrive at Billings, MT and decide to stop for a nice dinner at Applebee's to celebrate Kt's 18th Birthday as well as her first speeding ticket (Kt was as celebratory as you'd think). However as we exit the highway the car seems to be displaying a love for the Montanabahn and is keeping its RPM's at 4000 and has a desire to speed up to about 60 on the city streets. The brakes were straining a bit at the intersection from hell where there was an accident and it took 5 minutes to get through as the temperature gauge soared to the red zone. We eventually get through the intersection and into the Applebees lot. I open the hood to the radiator overfow...overflowing....just a bit...not an all out overheat. I'll say the car showed restraint in blowing off steam but I was really not inspired by the list of quirks. I would say that dinner was somewhat muted by the last few minutes and hours events and I was only thinking of what might happen when we return to the car.

8:30PM, We head out to the car. Our sad little puddle of radiator fluid on the ground. Will it start? Will the quirkiness go away? Would simply turning the radio louder make it all go away? It did start. But the high RPM's returned and the temperature gauge started being erratic from the red zone to the cold zone with in 3 miles so we veered back into Billings and stopped at a Conoco to see if there was an auto parts store or I could get a tool or two so I could check for vacuum leaks and such. Please be a loose hose or a replaceable sensor! Alas, Conoco only has a small pliers and It proved worthless. The car refused to start again and again the power was draining. It turns out thee was a Sleep Inn across the street. Thwarted we checked into the motel.

9:00PM, Bonus, This sleep Inn was completely remodeled and had the most amazing bed I've ever slept on. We contemplate taking the mattresses with us but figured strapping mattresses to a car that doesn't start did not seem like smart crime. Another bonus, the clerk at the desk knows a mechanic and vowed to have him call me to perhaps look at the car in the morning. She said he would call me after 11:30PM.

10:30PM, I go to get Ice near the lobby and hear the owner of the hotel, who was on a tour of his properties, yelling and berating the nice helpful clerk for giving too many discounts away and speculating loudly how he is contemplating docking her pay, suspending her, or going to fire her. I'm not sure where his logic was going in explaing his tax bill per year of 1 million dollars and how he gets no bailouts and aid but I had such mixed emotions in sympathy for a low margin business and a western conservative and a clerk who was as far as customer service goes went above and beyond...yet did not give me one of those nice discounts.

11:30PM, The phone rings, silence. No one is there. The clerk is not at the front desk to ask for the number of the mechanic who called but never got transferred and never called back again. Oh well. We will sleep and figure things out in the morning.

Good Night Day 1.

A Post

2010-06-03T09:13:00.000-07:00

Alright here is a post. It'll have to do. I have not been very motivated in the posting department. I have been very busy at work on projects, I have been busy after work coaching and now my own running/biking training. I am getting ready for coaching the HOPE school CC team this fall and we are starting summer running in June. I think getting the CC program at that school restarted will be quite a project.

Katie is graduating this Sunday from Wisconsin Lutheran. That's a big deal. I'm very proud of her academic prowess and dedication to being a great student. Might have wished to spread some of that dedicatoin out a bit amongst all three children but it did seem to get consentrated in Katie. Congratulations Katie.

Katie has some vacations planned this summer. She is looking for jobs in daycare. She is looking at school online at UIU where Karen goes or possibly MATC...or maybe both. She will be staying here though and not moving to California as she is no longer with Phil.

Ike was confirmed at Victory of the Lamb on May 9th and is graduating from 8th grade at St. Marcus this Sunday as well. He will be attending IQ Academy for high school. This is a virtual online high school run out of the Waukesha School District. After some research and contemplating this change, we decided that the online school addressed Ike's learning style in a much better way as well as provides him some flexibility to deal with difficult subjects in a way that removes some of the barriers to classic "brick and mortar" education.

The main things are that he can "rewind" the teacher(online class) whenever he needs to. Multimedia learning is obviously a focus. Assignments and tests are not restricted by time frames...meaning he can take an hour and a half on a math test which is an area where if given enough time he can do well...he just needs twice as much time. The point is to test the knowledge...not whether he can do it in 42 minutes. These kinds of deals and considerations are hard to make at a brick and mortar school...and even harder at Wisco. One more feature is that he has better access to teachers than most students. He can communicate with them with email and the online school portal and ask questions anytime of night or day. The teacher can go online and do demo's and "chalkboard" work from their computer and show him things nearly anytime in the day. Try to track down your teacher in a school to get a question answered. Maybe you can find them in the morning or just before class when the assignment is due. Maybe your study hall hour might allow you to find them. At IQ they are all at his fingertips. No fears of missing the assignment deadline because you couldn't get help. the last big plus is that he has a chance to perhaps catch up a year and graduate a little early. Since he is two years older than most of the kids in his grade this would be nice as socially it is awkward when a 16 year old has peers who just turned 14.

The downside is obviously the time management and staying on top of his work. This will be my job as parental homework gestapo. Thankfully they provide a great portal where I can see all his work as it is submitted as well as get instant feedback on grades. Even though the schools all post grades online it is almost useless because if you want to manage your childs assignments vigorously, you can't, because half the teachers don't enter them regularly nor can I actually see the assignments before and after they were submitted. Now I can. The other downside is that socially doing your high school from home is well...not very social. however the online community of IQ students is very strong. Additionally there is a ski club that ski's every Friday in the skiing season. This was a big plus for Ike. Also Ike spreads his friends around and his good friends go to a variety of schools. So he might adobt Wisco as a place to hang out socially. It wouldn't surprise me if half the people there didn't even know he wasn't a student there.

Ike is pretty excited about the school. We'll see how it goes.

Karen took the test for her FALU designation. The last test of 4 is very tough and only 25% of the people who take it pass it. That held true at NM as of the 5 people who took it, only Karen passed it this year. I'm very proud of her getting through all the FLMI, FALU, PCS, ARA coursework. This is the equivalent to approximately 50 credits of courses at various levels of college work. On top of it she has been attending college. She is now signed up for two classes. One of them she will be taking at UIU in Layfayette, IA for a week in June. The other she is doing in her normal correspondence mode. She has 8 classes left until she graduates. Again I'm very proud.

Zach is still in Jacksonville, NC at the New River base. He came for a surprise visit this Memorial day weekend which was very pleasant. Chrissy is planning their wedding and quite smartly keeping Zach out of it. Their wedding will be in February...yes February in WI. No matter...I love a good party and weddings are good fun. Zach is planning on coming back in July for a week or so over the 4th of July holiday.

So there a post.

Victory Update

2010-05-04T13:07:00.002-07:00

Things at Victory continue to grow and expand. We had an average attendance in April of a 170 people per week. Membership is 157 with 103 communicants. There are 20 people in various stages of Adult Bible Instruction. We have just sent off our call to the Seminary for “Call Day” on May 20th to call a second “Tent Minister”. This will be a part-time pastor that will focus on Church In-reach while Pastor Ben continues his focus on Outreach and Evangelism. This new pastor will focus on member visitation, Bible study, Confirmation, youth ministry oversight and things that help develop the members of the congregation. Since Victory is nearly half made up of new Christians or were non-attending members of other churches, we need to have the ability to strengthen new Christians with Bible study and growing in faith. This will allow each pastor to focus on their strengths.

Additionally since we have been self-supporting for awhile now and have a surplus in our budget and a decent amount of money in the Land fund we have commissioned a group to start following the Franklin Zoning project that is reclassifying the city. They will be looking for potential properties and identifying the hurdles there may be in getting land. This is great but it is not a high priority. Right now we have a space to worship that can accommodate a large number of people. We have found that not having a building has actually been a blessing to us. Also it has been shown that often congregations build too early, with not enough money, and too small of a building and they end up shooting themselves in the foot. We will only build when being in temporary spaces becomes a hindrance to spreading the Gospel.

Victory has got some neat new things going on. The first thing is that our Children’s Ministry Director, Cassie, has revamped the Kids Ministry for ages 10 and under to be super-charged. We now have nearly 40 kids per week for Bible Quest. Not bad considering we started with two kids two years ago. After having been Sunday School superintendent and Sunday school teacher I would have to say that anything I have seen synod-wide pales in comparison. Cassie has really created something to note here. We call the program Bible Quest and I am in the process of developing a separate website for it to highlight all the activities and teaching that is going on. I volunteered for BQ last week and wow! I was impressed with just how energetic and comprehensive it is. The engagement level of the kids is sooo much higher. I was exhausted by the end but it was very rewarding.

The next thing Victory has started is a teen group. Our teens have been steadily growing in number so that we have about 10 of them. We now have some leaders that will be doing the teen group and getting them organized and get the Teen activities and bible study going. They are still working on voting for a name.

Lastly, Ike will be confirmed this Sunday. He represents the first teen confirmation at Victory in terms of the traditional notion of confirmation. There will be several others starting to occur in the next months/year. Victory has been working in two ways with confirmation. Either they can take it at one of the neighboring congregations with the “public school” kids in whatever way those congregations run that, or we have been currently having parents catechize their own children with pastoral oversight (soon to be the role of the new pastor). This has been a great thing I believe. I think it helps parents and children learn about their confession of faith and the Lutheran doctrines. So Confirmations with the little white robes that happen every May are probably a thing of the past here. I think it will be very age independent and depend on the timing and thoroughness of the training of each teenager involved.

Runnin' Around

2010-05-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

I currently have been coaching Track at St. Marcus. I run 3 morning running sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6:45am – 7:30am and regular practice Tuesdays and Thursdays. As I have found to be the case after Cross Country season last fall that I start out with a large group and it whittles down to just a smaller more dedicated group of runners. This Thursday is the first meet. Next week there are 2 meets. There is a 4th meet the next week after that. I think this year St. Marcus will have some stand out runners for Track.

Through a connection at St. Marcus, I was recommended to be the Cross Country Coach at Hope High School (part of Hope Christian Schools…an independent WELS Lutheran school system…different in that it serves inner city kids and has no specific federation of churches supporting it. It is mostly supported with fundraising, vouchers, and grants. It originally started as a clone of the St. Marcus system when the principal of St. Marcus left to found the first Hope Christian School)

So this summer we will begin summer running and try to recruit, recruit, recruit. They have only had CC for two years now and the teams have languished from lack of a dedicated program and coaching. So currently I am working on the CC handbook and website. There will be some meetings in May to find out who is interested. I will also go to the two Hope Christian Grade Schools to talk to 8th graders and find some interest. Vouchers and Open Enrollment make things more interesting as that has so much more to do with where kids go to school than anything else. The incoming freshman class next year will be from all over and there may be a lot more late-arrival students showing up than I’d prefer in August. The more runners who work over the summer the better.

In any case, I have found 5 student leaders who are interested in helping make the program “run”. This should be an interesting year. As one student asked “where are we going to run for practice…because it’s pretty Ghetto around here and last year, Alissa (another student present) got beat up?” So there are just a few more things to think about in inner city Cross Country than in your typical school. Running routes free of gunfire and beatings are two of those things. However even though my own ability to run is constantly threatened by fragile tendons and worn out cartilage, the thing that attracts me to these schools for CC is that this sport is so under-represented from the inner city. But holy cow have I found so many students who are naturally great athletes and are born to run. They just need to be shown what they can do. Once they see the talent within themselves I see state level competitors all around me. Diamonds in the rough if you will. I’m pretty excited.

I plan to still coach the St. Marcus CC team because we have morning practices there and they wouldn't conflict much except potentially meets I would need another coach to get the gradeschoolers to the meets. However I was wondering if I could combine the two Hope grade Schools and the SM program to make one inner city CC team for the Lutheran Grade Schools. I call this a real feeder program. Perhaps that’s a pipe dream. I would need another coach and assistant and then to figure out how these three schools could practice as one…or run separate practices and combine as one at meets. Ahhh things to think about and discuss with people. It is clear that I need to buy myself a bus. I want a Partridge Family bus. OMG I would love to see the faces on the suburban Lutheran schools when a Partridge family bus shows up with a team called the Ghetto Runners or something similar.

Live from Mayberry!

2010-04-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a quick vacation to North Carolina(On the way there, we pass Mt. Pilot on the Andy Griffith Highway). We went down there to visit Zach in his new permanent duty station. We, however, got a suite at Ocean Isle Beach which is a bit south of his base in Jacksonville and about 40 miles north of Myrtle Beach, SC. It was a very relaxing location, perfect weather, and beautiful views. We brought Chrissy, Zach’s girlfriend, with us for a visit with Zach as well. We basically just hung out on the beach or in the hot tub.

Saturday we ventured to Orton Plantation near Wilmington, NC. It has 20 acres of beautiful gardens to walk through and truly was a stunning place. It also presented a beautiful backdrop for Zach to propose to Chrissy. Which he did and she accepted. That night we went to a restaurant called “The Isles” which is a stretch down the beach from our hotel. It was a good celebration of the day’s activities despite the waiters refusal to serve champagne to all the “youngsters” for a celebratory toast. North Carolina does not have family exception laws like 31 other states. We finished off the night playing Apples to Apples for hours.

Sunday we headed to Myrtle Beach to attend church at Amazing Grace Lutheran Church which I already recounted below. After church we ate at a Cracker Barrel. Well I’ve never seen a Cracker Barrel so busy as Easter lunch in South Carolina. After that we went back to the hotel and spent time on the beach and in the hot tub again.

Monday we left for home but stopped in Jacksonville to take a look at Zach’s barracks and base. My best impression was that it was “industrial” It did not have the resort feel of the Navy base in Pensacola. I guess the Marines like things a bit more Spartan and practical. We left from the base and headed home and stopped overnight in Beckley, WV. It was bustling because of the Mine disaster there. We finished up our trip on Tuesday. We came home to a house that needed serious cat box cleaning and to throw out some potatoes that were rotting. I must say that I really wished that vacation was longer. I had a good time and despite the 2500 miles of driving I found it all very relaxing.

Katie left for San Diego last Thursday, the same day we left. She gets back on Saturday. She is enjoying her visit with Phil. Of course in the smallness of the WELS she met someone from her school at Beautiful Saviour in Carlsbad, CA on Easter. When she returns, I feel all we will hear about her plans for moving in June. It will be a long two months. I will just focus on coaching track at St. Marcus, planning Ike’s confirmation in May and Katie’s graduation in June. After June…I guess it will be boring. I can take that.

Easter Update

2010-04-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

Another Easter has come and gone. Lent and Easter truly are my most treasured part of the church year. I must admit that this Lent and Easter were terrific. Our series of worship for Lent and the great Lenten hymns really touched my heart. Whereas I am sad that I missed Easter service at Victory, I’m glad I was able to worship with another growing mission, Amazing Grace, in Myrtle Beach, SC. Amazing Grace worships in a store in a strip mall but hosted their Easter service in the nearby elementary school to accommodate larger crowds. They are just about to break ground for a new building. It was nice to hear the recorded music of Sarah Kuerth the wife of

Pastor Ben from Victory as she is so musically gifted. I also got to have my most favorite Easter hymns. It was funny to hear a good Wisconsin type accent in the middle of the south from Pastor Ben Zahn.

I saw the attendance numbers for Victory for the Easter service and we hit a new record with 222. We had a forum on Saturday and again next week to discuss Victory’s decision to call a 2nd pastor. So far that process has gone well. We also have a Shepherd’s Team which constitutes our elders. I am one of them. We are working on 3 things. The calling of a 2nd pastor, working within Franklin’s new master zoning plan to find pieces of land that we can purchase, and further developing our children’s ministries. Victory has been blessed with abundance. We have an abundance of children and we have needed to rent more theaters for the new Teen group and the burgeoning Bible Quest group. We have been blessed in our attendance that keeps going up every single month. We have been blessed in offerings in that our building fund and general fund are both growing significantly to the point of going past self-supporting to having a surplus that allows us to expand our mission outreach. This is certainly an exciting time at Victory.

Constitutional Thoughts

2010-03-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

With the vote on health care complete there are so many things I have been contemplating about the specifics of the bill that was passed. Today the brain trust at the lunch table had a healthy discussion on the topic on such things. However for me the problem is not so much the bill (as destructive, expensive, and foolish as it is) as to what it means in America that we would vote for a bill such as this. This vote is a major step away from the Contstitution. The very Constitution formed to prevent a move toward total government. A constitution that was meant to avoid the problems of the European form of democracy that allowed too much control from aristocracy and monarchy. In a move completely foreign at the time, the founders transformed government to be the people endowing rights to the government instead of the government endowing rights to the people. It was a government that had a Bill of Rights that addressed only rights given by God to an individual. There are not items in the Bill of Rights that endow individuals with rights assigned to them by the government or that require collective sacrifice by all of society to grant to all people like Jobs, Housing, and Medical care. The government is conferring "rights" on the people and are not doing it through the Constitution.

Everytime I read the founder's writing I find nothing but gold. No founder could even recognize our government in its current state. Until such time as this country votes to ditch our Constitution and adopt some western European type mish mosh...this is the Constitution I want upheld in the land. You may note a famous quote contained within this letter from Benjamin Franklin to the last session of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. I have highlighted what I think are the most relevant passages.

Mr. President

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said "I don't know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that's always in the right — Il n'y a que moi qui a toujours raison."

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administred.

On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

~Benjamin Franklin

So alas the war continues for the virtue of the Constitution and the battles that lay ahead will determine its fate.

Victory is Growing

2010-03-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Tonight the "Elders" of Victory met. We were meeting to discuss the calling of a second pastor for our church. Attendance has been growing and growing. Last Sunday we had 209 in worship. Our averages are about 170 a week now with 30-40 kids in Bible Quest. Additionally our church has been self-supporting for a little bit now and has been growing a surplus in the general fund. We are putting together a request to call a second pastor from the seminary to be a "Tent Minister" for Victory in charge of church in-reach and nurturing while Pastor Ben continues with a focus on worship and evangelism. Additionally we hired a children's ministry director last July and we will again have our Summer ministry assistant.

God has truly blessed this mission as we reach a new milestone. Where we can extend our ministry even further we will praise God. It would be our hope to convert the pastor from a tent minister to a full time pastor within two years. With nearly 20 seminary grads not likely to receive calls, this is a great way to allow a new pastor to stay in the ministry and get started even if they may have to work an additional job while they ministering.

I am excited about these new opportunities.

Over Parenting Strikes Again

2010-03-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

Last night was a yet another tribute to the downfall of over-parenting. Around 9:00 we heard a knock at the door. Since no one ever visits us this would be strange and those that do visit us would never knock. When I answered the door it was a blast from the past. I didn't recognize him at first because of his short haircut and glasses but it was indeed Ike's long lost friend Nick. He had run away from his house and was looking for a place to stay.

A little history on Nick. He has been Ike's friend for awhile back from St. Paul's, Muskego. He has had a number of problems in school with learning disabilitites and ADD and things like that. He can be a follower at times and could easily be swayed into minor mischief and trouble making that I would mostly classify under "boys will be boys.." by other friends of his. When he was at our house he mostly was himself though which really was a decent and quirky. Whatever trouble he might be willing to engage in with other friends he kept in check at our house.

About this time last year Nick would bike to our house more and more frequently as he tried to avoid being home when his parents frequently yelled at him and the viscious circle began. When it was getting so common and he was leaving without permission they finally yanked him from 2/3rds of the way through Freshman year and sent him to a school for troubled kids in FL. He has been there for a year and Ike had no contact with him but his parents brought him home a couple months ago because they were not seeing the results they wanted. He has been home for two months and on Tuesday will be going to Rawhide Ranch. He hasn't been allowed to contact his old friends and has been very isolated. Last night represented the first time Ike has talked to him in a year.

So Nick was on my doorstep seeking refuge which of course we gave him. He had left after another fight with his Mom. I did make him call his parents so they knew where he was but his Mom hung up on him and said maybe she'd see him when she was a good enough parent.

So what is the issue? It's hard to say and I only have Nick's side of things. From what I can tell, it would appear that his parents both came from very strict households and lived very obedient and problem free lives growing up. His grandparents were authoritarian and conversely his parents are authoritarian. Whereas Nick has issues with his anger management it would appear he has indeed learned some methods to diffuse his anger. He was very articulate last night on all the steps he was taking to not blow up or over-react and to behave at home which according to him he has done up to this point. However I think the contention still is that his parents will keep shipping him off to special schools until he is obedient AND happy about it. Whereas he has been learning to deal with anger his parents want it gone. The issue last night started over his mother not allowing him to go outside with his sister. That part was fine but then she yelled even more when they both went off and grumbled about it (if I could have a dollar for every mumble mumble mumble ..SLAM!!) That is what prompted Nick to run away. Nick says his sister who is the oldest child when he is away at school is now also being increasingly yelled at.

Now I know this is all the side of the wounded 16 year old and I'm sure there is plenty that could be worked out as to Nick behaving a bit better and his parents easing up a bit more but until this cycle is broken I see Nick getting pushed farther away. He actually sounded encouraged about Rawhide because it has mandatory family counseling involved. He thinks that will be interesting if his parents have to step a bit towards his direction and participate in counseling. In many respects Nick seems a lot more mature despite all his shennanigans at the school in Florida (frequent leaving of campus unauthorized and running away). Unfortunately I think the past year has made Nick more at risk than when he left a year ago. Shipping him off was the wrong prescription then and it probably is now.

This morning at 6:15 while getting ready for work there was a strong knock at the door. I had hair gel in my hands and was only in boxers but at 6:15 am I don't care. I answered the door to Nick's father who came to collect him. His face was like ice and he barely spoke to me. I'm sure he was resentful that the first place Nick runs has always been our house even after banning him. He also had a certain look of pain like he can't reconcile what is all going on. I wish I could share with him the things Nick has said and have him really listen but he is not ready to listen yet. Certainly not to me. It is a situation that I will pray about. As Nick was walking out of the house all he said was "I can't wait until I am 18 and can leave..."

They're BACK!!!

2010-03-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Spring has sprung and our Skunk is back. Although the actions of the Milwaukee Animal Control office was significantly helpful in curtailing Squirrel Man from putting out his infernal corn and veggies and every other pest attraction he had, it would appear that the skunk enjoyed her cushy hole under my garage so much last year that she returned for another season. Alas…not last year’s hole but a new hole closer to the sidewalk. That way she can spray us without having to leave the comfort of her hole.

I cannot tell you how happy I was this winter that the flock of birds that would fly from tree to tree around Squirrel Man’s yard waiting for bird feed and such disappeared. Our cars in previous winters were targets of unrelenting and targeted bird bombings that delivered more ammunition on our cars than a drive-by on the north side. The amount of corn buried in our yard and growing corn stalks this year was minimal to none because the squirrels dwindled down to typical city levels after their gluttonous corn fest ended. Our fence remains standing because they didn’t eat my fence all winter. Why even the snow in the back yard remained pristine and untouched all winter without a super-highway of squirrel and bunny tracks.

This is why all yards should be Astroturf like the Brady’s yard. My skunk garden should just be paved over and install artificial flowers. This is the way nature was intended for the city. Prepare for death this season Pepe. Yeah…LeDead….mort..fin.

On Contemporary Lutheranism

2010-02-26T10:20:00.000-08:00

In terms of contemporary Lutheranism there is nothing new out there to speak too. I am still working on my installment on Worship. It is taking longer because I am researching more on it all. As to the Ichabodians and various crusaders I have not seen anything new. Pretty much the same slander, same doctrinal errors, same blather. I’m sure if I kept a good cut and paste library of responses it could suffice for anything “new” from that crowd. So unless the confessional "kittehs" cough up a hairball they do tend to bore me.

On Politics

2010-02-26T10:19:00.000-08:00

Politically I have been following many things. Oh the cheer that went up when Scott Brown was elected. Although I think there are so many dangers out on the table, I’m willing to settle for stalemates and government inaction if it prevents the introduction of the numerous disasters under consideration. There is much to unravel in the issues of Health Care, the environment, the economy, and foreign affairs. It is also clear why I am disgusted with government. I believe in the Constitution and the original intent of the form of government it intended to create. It is sad to see the US abandon those principles for those of Europe. To lose our ambition, our freedom, our faith in God, our self-reliance and personal responsibility. America is making the government their god and they want this god to provide them blessings and benefits by selflessly sacrificing the money of other people. We have invented a lot of new things we “deserve” or that we have a “right” to. Somehow wealthy people have an “obligation” to provide a lot of the cash for this and I don’t believe the obligations being discussed are derived from Christian love in appreciation and gratitude for the grace afforded us by Christ’s forgiveness of our sins.

I definitely have refined my positions a lot lately. I am definitely conservative. Until Republicans will stand up and repudiate their past deviations from what it means to be conservative I will have a hard time identifying with them. Certainly there are some good conservative ones out there. Perhaps I will change my mind when the republicans stand up confess their sins of spinelessness, spending almost as much as their progressive cousins across the aisle, and will have the guts to unwaveringly promote a true constitutional and conservative agenda.

Having said all that regarding the wonderland of idealism, when it gets to matters of practical politics I have been examining Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America. I hope he can bring that plan up over and over again. The fact that there are so many Republican and Democrat professional politicians that don’t like it means it must be a great start. I think I can see why. There are enough privatizations and market based solutions in there to drive progressives nutty. Yet it still considers and acknowledges that the progressive items that have been introduced in the last 97 years are here to stay so we will need to make them work. That is probably what angers some conservatives. I urge you to read it even if you’re a stinkin’ progressive. You may be surprised at how far this plan reaches across political boundaries.

http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/plan/

However we don’t have time for idealism. We need to do something because we are going broke. You can be idealistic as you want but if we can’t afford it we can’t afford it and you had better bring your plan for actually paying for it and it had better work because there is no more room for failure. That plan can’t actually be mythological as almost all “payment plans” touted out there have been. I mean idealistically I think it would be cool if in addition to healthcare we had pet healthcare provided by the government because it was a tragedy that I had to pay $1300 for my cat’s operation last fall. No family should have to be hurt financially because their cute fuzzy little kitty needed emergency medical care. (queue the “Awwwww’s) We should do this for the kitty’s…and the babies, and old people I mean c’mon don’t you have a heart? What do you mean there is no money for Pet healthcare? But he is so cute and carries beanie babies in his mouth like a mother cat and likes to sit on my head, and how can you resist when he rolls over so you can pet his belly? There is no money for this? You heartless bastards. Just print more money and tax rich people. (for ichabodians…this was sarcasm….yeah I didn’t think you’d get it)

I am in a project at the moment where my deliverables account for $1,000,000 of budget. Clients always want to add things in that will increase cost. I have to go to them and say two things. Either give me more money or tell me what else we can cut out to fit this in (Any good software person will know that testing is the first to go ;-) ) So show me the politicians that will actually do this. Show me the ones who will say in hard times, “Screw the 1,000,000 let’s take that back to 600,000 and suck it up.” I’m willing to take the pain. Are you? I’m pretty sure they could trim a good 750,000 union jobs from the government and operate at the same level just by the remaining 1.2 million workers working to the same capacity that normal people have to work at in their private sector jobs. I apologize to my union worker and my union/government worker readers but as a life member Teamster (yes I throw up a little in my mouth every time I say that) and former teacher and municipal worker, It is hard to see anything different.

There might be a little firestorm this year particularly as middle class America prepares their taxes. My list of people with tax surprises this year is growing. People who have never paid in or some that have never had to fork over quite so much. Funny how none of us make over $250K either. I fear that may not be enough. I think a good ol’ crisis like a default on our debt or a lowering of the US credit rating will do the trick though for the wake-up call this country needs. Not sure if I should actually hope for that though.

A Road Trip Adventure

2010-02-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend I had a little road trip adventure. I did a round trip drive to North Carolina to drop off Zach and Ricky’s girlfriends for their long-planned Valentine’s day weekend. I got a call from Delta Airlines at 5:45pm or so notifying me that their flights had been cancelled for early Friday morning and rescheduled for a very late flight on Saturday with 3 legs to the trip. As this shortened the weekend severely and would cost a fortune in lost deposits this was not a good solution. When I went online to find other flights it was bizarre because there were no flights to Atlanta to be found. The issue with the cancellations was that a big storm was coming through the south and Atlanta was shutting down in preparation. Without getting tickets on another airline there was no way to get a Delta flight to anywhere close to NC using a different hub.

So I made a snap decision to drive the girls down based on the money the boys would lose if the girls didn’t arrive, and the emotional factor of this long-awaited weekend that is exceedingly romantic for the young. We decided to make this a road trip at 7:00pm and by 10:00pm we were on the road. The girls had to rush their packing jobs because of the accelerated timeline of leaving. They did manage to limit their baggage to the 90lb per bag limit…good lord the amount of stuff girls can pack for a weekend.

I had decided on a route that took me down to Nashville and straight over to NC. I thought avoiding the route through West Virginia would be safe because of the storms in the Mid-Atlantic night have made WV hard to get through, so I chose this southern route. I should have checked to see that this route was 112 miles longer than the Indiana, Ohio, WV to NC route. Then we encountered a 75 mile detour around the Smoky mountains. So it took us 19.75 hours to get there and you could feel those last extra 2 hours too. It was a pretty uneventful drive and satellite XM radio was a big success for travelling. Kt was my co-pilot and she drove the nasty night hours and covered half the driving both ways. I couldn’t have done it without her.

We got there at 5:45pm Central time. I took the group to Flounder’s Steak and Seafood in New Bern, NC for dinner and we had a good dinner. After re-fueling and saying goodbyes after our quick 2 hour visit Kt and I hit the road at 8:00pm this time to take the shorter more northerly route. Just as we got in the car some snowflakes began to fall. It was so quaint that we had just driven 1288 miles from WI to the south and there was snow beginning to fall. It did start falling harder and I drove very very fast to get north of the storm. By the time I got to Raleigh it was starting to slush up on the roads. We saw several cars spinning out around us….some of them very very close to us. It would appear that North Carolinians do not have a great grasp of the power of slush lines and their ability to turn your car around. Although we were slowed down for quite a ways until we got in that skinny part of Virginia before the roads were clear, we also were able to go a good Wisconsin speed on the bad roads.

Kt took over driving just after Winston-Salem and drove the nice “rolling hills” all the way through northern NC, the Virginia Panhandle, and West Virgina up to Zainesville, OH. I slept very soundly. I finished up the last 7-8 hours and it was smooth sailing all the way home. We got back to WI on the short route at 2:15pm which was only 1100 miles in 18.25 hours including our 200 miles of slow snow going. I’m very thankful Kt came along as I definitely don’t have the same endurance for these kinds of excursions. Well I can handle one way but returning 2 hours later is the tough part. I really wanted to be back in WI a bit earlier on Saturday so I could’ve made Karen’s father and brother’s birthday party. However I did learn the best route now for future travels to North Carolina.

I would have to say that the western part of North Carolina is very beautiful. As we got to the flat lands leading up to New Bern it did get very white trashy and cliché southern stereotypish. I can see why Zach does not appreciate his surroundings as much as he might if he were out by Asheville or Winston-Salem.

That was my exciting road trip weekend. 40 hours of travel, 2400 miles, 4 happy kids, priceless.

Quick Zach Update

2010-02-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

Zach got his orders today. His Permanent Duty Station (PDS) will be MCAS New River, NC. This is just outside of Jacksonville, NC. NC was not his first choice...I think due to the climate and hickishness of the area. However it seems to be a decent command to work under. He will be in the:

Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 26

Marine Aircraft Group 26
2d Marine Aircraft Wing

Website for his command
http://www.2maw.usmc.mil/MAG26/MALS26/default.asp

Website for the base
http://www.newriver.usmc.mil/index.htm

The best part of it though is that he gets to be in the same unit as his best friend Ricky who he joined the Marines with in the first place. I'm sure they will be happy to be together as well as their girlfriends can travel together from Muskego to visit them there.

Tax Shelter Recommendations Accepted

2010-02-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

Last night my wife did our taxes. It was not a good night to be around the house. When she got to the final number we were both quite shocked. Last year we received about a $200 refund. That’s pretty darn close to perfect planning as you can get. So needless to say when we figured out that we would need to pay $4000 this year, it was a bit of a shock. Even accounting for changes in the fact that dependents are leaving the house and their tax credits with them that only accounts for a part of that tax increase. The interesting thing of course is that we take zero exemptions and that is still short by 20% of the total tax money needed. Also as a big "F@(% you very much from the government" we will probably have a penalty for being more than 10% off on our tax withholding. If we itemize we get screwed by the AMT. Now I know there are things I can and will need to do more of. We will up our 401K contributions and probably have additional money withheld for taxes.

Here is the point America. It’s our bad we got caught on taxes this year. Obama and Congress haven’t done anything last year that changed the tax code (except that $800 less that was withheld from our paychecks as a stimulus to us…except married filing jointly you can only allow $600…so there is $200 of that $4000….thank you ever so much for that stimulus Mr. Obama) However if you can in any way think that the government can continue to spend as it is trying to do without this scenario happening to more and more of middle class America, you are a naïve, incompetent fool. Or at a minimum if you feel like paying it, go ahead and pay my share too. If you believed that those under $250,000 weren’t going to pay more taxes? Tell that to my 22% tax increase.

As if I wasn’t inspired enough to protest, campaign and crusade against our ever decreasing freedoms, I now have the perfect example of how the middle class will be the people most screwed by the socialist agenda being pushed. Keep a watchful eye this year my good friends. Watch the anger boil up when those who had good jobs last year but are laid off now and get their tax bill. See the new level of activism when those who took emergency measures to survive a rough economy and they reduced 401K contributions and cashed in IRA’s and they get screwed this tax season. I hope to high heaven the anger boils over this year at election time. You can count on me to remind you every so often as well.

Family Update

2010-01-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

It has been awhile since I did a family update. We had a much better holiday season this year. It helped that this year we did not come back from San Diego to find our house robbed as we did last year.

Zach came home this Christmas from his base in Cherry Point, NC for two weeks. Although I think he only stayed at our house for a couple of those nights. We enjoyed our time with him. Zach is back with his former girlfriend. They were always good friends and continued talking a lot. They have been broken up for awhile but everyone knew that they would get back together. I’ll have to check to see who won the pool on how long it would be before they got back together.

Zach is back in Cherry Point though and will be there until the very end of March. After this training class is finished he will head off to a Permanent Duty Station somewhere. My vote is for Hawaii. I think that would be a great place to visit him. He also just got 5 wisdom teeth removed. Apparently he was lucky enough to have an extra one to dig out..

Zach did have a bit of a boo boo with my Jetta and it was totaled. No one was hurt or anything. However, I did have to find a new car. I did find a great car from a guy here at NML. It is a Volvo S40. It came with a portable XM satellite radio of which I am now in love with. It looks like an iPod with an antenna and I can click it into the car or into my sound system in the basement. I like that you can load MP3’s on it as well to have this all in one portable device with 170 channels of material.

Kt is ready to be done with school. She has begun her final semester of high school. She is planning and getting ready for college at Miracosta College in Oceanside California. They have a program that directly transfers its students into UCSD or Cal State. She already has a place to stay with friends in a house and can transfer her job at JCPenney to one of two places out there. I know it sounds crazy but the total cost of her living out there and tuition is cheaper than living at home and going to UW-Milwaukee. The reason for this phenomenon also goes a ways in explaining why California is bankrupt. California subsidizes the tuition at state schools to a crazy, crazy degree. Even non-resident tuition is cheaper than resident tuition here. Of course if only cost were the reason she was going to school out there, we all know that is not the reason. Boy’s speak louder than money. Expect Kt to beat a hasty retreat from WI this June so she can work out there for the summer and be near the boy at Camp Pendleton.

Ike is hitting his stride in school. Vastly improved in his organization and attention to the work that is due. His GPA steadily creeps upward and even in the classes he struggles the most in he is getting progressively better. He is also much more interactive and social with his classmates after last year not being very integrated into his new school. He visits his friends in Cedarburg a lot on the weekends. Other than hanging out in the basement Ike doesn't do a whole lot more these days...at least until track starts.

Karen just got back last week from a week in Jamaica attending her cousin's wedding with a host of other family members. The kids and I stayed behind. They had a lot of rain while they were there but Karen said she had an incredible amount of fun and wants to go again...this time with less rain.

I think that's the most of it for now.

Brit, Tiger, Buddah and Christianity in the Media

2010-01-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

Although Ann’s Christian perspective has an Armenian decision theology edge to it, this was a great article. It's a shame these kinds of public defenses are so rare

IF YOU CAN FIND A BETTER DEAL, TAKE IT!
January 6, 2010

Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.

On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:

"The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Hume's words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals' copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: "How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words." John 8:43.)

In The Washington Post, Tom Shales demanded that Hume apologize, saying he had "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

Is Buddhism about forgiveness? Because, if so, Buddhists had better start demanding corrections from every book, magazine article and blog posting ever written on the subject, which claims Buddhists don't believe in God, but try to become their own gods.

I can't imagine that anyone thinks Tiger's problem was that he didn't sufficiently think of himself as a god, especially after that final putt in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year.

In light of Shales' warning Hume about "what people are saying" about him, I hope Hume's a Christian, but that's not apparent from his inarguable description of Christianity. Of course, given the reaction to his remarks, apparently one has to be a regular New Testament scholar to have so much as a passing familiarity with the basic concept of Christianity.

On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the "separation of church and television" (a phrase that also doesn't appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity "out-of-the-blue" on "a political talk show."

Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!

What religion -- what topic -- induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)

Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage's indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity "offers the best deal -- it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can't."

In fact, that's exactly what Christianity does. It's the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and "radical sex advice columnist faggot" like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)

God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you're in. Your sins are washed away from you -- sins even worse than adultery! -- because of the cross.

"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:14.

Surely you remember the cross, liberals -- the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?

Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.

In the no-frills, economy-class version, you don't need a church, a teacher, candles, incense, special food or clothing; you don't need to pass a test or prove yourself in any way. All you'll need is a Bible (in order to grasp the amazing deal you're getting) and probably a water baptism, though even that's disputed.

You can be washing the dishes or walking your dog or just sitting there minding your business hating Susan Sarandon and accept that God sent his only son to die for your sins and rise from the dead ... and you're in!

"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9.

If you do that, every rotten, sinful thing you've ever done is gone from you. You're every bit as much a Christian as the pope or Billy Graham.

No fine print, no "your mileage may vary," no blackout dates. God ought to do a TV spot: "I'm God Almighty, and if you can find a better deal than the one I'm offering, take it."

The Gospel makes this point approximately 1,000 times. Here are a few examples at random:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23.

In a boiling rage, liberals constantly accuse Christians of being "judgmental." No, we're relieved.

Christianity is also the hardest religion in the world because, if you believe Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, you have no choice but to give your life entirely over to Him. No more sexual promiscuity, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no killing inconvenient old people or unborn babies -- no doing what all the other kids do.

And no more caring what the world thinks of you -- because, as Jesus warned in a prophecy constantly fulfilled by liberals: The world will hate you.

With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don't deserve it. It's the best deal in the universe.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

God's Sense of Humor

2010-01-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

I saw this picture and it amused me. :-D At least he wasn't ROFL.

Installment #2: A Contemporary Lutheran Mission Primer

2010-01-12T14:43:00.000-08:00

With Victory now started and a small group of worshippers, which was composed of about 15 core members and 15-20 un-churched/under-churched people, we began a journey filled with adventure at the Polonia. We’ll have stories for a long time such as the time the septic tank overflowed and froze into a sewage pond in the parking lot. The time the furnace went out when it was 10 degrees outside but those who came used blankets to stay warm as the space heaters we tried blew the circuits. The occasional phone calls that would come in during a service on the Polonia phone. The fact that our church had a full length bar with an admirable array of Polish vodkas. There was the time after some big flooding where the Polonia had lost power and we held our service under the picnic shelter and sang hymns acapella as more storms gathered. Our summer assistants had all their belongings flooded in the basement they were staying in and one of them had a car nearly submerged in the flooding. The weekly event of cleaning up beer bottles, cigarette butts from the party the night before and walking into the Polonia to that distinct smell of liquor, burritos, and vomit that may still be in the bathroom to clean up. My son Ike became the Sunday morning janitor and Coffee barista as the band set up and practiced. He could vacuum the joint, mop the floors, pick up the trash and set up the welcome table in no time. He could also dance about the place with air freshener on a regular basis. The point is that the flexibility learned here at the beginning is key to developing an attitude that reiterates that God is in control and he will direct all things.

As amusing as the stories of the first 2.5 years at the Polonia may be, what was most important was that this congregation took to its mission and started spreading the Word to the community. From the beginning, we began with the idea that this church would serve to reach the un-churched. That members at this church would be focused on reaching out to the community. That whatever your past experiences may be, that this church will not exist to make you feel all cozy and doted upon. There is an expectation that you would participate in the mission and be active in the church ministry. There is an assumption that perhaps our worship services are not exactly as you might prefer. That maybe the programs we run are not your favorite. However these things are things we have decided will help us in our mission and we would ask that you support it to reach the lost. This has definitely steered a number of curious WELS onlookers away.

The people that have come into this mission have been extremely faithful. Volunteers abound and the numbers of people who will show up to make something happen has been great. In the area of music, we have developed from two original musicians to having an array of 10 or so band members that alternate through. They put in a lot of hours in practice, setup, takedown, and planning. In Technology we have grown from just myself running audio and video to having a multi-media team and a few sound engineers. I am hardly even involved in these activities anymore. There are teams of people to run the café and to be greeters. There is a team to help with the children’s ministry. All of these things started with one or two dedicated people and have grown to be larger groups.

A mission to reach the un-churched needed to get its name known. We launched large mailing and advertising campaigns. We created a movie theater advertisement that we change up each year. We have done nearly 25 bulk mail campaigns in 3 years. Put out 1000’s of door hangers with canvassing crews. We have been in the Franklin 4th of July parade 3 years now and have handed out nearly 6000 pieces of literature at that. We have had some good signage right on Hwy 36 as well. At this point, many people in southwest Franklin know who we are and where we worship. Additionally our outreach events have attracted attention. We have gotten 200 people each year from the community for our Hallepalooza music in the park event. We have gotten 75 kids a year in our VBS Soccer Camp. We have gotten hundreds of kids between our Easter for Kids and Christmas for Kids events that we hold at the public Library. We have even drawn some praise for the quality of the events themselves and our involvement in the community from secular sources. This obviously is NOT the point. There are two points for all this activity. Number one, to let the community know we are here and number two, to create as many contact opportunities with the unchurched in the community. All these activities only serve as outreach activities. However that leads to the most important activity of all and that is Evangelism activity.

For many of our events we make a serious effort to have strong evangelism focused members available to talk to those visitors to our events. At the soccer camp, there are people to sit down with un-churched folk and ask questions and help spread the Word with evangelism. The Christmas for Kids and Easter for Kids are specifically designed to tell the true story of Christmas and Easter so the Word is proclaimed there to children. So many opportunities to evangelize start by just planting little seeds. Hopefully those seeds grow and we can encourage those new prospects to further explore God’s Word by studying in Adult Bible classes. So far this outreach to evangelism approach has been successful.

What we have seen has been remarkable at times. Over half our members have come from WELS and the other half from un-churched. Often times it is the new Christians who are the ones to immediately tell their friends and neighbors and bring them to church and to events so that they too can learn about Jesus. Of the many churches I have visited in the WELS, I have not really seen one that approached its ministry in this way. Now that I have seen how a church that is serious about reaching the un-churched functions, it would be very difficult to go to a church where congregational effort is low. I think mostly of my old church in NH that was very much averse to getting into the community. It has been there for 35 years and I bet that 75% of the people in a 1 mile radius do not even know it is there.

In the next installment I’ll talk about worship. After that, finances.

Yes Virginia, There is a Church in Franklin

2010-01-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

It would seem I wasn’t clear in my first installment as within hours, what I had said in the previous post was misunderstood. It was a comment in a weird random location and not very relevant to the topic but it was there nonetheless. However, I will try to clear that up.

“FeltNeeds over on his blog says that Victory of the Lamb was formed to serve the "unchurched" people of Franklin.

http://www.stpaulsfranklin.org/

He seems to have forgotten that church.

He also forgets the 18 other churches within 10 miles that the WELS Church locator finds. Franklin to Muskego, New Berlin, Oak Creek or Southern Milwaukee is a wonderful drive taking about 30minutes on a worst case scenario.”

I did not forget about St. Paul’s Franklin. They were one of the congregations that was going to help fund this mission and they did give some donations. One would have to really consider if they think one church for a city of 30,000 is all that is needed to serve the needs of that community. If that were the case, Milwaukee would only have 20 churches to serve that community…alas it has nearly 50. Additionally, you’d have to wonder why the one church in a city that is expanding and growing at such an aggressive rate was not matching that growth rate if for nothing else than just tracking along with the population with transfers. If that is too subtle for you, I will just say it outright. It is laughable if you think St. Paul’s, Franklin was adequately reaching all the un-churched of Franklin. I’d love to hear how many new residents of southwest Franklin even knew about this church on the north side. I’d also love to hear St. Paul, Franklin’s ministry plan for the un-churched and how that’s been working out for them. (of course it was very ironic when an un-churched person visited our church who lived in the subdivision abutting St. Paul’s Franklin. We mentioned she lived within blocks of that church ..and she didn’t even know anything about it except that it was obviously there.)

Victory was very strategically placed to fill a gaping hole where the nearest WELS church was 4 miles or more away in most any direction. To the southwest, Living Water is 7 miles away on the same highway. Ironically Living Water (a 3rd the size of St. Paul’s Franklin) has been a huge supporter and donator to Victory.

See, the point was not that there are 18 churches within 10 miles. The point is that un-churched will rarely drive more than 3 miles away from their house to go to a church. There could be 100 churches within 10 miles, but if there is not a church within 3 miles then you can expect very little un-churched from the community to find or even bother trying your church. I’d love to examine any congregation and ask them how much impact they have on the un-churched outside a sphere of influence of 3 miles. See a church is part of a community. It is not safe to say that a city in and of itself is a community. Northeast Franklin and eastern Franklin along 27th street is NOTHING like 76th and Ryan Road.

Having lived in NH for seven years I have some experience with a congregation that was the only one in the entire state. Trust me in that although the members drove from all over the place and distances of up to 70-80 miles that only the die-hard WELS member transplants would do that. Yet getting an un-churched person to drive from Merrimack, or downtown Nashua out to Amherst was very difficult indeed.

I know these concepts are tough for some old-school WELS to handle. What good WELS person wouldn’t drive a really good distance to be at a church. However you can’t transfer that desire to the un-churched. If you could influence them somehow, you should not worry so much about the distance they drive than just providing the motivation to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. However, after they are up and ready to go, then it will be a lot easier to get them to a church they can drive to in minutes. I know when I moved to the area and settled in Wind Lake, I tried out a good number of WELS churches. I chose a church 12 miles from my home rather than the one across the street. All well and good for me, but how would I convince my neighbor to do the same?

We also have had some instances of people finding our church from a distance away like Sussex, Pewaukee, West Bend and such that found the WELS for the first time but ultimately found a local WELS church to attend because traveling 30-40 minutes to church was not necessary or desirable.

Just a random question I thought of …outside of church services..how far will an un-churched person drive for Adult instruction classes? Honestly, it is not the church service that is so important for un-churched. It is the bible classes and instruction classes that bring new members. It is the community outreach events. It is the door to door canvassing. When did your church drive 10 miles away and do door to door canvassing?

I’m not sure that simply existing as a church in a community means that you reach the un-churched. There is one thing that has never once been answered in all my discussions on BW. What is an acceptable way to do outreach and evangelism in a community? I’ve gotten the non-answer of preach the Word and Sacraments faithfully. Got it! That is indeed the one thing needful. Now What? How do you make this one thing needful known to the community you service? The reason I don’t get an answer is that anything else is a “program” and they can’t support a “program” without it being considered CG. Sunday school is a program. Door to Door canvassing is a program, Advertising is a program, Bible classes are programs, VBS is a program…etc etc.

So I appreciate the analysis. I’m glad that someone can locate churches on the WELS Church locator however when considering starting your mission plant there may be a touch more analysis needed. I’m pretty sure churches could save a bundle in doing home mission work if they just said, ”hey we got a church within 30 minutes…we’re covered.”

Installment #1: A Contemporary Lutheran Mission Primer

2010-01-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Introduction

I am writing this series of blog postings to help chronicle the starting of a new contemporary Lutheran mission. My congregation represents a 3 year old mission plant that has been very successful in the spreading the Good News in a fast-growing suburban area southwest of Milwaukee. It also represents a mission that has successfully blended contemporary service design with traditional Lutheran worship. This has created a blended worship experience that is both modern, yet true to the principle of worship having its one true focus on Christ crucified. To illustrate where we have come from, Victory of the Lamb has grown from 12 members to over 110 in just under 3 years. Our attendance at Sunday worship continues to rise with a regular attendance total averaging about 150 per Sunday. At our Christmas Service we had 220 in attendance. Our first Adult instruction class had 3 prospects. Currently, the Pastor runs 2 classes of 7-10 each several times a year. How did this unique mission start? It started with the idea of one man and a mission spirit of a local congregation.

The Beginning

In early 2006, St. Paul Lutheran Church in Muskego, WI, a congregation of 2300 souls, had commissioned a demographic study of the southwestern suburbs of Milwaukee in combination with a study that already been released regarding community growth for WI. The study showed that the Southwest suburbs, and the city of Franklin in particular would be the fastest growing communities in WI for the next 20 years. The study that examined religious behavior showed that well over half the community is and would be un-churched. An even larger number of households would claim a church home but do not attend that church regularly. Another notable feature was that most people noted they would not search out or attend a church that was outside a radius of 3 miles from their home. A simple look at where the fastest growth was occurring and where the local WELS churches were, and there was a glaring hole to fill in Southwest Franklin. Not only was there no WELS church servicing this new and un-churched area of Franklin, there were very few churches of any kind servicing this area.

With the synod financial crisis in full bloom there was no mission money available for home missions like this. St. Paul’s had already started funding a missionary position in Africa for John Holz. Also a couple of years before, they joined with a number of Waukesha WELS congregations to partially fund for 3 years a startup congregation in a similarly growing area of Waukesha county that had no nearby WELS churches. That church, Living Word Lutheran, has grown as well and has over 160 members. St. Paul’s as a large congregation was taking on a mission above its synod mission offering to help spread the Good News in its area of influence. In the 10 to 20 years before this they had also spun off two daughter congregations in the form of Living Water Lutheran in Wind Lake and Star of Bethlehem Lutheran in New Berlin. Those congregations have 350 and 1000 members respectively.

So in early 2006, Pastor Peter Panitzke came up with an idea to start another congregation, using the data from the studies, in that underserved area of Franklin. This mission would be different. It would not be a daughter congregation in the sense of redistributing WELS members to a more convenient location as was typical. This was to be a mission focused on reaching the un-churched of southwest Franklin and it would be an all-contemporary church. St. Paul’s approved $100,000 to start the mission paying out 33,000 a year for 3 years. Additionally, two other congregations nearby, St. Jacobi and St. Paul’s, Franklin, agreed to pay into the kitty to assist in starting the mission. This additional funding never really materialized as these congregations were struggling in their finances. However within the first year of this mission, the new congregation managed to secure an additional $100,000 in gifts over the course of 3 years from individuals, new members, and a number of other WELS congregations in the area gave one time gifts.

Pastor Panitzke had gathered 6 WELS members together to form the Victory core. On behalf of this core group St. Paul’s called seminary graduate, Ben Kuerth in May of 2006. Pastor Kuerth recalls his first meeting with Pastor Panitzke. He told me, “We’ve called you to a mission that has a shoestring budget, 6 core members, and really has no WELS counterpart to learn from or compare to. You have no house, no place to worship, and no precedent for this kind of mission.” Although there were other WELS all-contemporary missions around, they were mostly started with Synod assistance, support from a wide base of other WELS churches, and a large core of WELS members to provide support and assistance. We had none of that.

Pastor Kuerth arrived in the area in July of 2006. Although the new mission was responsible for paying for it, St. Paul’s had secured a mortgage on a great parsonage in Franklin as no seminarian would be affording any kind of a house on their own in swanky Franklin. St. Paul’s administratively took care of the books and Pastor Kuerth would share in their staff meetings and ministry team resources (church secretaries) He gave an introductory sermon at St. Paul’s when he arrived and I was interested from the very beginning. Pastor Kuerth started going door to door canvassing and introducing Victory of the Lamb. A few more WELS members became part of the core group as well and began meeting for Bible Study. The primary mission was to find a place to worship. In this as yet undeveloped part of Franklin there are really only two locations to rent space from, Showtime Cinema and the Polonia Soccer Club. Showtime Cinema flatly rejected our offer to rent space from them. They wanted nothing to do with renting out to a church. The Polonia was a bit reluctant as well as a bunch of old Polish Catholics wasn’t as amenable to Lutherans coming in to set up shop on Sunday mornings in their “Beer Hall”. However, economics won out and they agreed to rent out the Polonia.

With a space secured, we now turned our focus on starting worship services. We came up with a plan to start worshipping on December 3rd 2006. Then we would have a “Grand Launch” service on April 1st. 2007. This gave us time to work out the kinks and develop our core a little further so we could actually pull off a worship service. I entered service with Victory in September 2006, starting to create the first version of the website and host it on my webservers. I then turned to arranging for the sound equipment needed for the services. It arrived two days before the first service. We had two hours to get it out of the box, setup and working before our first musicians of a guitar and a keyboardist needed to be heard. Our first media cart was a gutted out 26 inch console television case with wheels on the bottom. We had 140 in attendance at our first service. About 40 un-churched people and 100 or so curious WELS people from the area. After that first service and a follow-up Christmas Eve service we had about 35 start to worship with us weekly as we headed towards our Grand Launch.

It is hard to capture the “seat of the pants” way this mission started, yet it was off to a better than expected start. In the next installment, I will focus on the two unique features about this congregation that distinguish it from most any WELS congregation. A thorough look at Victory’s outreach and evangelism efforts as well as its decisions on how to “do worship” are a significant topic to the success of Victory.

Silly Greg

2009-12-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

Talk about tedious. Let's see if I can simplify this for you. Our interactions with you could be one of two things. Either I:

1) am a buffoon who, whenever stung by some biting "satire", must scurry around in my childish antics to try and cobble a weak defense against the masterful wit and scholarly acumen of the great Greg. Pledged to be the defender of all things C&C yet somehow I just can't manage to put a defense together as the world laughs at me.

or

2) I think you are a loon. a guy who thinks your carefully thought out research is laughable when you compare it to the likes of a serious scholar like Freddy Finkelstein. A guy who thinks your massive ego and profound love of self causes you to sit in your little world and take yourself way too seriously. A guy who gives you no respect or credibility. To take advantage of the season I'd say you were a Mr. Potter from "Its a Wonderful Life"

It could be number one but it is more likely number two. See you attribute such lofty goals to me yet basically all I do on a given day is decide, "Hey, let's stir up the old loon and see what we can get him to say." Oh indeed my motives are childish and harkin back to the day of picking on the weird kid in school. I'll admit that playing with you is a lot like giving a dog a beer just to see what happens.

So you can decide which one you think is my actual attitude yet I know you won't publish the actual truth so I will sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the next bit of wisdom you do publish. I learn so much about myself.

An Explanation

2009-12-22T10:19:00.000-08:00

There are times when I play blogging games where I just let the game play out without explanation of my intentions or motivations. I could let the entry below this one just stand with no explanation, but I decided that I would expound on it. It is hard to believe that Greg would make a wrong assumption as to my intentions, I know, let’s just take a minute to absorb the impact of that statement. There, now we can move on.

Greg divined that my intention was to defend Church and Change or more specifically two pastors (“Ski” and Glende) who have public photos out there posing with various stars. I got that from this statement, “They have jumped in to defend Glende and Ski by putting my face on Ski's pose with the Playboy model/alleged singer,…” and this one, “Someone has to defend the Chicaneries. Why not us?” which was a label underneath the now infamous trademark photoshop of Beavis and Butthead with Joe’s and my initials (Yes, I actually enjoy the sarcastic image…yet unfortunately I have forgotten, yet again, which one I am. )

I just want to state my actual intention for Greg. It is not to defend anything. I didn’t have one thought about Church and Change and actually don’t see how anything about C&C is relevant unless I’m missing a “seven steps to Kevin Bacon” moment here. I don’t know Glende or Ski and I won’t defend someone I don’t know. Of course I won’t condemn someone I don’t know either. My simple intention was to point out the hypocrisy and double standard of the concept of photoshopping people’s photo’s. One of Greg’s avid supporters so wonderfully provided the exact response I expected and it was just too wonderful complete with and 8th commandment callout. Greg provides all the rationale and justification on his very own blog for creating as many photoshopped images of him as I feel I want to create.

For the record, my Facebook photos are open to everyone too and I have hundreds of photo’s out there in over 20 albums. Few are actually of me since I tend to be on the other side of the camera but perhaps this week at Christmas I will try to get more of me out there for photoshopping opportunities. However, don’t be shy Greg. If you ask to be my friend in Facebook I will gladly accept. It will be just that much easier for you to get through all those photos. Actually I have a ton of pictures of my cats that I need to get up there. I bet you could use those.

The second point of Greg’s analysis I wanted to respond to was the statement, “I can see why these two get upset over my posts..” I don’t think I get upset by your posts. I’d say amused captures my true emotion. You know the saying, "Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." I’d have to say that is my approach to the Ichablog. The more Greg says…well the harder it is to take it seriously. So after some time reading it, I don’t get too excited about what is said anymore. Those who are maligned there daily should not be too upset about what is said either. More important is to note the hypocrisy and inaccuracy that forms the substance of the daily accusations, and slander. Reasonable men, I believe, see right through this and move on. A court of law wouldn't touch such hearsay and conjecture so why would we give it anymore credence than that. Basically it renders the his credibility as shot...even if there is a point or two here and there are accurate and even poignant. That’s the point where it all just becomes humorous. I think you could characterize Greg's hypocrisy as, “The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales."

Lastly, Greg is right about one thing. I can have a church website, complete with podcasting, multimedia streaming, complete database interactivity, and a full array of content up in only a few hours. Give me a call if you are interested. I host WELS related websites for free. Think about it.

Gratuitous photo of my cat in a box. I believe he is saying, "I am an ebil Confessional Crusader Kitteh. I sit in a very small box and slander you!!"

You Sly Dog

2009-12-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

I found this old photo of my good friend G-dawg hangin tight with Mariqueen. Smokin!! I'd be smiling too.

Liberty

2009-12-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

It is the 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party today. Interestingly enough my day started out with a good conversation on liberty (which started specifically over the liberty of Harley owners to annoy people with their mufflers...it expanded from there). My daughter and I were texting long things to each other while each driving to school/driving to work etc. Not recommended quality time, but it was a good conversation on liberty, morality, and tyranny.

This morning I watched the following video of Lt Col. Allen West. a congressional candidate in Florida, and again had to say, "Yeah! What he said!" In his speech you may note the lack of any teleprompter. Can I get an Amen? A great, great summary of my beliefs on liberty. Keep an eye on candidates like this. They will be popping up a lot I think in the next 3 years. I wish I was in Florida just so I could vote for him. There are videos of followup interviews with him where he expounds on current trends and I like him even more.

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." ~ Thomas Jefferson

I posted this same video on my Facebook. An aquaintance of mine from high school who is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal responded with this comment:

"Is it because of the delusion that under Obama you are living under tyranny. Laughable. How much a country decides to help its citizens is a matter for debate but to claim that under a (very moderate, yes very moderate) liberal we are now under the same conditions as when we fought the British is ridiculous. The more tyrannical was the path of set forth by the neo-cons to take over the middle east by hook and crook."

My response was as follows:

Tim Niedfeldt
Alas I believe that progressivism is tyranny period, whether it was fostered by liberals or Republicans (note I don't necessarily deem Republicans as conservatives..it's a case by case basis).

Historically, however, the tyranny of the revolution was at worst about a wash to today's climate (taxation, judicial abuse, and economic issues with debt and currency devaluation) and in some instances the threats to Liberty were less than they are now (progressivism was not a threat at that time). It's just at the time, the afronts to liberty tasted so much more evil and actionable than they do now to a modern humanistic country hellbent on having the government step in, save everybody, mitigate all risk to life, and we all go on enjoying our equality of outcomes.

You can keep your equality of outcomes. I'd rather have my equality of opportunity. I can take care of myself. If we were truly free most could take care of themselves too. If we were Christian as well, we would also help those who can't help themselves. However that is nearly impossible when you substitute government for God and pray for the gravy train. If we were in a position in society where those who want the mediocre existance of socialism could go choose that and those who want a more classic version of liberty could just enjoy that I'm sure we could all be happy. I just haven't found that place yet.

Thoughts? Comments?

Which one is Putin?

2009-12-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

I read a story today on a speech given in Russia and saw this picture. It reminded me of another picture I've seen. Since my good friend here at work is Russian, I put the two pictures together to see if he could tell which one was which. So you decide. Which one is Vladimir Putin and which is the adorable kitten?

On the other hand...If you are looking for tough...this is tough.

Victory Update

2009-12-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

This last Sunday was a real treat. In that service, we had an adult baptism as well as her newborn infant child. In the same service we also had Holy Communion. What a great service to have the Gospel proclaimed in Word and Sacraments. Truly it was a service of Thanksgiving. We now head into the C series of the 3 year lectionary for Christmas with our sermon series on preparing our hearts for Christmas.

Victory has been doing very well since our Grand re-launch in September at the Showtime Cinema. Attendance is creeping to 140-150 each Sunday. This Thanksgiving weekend I think there was over 160. Membership is nearing 100 if it is not over that yet. I believe we have reached self-supporting 3 months ahead of schedule as well. I guess I will have to wait until the end of December to know for sure. If anything Victory is a testament on to how to start a church on a shoestring budget (we were only funded by a mother congregation for $100,000 spread over 3 years...the rest was up to us. Now we have a budget of $125,000 a year that we can cover ourselves and have $70,000 stashed away in a land fund). It is interesting to note that if the congregation keeps growing at this rate we will be running out of room on Sunday mornings by June. We’ll have to come up with some way to expand or have multiple services.

Technology-wise we have improved greatly as well. Benhur Khamrang’s adjustments to the sound of the band have been very good. There has been some experimentation on band placement and mic’s and equipment but we have successfully moved the sound booth up by the video folks. The video feed from the Theater to the Café is now successfully beaming without the 100 foot video cable. In general I think Victory is one of the most technologically advanced churches around considering its size. I recently finished upgrading the website to ASP.NET 3.5 on IIS 7.0. That was a huge jump. I also upgraded the speed of the data connection and ability to stream the podcasts.

Karen has been singing harmony in the band much more now. We could still use a bang! pow! Lead vocalist for sure. We’ve got a ton of musical talent in the band if we could just have a power vocalist to rally around. It’s pretty good though despite that. Katie has been helping with the Bible Quest program almost every Sunday. She helps prepare the lessons or projects and sets up the video equipment and mats in the children’s theater. Ike helps a bunch too in a pinch….that happens most when Kt is not there. The Bible Quest program as well is growing very fast and is requiring a lot of helpers each Sunday. When they are short helpers, Kt jumps in a lot. I’m just happy to see my kids being so involved and actually enjoying it. Cassy is our Children's ministry director and she has developed a stellar kid's ministry program. The WELS should take note of how to design a good Sunday School program from her.

Have a great Christmas!

Family Update

2009-12-02T07:21:00.001-08:00

So the family is coasting along. Karen is done with her current classes at Iowa and is taking a 3 month break or so to focus on her final ALU (Academy of Life Underwriting) exam. After passing this 4th exam she will attain her Fellow designation or FALU. There are not a lot of underwriters who go for the FALU and the 4th exam is a very tough exam. The worst part about these exams is when she reads me the questions or asks what I think as she's studying. Do I ask her whether I should use an MQ call verses a webservice call? No!

Kt and Ike are free of school sports at the moment. Ike goes to Mixed Martial Arts still after having a bit of a break because of interference by football followed by driver's ed. With those distractions gone he is more free for the kick boxing. Yes, Ike did pass driver's ed. He's an excellent driver, except he drives like an Asian and if you try to get in the car after he's been in it you will break your knees because the seat has to be all the way up.

Kt takes the SAT and ACT the next two weekends. With those out of the way it will be time to get ready for a school choice. She's got a few options but I suspect her final decision will wait until the end of the school year when the final picture will become clear...hopefully. Overall there is no particular rush on this choice as apparently all the other frantic parents around me who freak out about early application and all that garbage. I think Kt's final choice no matter which option it is will be relatively painless and easy to arrange at any moment.

I have been working on my web hosting server. I made the big move to bring the server in-house and buy a new machine with all the latest and greatest. I have gotten the sites I host up and running and am currently working on upgrading one of those websites from ASP coding that is nearly 10 years old to the newest version of ASP.NET. This will take me a few months as it is a very large application. I have a wickedly fast data connection now and it helps to have the machine right there to do maintenance and updates. Now I would like to host more websites and actually collect money for them. All the sites on this server are basically donated to church related websites.

Zach is moving from the NAS in Pensacola, FL to a school at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, NC. Apparently it is a quick move and he was notified today and will be there on Friday. His specialty there will be Aviation Communications/Navigation sytems. I have yet to find out how long he will be there. I suspect it will still be until April. At least his best friend will shortly be stationed at New River, NC about 45 miles away. They can still hang out I guess. He will be home for Christmas from the 18th through the 2nd of January. This will be a vacation though and not a recruiter's assistance leave like the last visit home. It will be nice to have him home for Christmas again. So far that's not too bad. 2 out of 5 Christmas' he could be away that he has been able to be home. We'll see how many we can get.

I think that covers the family tidbits for now. Have a great Christmas.

Conservative on the Constitution...or what's left of it.

2009-11-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

There was a time in the 80’s, the 1780’s that is, where the founders of this great country desired states to retain most of their powers so that governing and representation was for the most part a local activity and remained with the people. The states agreed to cede a few of their powers to a central government, 17 of them specifically, that were important to the good order of the country. In case you’ve forgotten, here are the original 17.

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles (16 km) square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.

It is important to note that true evilness began with the passing of the 16th amendment in 1913. The 16th amendment allows the direct taxation of income of US citizens. With this ability, the government claimed the most important power which had been reserved to the states and now had the ability to fund the emerging progressive movement conveniently growing at that very time.

From that time forward the progressive movement has continued nearly unfettered. FDR’s New Deal, Johnson’s Great Society, and now we have Obama’s New France. During this nearly 100 years Americans have little by little handed over pieces of the freedom this country was founded on to the federal government. The country has already handed over a good share of their retirement pension and healthcare. Now the country is willing to hand over the rest of the nation’s health to the government. Now the government wants to create three new agencies to regulate the financial health of America and strip those abilities from the FED. Now the government wants to take over the banks. Now the government wants to take over Car companies. In NH the government is even bailing out Newspapers..because government intervention in the press is always a good idea. The government wants to influence the arts through the NEA and the list goes on and on and on.

There was a time in the 80’s, that is the 1980’s, when this nation got just a glimpse of what it might be like to turn back the clock to what the founding fathers of this country intended to create as a FEDERAL government. Ronald Reagan inspired this nation to take back personal responsibility, patriotic initiative, and reduce the size of government. It’s not as if his 8 years could rollback a tide of decades of progressive intervention in our lives however he made a small dent and it gave hope to those of us who believe in consummate freedom and the ability of the unfettered individual to accomplish the American Dream on their own.

However after America was set on the cusp of something great with approval at an all time high we got the “Read my lips” shaft. We got a “Contract with America” that buckled under some bleeding heart criticism with nary a wimper. I can tell you I became instantly apathetic to all politics at that time. Reform was done, Republicans and Dems were all the same. Spineless and weak and lacking the gonads to legislate this country according to the values it was founded on. I figured, “what’s the point?” What can I do? I don’t have any candidates who really will do anything.

However now I say, “ Enough already!” I can hardly take any more. I am becoming a very politically pissed off individual. Don’t worry I won’t be shooting off any weapons in some sort of Lutheran Jihad but I can assure you that I have shaken off my political apathy that has afflicted me since BUSH 1 gave up on Reagan’s values. Whereas I used to say I was Republican, I will tell you that I am no longer. I am conservative period. I see aspects I like in Libertarian and Conservative Party ideology. If the Republicans fold up the big tent and come back to their values, then we shall re-examine that, but currently, I think they are rudderless in the search for true values and leadership. Don’t tell me what party you’re from. Tell me you’ll represent the people who elected you and that you’ll fight to limit the government to what it was designed to do.

I think George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were correct in their dislike for political parties. They have ruined the political process for Americans. Accountability is shot and Americans are losing their country without a shot fired. Come on America! We need to stop being frogs in the boiling pot. Regardless if you are liberal, conservative or even one of those uncommitted, fence-sitting, conviction-less, moderate political mutts, we will all lose when we have no more ability to shape our own destiny. I have seen the enemy and it is I.

Political Summary

2009-11-03T07:21:00.000-08:00

Alright, here is a video that I happen to watch and started going ..."Yeah!!! that's me he's describing." It is a perfect summary of where I am politically. I remain pessimistic that the tide will actually change like I want it to as Glenn describes at the end of the video, but perhaps it might happen. Especially note the Chalkboard part of the speech.

I might note that this is the first I've ever seen of Glen Beck. On a trip home from Florida I heard about an hour of his radio show once. It seemed good but he had some wacky conspiracy theory ideas that he would spew out here and there and it tempered my enthusiasm for the rest of what he said. However, perhaps I will be checking him out more.

Tidbits of weirdness that have tickled my fancy.

2009-10-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

A Jet overshoots the airport on a flight from San Diego to Minneapolis, MN (the same flight my daughter has been on in the past) by 150 miles because they say they were distracted by a heated discussion…or as some speculate, they perhaps fell asleep. I can understand the heated discussion story. It is similar to how my lunch group solves the problems of the world 30-45 minutes at a time M-F with the amazing clarity of conservatism and common sense. We also could forget to land the plane.

Also amusing to me. The story about a man in Duluth, MN who was arrested for drunken driving in a Lazy boy. He had a Lazy Boy attached to a riding mower frame with a cooler and drink holders and everything. He hit a parked car with this rig and had a blood alcohol level of .29. I’m not sure I could handle being the officer who made that arrest. It doesn’t feel right to be laughing hysterically while arresting someone. I pretty much think it would be amazing to have a drivable Lazy Boy.

Again in MN (You get the sense that MN is the center of weirdness but it is just coincidence….or is it?) a woman was ruled against in that her bong water should be considered part of her drug paraphernalia instead of as a controlled substance. The problem being that the bong water contained traces of Meth and was 37 grams of water (two and a half table spoons). This constitutes a felony conviction of up to 7 years in prison for having a large amount of drugs instead of a misdemeanor conviction for having drug paraphernalia consisting of a fine of $300. So, druggies...remember to empty your bong water.

Victory Update

2009-10-15T10:45:00.001-07:00

Well Victory of the Lamb continues to grow. For September our average attendance was 140 people per Sunday. In addition there are over 4 Bible classes running right now during the week. The Bible Quest Kids have almost topped 30 kids too. All these are great blessings from the Lord as he has graciously been blessing our ministry.

I personally have bequeathed my sound "engineer" status to an actual sound engineer/musician who knows what he is doing. Benhur, his wife and little daughter are new arrivals at Victory from Santiago, Chile. He is originally from India but met his wife who is from the Milwaukee area in Chile while she was teaching English at the ELS mission church in Santiago. He married the teacher but after mission defunding they ended up back here in the US staying with his wife's brother. He has been a huge asset in improving the sound of the band and in arranging some of the hymns and songs with new sounds and styles. He speaks in a sound language I don't even understand so I just let him do his thing and occupy my time setting up the cables and taking down.

All in all our ministry is doing well and lots of people are stepping into the various roles. It is gratifying to see God bless this ministry and bringing ever more people who do not know Jesus into the church.

Links to Benhur's secular videos

Family Update

2009-10-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

Well it has been awhile since a Family update. I'll start with today and go backwards. There's not too much to report except that we had a good visit with Zach while he was here for the last two weeks. As I type this he is in the air on his way to Pensacola. He had a break between modules of schooling for 3 weeks and he sought out recruiter's assistance with his local Milwaukee recruiter for two of them so he could be home and visit even though he still worked every day at the recruiting station. He made a round of visits to relatives and such and then hung out with a few friends.

Zach's main goal to come home was to surprise his Mom so he told no one but myself that he was coming. Surprised her we did! It was exactly what he was hoping for. Since it is unlikely he will make it home for Thanksgiving, it was a good interlude before he comes home for Xmas. He also got to take care of all that fun stuff like renewing his driver's license and getting his contacts supply. I thank Kelly and Cal for the wonderful early Thanksgiving meal we had at their new house. It still makes my mouth water.

Kt is still busy with school and work and Phil. She visited him in September and I'm sure we will be seeing him on one of these holidays coming up as well.

Ike has been busy with football, CC and school. His football team had some sort of magical transformation this year and went from a Keystone Cops comedy routine to a pretty tough competitor. The thing is all the skills and size were there...they just need to have some confidence and sustain it. It's almost freaky the change. Last week the coach of the opposing team was livid with his team for "failing" against what was considered the most pathetic team in the league (last year they beat us 48-0). We all heard him screaming and jumping up and down. Sad ! Ike ran on my CC team as well. He was the 2nd or 3rd runner depending on the day. I had a great core of boys on that team and it always changed as to who was finishing where. They ended up taking 2nd place at the conference "Wisco" meet. I was ecstatic about a team from scratch from a school that hasn't had CC in 6 years and we came on strong. I hope for even better next year.

Karen and I just do our things...nothing new there. I have been running and continuing on after this CC season with it. Trying to get in better shape and lose even more weight. Maybe we'll see if I can run some fun runs this next year.

Immigration Qualification

2009-10-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

Okay pay attention folks. This is where I'm not as conservative as I am in most regards.

I'm up in the air about immigration. On the one hand I have to admire each and every immigrant who busts their ass to get here. Think of it ...wanting to get into a country to better your life so bad that you would risk all that. Dang that's what this country was made of.

I also would be the first one to pay cash under the table to have some illegals do work for me that I as a stuck up American deem too menial to do. There goes my nomination to the Supreme Court (although the current trend seems to indicate you will actually be better suited to be in Congress or the Obama administration if you don't pay your taxes.) No one should think that if the 17,000,000 illegals went home that there would be this sucking sound pulling our beloved jobless Americans into these great paying jobs that were stolen from them by illegals. Lordy it is hard to get a teenager to accept a job at less than $8 an hour to fold clothes at Abercrombie not to mention pick cabbage out of a field.

Living in a racially mixed neighborhood with a larger percentage of hispanic people in it however I notice some things. That on one hand there are plenty of industrious, thrifty, immigrants, legal or illegal, trying to make a better lives for themselves. They want their kids to learn English and to attend school. They want them to attend college too and become successful. On the other hand you can also see the ones who are here to cash in and send it home and make a better life for their families back home. Hmmmm what to think. I prefer the classic immigrant picture. Coming to America to make a new life and make America the great country it is. Not to come here...collect the gash and send it back home. I would move to a foreign country in a second but if I go there I'm going to make a go of it in that country for that country. It's the least I owe.

I guess it shortens down to this. I say for all those who want America to be their home ...come and make it happen. We welcome you (well I do at least). To those who just want the cash, the quick hit, the generous social services and healthcare, and when all is well you leave or you never bother to be an American etc... Please stay home....because really I don't even believe you can see through those massive flag stickers in your back windshields and that just seems unsafe.

School Insanity

2009-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Ok here is a perfect example of one of the things that daily catch my attention as to the completely wacky country we've become. I noticed the following article and was appalled at the "verdict"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=1&bl

This has been an increasing pet peeve of mine where schools are resorting to "zero tolerance" in the name of student safety or risk of bias and discrimination. It is no wonder America cannot think for itself. We are taking out discernment at every level of the game. We eliminate each and every risk from our lives with legislation born on the wings of paranoia. We cater to the fear of lawsuits and criticism from others. We all just need to get along and legislate a perfect feeling of love and happiness by getting rid of the evil.

Well that is why I love this guy.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/12/arizona-sheriff-vows-continue-immigration-sweeps-despite-federal-downgrade/

He is not like that. He makes the calls and goes for it despite what outsiders think. If his voters don't like it they will vote him out. Okay I was going to qualify my opinions on immigration in this post but I will just create a new post on that.

To Zachary Christie: Be strong little man. Try not to be some 2nd grader's bitch at reform school and we'll be waiting for you on the other side.

Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

HUH? WOW! I'm pretty sure I will be getting the next Nobel Peace Prize as I talk a lot about "hope" and "change" and have been almost as effective as Obama in establishing peace in the world.

I think its a bit premature to be handing out such things simply because Obama wants change. It would be nice if he had a track record where his recent decisions and potential big-time failures he is orchestrating by driving Israel away from the bargaining table, appeasing Iran (sanctions are as rediculous as the UN that loves them), and the as yet undecided course of action with Afghanistan had some sort of timeline to show success. Not to mention that Pakistan is about to blow on the Taliban issue in their border region and will complicate any US actions.

It could be that Obama's only being a Campaign and Chief instead of a Commander and Chief as well as being as an astute of diplomat as Neville Chamberlain could easily lead to being the person who most caused additional strife in the world.

But of course in this day in age ...It doesn't matter what you believe....just that you believe in something. What a pile of BS.

Hmmmmm

2009-10-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

So I have been away from the blogging world. Honestly I'm not sure what my thoughts are on that fact. Everyday I see something out there in the realm of politics that makes me ill. That's the point though. It's everyday. Sometimes its several times a day. There is so much fuel that I see a topic and I could write a lot about it. Honestly I want to scream about it. I simply don't have that time anymore though. Work has been involved and intense since 8/1. I don't have time to take a break and pen a thought. I've been coaching CC which just ended and that takes a little time away as I used to write drafts in the early morning and then finish them up at lunch.

I don't really follow the crusader blogs anymore. I think I have determined that it is like how I watch sitcoms. I find one that often is old and maybe even not on the air anymore and I watch all the episodes. However when I have been through the series once I am done with it. I call that the "Everybody Loves Raymond", "King of Queens", "George Lopez" effect. There is nothing new under the sun in crusader land so it has ceased to be interesting. We have already determined debate is pointless in that crowd. It was fun sport for awhile but after a bit becomes like NASCAR. "Oh look he made another left turn...he keeps doing that..."

Also my family updates could almost just be cut and pasted each time. Tim is busy with work, Karen is busy with work and school, Kt is busy with school and homework and Phil, Zach is busy with Marine stuff and school, Ike is busy with sports and school. I have a good routine of cleaning the house on a regular basis 3 days a week.

So with that said, I feel somewhat constrained because what I would love to post on a regular if not hourly basis I do not have time for. For the things I used to be contentious and obnoxious about I am not really interested anymore. Oh well. I will work harder on short sweet points. I will not Twitter. God that would be annoying. What would I say, "Just noticed my mouth tastes skanky after the poor quality coffee they supply in the coffee room.." Did you need to know that? I doubt it. It does though..I could use some Altoids....or more coffee.

Perhaps we'll use a little time at lunch to post a short blurb more often. I'll now go to lunch. After lunch we'll practice this new routine.

Healthcare

2009-09-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

As I was writing the below blog, I happened to scan my Facebook page and Larry Schlomer posted this video. This video says much of what I feel.

I have been deliberating on the issue of healthcare a lot lately. Who hasn't. For me though, the issue isn't even about "health care" per se. I am more concerned about how with each new government intervention in our lives we lose the very freedom this country was formed to create. When you get to the core of the American Revolution, it started in order to free the colonies from excessive interference from the government (selective taxation, removal of authority from local governments, replacing local courts with crown magistrates, etc). Also, looking at our own history, the government seems to fail the most when it departs from its original stated purpose of defense, courts, regulating trade, and maintaining infrastructure. Heck even in maintaining some of these essential things the government fails. (Amtrak…let your government railroad you to success)

So the issue for me really is: is healthcare really a right? Who says so? If this more modern phenomenon of manufactured rights is the way America is going to “mature” then a clear majority of Americans should say so then add it to the Bill of Rights. Then we can discuss how to make that happen in America. Could healthcare as a "right" be re-constructed in America? Of course. Could it be done properly in the private sector? Yes and no doubt more efficiently than the government could any hour, any day, anytime. In 1966, the year Medicare law was enacted, the cost was $3 billion and estimated to be $12 billion by 1990. Actual cost in 1990 for Medicare was $107 billion. In 2007, Medicare spent $468 billion on prescription drugs, hospital care and physician services. Yes indeed the government is great at estimating and containing costs. It would appear we finally found those missing weapons of mass destruction and it’s the government itself.

It would be good to first gain a consensus that there even is a healthcare "crisis". A crisis for some may not be for others. For me the crisis is the mini-van, soccer, moms taking their kids to the urgent care for every sniffle and scrape. Stay home. Rub a little dirt and lemon juice on it and tell them to suck it up. Duct tape is an adequate substitute for stitches in certain circumstances.

Please tell me if you had a nasty cancer and in this new world of "choice"...would you choose the Aurora/PHCI/Wheaton Franciscan (Insert Local health system here) clinic or would you sign up for the Veteran's Administration. It seems to me the biggest healthcare "crisis" we have is the healthcare provided by the government already. With these glowing successes, we want to throw more on the government? I wouldn't trust it with my life...or yours.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before education is a right and the wealthiest 200 million Americans will be paying for everyone’s college. Housing should be a right..we should be providing housing for everyone as the government does housing really, really well. We can accomplish this by taxing the wealthiest 325 million Americans and by sharing the large homes of the wealthy. I’m pretty sure Cable TV is already a right so that’s covered. We should be dressed adequately so I’m pretty sure I want clothes to be a right..although I think nudists should have to pay fines for not participating. Oh what a nation of wussies we have become.

The shame of course is that American’s have allowed this to happen. With the decay of Christianity and the rise of humanism it was bound to happen. People and businesses have sacrificed their Christian love for their neighbor and the desire to help others through church and charity by shunning religion and focusing on humanism and greed. Their new god is government and the government should be providing things to them…because after all…it is all about us isn’t it. Despite how the current trend to foist basic human morality on the government puts me out of sorts, it is just desserts for nation that has forgotten God. Indeed our Babylon is approaching.

Re-Grand Launch of Victory

2009-09-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

So coming up on September 13th, Victory of the Lamb is having a special service to introduce to the community to our new location at Showtime Cinema. We have been there since May but we have spent the summer working out the kinks and the routine so we can be smooth and efficient.

Although there are some things that are not as cool as the Polonia such as the sound sucking walls and stadium seating that make singing disappear but in general everything about meeting in a theater is better than meeting in a beer hall.

I hope to see you all there on Sunday, September 13th at 9:00am for fellowship and 9:30am for the service.

Checkup on the Hypocrites

2009-09-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

I guess that leaves this wide open. It could be about Obama or it could be about the various Lutheran Legalist I follow on again off again.

I had taken a very pleasant break since the WELS convention in following these folks but Joe pointed out to me today that the Ichabod's are fighting again. I had some fun before with Joe back in July in playing up the accusation that we were the authors of the "real Ichabod" vs the original ichabod. We even had a Beavis and Butthead icon made up for us by Greg. It was an interesting experiment in following how a suspicion becomes a fact in Greg's mind and then after enough times saying it it was an immutable truth. This is too tempting for me to resist. If Greg said I was a flaming liberal , I am pretty sure I would run with that to see how many people would then believe it. You might find me finally writing the environmentally friendly, government loving piece on how we should all support the right to choose to kill babies.

Well the "Real Ichabod" author is back. Apparently he is upset about recent postings from Greg and decided to return. I have to laugh that the same tactic employed by Greg is being used against him. Rumor and hearsay with a bit of fact mixed in and then taken to an extreme. Although my dark side enjoys the "How does that feel for all the people you lambast daily in a similar manner.." feeling it gives, I have to admit it is definitely not my flavor at the moment

However now that I'm done having fun taking the credit for the "real Ichabod" site I will set the record straight that Joe nor I had nothing to do with it. I will confess I sent a comment asking who the author was and to email me. I wanted to offer some services to handle a posting here and there but alas...no response. In actuality I don't think the author likes my style any more than Greg as he is bitterly against satire and I of course LOVE satire. I think the blogosphere is THE place for satire. Pretty much those who can't take the heat should get out of the blogokitchen. So although I enjoyed watching the reparte, I don't think he believed I or Joe were the allies he wanted.

It should be known that If I author a site to refute Greg, you will know it is me. I will put my name in capital letters and maybe a good picture too. Secondly I don't think I would ever get personal like the "real Ichabod" is at the moment. I would stick to his doctrinal errors and poorly researched accusations. There isn't one word I have to say anonymously to him. For those so spineless to be anonymous because they know how Greg will drag them through the mud I say in love...stop being a pussy.

I suppose I will need to start watching the fun and games but I promise that my interest in all that nonsense is much less these days.

Quick Update

2009-09-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

So Ike has been in school at St. Marcus since the 19th. He started Football on the 3rd of August and has had a scrimmage and his first game this last Saturday. There has been vast improvement from last year, however, they still lost soundly to a very large team. Even though the Jr. Vikings have grown they still seem to come up against bigger teams. Probably the biggest thing our team lacks is aggression. How do you convey to a team that all those things they are told everyday in society about being passive, non-violent and nice does not count for football? Still for a team of noobs that started only last year they are definitely improving at a fast rate.

Kt started school today. She will have a stressful year for sure. She has 3 AP classes and one class at Wisconsin Lutheran College for Spanish. Along with work and CC that should keep her time filled. Phil phone time will have to be worked in there too. Phil is already settling into his job as an Air Traffic Controller at Camp Pendleton. Kt is heading to San Diego this weekend to visit him.

Zach is still plowing through his school as well. He had a two week sidetrack here but he will be done on 9/25 with this section of classes. We'll find out in a few weeks where he goes next. I think it is a bit boring right now since many of those he started with have already moved to the next phases and he is a few weeks behind them due to a few scheduling snafu's. Also I think he has decided he is tired of the base in Pensacola. They are particularly high strung there because the Marines are residing on a Navy base so they clamp down hard on the Marines to keep the Navy happy. Since his MOS has about the longest education track in the Marines it means he has to stay in the somewhat over-regulated training mode longer than most. Once he is in the fleet he will be good.

I have finished work on the temporary projects I had floated to back in April. August 15th I returned to NML's Enterprise division to work on a large project there. It is very interesting technology and requires lots of focus and study. That is partially why I haven't been blogging as I need to keep it all focused on the projects. I did move to a nice window space compared to the old building with a nasty inside room with a view of boxes of stored stuff.

Karen has been on cruise control these days but has been very busy at work. Because there can be 15-18 underwriters out on vacation on any given day the distribution of cases can get quite heavy over summer.

"Death Panels"

2009-09-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

Here is an article from a liberal newspaper that struck me precisely because of it's source. Without spewing some of the extreme rhetoric, I think this article gets to the core of the danger of that issue and even better when the concerns of the public come from the Washington Post.

Washington Post - Charles Lane Article

Note the line "Admittedly, this script is vague and possibly unenforceable. What are "key questions"? Who belongs on "a list" of helpful "resources"? The Roman Catholic Church? Jack Kevorkian?"

Why are people so willing to give up their freedom and follow the government so blindly? What a nation of lazy lemmings we have become.

Blogging Absence

2009-09-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

I have been absent from the blogging world for a bit. I confess that not only have I not been writing them I have not been reading the numerous one's I follow as well. I guess it was a little vacation. I have often had a thought ot two I wanted to point out here and there but it hardly seems worth putting out. Oh well I will be getting caught up here. I have a few topics I emailed to myself to get out here but never did. In any case it is good to be back

A Wisconsin Thing...

2009-08-11T07:43:00.001-07:00

Something I saw in the parking garage this morning that struck my fancy. This is really only something you'd see in WI. If I were more talented with Photoshop I would change the sign letters and have it say something like "In case of fire, carry cows down stairs.." or something. Honestly in case of fire I will either be throwing the cows off the building or just abandoning the cows altogether.

For my Ichabodian friends...This is a joke...It's not real. Someone just stuck a foam rubber cow thing on a sign.

Victory Update

2009-08-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

What a great July and August so far for Victory of the Lamb. The various summer events have been very successful. We handed out well over a 1000 packets of info at the July 4th parade and several people have visited church because of them.

We had nearly 200 people at the Hallepalooza event in the park. This is our family friendly music and games event at the park in Franklin. We put on a free picnic with the Victory Band playing music the whole time. We got to meet a lot more people in the community and let them know we exist and I hope they got to hear Pastor Ben’s message at the end.

Our Bible Soccer camp had 50 kids in it. After a week of learning soccer and Bible stories they have a large cookout with over 100 adults and family members staying. This gives one more opportunity for the parents to hear the message of salvation too.

This last Sunday we had 146 people in church. 26 kids in BibleQuest. (for Secret Shopper… I included a photo of everyone standing at the last hymn except for about 10 people on the far left who are cut off.. this is minus the 26 kids in BibleQuest and the 4 BQ helpers. And the 5 members of the band, Pastor, and myself)Both of these are new records for a regular Sunday.

With such a large number of visitors I was very happy that we had communion. I definitely fall in the camp of using communion as a teaching tool for visitors. Pastor does a great job of explaining the importance of communion and why it should only be taken with a shared confession of faith. In combination with his sermon which was a very good old fashioned law/gospel message having communion was a perfect follow-up.

On September 13th, 2009 we will be having our Grand Re-Launch Service. This is to announce and re-introduce our move to the Showtime Cinema. When you are a nomadic church such as ours it is important to let the community know where you worship. I have to believe that meeting in a movie theater despite its shortcomings (It is not singing friendly…sucks the sound of corporate singing away in the acoustics…sort of sad) has to be better than in the Polonia Soccer Club…a beer hall basically. We could hear the congregation sing there but it of course had a full bar and reaked of the last night’s party. I’d rather smell old popcorn than old alchohol, burritos, and vomit. On the upside…we had a disco ball.

So I extend an early invitation to the re-grand launch service on 9/13 to everyone. Fellowship before the service at 8:45 and the service starts at 9:30.

Family Update

2009-08-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well it has been some time since I have updated my blog. It’s about time to get back to it. It sure was a busy couple of weeks. So jumping back a bit I left you with an update just before Hallepalooza.
Hallepalooza is Victory’s annual family and music picnic in the park for the community of Franklin. This year there were about 200 visitors. I didn’t mingle as much as the music required a lot more attention to the mixing per song based on different singers and instrumentalists. I’ll give a Victory update separately later.

The day after Hallepalooza we went to the Brewers game with the Victory folk. OMG!!! We are by far the closest residents to the stadium and it took us an hour and 15 minutes to get into the parking lot to park. PATHETIC. To illustrate we were stuck recently going through all of downtown Chicago with the White Sox fans and it only took that long to get through it. All we wanted to do was drive the 4 blocks from National Ave into the stadium outer lots. However we did manage to see a “historic game” where the same guy hit a grand slam in consecutive innings off the same pitcher. It was not cool as the Brewers sucked up the game. However I had fun with the Victory folk and drowned my pain getting high on Pixie Stix.

Directly after the Brewers game, we headed out to New Hampshire. Karen and I drove through the night leaving at 11:11pm ironically and arriving 18 hours later in Sunapee, NH at Terry and Cheryl’s. Although Karen has learned to loath this drive I think, she did very well.

We spent Tuesday evening talking and playing cards. Wednesday we woke up late and Cheryl made us these awesome ham, egg and cheese sandwiches. The cool part was the flatbread she made them on. Yummm. Then we went looking at the New London Gnu’s. They were very cool but I’m sad the battery died on my camera before getting to Cheryl’s. I am amazed at other people’s creativity. I sure suck in that department.

After Gnu viewing we headed down to Manchester to eat at the most yummiest of places, KC’s Rib Shack. We have yearned for their food ever since Caitlin’s wedding. I stuffed myself and was not disappointed. Jeff and Martha Lewis joined us for dinner. They are good friends and business partners with Terry and Cheryl. We have hung out with them in the past a few times and we definitely had a great time again.

Again we watched a movie which I highly, highly recommend if you haven’t seen it yet called “Gran Torino” Then we played spades and talked until 3:00am I think. The night before we had played spades as well. Cheryl and I still suck. Terry and Karen…still don’t.

On Thursday we slept in late. Yeah it was a trend. We finally got up and headed down to Nashua to visit the Lords. We spent the day catching up after not having really kept up with each other in a year and a half. They are doing great. They made their famous grilled food and it was fabulous. I sure miss those Sundays at their house in the summers swimming in their pool and sitting in the hottub and grilling out. Glen and Tanya have been through a lot in the last couple years and after a bit of time apart from them, I came back and found they are very different people and in a good way. I’m trying to think of a short description. Calm, cool, and relaxed…perhaps would be best. Yet another couple that has worked/keeps working through adversity and yet in relying on God’s grace finds that God does give the strength and that in the end we grow in maturity, empathy and confidence.

On Friday, we slept in late. It was raining all morning and pretty much continued all day long. That wrecked our plan to go out on the boat for the day but we stayed in and played hearts. Cheryl and I still suck. Terry and Karen still don’t. Later the Lewises came for pizza and we played phase 10. Cheryl made her famous Long Island Iced Teas and they were dandy. I swear we laughed for like 5 hours straight that night. I sure miss that.

Saturday we woke up….wait for it……early!!! But that wasn’t cool because it meant we were getting ready to head home. After arranging the purchase of Cheryl’s Toyota 4Runner we headed home. However Karen and I were in separate vehicles this time so we stayed overnight in Cleveland. We finished up our little adventure on Sunday.

Ike had stayed home during this trip and Kt was in Seattle. Since Vladik was not available to hang out with, he did not think tagging along on all our adult interactions would be fun at all. We also thought just going with the two of us for a vacation sounded awesome. OMG it was! I really, really enjoyed myself. I think Karen did too. Not once did I have to worry about what a teenager would think about this activity or that. He seemed to occupy his time by spending a day being his little cousin’s plaything. He also went to a friend’s house and helped him rip the siding off a garage. There were some visit’s to girls houses as well and a late night ice cream and George Webb run. The house was pretty clean when we got back but there definitely is a difference in standards between his cleaning and mine.

On Monday the 3rd Kt returned from Seattle. She spent this last week being a bit bummed by not seeing Tucker every day and getting back into the swing of things such as work. She had a good time in Seattle and seemed to meet many members of Phil’s family as well as all his old friends. Phil has headed off to his permanent assignment at Camp Pendleton as an Air Traffic Controller.

This last week was not too exciting. Ike started Football practice. They definitely look different than last year. The line has some size now and they actually hit each other. Funny the difference a year makes. I watched a couple of practices and I liked what I saw.

On Saturday I finally got started on painting Ike’s old room. We are getting it ready to be Karen’s library/den. Sunday we got Ike’s uniforms for school and Kt some work clothes. Karen and I trolled the clearance racks for a few nuggets for ourselves because of the 70% off on summer clothes plus Kt’s 20 percent discount. We actually did very well. We got all the clothes Ike needs for a full school year for $200. I LOVE uniforms.

Coming up Ike has football and Kickboxing filling his days. He starts school August 19th. Kt has work and CC filling hers and she starts school on 9/1. I will be coaching CC this year at St. Marcus. We will see how it goes. It has not been offered for a number of years. I think the team will start out small. Who knows…maybe I’ll be surprised. I’m looking forward to it though. I just love the fall though. I like seeing the Wisco football games. I like seeing Kt and Ike’s sports. I like coaching CC. It’s definitely my favorite time of the year.

Zach has about 1 month left in this section of training. We still wouldn’t hear until just a little bit before as to whether he stays in Pensacola for advanced training or whether he heads to another base like Biloxi. It all depends on the specialty. I think he will be much happier when training is done. He has had some intense sections there and I think he would like a break. Basically they are trying to cram two years of schooling into a one year time period so I’m sure his brain is feeling it. I think he just needs to be trained wherever it is warm so that we can visit him there when the weather is cooler.

So that catches you up on the family. Enjoy your week.

Drive New England '09 is on...

2009-07-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

and its Awesome!!! I'll put up pictures. My wife and I are consulting with the Victory Media Arts team in about all the things we can do today.

(Don't worry Butthead, that just means I drove to the old homestead of NH, to visit Cheryl and we'll decide what to do today)

Dude....

2009-07-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

Our blog didn't fly man. We aren't posting anymore. I'm bummed!!

If You Want To Know Why.....

2009-07-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

I distrust government to take over anything...much less something as significant as healthcare here is a classic example.

In 1966, the year Medicare law was enacted, the cost was $3 billion and estimated to be $12 billion by 1990. Actual cost in 1990 for Medicare was $107 billion. In 2007, Medicare spent $468 billion on prescription drugs, hospital care and physician services.

Find your favorite goverment program and find its original estimate and then its actual costs. Were they less? Did those "savings" appear? Were costs held down? I'm guessing not. Government is not qualified or capable of running ANYTHING efficiently.

With numbers of this magnitude you do not ram this down a country's throat in a few weeks and say "yeah close enough on the estimates give or take a trillion...just vote it through"

Of course this just addresses the inefficiency and incompetency of government that most people are aware of. It should be enough to scare the crap out of you. However I wish there was more of an uproar to decry how un-American this whole concept is. People forced to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Business forced to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Whose America is this? Comrade Obama's I guess. I'm waiting for when those small businesses go to a few of their employees and say, "I'm laying you 2 employees off and I'm going to use your salaries to buy insurance for everyone else. Phew..good thing you two can get government insurance now huh? I bet you're relieved."

I want to file charges of governmental rape of Liberty.

A Good Quote

2009-07-23T13:21:00.001-07:00

I don't know why this quote struck me today...hmmm

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Winston Churchill

Family Update

2009-07-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

We had a decent visit with Zach when he came home on the 4th of July. He was off with his friends for a good chunk of the time but we did snag him for almost 24 hours. He is back in Pensacola of course continuing his schooling. He will go in this section of training until mid-September. After that it’s a bit unclear. He will go to C-School in a very specific job training function but it is unclear as to whether he will stay in Pensacola or possibly go to Biloxi. He won’t find that out until the beginning of September. Zach has been a little incommunicado due to the recent suicide of his iPhone. Apparently barracks hijinx caused the iPhone to dive into the toilet. Zach also moved barracks to the “601” Barracks. He is not happy about that move. It is far away from the “downtown” of the base, does not seem to have as many amenities, and the Chow hall that is close to it is closed on the weekends. Poor Marine….he is going to have to hoof it a little more. He also doesn’t like that they put 4 to a room there as opposed to the H barracks where there were only 3.

Kt is in Washington State with Phil as of yesterday. It is surprising how quiet that makes our house. Kt so far has said the in-laws are a fun bunch. Of course that is if she can even notice they are around when Phil is there. Kt comes home August 3rd. Phil leaves his home to go to Camp Pendleton in CA on the 4th. Want to guess where Kt will want to go for Xmas?? Well that is if Phil doesn’t come to WI of course.

Ike is well…He stays up until 3:00am. Wakes up at 11 or noon. Veg’s around for awhile. Goes to Muay Tay. And when evening kicks in he goes to girl’s houses. I think that defines his whole summer. However in two weeks he will be at Football practice a lot. Yayyy.

Karen and I will be hopping out to NH in a bit for a brief visit. That should be a blast. Everytime we leave NH we push the “pause” button with our friends and then when we return we hit “resume” It makes me sad sometimes. If I were independently wealthy and didn’t need these silly things we call jobs I would love to be settled in New England on a mountain…or even better a mountain lake with a ski hill. It probably doesn’t even need to be New England..but a mountain lake with a ski hill attached…anywhere would probably be nice.

Karen has been singing with the Victory Band for a little while now and will be contributing to the Hallepalooza event this Sunday in Franklin. I'm glad she's back at it.

"This Economy"

2009-07-22T14:59:00.000-07:00

How bad is the economy??? I'll tell you how bad the economy is . . .It's so bad that . . "

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.
Jewish women are marrying for love.
Even people who have nothing to do with the Obama administration aren't paying their taxes.
Hotwheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
Obama met with small businesses to discuss the Stimulus Package: GE, Pfizer and Citigroup.
McDonalds is selling the 1/4 ouncer
Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.
A truckload of Americans got caught sneaking into Mexico ..
The most highly-paid job is now jury duty.
People in Africa are donating money to Americans.
Motel Six won't leave the light on.
The Mafia is laying off judges.

And finally...

Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Great news...the guy who made $50 billion disappear will be investigated by the people who made $750 billion disappear.

(Note to Ichabodians...this is a joke. It's not real. It was a joke forwarded in an email from my mother. )

Kool & The Gang

2009-07-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

NM had their annual company show tonight at the Bradley Center. This year Danny Gokey from American Idol opened and then was followed by Kool & The Gang. I have to admit that although the middle of the show was a bit tedious, they are talented musicians and great showmen! I love the brass. You can't really see anything in this photo from my phone but you can at least see the great setup NM puts on each year when all the field agents converge on Milwaukee for "The Annual Meeting". Over 10,000 Agents and their families fly in at their own expense and pay for their lodging to attend. The Field Agent's dues to the Agent association pays for the education seminars, the rallies, and the entertainment for 5 days. The Home Office gets "invited" to participate with the field for the company show as well as participating in the Roots and Wings road race which had 8000 people this year. All in all its a great thing to see and I'm proud to work for a great company like NM.

Hey Beavis...

2009-07-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

We should start a blog ...heh heh heh heh!!!

Squirrel Update

2009-07-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing a radical decrease in the bunny, squirrel and skunk population living in my yard. Yes indeed our skunk family has moved out and I have filled in the hole again and it remains covered. My plants do not have any further damage. No bunny holes have been detected. Even the gopher from the yard fell into the water fill hole of the basketball hoop and could not escape and drowned. The neighborhood in general has returned to the critter levels I would expect in such an urban part of the city.

I have finally achieved what I had hoped for…and I’m a bit sad. It would appear that my next door neighbor who lives between me and “Squirrel Man” and has beautiful gardens called the City Dept of Animal Control on Squirrel man. My jewish lesbian neighbors didn’t like the skunks travelling back in forth in the wee hours of the morning when they would walk out of the house to go to work (Thankfully they did not know they were living under my garage at the time.) and that their fences were also being eaten by the squirrels. They didn’t like that Squirrel man left veggies in the back yard for the critters in addition to the corn and feed buffet in the front yard. Of course I had the same complaint but I would never call the city and rat him out. That just seems mean.

But the corn cob altar in the front yard is gone. The corn is cleaned up. I’ll assume the veggies are not in the back yard. I don’t see the crazy flock of poop birds hanging out on the tree behind his house just waiting to move to the tree in front of mine if there is a car underneath it.

So all is right in critter land. Balance has been restored to the urban ecology. However, this 63 year old man, a widower whom I never see with guests and watches TV until 2 in the morning yet is also up at 6:30 in the morning, can no longer do the things that probably brought him some joy. So now I feel bad. Be careful what you wish for…

There Once Was A Country

2009-07-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

There once was a country that went to war for 7 years. In the course of that war, they borrowed heavily and doubled the national debt in 7 years. To remedy this situation, they decided the solution for this was to raise taxes. They did this by taxing imports and by raising sales taxes. In the accommodation of all these tax increases, bureaucracy required the number of government workers to nearly double as well to enforce the new policies. To empower this new bureaucracy, a flurry of new laws and administrative powers and controls were enacted. The subjects of this country chafed at the new tighter controls and stifling national debt. This represented a change in how revenue had been raised and policy had been enforced for over 100 years. Taxation became a central point of contention to the subjects of this country because it threatened the prosperity and autonomy of its subjects.

It is interesting to note that during this time of war the trade balance shifted so that consumers were consuming more imports than they were exporting and that to accommodate this demand credit began to be extended to the consumers very commonly.

An era of peace after the war removed the stimulus of a war economy and brought about a recession in the country. People with debt in all areas of life experienced a credit crunch. The balance of trade still was favoring imports and was rendering the country’s economy more and more dependent on foreign commercial ties and foreign financial policy. That country had tried printing more paper money to finance the large debt but this increased inflation and depreciated the value of the currency. Soon foreign governments did not want the cash anymore. Even as the country’s standard of living rose, citizens in debt grew increasingly suspicious of government motives and interests. In one instance, legal cases were moved from lower courts with juries to federal courts with singular judges to decide their fate because local juries were too sympathetic . Many laws were then interpreted by federal magistrates rather than by local law. Taxes became increasingly dictated from the federal government and slowly the local governments lost their authority to tax and regulate.

After a particularly large abrogation of commonly accepted liberty and addition of a heavier tax, the subjects of this country began to unite against this intrusion into their local economies and started to protest. They petitioned government to repeal the new taxes and restore local authority for their taxation. Groups around the country formed many local protests.

Urban areas were hit the hardest with the taxes. Lots of small businesses were already economically dislocated from the recession and the large supply of cheap imports. The addition of these taxes and regulatory burdens started to undermine the loyalty of the middleclass and businessmen to the government.

In continuing efforts to increase revenue the government fiddled with various taxes including granting national monopolies to certain companies through trade policies and import taxes. The various local governments started protesting these taxes and were refusing to enforce them. The national government stepped up its enforcement and neutered local authority by getting rid of it in certain instances and consolidating power in federal hands and forcing the local governments to comply or be taken over.

When the subjects of this country could not take the intrusion of federal power and intrusion in their lives they finally banded together and threw off the yokes of that Federal government.
Can you guess which country this was and when it occurred? Does it sound familiar? I hope so but for the sake of those from public school I will just say that country mentioned above represents Colonial America from 1756 through 1776.

As you contemplate a government that in one year will have more than tripled last year’s deficit. ($485 B in 2008, 1.85 TRILLION in 2009)

As you contemplate a government that has taken over banks and car companies

As you contemplate a government that is taking over Health Care (tax penalties if you do not provide it, penalties if you do not buy it, taxes to the middleclass and businessmen to subsidize it, rate setting that will destroy private insurance)

As you contemplate a government that sacrifices its economy with Cap and Trade to solve a “world problem” that doesn’t exist while the rest of the world laughs and says “we just gained a huge competitive advantage. Stupid Americans are handing manufacturing to us on a platter.”

As you contemplate a government that prints cash to fund its expenditures and threatens the nations fiscal soundness with rampant inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment.

As you contemplate a government that taxes the “rich” to give to the “poor” and calls it progressive.

As you contemplate a government that grows increasingly unresponsive to the will of the people.

As you contemplate a government that decides policies in federal courts rather than in its local governments.

As you consider a government conceived in a Christian morality that has abrogated all signs of morality to the point of working against any moral code.

As you consider all these modern travesties consider that the very foundation of this country was formed to protest against them. The hymn title “We all like sheep have gone astray” is a good description of our fall from Liberty. Almost daily I hear another liberty being taken away or proposed to be taken away. I fear Americans will only know that their liberty is gone after it is gone. It literally brings tears to my eyes to think of the liberty we have surrendered away in the name of “social justice”. In reality we are surrendering our liberty in the name of economic equality. This is not what liberty is all about. That’s more what socialism is about. This is the time to stop this liberty decay. Right now I truly hope that history will repeat itself.

Welcome Ichabod Referrals...glad to have you!

2009-07-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome Ichabod Readers. You might want to note the replies I posted to Ichabod down below as I'm sure Greg must have technical difficulties on his site and my posts don't seem to show up. ;-)

The Sermon noted in Ichabod today is available as a PDF here. I think in several ways you'll find the "Secret Shopper's" analysis lacking.

Great Faith Needs Feeding

You can also listen to the podcast here.

Great Faith Needs Feeding - Podcast

Here is the service Folder for that Sunday

July 5th Victory Service Folder

If you are new to Victory of the Lamb I'd suggest going to the website and checking it out first to set expectations. Here is the page to start with

New To Victory..

Here are two posts I made to Ichabod but they were deleted by Greg. I'm only guessing that he deleted them because after listening and reading the Sermons, it didn't jibe well with "secret Shopper's" analysis of the sermon. Transparency really bothers Greg because it goes against his preconceived notion that there is a secret conspiracy. The two deleted posts are below.

*****************************Post #1

Tim Niedfeldt has left a new comment on the post "WELS Members Visit Victory of the Movie Screen:Ano...":

Maybe I can help the "secret shopper" analyze where they went wrong in their visit. I think it was when he said he was looking for more liturgical and his friend said "It's kind of contemporary, but..."

The next point would be that he passed a WELS church 3 miles back. There are in fact 4 WELS churches within approximately 3 miles. We are in fact spaced out like this to fill this gap where no church was. All those other churches are liturgical and two of them mind-numbingly so. I think St. Paul's, Franklin or St. Jacobi, Greenfield would be perfect for you.

I'm thinking if you had gone to the website first you might have known you'd be greeted by Pastor Ben. That it's a casual environment, that we invite you to bring your coffee in to church, that if your kids are squirrely that's ok. You'd also know that Communion is offered every other week. Apparently you are amongst the 20% of people who do not check out a church's website before visiting or I'm pretty sure you would have not bothered to come.

What you could find out from me is that membership is about 85 members with about 40 of those from other WELS congregations. The rest were unchurched or under churched. We have about 120 - 130 worshiping each week. There are about 10-15 people in Adult instruction at any given time.

Here are the links to the mentioned Sermon as a pdf

http://www.victoryofthelamb.com/GetFile.aspx?File=GreatFaithNeedsFeeding.pdf

here is the podcast of it.

http://podcast.victoryofthelamb.com:8080/?p=episode&name=2009-07-13_learning_from_our_father_prayer.mp3

I can't think of a better website to post them than where they are most needed. I urge you to actually read the sermon or listen to it. I think the analysis of the "secret shopper" was a bit thin.

A note to the "secret shopper". If someone says. "hey, you should try the 6:00pm service at St. Marcus Sunday nights...It's kinda contemporary, but..." Don't bother going. I don't think "kinda contemporary" is your thing.

Tim

PS. I will post the link to the service folder for that week as well. It has the songs, readings and order of worship in it and such. I will have to visit a different computer to retrieve that for you. I will post it on my blog as well as here in a little bit.

************************** Post #2

Tim Niedfeldt has left a new comment on the post "WELS Members Visit Victory of the Movie Screen:Ano...":

Here is the link to the service folder for July 5th.

http://www.victoryofthelamb.com/public/upload/07.05.09.pdf

************************** Post #3 I just posted this on a new but related thread...We'll see if Greg can muster the courage to post the comment.

Well, I don't hold out much hope that this will be published as the last two posts were deleted, but I'll give it a shot. I assume that posting the actual sermons and service folder must have been too conflicting to the review.

No one would see that I used the term secret shopper on this site because it was all deleted. However, I used the term because the visitor was church shopping...oh I mean selective fellowshipping. I use the term secret because:

1.) He came to the church looking to find a more liturgical church. He heard about a contemporary church and went there hoping to find what he wanted in a church.(really?? I don't think you need a degree from an Ivy League school to figure that probably isn't going to happen)

2.) He was shocked to not find it that way. (Who would've thought?)

3.) He then decided to write a review for Ichabod on the Church experience. (As if he was an Ichabod reader and had high expectations that VotL would be different than portrayed by Greg?)

I would submit this was just an Ichabod secret shopper mission for a review because so far no one in the Ichabod network has been there. It has nothing to do with marketing. I would work up some other angle on that particular term. I look forward to your creativity.

I would disagree in that I think your frustration really resides in the differences between what you think Lutheranism is and what it actually is. Ichabod's and/or your straight and narrow is so narrow as to exclude most Lutherans. Add in the SJO doctrinal errors and there is very little room for good Lutheranism at all.

I understand you cannot fathom that the Gospel is proclaimed in Word and Sacrament in a contemporary setting. That little box you sit in is fine but it is a self-imposed box. I won't try to convince you otherwise because your buy-in to contemporary Lutheranism is not required for you or for me.

I won't sit around fretting too much about being kicked out. Just ask Greg. The WELS is infected with us..who's going to kick us out. Muahahahahaha!!

Tim

OJ/SJ

2009-07-08T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here is one of my favorite references regarding the nature of Salvation by Grace. It is out of the book "A Summary Of Christian Doctrine" by Edward W.A. Koehler pages 78-79 written in 1939 and taken from the second edition published in 1951. Edward Koehler was faculty at Concordia in River Forest, Ill and died in 1951.

PART VI. SALVATION BY THE GRACE OF GOD THROUGH THE REDEMPTION IN CHRIST JESUS

1. The necessity of grace. -- All men have sinned (Rom 3:23), and are , therefore, guilty before God (Rom. 3:19), under the curse of law (Gal. 3:10), and deserving of death (Rom. 6:23). Left to himself, it is absolutely impossible for man to achieve his own salvation, for "by the deeds of the Law shall no flesh be justified" (Rom. 3:20). Salvation by the merit of our works is impossible; hence, divine grace is necessary for us to be saved.

2. The certainty of divine grace.--The grace of God is not an imagination or a possibility, but a divinely revealed fact. Moved by His love and compassion for man, God resolved to save him by the death of His Son (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8-10). The grace of God, then, is the moving cause, and the redemption through Christ is the meritorious cause of our salvation. Man, lost by his own works, is saved by the grace of God in Christ. "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11). "By grace are ye saved through faith...not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph 2:8-9). Salvation by works is impossible, by grace it is sure. "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed" (Rom 4:16).

This doctrine of salvation by grace distinguishes the Christian religion from all other religions in the world. All others teach that, because man sinned, man must make amends and appease the wrath of God. While they differ as to the method and means by which this may be done, theya re agreed in principle that man must achieve his salvation by his own efforts and works.--The Bible teaches that man's salvation is achieved exclusively by the grace of God. Human ingenuity never could have devised the plan of salvation as it is revealed in the Bible (1 Cor. 2:6-10); it runs utterly contrary to our way of thinking; it is "foolishness" to us (1 Cor. 2:14). This doctrine, being the chief doctrine of our faith, marksthe Christian religion to be of divine origin, while all others are human inventions.

3. Definiton of grace.-- In our definition of "grace" we do not include that goodness which God shows to all His creatures (Ps. 145:9), but confine ourselves to the grace by which God saves sinners.

The word "grace" is sometimes used as a gift, quality, virtue , or power which God imparts to man gratuitously (Rom. 15:15; 1 Pet. 4:10). But when we speak of "saving grace," we do not mean anyof these things, nor do we mean an "infused" or a "prevenient" grace, by the proper use of which man is supposed to be able to effect his conversion. The grace by which God saves us is a personal attribute or quality in God, which manifests itself in His attitude toward man and in His promises and gifts, but which is not imparted to man. (Example: We can show our love to our neighbor in various ways, but we cannot impart our love to him.) According to Romish teaching "grace" is not a quality in God, but an infused "quality inhering in the soul" of man, by the aid of which he is to do good and to obtain forgiveness. When the Romish Church says that we are saved "by grace," it means something entirely different from what we mean when we say that we are saved by grace. The grace of God by which we are saved is the "favor Dei," which is that merciful, affectionate disposition, that good will of God toward men, according to which He forgives sins to those who are worthy of eternal death. It is the unmerited love of God toward men (John 3:16; Titus 3:4-5).-- From this concept of grace must be excluded every regard for the merit of man. God's grace is not in the least affected, motivated, or influenced by any worthiness in us; in fact the slightest injection of man's merit and worthiness utterly destroys the concept of grace. "If by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace; otherwise work is no more work" (Rom. 11:6). The grace of God and the merit of man are exclusive terms. Man cannot be saved partly by the grace of God and partly by his own merit; it might, conceivably, be the one or the other, but never both. As man cannot be saved by the merit of his works, it follows that his salvation is possible only by the grace of God.

It is a grace in Christ Jesus. While the merits of man are indeed excluded from the concept of grace, the merits of Christ must necessarily be included. "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:24). There could be no grace for sinners with God, unless the demands of His holiness and justice had been fully satisfied by the active and passive obedience of our Redeemer. Hence we may not think of the grace of God apart from the redemption by Christ. God is gracious to sinners only in Christ and for Christ's sake. They who trust in the grace of God, but rejet the vicarious atonement of Christ, trust in something that does not exist, and will some day find God to be a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). The grace of God is given us by Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:4).

4. Attributes of saving grace.--
(a) the grace of God is universal. It is not limited to certain individuals, , the elect, as Reformed theology teaches but it extends to all men. "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11). "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). "God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4); (Ezek. 33:11). As Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2) so also the grace of God in Christ goes out to all men. But the Bible does not reveal that there is grace and redemption also for the fallen angels.

The fact that only a few are saved (Matt 7:13-14), and that these are saved solely by the grace of God, does not invalidate the truth that God is gracious to all men. Both propositions, that grace is universal, and that grace alone saves, must be maintained on the basis of the Scriptures. If the grace of God did not include all men, no man could be sure of it, because every one must then be in doubt whether God's grace is really intended for him. Neither can any one be sure of God's grace if in any way it depended on his merit, because he could never be certain that he is personally worthy of it.

(b) The grace of God is active. God's grace is not an idle sentiment, but manifests itself in what He did and what He still does for the salvation of men. Because God loved the world, he sent His Son to save the world (John 3:16). "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). By the preaching of the "Gospel of grace" (Acts 20:24), God continues to offer all men the saving benefits of Christ's redemption. All the acts of God, whereby men are brought to faith, justified, sanctified, preserved, and finally saved through faith, are motivated by this grace. "By grace are ye saved through faith" (Eph 2:8)

(c) God's grace is serious and sincere. This appears not only from what His grace prompted, and still prompts, Him to do, but also from the definite statements to that effect. God swears, saying: "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 33:11). Christ weeps over impenitent Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and says: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" (Matt. 23:37). There should be no doubt in the mind of any one that the grace of God is unfeigned, honest, and sincere.

(d) The grace of God is efficacious. The declaration and offer of God's grace in the Gospel possesses inherent power to impress and move the heart and towork acceptance of the offer. The Word of God, which offers this grace, works effectually in them that believe (1 Thess 2:13). As the offer of grace by the governor of the state has power to work in the heart of the convict the acceptance thereof, so the offer of God's grace has power to work in the heart of the sinner that faith by which he accepts it. The reason that it does not always do this, lies not in a lack, deficiency, or weakness of the offered grace, but in the perverse will of man. "Ye would not" (Matt. 23:37). "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost" (Acts 7:51)

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Feel free to borrow this post for your oj/sj discussions.

Family Update

2009-07-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

This week I am working hard to get ready for Zach and of course Phil to visit. I have FINALLY gotten Ike’s old room cleaned out. The bed will be removed after Zach leaves and we will paint the room a more exciting color. For now though the room is a barren guest room. It probably will not feel homey at all. All the rest of the bedroom furniture is stored in the garage now. Zach arrives Thursday night. He was able to leave his base at noon to catch a flight. Phil is in a different training command (Zach is Aviation Electronics…Phil is an Air Traffic Controller) and isn’t allowed to leave until 4:30 which was not enough time to catch a flight out on Thursday so he is coming in Friday morning.

Friday will be an open day where everybody does their thing. At night Milwaukee has their fireworks downtown on the lakefront so I suspect everyone will end up there. Karen and I will most likely join the church group. Kt, Phil, and Zach will probably join Z’s friends.

Saturday is the Franklin 4^th of July parade. Victory of the Lamb has a float with the band playing on it. I ride on the float and run the soundboard. There is a tractor behind the float with a wagon that carries the literature and candy to hand out. We hand out like 2000 brochures and invitations to soccer camp and Hallepalooza. Ike helps out with this…he sucks because he knows half the people there. He is such a social butterfly he just knows everyone from somewhere. This is a cool thing to do. It’s a little weird being in a parade though rather than watching it. So many people wave like I should know them…I rack my brain over who they are and they were just being friendly.

After the parade we are heading up to the lake house. I expect there will be about 20 relatives who will be there. I hope to see a revival of King of the Raft and the Bucket game. I think having two marines makes it more interesting. The bucket game is a manly sport where a group of manly men such as ourselves stand in a circle in the lake about thigh high. We then start by the first person choosing a victim and they can pick from an array of bucket sizes and shapes …it just depends which one you think you can cause the most damage with. Then you fill it with water and whip it across the victims chest in any pattern you see fit to try and sting and pummel the victim. Then the victim gets to choose the next victim. It goes on like this until …well…until you feel like not playing anymore. There is no point and there is no way to win. It’s just about how manly can you take the water whippings and how well can you give them. Is there anything more manly than that…short of actual whippings or using baseball bats? Great fun!! I’m sure it will catch on one day. This game does pre-date my existence in my in-laws family so perhaps it has historical roots that your family enjoys.

Sunday we will come home.. I have no plan after that. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Zach and Phil go home to Pensacola, FL Monday morning.

This last weekend we were at the Lake house as well. No bucket game this time. We actually took K’s parents and my mother up there to be a very quiet and elderly weekend retreat. We tried to pamper the Mom’s as it was their Mother’s Day present. I also mowed the grass, cleaned the moss off the siding, raked pine needles. Fun stuff. I think the lake house is all ready for the party this weekend. My Mother-in-law and Karen put up all kinds of patriotic decorations. Since the two Marines are coming we should have decorated it with like weapons and khaki. Alas it is red white and blue.

Ike has now been to the Muay Tay lessons 5 days a week for a few weeks now. He is doing pretty good. I had him box me the other night and he and Kt went at it last night. He is a quick lil bugger. He got some great hits to the kidney and face. I’m not sure why people enjoy this. Well I just suck and I fell for his fakes every time. So that was enough pain for me. I suspect he will be quite nasty to deal with in 6 months or a year. I suppose he has to live up to his nick name of Jackie Chan.

Rockin' Pipe Organ

2009-06-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today Karen and I took my mother to see an amazing concert on an awesome pipe organ. It is in the Overture Center in Madison and was just phenomenal. I'd say there were 800 or so people who came to hear this concert and the organist was amazing. He played a tribute to Felix Mendelssohn, Bach, Mozart, and Shumann in honor of Mendelssohn's 200th birthday. He called it Felix and friends. I have never seen such incredible foot work and just general knowledge of the instrument. I had a very clear view of his volume control and was amazed at how adept he was. I am excited for the new season of concerts on this organ. There are 4 hymn sings and some other concerts as well.

If you love the sound of real pipe organs...not that blah stuff in 95% of WELS churches...this is something to hear. More than the instrument of course is having an organist who can bring out the sound. It is a shame so many of our churches have 300,000 to 800,000 dollar pipe organs and they are played like there are only 4 flute settings in existence. That is one of my pet peeves. I remember once at my old church thinking how sad it was a congregation of 2300 people has such a lame instrument. Then one of the synod's most talented organists played it and holy crap...The church thundered and moved and there was probably dust flying out of half the pipes from lack of use.

Well anyways..try to make the next concert there in September. Here are some facts on this organ made by Orgelbau Klais Bonn.

craftsman construction using old-fashioned methods and handmade elements; wood harvested and cured for years
stored in "closet" approximately 18" x 65" and 62-feet high with stairs to reach the instrument
organ and enclosure together weigh approximately 350,000 Ibs.
organ moves into position on rails at a speed of one foot per minute
40-foot doors open to reveal organ and form side walls of orchestra shell; wood panels drop down to form ceiling
separate ventilation system in stage house includes temperature-controlled environment for organ

Plans

2009-06-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Karen,

20 years ago today we were married. Back then we had a lot of plans. We spent a good chunk of our time of our 4.5 years of dating contemplating the future. We made so many plans sitting on the shores of the lake or behind Lafollette High School. So many plans…

We planned to get married when I was done with college. We got married before my senior year.

We planned to wait a few years to start having kids. We waited 4 months to get started.

We planned I would teach high school. I ended up in software development.

We planned you would stay home with the kids. You ended up in a career you enjoy and are successful.

We planned to settle down in Wisconsin close to home. We lived in 3 states and 14-16 houses.

We planned to live in a nice house in the suburbs with two nice cars, two kids and a dog. We ended up in the city with 4 old cars, 3 kids and 6 cats.

We planned to have a long life free of trials and tribulations. We ended up having several marital disasters and financial messes that would make a politician blush.

We planned to be skinny all our lives. We are not.

We plan our meals for the week. By Wednesday, they are shot.

I have never been so grateful than for so many “failures.” We got married with nothing and we learned that each other was all we needed. God gave us that beautiful boy without a clue what to do with him. God led me away from teaching and into a career that suits my interests and talents much better. You had some time to stay home with the kids but you also got a chance to develop a successful career. Despite 3 robberies, a leaky roof and a leaky basement we do have a home that we are not a slave to. Look at the adventure our 4 cars with a combined mileage of 700,000 miles give us nearly every week. Our cats each contribute their little piece of life every day. We have 3 great kids, the Marine, the Princess, and…umm..the little philippino kid…(mental note…Ike needs a stereotype) none of whom we could live without. Our marital issues and financial messes have made us stronger, more forgiving, more empathetic, more understanding, and more appreciative of what we do actually have. Umm…There is more of us to love and when our meal planning is shot the upside is that we get to have pizza.

I am thankful to God that he has lead us these last 20 years. There was one plan we made at our wedding. That was to keep Jesus a part of our life to the end. So far that is the only plan that has succeeded. Funny how that works. I think you know that one single plan was the key to the success of our life together despite the “failure” of so many plans. Every bad thing that has occurred has been turned to good. I look forward to another 40 – 50 years of failed plans with you. At least that’s the plan.

Love You With All My Heart

Tim

St. Marcus in the News

2009-06-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a news story run last night on Fox 6 about the success of St. Marcus. The same story is so true of so many kids there. Here is the link: http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-090615-st-marcus-upside,0,3959739.story if the embedded video does not work.

Back to Blogging

2009-06-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

So after a week absence I am back. I spent my bachelor week last week enmeshed in a problem with a project at work. I inherited another guy’s code and it was full of errors. Finally I scrapped a lot of it and rewrote it the right way. I worked like 7:00am – 7:00pm almost every day. Woo hoo party time. Then I was so tired I didn’t feel like doing anything else. I certainly didn’t get K’s office cleaned out and painted…or the garage cleaned or any of that good stuff

The highlight of the week was going to get 4 pizza’s for the week, a box of twinkies, two bags of buffalo wings and a tub of cookie dough. I call them…meals for men. We didn’t even eat all that stuff but it sure seemed like a good idea. One night I didn’t eat dinner and another we went to Applebees. So yeah Ike and I are pretty much dorks.

Ike joined a Mixed Martial Arts/ Muay Tay Kickboxing club. It is an open membership so he can show up for as many sessions as he can handle. It is one of the best if not the best MMA clubs in Milwaukee and highly regarded in the midwest. There are a few UFC fighters from this club. All the skills are good for other sports. I hope he enjoys it. The wrestling coach at Wisco is already recruiting. If Ike does enough juijitsu that coach will be drooling.

We also picked up a new bike so he can get around. Ike picked himself up a girlfriend a couple of weeks ago too. She's a nice girl from St. John's Tosa.

Katie got back from Florida today. She is still a little rambunctious. She is high on Phil. Phil is coming up here for the July 4th weekend with Zach. I'm sure our house will be filled up again with Zach's old crew. yay :-/. It will be nice to have him home though. I'm not sure he has thought about the fact that he only has a couch to sleep on now. The rest of the family won't have seen him for 6-7 months.

Karen had a great week in IA. She did not get tturned into a flaming atheistic liberal in her Critical Thinking class. Rather Iowa sports a rather conservative crowd and she found it quite enjoyable. The professor was excellent. The group bonded very well and went out for some meals together. Sounds like something Karen will want to repeat.

This last weekend we went to a baptism party on Sunday for Karen's cousin's baby. We also went to my cousin and my uncle's 50th and 80th birthday party. Nice to see old faces....wait...faces that we have not seen in awhile.

Hopefully by the end of this week things will be calm and boring as usual.

Reformation Relevance

2009-06-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today at Victory we had a great service. We have been going through a series called Victory Core Values. The core value we covered today was Reformation Relevance. I just think this sermon hit our mission on the head. If anyone wanted to know what being in a mission to the unchurched is about they should listen to this sermon. If anyone wondered what having a contemporary Lutheran mission means...this covers it. If any Ichabodians or BW officianado's want to actually hear what its about..they should listen.

podcast of sermon on Reformation Relevance

You can hear the other Core Value sermons at the podcast site or Subscribe to the Victory of the Lamb Franklin, Wi podcast in Itunes

Victory Update

2009-06-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

God is blessing our work at Victory these days. The jump in attendance up to around 130 – 135 each week since moving to the theater seems to be the new baseline. Even on Memorial weekend we had over 100. Lots of new faces. That trepidation some of us had in how moving to the theater will change the dynamic of the church has faded away. It is starting to click. For the most part I think we have realized that the service is still the same and the Word is being proclaimed in its truth and purity. The location does not change the law and gospel.

Last Sunday represented the first Sunday without any real technical glitches. We had volume issues which we have fixed with speaker placement and more wattage. We had issues with the new software based mixer and clipping but that is now resolved. We had a few issues providing sound to the video camera and also in transmitting WVIC to the lobby TV. We’ve got those resolved now. We now have the podcasting working well and available in iTunes weekly. Check it out.. http://podcast.victoryofthelamb.com/. It was my goal to have the technical side of things resolved by the end of May and we did.

Next up? I’m working on presenting the sermon video in our own Video player off the website as well as providing a video for iTunes video podcasts. We may have some incremental improvements in our service video’s coming up. There are some opportunities coming up for us to expand our reach and mission with high quality video production. Stay Tuned.

I am looking forward to this summer build up to a grand re-launch event in September. We have the new advertisement replacing the old one which I am very tired of seeing. The 4th of July festivities we are involved in. The Hallepalooza event after that and the Bible Soccer Camp.
I’m excited that we now have a paid part-time Director of Children’s Ministry and Volunteer coordinator. She has put in so much time and work already and now she doesn’t need to work full time AND put in another 35 hours for Victory each week. Her organizing abilities are great. We also have two summer assistants working for us from MLC again.

I think this summer we are going to see even more great things happening. If you are looking for an opportunity to be involved in a church and be part of its ministry…come to Victory.

Zach Update

2009-06-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Katie and Zach on the Beach in front of Zach's Barracks.
Zach has classed up with the second phase of his training. It is a 4 week piece of training. After that he has two more phases. One is 16 weeks and if he does well and gets what he wants there will be an additional section that is 10 weeks long. So either in November or February he will get his Permanent Duty Station. He did get his desired “I” strand training section. There is also an “O” strand. Basically the difference will be that “O” strand folk work “Outside” or at least directly on the planes and helicopters. They diagnose the issues and replace faulty parts and radar equipment. The “I” strand or “Inside” people sit in their little boxes and fix the issues with those
faulty parts. It requires a higher level of technical competence and intricate electronics knowledge. The O strand requires more diagnostic and knowledge of integration etc… different flavors I guess.

Zach loves Pensacola. The base and the weather and being on the ocean. He has it pretty cushy there. Four of his friends from Muskego are heading down as well this week. They actually are flying down within hours of Kt on the same airline but they are on slightly different routes. Kt flies through Atlanta to Pensacola and they are going through Memphis. Kt gets there an hour and a half later. So from Thursday through next Monday Zach will have plenty of company and hyperness with those 4 girls. Kt will be off with Phil so I don’t think she’ll be too involved in their gatherings.

Family Update

2009-05-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

Ahh the end of the school year. Kt is done in two days and Ike is done in a week and half. Unlike the common reaction of summer vacation for parents, I cannot wait for summer vacation to start. First of all I get to start riding my bike back and forth to work. Since Ike is a wussy and won’t bike with me the 9 miles each way to St. Marcus during the school year I have to wait for the summer to be able to ride. As it is, Ike has summer school for 5 weeks as well and he just may find himself riding bike after all. I consider it football cardio training. It is just nice that the kids can be off doing their own things and I usually get a lot of work done at work because I have total flexibility. Ike is getting comfortable with the bus concept as well. Ahhhhh.

Kt goes to Florida in a week. She will be there 10 days visiting her boy, Phil, and her brother too I suppose. She is very excited. She has enough excitement that if you were lacking some...she has some to spare. It would appear that in July Phil will be flying up to visit for a day or two and then taking Kt to meet his family in Washington. I'm guessing Kt will be excited... After that Phil will get his permanent duty station as an Air Traffic Controller. He could end up who knows where at some Marine Air base. I'm guessing Kt will hope for a base in the lower 48 as frequent trips to Hawaii or Okinawa are not in her budget. I'm sure eventully he'll get a deployment to Afghanistan and be an ATC at some remote air strip. A challenging relationship to maintain to say the least as really any military relationship is. We'll see how it goes and I will wish them luck. Tucker (as marines do not go by their first names!!) seems like a really nice guy. He is chivalrous, old fashioned, and is a gentleman. He seems to put Kt 1st in his life and has been darn right dedicated. All good things...and since it has been a long time since a guy has been that honorable with Kt I am happy about it. So far its all been through the phone too except for a couple of short visits during Easter. Something they will need to get real comfortable with.

Have a great week all!!

"Advanced" Education

2009-05-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Karen will be gone for a bit here at the beginning of June. Karen is going to Lafayette, IA for a week of classes at Upper Iowa. The class was going to be Ethics but not enough people signed up so she is taking Critical Thinking. I told her if she comes home spewing all this crap about tolerance, personal relevance, truth is relative, humanism and post-modernist thinking that she will need to go through a few sessions of de-brainwashing before being allowed back in the house.

Lately I have run across too many people who adapt to this style of thinking in college and particularly advanced degrees. I’m beginning to think that advanced degrees are a recipe for disaster. Why do all the people I know who get them become all humanistic and self-centered? I’ve now seen three marriages ruined by this kind of thinking.”I’ve got my degree, so now it’s all about me!! See ya later honey!!" It just scares me how pervasive it is and it has been sad to see people I thought could not be "turned to the dark side" become self-centered humanistic fools.

Then there is the issue of the egos of those people who get advanced degrees. It becomes rare to find a humble Phd out there. There is a lot of self love and power trips going on. I remember once at a family gathering an article written by an ex relative who had obtained an advanced degree got passed around. She has a hearing disability and was working for a hard of hearing advocacy group at the time. The article was about the ”Elephant in the Room”. So many of my relatives were touched and drippy by this relative's drippy story about her struggle with her hearing loss always being the “elephant in the room”. I’m sorry but my wife and I just thought, “What are you talking about?? You weren’t an elephant in the room…the problem was you were a mesquito in the room.” I can’t remember the last time I remembered she was deaf. It was sad to think that she thought the problem was nobody wanted to talk about her deafness or acknowledge it because we were afraid, or it was taboo when really it was more about nobody realized she was deaf, didn't care, or just didn’t think it was any kind of big deal.

This humanist assumption that it would naturally be all about me so if people aren’t talking to me about it they must be avoiding the issue is a funny one. Of course that’s pretty depressing I suppose. Who wants to admit that the reason no one acknowledges their particular concerns is because they are simply ignorant of it, indifferent, or their concerns simply elicit no concern by others. It would make one feel small and unimportant. This is not cool for a humanist. I find this situation a lot with my daughter. She has some sort of self-centered melt-down and I find myself struggling to be empathetic because my reaction for the most part is, “I understand your upset however you’re being very self-absorbed so therefore it seems to be your own problem. I’m sure you’ll understand as I go in the other room and not care about this selfish episode.” You’d be surprised at how this is not helpful for her and does not score me Father of the Year awards. However it is a right of passage for most teens so it's nothing to get worked up about.

I guess this means that my hypothesis is that as those who get advanced degrees become more self-centered they become more like teenagers. Ahh the wisdom of this world….so much to take your focus off of Christ and put it on ourselves.

Memorial Day Memorials

2009-05-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

I know this is after Memorial day but I have some memorials to make. This last week and weekend has certainly been filled with a number of tragedies. First there was the death of two students from MLC. They were driving up by Two Rivers and the driver lost control on a curve and went into the ditch. There was mention of a high rate of speed but I don't know if that's true. Both these kids were from my high school alma mater, Lakeside Lutheran, and graduated last May.

Next on Friday, a 17 year old kid from Kt's class at Wisconsin Lutheran got his recently purchased car over 100 mph on highway 45 and hit a median, rolled 4 times and him and his two passengers were ejected from the car. The driver BJ Webb died. The other two had serious injuries but are alive.

Lastly I heard about Pastor Paul Schmeling, a WELS pastor who died this last weekend when he fell out of a tree. He was pruning the branches in the tree and fell and landed on his head.

I have had many thoughts. One of my first was anger that a certain child of mine has on numerous occasions stressed the limits of my BMW or his RX7 as if the manufacturer's might have been mistaken when they said the top speeds were 125 or so. One wrong move and ....lights out. I am not prepared to have to deal with my children's stupidity in this way. I would not be opposed to placing said crumpled vehicles right at a prominent corner of the school as a testimony to what can happen in one moment of misjudgement.

The deaths of these young kids and an esteemed called worker however unusual in their concentration still mark that the Lord is in control and he numbers our days. Everything happens according to his good purpose. Perhaps other kids will live this "graduation season" because they paid special attention to the recent tragedies. Heck, I also am a seatbelt slacker and I have now been remembering to buckle up.

Lastly I do want to salute all those who have died in the defense of our freedom. It is certainly more poignant now that I have one in the Marines and (hopefully) one more on the cusp of enlisting. However, my first appreciation for the service our fallen soldiers gave struck me the most when I was a caretaker in a couple of cemetaries while in college. It was the least I could do to make sure to fix any broken flag holders and to make sure no weeds grew around their graves. The most striking things of course were the funerals. In the small town I grew up in the American Legion would often provide a 3 gun salute for veterans. I think this is a thing of the past, but I do remember that I would always turn off my mower and note that those shots ring right to your core. I hope I never hear them in relation to any of my own children.

St. Marcus and a lesson in Humility

2009-05-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an interesting day. I took the day off from work to take my rag tag band of the St. Marcus track team to the Wisco Grade school meet. I believe there were about 22 teams there. I only had 5 guys and 9 girls because 70% of the team went on the Washington DC, Discover America Trip for two weeks. My team's performance was admirable considering our low numbers.

I decided to take my rambunctious team to Gille's afterwards and get burgers and ice cream etc. I thought that would be a good end of season celebration. It did not occur to me how that would be received and it was interesting. The kids were just amazed that I would pay for their lunch. Over and over again they would thank me and ask how much they could order and thought it was going to cost a fortune. A couple kids, asked me point blank, "Are you rich?" I assured them that I am not rich...on the inside I was thinking about how rich I was to have worked 20 years to achieve my 1000 sq ft house in a working class neighborhood of Milwaukee with a morgage greater than the value of the home and my 4 older cars totaling 655,000 miles on them...etc etc. Boy am I rich alright... :-/

Coming from coaching in the suburban schools I did not think it too weird to spring for Dairy Queen for the kids or have a pizza party or I would bring donut's nearly every morning for the CC team. However clearly these kids did not have this kind of thing done for them...I'll have to assume hardly ever, since the looks on their faces were incredulous. The bill was hardly more than the bill for my family of 4 to eat at Outback. It brought a little more focus to the comments of Ike's friend from STM who came to our house last Friday for the evening. He was amazed at all the food we had and had himself a feast. Anyone who knows how little food we keep in our fridge (like every single friend of our children would confirm)..you would find that statement a bit odd.

So this was unsettling for me a bit. Even though my kid goes to an inner city school I don't actually get a good glimpse of the lives of these kids as individuals. I noticed in the season hardly any kids had proper running shoes. My legs ached just seeing them run in flats, and docksides, dress shoes, converse tennies, and even just socks. As much as I like the ...well.. uniformity of uniforms and its intended effect, to some degree the masking of one's financial condition makes someone like me...an inner city noob...not realize the individual stories behind each kid. I was contemplating this revelation as I drove a few members of the track team back down to St. Marcus for pick-up and end of day activities.

Back at St. Marcus, I was talking with Principal Boche about the day's events and such and he went off to attend to some parent's needs. While that was happening, the remaining track students were coming in from another vehicle and an elderly woman of about 68 or so very slowly followed them into the school. Being the only adult around for a moment, the kids were nodding for me to help the woman.

She was definitely worn by the years. Her lips had sores. She did not appear transient but by appearances seemed close to it. She seemed disoriented and I'm not sure whether it was a mental issue, alzheimers or just stress and despair. She was crying and said she needed help. I asked how I coulp help her. She said, "I can't live where I'm living now...I need help. I need help." The tears were just falling from underneath her glasses. Then she said..."I just need someone to pray for me, not on Sunday, not tomorrow, I need someone to pray with me right now!!" At this point Jon Boche came up and rescued me. I felt at a complete loss. I know that St. Marcus folk are pretty experienced in handling these things and referring people and finding help for people. If he had not showed up I would have done at least two things. I was about to get her outside as Jon did, but then all I could think to do is pray for her and with her. As I got into my car I did pray for her. I have prayed for her at least 4-5 times more last night and today. I pray that she can find relief from her troubled life in Jesus' salvation.

Yet the thoughts of the day have been in my mind. I thought about the life those kids lived to have not experienced a simple gift of a cheeseburger and a shake and how those lives will go forward. Then only an hour later to see a woman on the other end of life...who just needed help in probably every physical way...but really her biggest need expressed at that moment by herself was to have someone pray for her. I thought about how this must have been like so many of the people who sought out Jesus in his day to just touch his robe or hear his voice pronounce forgiveness.

Truly it was one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had and I will thank God for putting me in the situation to experience it.

Family Update

2009-05-13T06:00:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted a family update so I guess I better get to it. I guess we just have those times where we are on cruise control and there is nothing really to update you on.

I have been coaching track at St. Marcus. In about the 3rd practice I tore my achilles slightly while sprinting against an 8th grader. It has been healing slowly. I am slightly less gimpy each day. My family does not tease me less each day. I do what I can to give them a reason to laugh. I'd have to say that this group of kids for track is like herding cats.

However their performance at this last track meet was impressive. The boys truly dominated. 1st in nearly every event and often a 1st and a 2nd. Ike personally got 3 1st places for sprints, a 2nd place for Triple Jump, and a 3rd place for Running Long Jump. The only people he placed behind in the jumping were his own teamates and they were all within inches. I look forward to the WISCO meet tomorrow. There will be a few more schools there and could be some sleeper athletes from other schools we don't know about. Should be more competitive.

Katie, Ike, and I have a 5k road Run on Saturday in Franklin as part of "Team Victory" I will be jogging along at a very slow pace as the ankle really won't be up for it but we'll "git r done" I'm guessing Ike and Kt could win their divisions.

Karen is plowing through her Statistics class and in a couple of weeks will be doing her Ethics class actually on campus in Lafayette, IA for a week. Kt will be going to Florida that week to visit her new love...or not so new by now. It will just be Ike and I living the bachelor life. I predict Pizza will dominate the menu for that week. Since it the first week of ike's summer vacation I also predict he will not be around either. I cannot believe how fast this school year has flown by. It makes my head spin. Probably a good week to do web things.

Kt has been going to Physical Training (PT) on Thursdays and Poolie events on Saturdays with the same recruiter as Zachary. She really "enjoys" getting out there in the fresh air and doing their little excercises. She seems to be doing well considering she hasn't even enlisted yet. The Sergeant Major for the midwest recruiting district was there this last Saturday and was impressed by her because she came in 3 minutes before any other girl on her run and is actually able to do the physical activities.

It does seem to be a trend.. as often when Zach was doing the same conditioning he would comment about the girls who would complain about not being able to run or do certain activities and would sit out. As I always sat in the car waiting for Zach I often heard the girls as the recruiter would take them outside to listen to them whine(I admired the recruiter's patience as I would just want to smack them). Apparently the recruiter has said to Kt that she is the last girl he will actively try to recruit. He has had too many bad experiences. One got dishonorably discharged and others have had various issues (like doing drugs the night before shipping out...zero drug tolerance for the Marines and you have no recourse....you are done permanently). All recruits stick with their recruiter for the entire time he is a recruiter. Meaning if your recruits do well all the way through..it reflects well on your performance review...If they suck...it reflects on your performance review. So they have a vested interest in getting truly dedicated, morally responsible, and high quality candidates. It's another reason that the Marines at least will not make as many waivers for previous bad activities as say the Navy and Army.

Zach finishes his "Core Electronics" School today. He is finishing with a very high score (I believe it rates proficiency in the material) He will now be classing up to the Introductory classes for his Avionics training. This will be a standard day schedule with classes from 7-4 instead of the 2nd shift he is on now. He has two classes slated for 4 weeks total duration. After/during these intro courses they lock him in to his MOS. Depending on final assignment he has a minimum of 16 weeks in classes but could end up in the 27 week program if he does well and gets his choice of programs. So he could be in Pensacola until November 1st-ish or as late as February 1st-ish. Hopefully he will get his wish and be there until February.

Zach also has only one week left of wearing his orthopedic boot things for the stress fractures in his legs. Zach has always suffered while running and I guess there is good reason. The shin splints stepped it up to stress fractures. I don't know if that means he starts getting to run again right away but soon he will have to rejoin his group for PT runs. He also had half his big toe nail removed and it will be permanently gone. It was constantly getting ingrown and he had to have them keep slicing it off so he had it dealt with in a more permanent fashion. That is the same toe that was chopped in the lawn mower.

So that has got to cover everything I know for now. Have a great week!

Week 2 - Victory at Showtime

2009-05-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

So week 2 at Showtime for Victory went pretty smooth. We worked out the sound issues for the most part. Another week or two and that should be very well adjusted. Until they unlock the cabinet with the powerstip for the TV, I cannot broadcast as WVIC. I'm pretty sure the viewing audience within a 1000 feet is disappointed but hopefully by this week we will have access to the lobby television.

Also this week I hope to put out the first video podcast. The audio podcasts are working pretty good and this week's sermon is out there. But it will be nice to get our sermons out as video podcasts as well.

I really like our new advertisement for Victory that will be playing in the advertisements before movies at Showtime. Our last ad has been there for over a year and a half and it is getting stale. Starting this week hopefully it will be changed over. You can go to our facebook page and see it if you like. Just look for the Showtime ad video. Click Here to go to the Facebook Page

Interesting Person

2009-05-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

I was posting on another WELS related blog last week about the current Synod financial conditions and such and a blogger emerged out of the woodwork who is an interesting specimen. Apparently the topic of closing prep schools tripped his trigger.

I, yes..I, had to just stop posting because posting anything on a topic with him around is impossible. Something about his posts just has been hard to figure out and almost disturbing. It's not his point of view. That's easy enough to figure out. He went to a synod school, seems to have had a bad experience and it would appear related to not being in the "in" crowd. He decries everything the WELS stands for now. He is deeply entrenched in post modernist/humanistic reasoning, truth is relative, toleration, etc.. So much so that his very words could be the examples used in an illustration that said, "A post-modernist would typically say something like this...." The actual disturbing part is his paranoia, defensiveness, and perception. Everything is a threat and intimidation. Yet I'm not sure anyone can figure out what the threats have been yet but he seems to be threatened easily.

Last night I just had to read his posts to my family in the car on the way home from Madison. I wanted to get their opinions as to what might be wrong. My wife said it almost sounded like a personality disorder like maybe paranoid schizophrenia or maybe a brain injury. My daughter thought he was just nuts and used a lot of big words trying to sound smart, but didn't know how to write. I have been leaning towards the psychological issues. At first, I had been thinking maybe it was someone pretending to be 28ish but actually is 18 and has severe low self-esteem. Perhaps he heard something in freshman philosophy at the distinguished public university he is so fond of and was finding an outlet to argue for rationalism and reasoning instead of faith and the Bible.

So I don't know. How do you tactfully suggest to someone that he should perhaps pursue counselling because his writings seem to indicate a level of paranoia beyond the normal person? I'm pretty sure his defensiveness would not take the suggestion to heart. Or maybe I'm nuts and there are tons of people out there like that. I just have not run across someone like this before. Since he doesn't seem to hold to any of the beliefs of the WELS maybe he just came to the board to be a pin in the butt. I don't know, but all I can say is if he is legitimately experiencing the feelings and making the judgements he is writing about then I hope he gets some help soon.

First Victory Service at Showtime Cinema

2009-05-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

This last Sunday we had our first service at Showtime Cinema. Over 140 people attended and we had a record number of children in Bible Quest. Although the setup of the technology inside the theater was a bit stressful and we did have a snafu or two on the new sound equipment, the rest of church went pretty smooth. We had a lot of people on hand to make sure everything was set up and ready to go. I'm thinking by the end of the month we will be pretty smooth. We've got some awesome new happenings coming up in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

New Victory Technology

2009-05-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

I have recently added some new technology to the Victory website. I had been trying to implement a new podcast generator for awhile but kept being stymied by errors. I finally resolved them by setting up an Apache webserver and running the podcast site from it. You can get to the site by going to http://podcast.victoryofthelamb.com . It is linked into the main site and should be relatively transparent that it runs on a different webserver. It is a great tool because it formats the podcast feed to be optimized for iTunes and includes tools to ping iTunes for an update. The last podcast tool I had was very very basic and not suitable for iTunes. Also I noticed that this tool streams the podcast much faster than the last one I used. Another feature that I have not played with yet is the ability to add video to the blog and have video blogs.

I am working on upgrading the wiki infrastructure of the Victory site as well. There is a new version that has some very desirable features. I think it will be the last key ingredient to being able to totally share the content management of the site.

In other technology excitement, I am greatly looking forward to setting up our wireless TV broadcast so that we can beam our service to the lobby TV or if we ever need to overflow into the other theater we can beam our service into the other theater. I'm going to call it WVIC...broadcasting church services within a 1000 feet of Showtime Cinema once a week....commercial free.

I bet you're all as excited as I am.

Bionic Fence Eating Squirrels

2009-05-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

Today was "Lawn Day". I officially got into summer mode by mowing, raking and weeding. I even put the snow shovels away although that might still be foolish. However what I noticed on my fence was astonishing. On the metal fasteners that keep the chainlink attached to the fence pipe, I saw that many of them had gashes and some were worn so far through they look like someone used a grinder or a metal file to file them down to thin strips or as if they were chewed through.

Talking to the neighbor, I found an astonishing answer as she told me what she had observed. Bionic fence eating squirrels were eating or filing their teeth on these metal bands. Nearly 15 fasteners had been gnawed by these squirrel warriors. I imagine by now their fangs would snap a leg in two in one chomp. I am on Dr. Moreau's island. Does the squirrel man know what he's created? I think not.

However, news from the front tells me that "Fatty" Squirrel, a corpulent general in the squirrel army took a header from same fence into the neighbor's kiddie pool. Fatty was found doing the dead man's float this morning. Some think it might have been suicide but I for one think there was foul play. Perhaps a jealous bunny.

The skunk's home under my garage was siezed by eminent domain and promptly filled packed and destroyed. Another skunk affected by "This Economy." Wait until he has to pay more taxes at the end of the year. He'll be taking a header into the pool too.

Thank you Obama may I have another?

2009-04-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

So that wonderful tax cut to 95% of the people in America? How will they feel when they have to pay it back next year because too much was witheld. Will my daughter keep her $400 set aside to pay back to the government? That particular American who earns well under the poverty level does not qualify for the tax credit because she is claimed on our taxes (talk about someone who would stimulate the retail economy too!!). How will I feel when I have to pay $400 more taxes back to the government next year because they screwed up the witholding tables? (this affects 33 million married couples..thats 55% of married couples)

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/INSIDE-WASHINGTON-Rude-apf-15091434.html?.v=1

Imagine how so many married couples who find out they get less back from their return or have to pay more back to the government are going to feel next April. America is a land of savers so I'm sure everyone will have their money set aside or not be anticipating getting so much. Obama's plan gives everyone a little cash now so you can take it all back a year from now. Save us Obama... your well thought out plans will save the day.

Here are some nice benefits for the retirees.

"Retirees who have federal income taxes withheld from pension benefits also are getting an income boost as a result of the new withholding tables. However, pension benefits are not earned income, so they don't qualify for the tax credit. That money will have to paid back next year when tax returns are filed."

another bonus for retirees?

"The Social Security Administration is sending out $250 payments to more than 50 million retirees in May as part of the economic stimulus package. The payments will go to people who receive Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, railroad retirement benefits or veteran's disability benefits.

The payments are meant to provide a boost for people who don't qualify for the tax credit. However, they will go to retirees even if they have earned income and receive the credit. Those retirees will have the $250 payment deducted from their tax credit -- but not until they file their tax returns next year, long after the money may have been spent."

You can note it here. An uber conservative is saying, "No more tax cuts please. I can't afford it."

Swine Flu Panic Attack Yet?

2009-04-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

I think I've decided that the only thing truly pandemic about swine flu is the media attention given to it to create a panic. If there was money to be made in it I would start a media firestorm over the pandemic nature of the Rhinovirus. It spreads through schools and offices like crazy and disrupts our lives.

Swine Flu is coming for you
Not really knowing why Swine Flu is such a big deal I assumed it contained similar damaging properties of bacterial Meningitis. Turns out that the nature of Swine Flu is that you will have "Flu Symptoms". So 3400 kids in Milwaukee are locked out of 4 schools because of exposure to 2 Milwaukee residents who appear to have Swine Flu. There is a reason I don't watch the local news and if I needed a reminder, the 8 minutes I caught of it last night reassured me that the media is insane. The picture shown here I think illustrates the portrayal of Swine flu entering the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Now I think everyone knows that I have a thing against the suburban mentality of taking children to the doctor for every little thing (Or even adults going for every little thing). Just ask Kt about the times she feels we should have gone to the doctor but didn't. She'll provide you a list of the abuses. Somewhere our society has gotten to the point of worrying if a baby has a cold, a cough, or the flu. Why did we lose the ability to handle the basic things of life. It goes beyond that though. Society in general seems to be misfiring. Thy now have a name as being a part of the "over-protective" generation or "Helicopter Parents".

It proliferates every part of our society. Here at NML they changed around the health plans because under the old cushy plans too many people were using the doctor for every little thing and our cost of healthcare was more expensive than the average because of it. We spend BILLIONS of dollars on safety that often times is the result of some mishap that affected a few kids somewhere. How many millions spent to mitigate airbags that injured or decapitated a hundred kids. How many billions spent to remove lead or asbestos from everything because of a few kids were stupid enough to suck on window sills every day. Then how much of this is spurred by sensationalism in the media. Perhaps in the past the government didn't jump everytime a camera showed poor Johnny having trouble in school because he ate too much lead based tinsel as a kid.

25 Marines died last year because of motorcycle crashes. 20 Marines died in Iraq in the same timeframe. It is clear as to which kind of deaths the media pays attention to. No matter that in The Battle of Gettysburg 6500 died in 3 days and another 3000-4000 from their injuries over the next few weeks after the battle or that in 3 weeks time 6200 Americans died fighting for Iwo Gima. Now, we as Americans get frustrated with war because 4600 died in 6 years of fighting...6 years. Its no wonder America has become so weak. We can't stomach a war against world terrorism where fewer troops have died in WAR than troops who have died because they didn't buckle up, were stupid enough to drink and drive, or think that they can ride their crotch rocket 120 mph and live.

So what is it with risk that Americans have given up on it. We'll spend billions to prevent a few deaths. We can't stomach war. We ask government to solve every problem and provide security against anything that could happen to us. We are rushing away from everything that made America the great nation it was. I have a few theories. I think as the country has become unchristian, that people become more terrified of death. If you do not live in the hope of eternal life they will do whatever it takes to avoid it and spend as much money as is needed to eliminate the risk of death from life. Along the same lines as we become an un-Christian country we try to create this utopian dream world on our own because "tomorrow we die." So yes that means my vote is with ungodliness as to why our society is decaying. A common thread through history. I wonder if the media will cover that someday?

Change in Church? What's New

2009-04-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

What a busy week for Victory. This last Sunday we held our last service at the Polonia Soccer Club. It is hard to ignore God’s blessings on this mission congregation. We went from a core group of 12 to a group of 120 in just over 2 years. I believe in the last year, Pastor ran 6 different series of Bible Instruction classes not to mention all the individual BIC classes to those who couldn’t make it to the larger classes. The newest one may be in the double digits. Our outreach into the community has brought a larger and larger number of people. 90 kids came to our last event, Easter for Kids. The kids ministry has been growing each Sunday as you can tell by the noise meter in church and during Bible study class. About half the church are parents 30 and under with about 25 kids under 6.

With the move to the theater I think we will see a slightly different dynamic. Church will not be this echo filled cinder block hall and that will have a large impact on the noise level. It will feel different in church because it will definitely seem quieter. I’m sure with 100 additional seats in the theater than we usually put up it will seem emptier for awhile as well. Also the change to have the kids go to Sunday school just before the sermon will be a big change. Having fellowship before church will be a shift for a lot of people.

I’m excited for the new arrangements. The kids will have rooms to do their Bible Quest group. We have a nice café area for fellowship before church that will be stocked with quality coffee (I think we are getting Alterra) and bagels etc.. We have the big theater for our service but the kids can have their video portion of Bible Quest in the smaller theater across the hall. Also for overflow we can beam our service across the hall to the small theater, We also will beam the service to the TV in the Café area for those who need to sit with their kids etc..

I’m also excited for the new technology. We just spent a good amount to upgrade our technology. We bought a new laptop as the “sound” computer and it will be the controller of our new computer based mixer. I will be able to record the whole service and do magical things with the “soft” mixer. We got a wireless monitor system for the band so they can actually hear themselves. We got a nice projector that can handle the bigger screen. I also bought a wireless video transmitter and receiver for sending our service video to the Café’ TV or the small theater on occasion.

The improved sound without all the evil feedback we get at Polonia will be great and I think the improvement in balance will be very noticeable. The rest of the things I don’t think anyone will appreciate the technology behind the conveniences. On the website I am hoping to put the entire service video each week. We’ll see how a file that large will work.

I have a feeling we will be growing into this location very quickly. I predict 200 worshiping each Sunday 1 year from now. To God be the glory.