We are about two months away from closing on our new (wonderful) first home. Meanwhile we are living in our apartment that is falling apart at the seams. From the first month we moved into this apartment we have asked the landlord/property management company to fix our front door. Sometime before we moved in the door was kicked in, and instead of replacing the door jam as they should have done, they just placed some screws to hold it in place. The door is still not fixed after two years of repeated requests to repair it. Not only is the door in serious disrepair but, it is so weakened that a child could easily kick the door in even with the deadbolt engaged. Also the door is so damaged that it leaks cold outside air in very badly. The last straw came the other day when we had a small blizzard with winds around 30-40mph with some heavy snow. We noticed that not only was there massive amounts of air coming in through the door jam but there was now snow blowing in as well.

The other things that our landlord refuses to fix: Our electric stove is about 15+ years old and the burners are shot, and only work occassionally/sporadically, the carpet is at least 10 years old and there is absolutely no padding whatsoever. The landlord refuses to de ice the sidewalk in front of our apartment or any other for that matter. To top that all off, our landlord raised our rent by $15 two months ago.

Our close friend offered to let us live in her basement for the next two months while we wait to close on our house. So, now we are in the process of moving our things once again and probably will be living out of boxes for the next couple months.

We have been wanting to get out of this apartment for a number of months now, and we were hoping to be able to close on our new house sooner; however this is a blessing in disguise. It will be a pain to live out of boxes for two months, and I don’t want to have to move twice, but it beats living in that horrendous apartment.

First off I would like to apologize to all those who have faithfully read my blog and have wondered where I have been these last few months and what I’ve been doing.

I took a break from the blog to deal with some issues that have arisen. God has been working in my life on certain issues. One of these issues has been what to believe in regarding the Calvinist viewpoint versus the Arminianist view and where do my beliefs fit in the spectrum. I have been struggling with this issue for the last 6 months to a year. Just a few months ago however after much study, meditation and discussion with my wife, I decided that I cannot let my pride, or self-centered nature prohibit me from knowing God’s true nature and His will. I could no longer deny the truth about God’s grace and my depravity, nor could I deny His electon of me into The Kingdom of Heaven.

This has been the hardest thing to come to terms with that I have encountered since being changed forever by Christ. For the longest time I held fast to the belief that somehow my “free will” either stood on equal grounds with God’s will or that somehow I could choose God. I had to come to a realization that we do have a will of our own however that will was tainted when Adam fell into sin. I also had to come to a realization that God foreknew me and predestined me to be one of His children, not based upon anything I did or didn’t do. Since then I have had an amazingly clear perspective on my life, on God, and His word, and His sovereign will in my life and the world in general. I’ve also had an even more amazing sense of gratitude since this realization than when I first believed. Everyday I wake up feeling so blessed that He chose me.

I will post more shortly on this subject specifically and go into much more detail then.

Some other things that have been happening in my life:

• God has blessed us with a beautiful healthy baby boy on August 4, 2008, Ezekiel James. He is now 5 months old and just learning to roll over and eating his first solid foods.
• God has blessed us with our first home. We are due to close on the house when all the renovations are done in/around mid March.
• After much research, trial, and experimenting we have found out what our 2 year old son’s digestive problem has been. Originally we thought it to be Gluten intolerance or Celliac’s Disease; however after further research and some dietary experimentation, we’ve discovered that he’s Fructose intolerant.
• We have a major trip planned to visit my family in California in February of 2009. My parents have payed for all of us to come visit, and we have a huge itinerary scheduled for the whole week.

Anyway this is what has been going on in my life over the last 6 months. I will be back to blogging at least on a more regular basis.

This is kind of an off topic post, however here over the last few weeks we have been having some serious issues with our broadband internet connection. Under other circumstances this wouldn’t be as big of a deal, however our phone is over our internet and we need a somewhat reliable connection in order to use our phone. We currently have Cable tv and 3 Mbps internet connection and up until recently have had no problems. Now however we cannot hardly talk on the phone without the signal breaking up. After doing several speed tests I discovered our bandwidth was running at half of what we are paying for or less. We called the cable company and I was treated like a complete moron as if I didn’t know a thing about computers or networks. After several phone calls I was able to get a technician to come out to check out our service. The technician came out and for some strange reason everything worked fine (which was infuriating). Two or three days later my connection was on the fritz again.

Yesterday we did some research and discovered switching back to DSL @ 6 Mbps would cost us half what we pay now and switching to satellite would make our overall bill about $5 cheaper. On top of being cheaper, we are able to get a dvr. We tried getting one from our cable company, but they wanted us to pay them $15 a month to rent one, which is ridiculous. This means we can record the shows we want to watch and not have to put up with some of the horrible garbage that is played on tv nowadays.

We realize that having broadband internet and satellite/cable tv is really a luxury, and not really necessary. We have cut way back on our television viewing over the last year, and are looking forward to being able to filter out most of what we don’t want to subject ourselves to and our children to using the dvr.

So goodbye cable and hello again to dsl and for the first time in my life satellite tv.

Today I made my first post in a week. I have had a really long week to say the least and all that I had time, or energy to do was to log on to the blog for a few minutes and moderate any comments. As of last weekend I made the switch from 12 hour night shifts to 12 hour day shifts, after only 24 hours to adjust. This was difficult for me as for the last 5 years I have worked 12 hour night shifts almost exclusively.

What made the week harder however was the return of my cold on Wednesday at work. This pretty much put me out of commission on both of my days off. Fortunately the rest and medicine was able to get me through the next 3 days of work and now I am almost back to normal. The week was almost a total blur, as half the time I felt like a walking zombie. Also, as weird as this sounds but it feels so strange to be up and at work during the day. I am just so used to sleeping most of my days away.

My little one has had a hard time getting used to my new schedule as well. Normally, I get home around the time he’s waking up and spend some time with him in the morning. I’d wake up around supper time and spend the evening with him and put him to bed. Now, I am gone before he wakes up and I don’t get home until he’s already in bed or about ready to pass out on the floor waiting for me. He asks numerous times throughout the day, “where’s daddy?”. The upside to this new schedule is first, I will be back to a normal sleep schedule for a change. Secondly, I will be able to spend more of my time off with my wife and son during the daylight hours. I am still not totally adjusted to my new schedule but it’s only a matter of time before I am back to normal.

Anyway, that is what has been happening in my little corner of the world.

After reading an article in my local newspaper(Grand Island Independent) yesterday, it got me thinking about our society and the trends arising from evolution being taught in public schools. The article had nothing to do with evolution or schools, it was about a couple of young adults who were being charged with child abuse in the death of their 7 week old infant. Now granted on the surface this has nothing to do with evolution. If we dig a little deeper however we see underlying issues that are on the rise in our society. One of these issues is the rise in child abuse and infanticide. The writer of the article interviewed Diann Muhlbach, the coordinator of the Coalition for Children and secretary of the Association of Child Abuse Prevention in Grand Island who was quoted as saying, “Our biggest challenge is getting people to understand a child is a valuable human being. If you have something that’s valuable to you, you take care of it. A child is a precious gift.”

I see a big problem when a child advocate says that their biggest challenge is convincing parents their children are a valuable human being. This is a direct result of what evolution teaches our young people in public schools. They teach them that we are nothing but another animal, a highly evolved animal and that we don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves. With this kind of attitude about life it’s no wonder our young adults have no value for life or their own children. We also see the trend of abortion increasing steadily, which is another result of evolutionary theory.

Muhlbach was also quoted as saying, “We need to look at how we value children. How do we get people to look at children as valuable?” I would have to agree, society needs to look at how we look at our children. I also have an answer for her second question. How do we get people to look at children as valuable? All People need to look at children as God sees them. God values each and every life that He creates, and forms each and every being by His own hand with lovingkindness. If society looked at human life as God does then society would have a wholly different attitude.

Update (3-4-2008)

This is a forum where I state/express my views and my perceptions. This is not an open forum to debate these views or perceptions. If I wanted to debate my views on creation or evolution I would go to one of those such forums. I recently had to delete several comments due to this reason. Those people who want to discuss my views or my perceptions can either do it in a positive encouraging way or go somewhere else to do this as I will not post any comments with the intent of bashing, berating, or malice. If those people do not like my views or the fact that I will moderate every comment that gets posted publicly they do not have to come here and read my views or look at my blog.

Just when I thought we were heading back to normal health wise for the family, another bug strikes! Our son has been struggling all winter with several illnesses; bronchiolitis being the worst of them. He was just starting to get his appetite back again and getting back to normal, and that’s when this nasty cold bug strikes, and it struck all of us. For me it was just the nagging itchy throat, cough, achy head, stuffed up, lightheaded bug that just won’t go away. I think my wife side-stepped the worst of it, either that or she is hiding it well.

My son however has been feeling horrible. Waking several times a night with high fever, cough, and just general crankiness. Such is life with a toddler.

I anxiously pray and await the return of good health for the family. As we await the answer to our prayers we turn to the usual barrage of medicines.

This is not “technically” a current event anymore, however I wanted to post the pictures as I originally intended to post them on the web anyway.

On December first Nebraska got a small ice storm, and I took the opportunity to snap some pictures out in the front yard. This storm was no comparison to the major ice storm that hit around new years of 2007 (links here & here).