Avoiding Evil

Tonight was one of the better youth services we have had in a long time. The worship went very well and the message hit home. By some strange coincidence the lesson this week was on love. We’ve been doing a 13-week study on lessons on assurance of salvation and growing in Christ. Without planning, the love lesson ended up being the week of Valentines Day. This week I took the video camera and went around the church asking people 5 questions about love. I then made a video of the different answers to the 5 questions. Now I am curious as to what your answers would be to these questions. Here are the rules: You must answer each question immediately with the first thoughts that come to your mind. You cannot look up any answers, any references, or any definitions. This is to see what you think about love right now.

1. What is love?

5. How can you love one another?

Today was an abnormal Valentines Day for me, meaning I actually had to do something for Valentines Day whereas last year I did basically nothing. It seems to me like most of the people I know went out on Saturday to celebrate Valentines Day instead of trying to go into the city on a Monday night. We were the smart ones, we waited until Monday to rush up to St. Louis at the last minute and try to get into a restaurant without waiting ten billion years. Luckily we were able to leave town early enough to get to a restaurant in time to immediately be seated in front of all the people who made reservations I might add.

We ended up going to a little restaurant called Tony Marino’s on Manchester Rd. The service, food, and atmosphere was very nice.

The only issue I had with the restaurant was the fact that they ran out of steaks. On Valentines Day, an hour and a half after the place opened, they were out of ribeyes, which is what I wanted. That is just not good business if you ask me, even though I did really enjoy sirloin steak covered in a thick brandy sauce.

We also went to see Million Dollar Baby. Can I just say, what an excellent movie! With all the reviews I have wanted to see it. They say it is one of Clint Eastwood’s best films to date, and frankly I agree. I should warn you, it is an emotionally stirring movie that leads you to wonder about the choices you would make. It’s one of those movies that I really love and yet hate to watch just because of the emotions brought along with it. Another movie that did this to me was Mr. Holland’s Opus. With the narration of Morgan Freeman and the direction of Clint Eastwood this movie certainly comes out on top. If there were any cons for me it would be the length with a running time of 2 hours and 30 minutes, however it takes time to tell a good story. My rating: A

All in all, Monday was fun and yet I was tired and broke the next day. Aaaaahhh, such is life and Valentines Day. Hope you had a good one!

That is ‘Lou’ not loo. It’s my nickname for St. Louis. We went to St. Louis today, Forest Park to be exact, for a day of fun and excitement. We are always giving Michael a hard time about not making any plans or decisions so he decided to plan the day for us. Today we went to the Zoo, the Science Center, and to Olive Garden. Here are a couple pictures from the Zoo.

My favorite part of the day was the Omnimax Theater in the Science Center. We watched a show called Pulse which is a production of Stomp. It was excellent. I love to see all the different cultures and their musical/rhythmic style. If you get a chance to see the show, I would recommend it. All in all, Michael did good.

This has been one of the busiest weeks of my life. We decided to start a new project in the sanctuary of our church. For years we have been plagued with a little sound booth that sits so low you can’t get your legs under it and barely has enough room to put any of our sound equipment in. We bought a new computer over a year ago that was supposed to run our video on Sunday mornings, but unfortunately we could never use it because it wouldn’t fit on the sound booth. That has all changed now.

Starting on Monday we began the process of tearing down the old sound booth. I had to mark all of my wires, make sure I knew where everything went on the Sound board, and then move all of the stuff. We took the old booth and gave it to the janitor who wanted to use it as an entertainment center in his house. Here is a picture of the raised platform after we took the sound booth out. As you can see we sat on a little raised platform that our chairs barely fit on. Many of us have had the experience of our chairs falling off the back of the platform causing us to fall backwards.

On Tuesday they began the construction and by 5:00 p.m. they had the new platform, counter top, and the wall up. Here is another picture of the new sound booth. If you compare it to the picture above you can see that we took out two of the back pews and stretched the booth to fit all the way across the back instead of being to one side. This created a huge, nice working space for the Audio Visual team. It has small, locking doors on each side of the booth and is probably large enough to hold 3-5 people comfortably. I spent most of the day Tuesday preparing for youth on Wednesday so that I could spend my time on Wednesday to help with the sound booth. I did learn one important lesson…drilling holes in concrete is extremely loud!

On Wednesday the top piece of wood and the inside walls had to be stained. We began drilling holes, running electrical outlets, running wires, and doing whatever it took to get this project completed in less than a week. I spend my entire day working on this project and continued to do so until dinner time and youth that night. You can see from this picture the newly stained walls and oak top. Those are just a few of the many wires that needed to be run and of course this picture is a commercial for Diet Pepsi, the drink of choice while working all day. I also spent three and a half hours setting up a portable sound and video system for our Wednesday night children’s program since our normal system was out of commission.

Today, which is Thursday, we spent most of the day running wires and cutting holes in the counter top and wall to run more and more wires. I re-organized our wireless mic system and spent a large portion of my time working on sound equipment and setting the board back up. I also set up several surge protectors under the counter in order to give us more plug-in space on separate circuits. In this picture you can see the CAT5 board we ran all the wires through. It took a lot of time wiring this up, luckily I didn’t have to do that job.

We didn’t quit working tonight until almost 7:00 p.m. There is still a lot to do to get this ready for Sunday. The carpet is supposed to be done tomorrow and I hope they finish painting the wall tomorrow as well. Then I have to get all of the stuff in racks that are supposed to come in tomorrow as well. I am also going to the city tomorrow to buy chairs, wires, and some other accessories that I need for the board.

I just purchased a new Ol’ Man climbing Tree Stand from Cabela’s. It is the updated model of one of the best tree stands on the market. It has all new Spreader Arms for more room and now both sides of the seat section hook up and adjust in order to make it safer and easier to hang. It weighs a grand total of 26 pounds which means I can plan on that much extra weight that I can lug through the woods and up a tree. This is the first climbing tree stand that I have used so we will see how it goes.

Here is a picture of me, behind the church, testing out my new tree stand. At this point I hadn’t made it very far up the tree, but it shows how this thing works. You place straps on your feet and then lift the bottom stand up while you are sitting on the top section. Then you stand on the bottom section and lift the top section up. You continue this process all the way up the tree, as high as you are brave enough to go. I purchased this stand now because I am going on a hog hunt in a couple weeks, but I will get the most use out of it during deer season and while filming hunts.

I will be making good use of this tree stand, as long as I don’t fall out of it. The invention of the full body saftey harness was a wise thing, a special thanks to whoever came up with that idea.