Has it really been a week and a half?!?

Wow, I just went to my blog and noticed I haven't posted since the 19th. Well lets see what has been going on? I have finished the weird, wonderful, and wacky world of Greek verbs and I can honestly say I understand. Not perfectly...but much better than I thought. I have a big test tomorrow so we shall see how much I really know. It has been quite an adventure. So, to keep me going after Greek class I just bought a parallel/interlinear Greek New Testament. What is that you may ask? It is a New Testament with the Greek text with each of the words translated right underneath. It also has two English versions. 1) The NASB (New American Standard Bible) which is what is called a literal translation. That means it strives to stay as close as possible to the original wording even if some of the meaning or understanding is not clear. Other literal translations are KJV (King James Version) and NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) 2) The NIV (New International Version) which is called a dynamic equivalent. Dynamic equivalent translations stay close to the original text but usually translate idioms and figures of speech into equivalent idioms and figures of speech in English. I am looking forward to using it.

For those of you who skipped over the last paragraph because it got a bit technical...Welcome back! I went to see a concert on Saturday night. It was a church event, but we did not have much interest. Oh well, their loss because it was awesome!! The headliner was Jeremy Camp, and he had two opening acts. One was Bethany Dillon. She is a new, young (16 yrs old) artist on the Christian scene. I picked up her album a couple of months ago and I really like it a lot. She played first and sang about 6 songs. Very simple, acoustic guitar, bass, and drums. She has a great voice and one of her songs is in the movie Dreamer. Click here for info on the movie. Up next was The Afters. I had never heard them before and I was quite impressed. They are a well put together band. They signed with a small Christian label and then Sony Music heard them and signed them to a big time deal. They have a video playing on MTV righ now and they seem to be on the edge of blowing up (in a good way). Then Jeremy camp came out and he put on a fantastic show. He was a worship leader in his church for a while and he has a grasp on some good Church music as well as his own songs. He puts a new spin 0n some hymns as well as popular "praise" songs. I would encourage you to pick up any of his CD's if you are into modern worship and praise worship. He also wrote a song for the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It is on the CD of music inspired by the movie (Bethany Dillon is on that CD too). He spoke a lot about the struggles he has in his life and was very honest. It was a good witness that even he doesn't have it all together. He said that his hope is in Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus. Good times!! Well I could go on but I will keep it at that.

In health news, nothing new to report. I am still going to physical therapy three times a week for my ankle. I go back to the orthopedic guy on Thursday. My ears are better (even after the concert) and I will see the ENT again in January. We are still waiting to hear from the county regarding our application for adoption. I hope to hear soon. So that is my post for today. Man, why did I wait so long. That was fun. Talk to you all soon.

Narnia

Well I have a few minutes right now but nothing burning in me to blog about so we will see where this goes... School is still going well. I have been carrying my Greek flashcards with me everywhere and flipping through them when I get a chance. My pastoral theology class has been fun. We have spent a lot of time in Ephesians and 1 Timothy. I have been using my new Greek interlinear Bible and it is making some sense. My Wednesday night Bible class that I have been teaching has been great although rather sparsely attended. Each week there are about 12 people there. We have five more weeks to go. We are studying C.S. Lewis' book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. If you haven't heard by now, the book is being made into a full length movie that will be released on December 9th. The same people who did the special effects for The Lord of the Rings are working on this movie. I hope it lives up the hype. Disney is behind this one and the website for the movie is pretty cool. You should check it out. I love all of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I remember that my third grade teacher Mr. Kerstin read some of them to us in class. I remember them vividly. We would come in from lunch recess and lay down on the carpet in the reading center and drift away to the land of Narnia. How I wanted to be there with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. What great adventures they had. Little did I know I was learning about God the Lion of Judah. The books seem to get better with age. If you haven't picked them up in a while I highly recommend it. If you have never read them it is time to start. If anyone wants my notes from my class just let me know in the comments section or you can email me. I would be happy to share. Well I guess I found something to write about after all. I will give you an update on Oktoberfest as soon as I get the pictures from my friend Joey. Take care.

P.S. Happy Birthday Dawn!!

Gotta Love the Weather in SoCal!

With the pitterpatter of rain outside I write a short post. Yes it is Southern Californian and it seems like we don't get much rain, but it is sure nice today. We have been battling the heat from the Santa Ana winds the past couple of days and I am getting a bit antsy for fall to start. Now mind you we really don't have seasons here in Long Beach. We have summer and then spring. Now I am not complaining. I love the weather here but I wish we would have a hint of the seasons. The crisp air of fall. The snow of winter, the newness of spring. But alas I guess I will suffer with another 70 degree day with sunshine and a chance of rain. I like weather. I am one of those nerds who owns a weather radio and on occasion actually listen to it. One of my bookmarks is for the weather channel and I even took a graduate class on weather. But here I live in SoCal where channel 7 has the Doppler 7000+ and when it starts raining we go on "Storm Watch". The local news cracks me up. Lets go out to our reporter in San Fernando... "Thanks guys... Droplets of what I can only assume to be water have been falling from the sky for about 30 minutes now and the ground is getting wet. We saw people opening up umbrellas all over the valley in the past hour and we thing it may last for a while... back to you in the studio." This goes on for about 15 minutes with reports fro Oxnard to San Juan Capistrano. Then we go to the "weather expert" for 10 min. with the super doppler veggimatic or whatever and he tells us it is raining!! Oh my! Then... breaking news from Orange County... "It looks like a couple of people have "fallen" into the Santa Ana River and swift water rescue crews have been dispatched." This happens every time it rains. I hate to imagine what would happen if we ever get real weather. Oh well, that is life. Well got to go...

The Pit Of Despair... or Greek II

I told myself I would post more often so here goes...Went to physical therapy today for my ankle. Man, that place is like a dungeon from the dark ages. There were all sorts of contraptions and whatnot. I thought I had entered "The Pit Of despair" from "The Princess Bride". There were some machines in there that I have never seen before. I was a bit scared as I sat down for my evaluation. At least the lady helping me spoke normally. If she started hissing, I was outta there. Now mind you this is in Seal Beach and for those of you not from So. Cal. Seal Beach is home to one of the many leisure World retirement communities. So the clientele was rather... how shall I say... the 4:30 crowd at Denny's. I was hopeing to work out next to some athlete but all I got was Melba who was there recovering from her fourth, count 'em, fourth hip replacement (you can't make this stuff up). She was lying on some water torture device with a towel wrapped around her head and in no pain, so I though this might not be too bad. Well, I had to bend and twist all sorts of ways that a person should not. I am in more pain now than before. I rode the bike for a while and did some stretches as well as some range of motion exercises. I guess it could have been worse. So I have to go back twice a week for three weeks and then I will go back to the orthopedic guy.

In other news, school is going well. I am in the fog of the Greek verb right now. Boy those guys must have been board when they made that stuff up. Lets see how can we make this easy... no, I have a better idea, lets make this sooooo hard we will be remembered forever. Here is a sample. If you don't understand all this just nod and smile, (that's what some of the guys in my class do). For every verb there is tense. Sounds easy but here are the tenses: present (so far, so good), Imperfect (O.K. gotcha), Future (piece of cake), Perfect (I think I studied that), Aorist (What!!) 1/2 Aorist (you lost me), Pluperfect (MOMMY!!). Then there is mood: Idicative, Subjunctive, Imperitive, Infinitive, Participle, Opative (my mind is mush at this point). Then there is voice: Active, Middle, Passive, Deponent. Not to mention person and number. My Greek professor at this point dangles the carrot in front of us by saying we will be taking baby steps. So I reach down and pick my jaw off my desk, wipe the tears from my eyes and we get to work. So far so good. We are only working with Present, Active, Indicative verbs for now, and I get it. It makes sense. We will see what the next few weeks hold. I hope I look back on this post and laugh sometime (soon I hope) and say that there was nothing to it. OK so I have successfully wasted 15 min of valuable study time on this post...so back to the books. Kali Mera, Eukharisto Pali!!

Eins...Zwei...Drei...Suffa!

Yeah, I know... you come to my blog every day and see the same post. At least my new counter at the bottom of the page is getting some use. So here is the latest. My second round of seminary classes is underway. I started Greek II and Pastoral Theology last night. So far so good for Greek. Of course all we did yesterday was review Greek I and I still remember most of that. I did take most of last Friday to study with one of my class mates Shin-Hwan Kim. He is from Korea and was a missionary in Ecuador before coming to the States for seminary. Our conversations are mostly in English but when we need to we speak Spanish too. He helps to keep me speaking Spanish a few times a week. We worked on our Greek vocab cards and some basic grammar. I carry my vocab cards with me all the time so I can study when I get a chance. My computer design class has been a blast. It is pretty cool what you can do with a computer. I said in an earlier post that I would try to get my latest project on the blog to show you but it turns out that the file is almost 32 megabytes. I think it would take at least a day to upload that one on blogger. So if you are really interested I can send it to you as an attachment. You will need to have a high speed connection to download it. Since it is October the annual trip to Alpine Village in Torrance is set for Oct. 14th. Time for some brats, pretzels, and good ol' German beer!!! Not to mention the um-pa-pa band and the stein holding contest. We have gone a few years in a row. If you are in So Cal come out and join us. We will be there from about 7:00 to who knows when (probably 9:00 when Jill will get cold). Make sure you print out a coupon from the website to get in for free. There will be about 20 people from church there, but no worries they are all Lutherans! It's not the Hoffbrau Haus, but it is the best we have here in the Southland. And I leave you with this:

Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der gemiitlichkeit
Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der gemiitlichkeit
Eins, zwei, Drei g'suffa!
Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi,
Zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, hoi, hoi, hoi,