I’m here with my friends Ella, Andrei and Mark here in Kiev and we are learning about blogging. Isn’t this easy? Everyone should blog!!!
Learning about Blogging in Ukraine
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Monthly Archives: September 2004
The hills are alive . . . .RUN!!!!
This past weekend our family went to the mountains of Austria. We stayed in a Christian guesthouse that is about 30 miles from Salzburg.
While we were there, we had a chance to visit Salzburg and take the “Original Sound of Music Tour” (accept no imitations). We were able to visit many of the locations where the movie was filmed. This picture is near where we stayed on Lake Wolfgang (Wolfgangsee in German). It is the lake that you see at the beginning of the movie when Maria is dancing in the mountains. It is absolutely beautiful. For my wife, who is a lifelong Sound of Music fan, it was a dream come true!!!
Hello Win Column!!!
Last night my beloved Texas Rangers completed a 3 game sweep of the division leading Oakland A’s in dramatic fashion. They came into the 3 game series 5 games behind Oakland with 13 to play. From anyone’s perspective, it was looking pretty hopeless.
Even after winning the first two, a loss in the 3rd game would still leave them 4 games out with 10 to play.
I tuned into the game last night (on mlb.com) in the 7th inning with the Rangers losing 3-2. The A’s scored in the top of the 9th to make it 4-2.
In the bottom of the 9th Hank Blalock hit an incredible Home Run to make it 4-3. Then, with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, David Delucci drove in the winning run!!!!
That’s 2 games out with 10 to play. It can happen.
I’ll keep you posted.
Powerless
Hungarian Electric Companies seem to have a different view of the importance of their service than I do. A couple of weeks ago, the power was out for two whole days in the city that my office is in. This was planned and everyone knew about it. It wasn’t an emergency, just a scheduled outage. Therefore, all businesses, households, etc . . . were disabled for the entire day. I’m sure that American electric companies work for years and spend lots of money to put in parallel systems to avoid these type of planned outages because businesses wouldn’t stand for it.
This morning there is no power at my house and I called them and they said that it will be out until 4pm. It went out at 8am. Sounds like a work day to me. They had to do something and it was more important than my house having power.
Another chapter in our “Overseas Adventure”
That’s Disgraceful!!!
I’m reading through Acts a little bit each morning. This morning I was in Acts 5 where Peter and the apostles were put in jail, miraculously escaped, and then were questioned by the religious leaders. After the religious leaders questioned them, the let them go, but only after flogging them. It was after all of this that I came to verse 41 which says:
“The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” (NIV, Acts 5:41)
At first when I read it, I took it as one of those generic “endure suffering” verses. I don’t like that we are to endure suffering for him, but I accept it as best I can. I guess I think of physical suffering first when it comes to these verses. In my life, it means things breaking around my house, sickness, stress, etc . . . . Then, I read it again and noticed that word DISGRACE. Now disgrace is a totally different thing. They were publicly humiliated and seen as unfit for society by these leaders. Yet, it didn’t seem to bother them. They rejoiced!! It seemed that they were prepared for this and possibly looking forward to it. I’m not there. Lord, help me to be willing to suffer disgrace with the courage that the apostles had.
Milestone in Hungarian TV Sports History
This weekend marked an incredible milestone in sports history for me living in Budapest. It marked the first two live American Sports events that I could watch from the comfort of my own home!!!!
The Hungarian ESPN finally carried something other than soccer, team handball, darts, or snooker.
The Ryder Cup aired live most of the weekend. It was wonderful to watch even though it was all in Hungarian.
Then last night, they showed a live Football game. Although it was New England and Arizona which wasn’t a particular interesting matchup. It was still football!!! The funny part was that the in-studio color commentary was from a player on a Hungarian American Football Team called the Budapest Wolves. From looking at their website, it appears that they are the only team in the country since their only game is against a team from Austria. Pretty cool that you become an expert and celebrity when you are on the only team in town.
Maybe we can get some College Football soon!!!
Hope for the Aggies
On Saturday, Texas A&M beat Clemson 27-6. After a few weeks of ignoring the Aggies for fear that they were going to have another losing season, I’m back on the bandwagon. They might still have a losing season, but it is nice to see two strong victories in a row.
Gig ‘Em!!!!
No Experts Here
Yesterday, I went to seminar put on buy Andrew Jones. It was part of a conference by the Alliance for Saturation Church Planting. He was discussing how “new media” is used in reaching the 20 something generation in Europe. He wrote a paper to prepare for the time.
I was very encouraged by the time and gettting a new perspective on how this emerging generation views media and their world. The thing I came away with was that I live in a world that demands experts. I want experts and others expect me to be an expert. In this new world there aren’t experts, but the community is the expert. As the community interacts and shares ideas and thoughts in humility then greater learning and ideas are achieved.
Still need to figure out how this will impact my work here, but I realized I can stop trying to the be an expert.
Thanks Andrew!!!
Tom & Valerie in Venice
Valerie and I just got back from a wonderful trip to Venice!! My parents are visiting from the US and graciously took us to Venice. It is a beautiful city and incredibly unique.