Ok, I’m finally getting around to writing something about my trip. This post won’t have pictures, but there will be plenty to come. This is mostly to give you an overview of what happened down there and why there. This the fifth trip down there from my church, but my first. Normally, it is a youth group mission trip. But this time it turned into a mostly young adult/youth group. The destination is Pan American Health Services. They run an “orphanage” that caters to abused and malnourished children. They also help the underprivileged get an education. In the past the group has built and improved a casita, basically the home for the babies and young ones. They’ve also constructed a kitchen for visitors to use and poured lots of concrete for walkways. On this trip, besides me, there were 4 youth, 6 young adults and 6 adults.

We left home on the 13th and flew out a little after midnight on Valentines. We flew to El Salvador and then on to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. There we boarded a bus, grabbed some food and then headed up to Peña Blanca. That gets us there and instead of giving you a day by day I’ll explain generally what happened. We spent quite a bit of time hanging out with the kids and playing games when not working. For work, we were painting steel so that it wouldn’t rust away. Another project we picked up was building a home for a family in one of the mountain villages. A lot more on that later. We also took a day to go see Copán. We flew back on the 24th and arrived back in town at about 4:30 in the morning on the 25th.

I intend to put up quite a bit more especially about the house building project and pics of the kids.  I couldn’t wait any longer to get something up, however. So now you’ve read the teaser.

cheers!

Yesterday, a friend and I went snowboarding up at Badger Pass in Yosemite. This was only my fourth time, but I got comfortable enough that I was able to take my camera on a couple runs. I got a few photos and my friend cautiously borrowed it to takes some pictures of me. I, on the other hand, was booking down the hill almost at full speed with my camera bag strapped around my waist and my camera in my right hand. Fortunately, I ride goofy so that was my forward hand. I normally don’t land on that one when falling. At any rate, I took a picture of this tree that I thought looked cool. It was at the top of the hill just outside of the ski area.

* WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *

Well, I’m headed to Honduras tonight and I’m extremely excited. As soon as this is published, I’m going to lock up my trailer and head to town and meet up with friends. Oh, we get free pizza tonight because one of the local Pizza Factory owners likes what we do. I like pizza, but free pizza? Can’t pass that up!

cheers!

So, I’m super excited today. I got new batteries and charger for my camera and … I finished up my classwork. If everything goes as planned, I will be getting my degree this spring. I have to write some letters and say pretty please to the important people at PUC and hopefully they say, “Good job.”

Another reason is that I’m leaving for Honduras Wednesday night. We are leaving from up here Wednesday evening and then flying out of San Francisco at 12 somthin’ in the morning. This is the first time I’ve ever flown internationally, so, really the first time through foreign customs. I’ll be down there for 10 days.

Oh, I have to grow my beard out, too. Made a bet with a guy that if I would grow it out, he would shave his. Now he hasn’t shaved his since his 20s and his wife has never seen him clean-shaven. So, even though I’m not real thrilled at the prospect, I’m taking one for the team. I wonder if I’ll look just like my dad…

Well that’s it for now. It’s been an awesome day. I got new stuff. Going on a trip. And God’s taken care of my finances, which I knew he would, but, argh!, its so hard to let go.

cheers!

So, a friend mentioned in a blog post this statement.

The most basic of emotional needs in life: To know we matter and are important enough to have someone else care.

I think this is probably one of the best definitions of what it means to be loved. And I don’t mean the romantic love; I’m talking about the true love that can only come from God.

I’ve only really been completely overwhelmed by the power of the sacrifice given on the cross a couple times. The first time was at a Dallas Holm concert, probably when I was in junior high. He performed Rise Again with a slide show. The second time was more recent, when I was still in college. Nicole Nordeman came and did a concert and for some reason, hearing her perform the song Why live really brought it to a whole new level for me. I remember having to blink back the tears when she hit that last section. I had loved that song before, but that time it totally hit me square in the face.

To bring this back around, it was at those times that I really felt that I mattered to God and He cared about me. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” I don’t care what love language speaks to you the most, this trumps them all. How much more is this when it is God incarnate?

I normally don’t post lyrics, I think it’s kind of lame to do it regularly, but I do want to share the song that made me most feel the love of my god recently.

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Why - Nicole Nordeman

We rode into town the other day
Just me and my Daddy
He said I’d finally reached that age
And I could ride next to him on a horse
That of course was not quite as wide
We heard a crowd of people shouting
And so we stopped to find out why
And there was that man
That my dad said he loved
But today there was fear in his eyes

So I said “Daddy, why are they screaming?
Why are the faces of some of them beaming?
Why is He dressed in that bright purple robe?
I’ll bet that crown hurts Him more than He shows
Daddy, please can’t you do something?
He looks as though He’s gonna cry
you said he was stronger than all of those guys
Daddy, please tell me why
Why does everyone want him to die?”

Later that day the sky grew cloudy
And Daddy said I should go inside
Somehow he knew things would get stormy
Boy was he right
But I could not keep from wondering
If there was something he had to hide

So after he left I had to find out
I was not afraid of getting lost
So I followed the crowds
To a hill where I knew men had been killed
And I heard a voice come from the cross

And it said, “Father, why are they screaming?
Why are the faces of some of them beaming?
Why are they casting their lots for My robe?
This crown of thorns hurts Me more than it shows
Father, please can’t You do something?
I know that You must hear My cry
I thought I could handle the cross of this size
Father, remind Me why
Why does everyone want Me to die?
When will I understand why?”

“My precious Son, I hear them screaming
I’m watching the face of the enemy beaming
But soon I will clothe You in robes of My own
Jesus, this hurts Me much more than You know
But this dark hour I must do nothing
Though I’ve heard Your unbearable cry
The power in Your blood destroys all of the lies
Soon You’ll see past their unmerciful eyes
Look there below, see the child
Trembling by her father’s side
Now I can tell You why
She is why You must die”

I should be sleeping, but I feel that I should write this down before I put it off again. I was reading a friend’s blog and she posted a story about God’s providence when finances get tight. This happened to me recently, too. I checked my bank account just before leaving home and found out it was really low. I also remembered that there were some charges that hadn’t posted yet. This really hit me while I was at the gas station filling up. I was getting stressed out as much as possible for me when I suddenly remembered that I had a check in my wallet for a random job I had done the previous weekend. For some reason, a church member had contacted me about fixing some satellite issues. I promptly felt quite relieved and was able to enjoy the evening without worries. Quite a bit of money that I was expecting came in the next day, so I didn’t actually need that check. You can totally chock that up to just another of life’s coincidences, but I don’t believe in those that much. I’m pretty sure it was God just reminding me that even before I think I need to worry about something, He’s already provided the solution or at least started the snowball rolling.

In a few minutes I will be posting something that I have been trying to do for months. I finally did it.

At any rate, I figured I would take this time to let you know what I’ve been up to. Christmas was spent at my folks place. My sister came down from Washington. I had fun with her and her husband. My dad’s mom and brother also showed up. So it was quite the full house. I was sleeping on the couch in the living room. I pulled an all-nighter hanging out with Trina. She was visiting home from Cambodia where she’s teaching and didn’t want to experience jet-lag on the way back. New years found me at some friends house where I mostly just chilled and played ping pong (table tennis). Throughout all of this, I’ve mostly just been working in the office, madly programming. I’ve gotten a ton done, but it seems like forever until it will actually be useful.

That’s it for now.

cheers!

Blogged with Flock

Let’s just get the complaining out of the way at first. I’ve been sick for the last two weeks. The first week was the sore throat and some congestion, the second was just sinus pressure and more pressure. I didn’t feel congested like normal, just the pressure that almost caused headaches a couple times. I think I was mostly well today, but then I had to go and work from 7 till 10. That’s not conducive to staying well. Right now, I’ve got a splitting headache and I hope it goes away soon.

Now that that’s over with. Last week was spent in the office. First we rearranged the office so I have my own sweet space. I say sweet because it’s a corner with a huge L shape desk and white boards. (The white boards are quite useful when brainstorming a programming project.) By the way, I am very excited about having my own spot. It’s been two weeks and just thinking about it still makes me happy. Weird, huh? The rest of last week was spent catching up on CD sales orders, mastering CDs, and programming. Oh yeah, I also started playing Settlers of Catan. (Board game that’s addicting and a lot of fun.)

This week … well … I’m back in Yountville, CA mostly finishing their sound system … finally. Tonight was their Christmas music program and the first program to run through their brand new sound system. Yes. We finally finished it enough to use it. Let me tell you. I am very very very pleased that it’s not hanging over my head as another unfinished project. I guess I can’t see we are “finished”, but it’s close enough. It’s runs and they can use it. In my book, that’s most of the project done. This project has been very frustrating at times and that’s putting it mildly. So relief is the current feeling, well, it would be except for the headache. We got quite a few compliments on sound tonight and I am very happy with the way it sounds. I’m quite picky and have become even more so since I’ve been spoiled with an awesome system for our live shows. So, to make me very happy with it, means, “It rocks!”

Well, that’s enough to help you get caught up on my life short-term. Briefly, I spent most of November in Arroyo Grande, CA installing a new system there. Also, my original “home” church and I spent Thanksgiving down at my Grandma’s place in Loma Linda and actually got to briefly visit my other grandparents since they were down there with some cousins.

If you want to know what I’m up to, I suggest following me on Twitter. I’m horrible at updating this blog, but I tweet almost everyday. You can see my latests tweets on the right of this page as well as visit my Twitter page. If you don’t know what Twitter is, please see my old post upgrade and twitter.

cheers!

I’m just checking out how well posting from Flock 1.0 works.

[UPDATE:]
Guess it works pretty good.

Blogged with Flock

Wow! It’s been almost a month since I blogged last. Almost being less than four days. A lot has happened and I’ve been several places. Since my last post, I’ve worked in: Yountville, Fresno, Arroyo Grande, and Modesto twice. Yountville and Arroyo Grande are install jobs, but Fresno and Modesto were the fun ones.

Fresno was a church Youth Conference. We had to unload and setup in less than three hours. With God’s help and six workers, we actually did it. We had never setup the large sound system in less than eight hours before. The second time in Modesto was for a Prayer conference. Again we setup the large system. Fortunately, we weren’t time crunched. We had it up and running in six hours with no helpers. That included time picking up some lifts that we thought were going to be delivered. So, we are getting pretty fast at setting it up.

While working in Arroyo Grande, I stayed with my parents and was able to attend one of my dad’s performances. He conducted the San Luis Obispo Chamber Orchestra. It sounded awesome and the featured bassoonist was excellent. My grandparents also visited that weekend. So, fun was had by all. The weekend before was spent recouping from a 101.7F fever that I had Friday night. That was the first fever in almost 11 years. I can wait at least that long for another go at it. That was the temp an hour and a half after taking four ibuprofen. I wonder if it was higher earlier.

Today was spent cleaning up my mess in AG and driving home. Tomorrow, I load up a small system and head for the Santa Cruz area. I’m providing sound for Men’s Ministry Retreat. The speakers being brought in are pretty good from what I hear. Hopefully true.

Oh, I saw a tweet from Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.TV that they would be broadcasting the recording live on ustream.tv. I decided to attend since I had nothing else to do and lucked out. I had my domain mentioned because I used her GoDaddy promo code, GB1. If you want to see it, it’s at the end of Episode #248.

Oh, news about my laptop, too. I took it in to get repaired because the USB port on the right side was really messing up and causing problems. They opened it up and found out that there was water damage, which isn’t covered under warranty. Getting it fixed would cost at least the price of getting a new MacBook. Granted, I want the pro, but it’s not worth putting that much money into a 2+ year old laptop. So I’ve got it back and I just have to remember not to use that port. Hopefully it will last for a couple more months.

And that’s it for now. I’ll try to be more regular … why am I saying that? It will or won’t happen regardless.

cheers!

I just downloaded the new Opera 4 beta for my Blackberry and I love it! Finally able to browse regular webpages mobilely. Even the twitter javascript on the side of my page works! I just had to write this post because I am quite impressed. There is one complaint I have however. Text entry is messed up. When I’m entering a URL, it doesn’t auto period when I put a space and the enter key goes to the next line. Text fields also go to the next line when entering. Neither can ever hold the cr/lf characters, so what’s up? At any rate that’s pretty much it. Oh. Can’t figure out how to zoom out. That would be nice to know. Otherwise, very nice beta.

cheers!