She and everyone she showed the video to thought it looked like Yoda. Well, I couldn’t have a male name for a girl so I thought of Yaddle, the Yoda-like female. That almost worked, but not quite. So we ended up with: Princess Yaddie. That’s it.

cheers!

There is a point to my delving into childhood stories. I thought that I had lost the kitten today. The door on my trailer doesn’t always latch well and while I was in the office, the door swung open. I came out and found it wide open and couldn’t find the kitten anywhere inside. I rechecked the trailer several times over the next hours. And the shop. And under the house. And under the cars. And under the woodshed. And the area I thought I saw a hawk take off from. And then one more time under the house. I saw the momma cat and some other eyes, too. I became quite hopeful. I went to a different access hole and four adorable kittens came running to the sound of my voice, but not mine. (At this point, I figured out that mine was definitely the runt. The others were a little bit bigger and more filled out.) I was happy to find other kittens, but still sad. I went back to the trailer and sat in my doorway playing with her toys. (Despite what some people thought, she is not too young to play with toys; at least, she doesn’t think so.) I was hoping that the sound of the toys would bring her out of hiding. I was on the phone with my girlfriend, barely holding it together; I hadn’t felt that awful in a very long time. Then, I thought I heard a mew, but it was so faint that I couldn’t tell if it was a cat or a bird. I stepped away from the doorway to look under the trailer, but still no kitten. I looked up and there she was in the doorway. At that point I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I can stifle tears of sadness, but tears of joy are just unstoppable. She, of coarse, had no understanding of what I was feeling. Partly because she didn’t even know that she was lost and partly because, well, she’s a kitten. I had told some people that “she must be sleeping somewhere”. Well, she disappeared again not long after and found out where she had hid. Evidently, she can scale higher than I expected and was sleeping behind some blankets on the couch. Not all that hidden, but I was looking too low.

Today, err, it was when I started writing this, I had just a taste of what my parents went through. I know its gotta be worse with a kid than a kitten; so, I hope my kids don’t do to me what I did to my parents. The kitten was bad enough.

You may have noticed that I have not written her name anywhere in this post. Well, I told some people that I was going to release the new name for the kitten this weekend. I shall do that, but I need to pull a frame out of video first. There is a story that goes along with the new name; so, you’ll have to wait till Sunday to find out, unless you’re lucky. At any rate, you’re still lucky because the story isn’t nearly as long as this one.

cheers!

cheers!

Its kinda funny though. People keep asking me what I’m going to do now and the only answer I have to give is “Nothing…?” I guess people are just used to students graduating and then being released into the world. Well, I haven’t been in school in 4 years now and I just had to finish by doing a class via email (Thank you Dr. Ivey!!!) and petitioning the administration to let me graduate under an old program. So pretty much, at this moment, the degree means nothing for me except something that it is finished.

So that’s it. I’m happy its done and over with but life continues unaffected for now. Congrats to everyone else that graduated this year!

cheers!

Miracle

Astonishing

Zany

Inspired

Nocturnal

God-fearing

[Update:] Added the underscores because people didn’t catch that the words spelled a-m-a-z-i-n-g.

It started off innocent enough. I woke up late and didn’t get a shower. Ok, like I said, innocent, but it bugs me when that happens. So I get to work and realize I need to reshuffle the stuff in my car so a friend could borrow it. I take out the things I might need and set them beside the car to take in to the job site once I move my car. Long explanation shortened, I run over my camera. It’s worth about $1700. Rather, it was. Number three came while crawling out of the attic. Yes, almost out and (can’t think of a sound). I cut a 3 inch gouge across my back, just above my butt. I could actually feel through my gloves that there were now two separate pieces of skin. It went from a scratch on one end to about 1/4″+ deep on the other. That put me out of commission for about 4 hours while trying to make sure that it would close and stay closed. (Butterfly bandages rock!) While resting, I find out that my bank account became overdrawn by some stuff that took 3+ business days to post. I figure, that has to be the end. I mean, seriously, how much worse can it get. Oh, I didn’t mention that all that happened before 10:00 in the morning. The afternoon was pretty uneventful. Was able to do a little bit of work and then working on one of the final things I poke myself with a staple. Well, so I thought. I mean, I do that all the time trying to open little bags. No, I had to go and slice the tip of my thumb with the staple. It still hurts today worse than a paper cut. So there you have it.

I guess I should tell the rest of the story. The camera body is still OK as far as I can tell, so I only have to replace the lens. The gouge is healing nicely and hasn’t split open again. I was able to put some money in my bank account that afternoon, so I won’t be overdrawn again. So the major things are pretty well taken care of.

It was kinda ironic that I was reading the last two chapters of Mark that morning and the next. Talk about a bad day! The amazing thing is that that was the purpose for which He came. He came to be beaten just because some leaders were jealous of the power He held with the people. He came to die because Satan decided he needed more power than Him and He couldn’t let that affect our chance to live with Him.

So, in that light, my day wasn’t as bad and I shouldn’t let it get me down. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. The cuts still hurt and my lens probably won’t get replaced for about 5-6 months. I’m gonna miss my camera, but it will get better eventually. So I leave you with a blessing, that you don’t have a day like my Tuesday.

cheers!

cheers!

cheers!

cheers!

The first Sabbath down there, we went for a hike through the rain forest land owned by PAHS. The trail starts in the village that the girl comes from, so we went and checked out the house before the hike. Basically, there were the four corner posts and three other support posts holding up a tin roof. PAHS didn’t have a major project planned for us; so, we decided to build the house back up. Pastor Steve had been to Pakistan and learned a new way of building a small structure. He shared that with Gary, our resident engineer, and promptly left us. (To be totally fair, it was always planned that he was only there for four or five days.)

Sunday, we pretty much finished up the painting project on the PAHS campus and Monday, I was part of the crew that went up. That was one of those times I was glad I was the #2 cameraman on the trip (Tom was #1). It was only a partial crew because the rest were supposed to stay behind and finish the painting, but wasps made it impossible to finish. At any rate, the first day was spent digging a trench, pouring cement into the trench for the wall foundation, and stretching seventeen wires around the whole structure. And, that’s how we left it for a couple days. It kinda looked funny.

Tuesday/Wednesday were mostly touristy days and Wednesday evening four of us picked up three metric tons of sand in town and shoveled it off at the site. Oh, something I forgot to mention. This town is quite a bit higher up in the mountains and probably only reachable with four wheel drive. We carried everything up there on a flatbed trailer behind a good sized truck and when there was more than four people, most of us rode on the trailer as well. Definitely not something you could get away with in the states. I’m not to sure of the trip time, because I didn’t have a watch or cellphone while down there, but I think it was about 45 min drive. With the sand on Wednesday, if I remember correctly, it took one and a half hours. It was quite the heavy load. Although, Thursday’s load wasn’t light.

Thursday, we loaded up 25 100lb bags of cement, a cement mixer, and 20 people. On this day, I actually arrived late because of a little adventure, but that’s another story. During that time, they had back filled the trenches and stretched the wires vertically, so they were taut. Next, was tar paper and chicken wire around the whole structure. They also erected the window and door that I had helped Gary make on Monday. Next was putting cement mud against the side walls. This took the rest of the day and most of Friday.

Friday was spent finishing up the mud and also adding plywood. When we realized that we wouldn’t be able to finish mudding all the way up the wall, due to time constraints, and it was decided that plywood would be used on the upper half. Also, Tim did some electrical work so they would have two lights and a plug. That pretty much sums it up and I’ve got a slide show uploaded now. Just click the picture below.

cheers!