Abandon All Hope of Productivity...

I stumbled upon this site a few weeks ago. It holds a whole bunch of old computer games that have been abandon by their companies. This means they are freely available for anyone to download and enjoy. For an old gamer like myself, there's a lot of games in there I remember, and a lot that are before my time. They even have a DOS emulator for Windows to make all of the drivers work out. Oh, and I haven't actually tried any of it out yet. I'm too worried about losing what little productivity I have.

Enjoy!

I Reached My Goal!

Earlier this week I received a fund raising update. Praise God, I reached my budget (and even surpassed it by a bit)! If you are still thinking about giving, you are welcome to send a contribution. Any additional money will go towards other team members, or toward other ministries Word Made Flesh is involved in.

Thank you again to everyone who has been supporting me in any way through this process.

Mud Slide

This mud slide occurred in the Ventura area, less than 30 miles south of Santa Barbara.

Here are some pictures:
Freeway Pictures
View From Above

I was driving on that section of the 101 less than 48 hours before those pictures were taken. It was raining hard enough that many people were driving below the speed limit, but I never really considered that this could happen. This morning during a prayer meeting at Church, a man shared about a close friend of his that was killed by the mud slide.

It puts it into perspective when my only complaint is that the rain makes me wet and cold.

I Can't Believe I Finished the Whole Thing

This morning Rose and I ran in a half-marathon. She had invited me to do it about three months ago. At the time that seemed like plenty of time to prepare. I'm sure it would have been if I had actually gone running on a semi-regular basis leading up to the event. Thanks to Rose's encouragement I did finish, although our time was quite a bit out of the impressive range. I am left with a bit of motivation to someday run one again after actually training for it. We'll see if that ever happens...

For Once I'm Glad I Don't Have a Window Office

Toyon's Building is a somewhat old building. As such, it has its fair share of quirks. The heavy rain we're getting right now is causing a little bit of leakage through at least a couple of windows. Thanks to the fully enclosed cave I work in, I don't have to fear for my dryness.

Melissa

I just found out that Melissa, a member of my Kolkata team, has a blog. You can find it here, or on the bar at the side.

Now, while I'm on the other side of the world, you can get another point of view on what our team is doing. I expect it to look something like this:

My Blog: Kolkata is quite an experience, but I think I'm adapting pretty well. God has really been using me to hold the rest of the team together.

Melissa's Blog: Our team is learning just how hard life is in Kolkata. It has been a pretty tough on all of us. Please be praying for us. In particular, Philip is falling apart. I think he has lost touch with reality.

Ok, hopefully our two blogs won't be completely contradictory. Still, some of you may find it interesting to take a look at her blog too.

How Much Would You Pay for Your Own Island?

Would you pay $26,500 for an island? What if it was an island in a video game? It sounds crazy to me, but someone actually did. What's even crazier is that he's likely to make money on his investment by selling plots of virtual land to other online gamers.

Like most important pieces of news, I originally found out about this in an online comic.

Useful Police Officer

Generally people aren't too happy when they get pulled over by a cop. Last weekend I was riding in a car with Ron when a cop pulled him over. All he wanted to do was let Ron know that he only had one working headlight. He was genuinely trying to be helpful.

Decision Made!

I finally decided about Toyon. I accepted their offer of employment. I will return to work there as a full time employee in mid-July after I return from Kolkata.

Blackout

As I often do on Sundays, I went to Church yesterday. During communion there are pairs of people available to pray for you. I went up to receive some prayer. While they were praying for me, I started feeling a bit nauseous, then dizzy. After they finished praying for me, I started walking back to go sit down. After just a few steps, everything went black. I turned around to try to find the people that had been praying for me.

My memory is a bit hazy on what happened next. Someone helped me sit down in the nearest pew. I kept my head down for a bit and soon felt somewhat better. Some people around me asked how I was feeling. A man came over who seemed to be some sort of doctor. He told me his specific title, but I don't remember what it was. Someone else brought me a bottle of water and some crackers. They asked me all sorts of questions.

I was sitting next to one of the pastors, I think he was the person that helped me sit down. He mentioned that he was surprised I hadn't fainted. Apparently my face had gone very white.

A little later in the service, after I was feeling fairly normal again, it was time for more worship. They asked us all to stand up. I suddenly wondered if I would be able to, or if I would black out again. I was able to stand and didn't have any more problems. Worship really hit me in a new way. For the first time, I realized that it was only by God's will that I was able to stand and worship Him.

For the record, there were a few factors that may have contributed to my blackout. I had been fasting the previous day (no food, only water), so my body chemistry was a little out of whack. As I was going up for prayer, I rolled my ankle so blood may have been flowing more to my foot and less to my head. Hopefully this won't happen again. If it does, I will definitely go see a doctor.