This past weekend was Homecoming in Boone. This ended up being quite the production for Johnathan, Elainie, and Brandon. Below are some pictures of them all dressed up and looking slick. As you can tell, Elainie was really into getting her picture taken. Brandon and Johnathan? Not so much.
Saturday was a momentous occasion. It was first time in the history of my knowing Greg I saw him not wearing a hat. Oh yeah, he also married Amanda too. Here are a few pictures from the reception and a few random candle pictures thrown in at the end.
I’ve just had a few random thoughts cross my brain in the last few days.
Harvest Moon
Last night was the Harvest Moon. I didn’t really get to check it out myself because it was cloudy and I fell asleep on the couch waiting for score updates from the Padres game. I hope somebody else out there enjoyed it.
Iowa State’s New Uniforms
Yesterday Jamie Pollard announced the new Iowa State football uniforms. Take a look:
My main thing is that I’m very thankful that they didn’t decide to go with white helmets. The cardinal helmets look awesome. I am not crazy about the logo. Nobody in the world identifies us as “I State”, but at least the logo looks good on the helmets even if it doesn’t make perfect sense.
The home uniforms do have a very distinct USC flavor to them, but I can handle that because I’d rather look like USC and have our real colors than look like a loser franchise like the Chiefs and be sporting red and yellow for some reason.
The New Peso?
I don’t want to tell you what to think politically, but thanks to the completely unnecessary war in Iraq, Mr. Bush’s War (thanks to all the people that caught that sweet reference to and indictment of our 4th President), the United States is borrowing 2 billion dollars a day from foreign governments. This has lead to the weakening of the dollar. So much so that the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American dollar. To think just 5 years ago, the Canadian dollar was only worth 64% of the American dollar and now it is worth more. If we continue on this kind of decline it might at least resolve one political issue that I personally could care less about but am sick of hearing about, the United States might be come little more than flyover territory for illegal immigrants trying to make their way to Canada.
Why should the average American care? That two dollar package of tube socks at Wal-Mart is about to go up in price. The American dollar can’t buy what it used to buy.
Tomorrow night Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show is going to be speaking at Stephens Auditorium. I’m pretty excited for this event. It is going to be awesome.
A little fun fact for you. I have revealed this fun fact before, but it is sort of related to the title of this journal entry.
Presbyterians is an anagram for Britney Spears. That is really about all I know about Presbyterians. However, after watching this video, I might have a clue what it is like to be a Presbyterian.
However, below is a video of Buck Henry’s recent appearance on The Daily Show.
The bit itself is only moderately funny, but there is a line in there I think Iowa women should hear. It is an interesting theory on why Iowa gets to have the first caucus in the nation. So if you are an Iowa woman or a fan of Iowa women, watch the video.
My only real response to this is, I guess I’m glad I was born in Iowa.
Every year I feel myself compelled to go down to the B&SVRR when they are scamming small children and draining the coffers of their parents with Thomas the Tank. I admit that it really isn’t their doing. They put on a pretty good show. There is a magician and a petting zoo. There are characters from the show. There is a funnel cake stand. Actually it is “the funnel cake stand”. If you’ve never had a funnel cake from the Kruse funnel cake stand my friend, you’ve never actually had a funnel cake at all. Plus they have real train rides like their dinner train or their excursion train. However, Thomas the Tank is a lie. He is no train engine. He is a glorified caboose and the kids fall for it every time.
I’m a firm believer that a person shouldn’t lie to their children. There is no reason to have your children believe in things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. It just sets them up for a lifetime of disappointment when they realize that other mythical objects like social mobility and the American Dream are as real as a 7 foot rabbit that hides eggs on the day that Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God. Although it does teach them to learn at an early age that authority figures (employers and the government) will lie to you at every conceivable opportunity. Perhaps there is something to lying to your children.
It is because of this that I think that parents should make it very clear to their children that Thomas the Tank is nothing but a glory hound. He isn’t doing any real work. The real work is being done by that engine in the back. It doesn’t have a face, but it is the one that deserves your respect.
Why is it that I feel compelled to go see this charade every year? I admit that Thomas does have a certain allure. For not doing anything, I feel compelled to look into his eyes to make sure that this isn’t the beginning of the machine revolution. The one foretold in the book of Maximum Overdrive. I believe you may have seen the movie they made based on this prophetic text starring Emilio Estevez. What I saw when I looked into Thomas’ eyes this year is that we are still at least a year from the coming of the semi with the green face.
Also, I go down there to see Shorty. He always volunteers for the B&SVRR when Thomas is in town. He is also going to do the Santa Express again this year. However, I got a surprise when I found out that Johnathan was going to be volunteering. He has never been a community service type of chap, so this I definitely had to see and digitally record.
Here is a copy of Mark’s September newsletter from Taiwan.
Start of a New School Year:
A Recap
Hi everybody!
I know it has been a while since I have written, and this newsletter comes after a much needed break in America, and then a quick start to the school year. It is hard to believe that it is already nearing the end of September.
I would like to use this newsletter with as a quick reminder of the ministry that I have going on here in Taiwan. I live on the Campus of Concordia Middle School in Min Hsiung, Taiwan. My primary ministry is to serve as an English and Bible teacher here at CMS. This year I will be teaching 2 grade levels. The first is Junior 1 (7th graders). I teach 3 classes of kids 2 times a week, once for Bible and once for English conversation. The conversation class is new this year, but has been a real blessing so far, and I will have to spend more time on that in a future newsletter.
The other grade I teach is Senior 1 (10th graders). I teach 6 Senior 1 classes, twice a week. Each class I see one time for Bible class and one time for English writing. In addition to these Senior 1 classes, I am again teaching the Senior 1 Advanced English class. I see these 33 students twice a week. In this class we read and discuss English novels. Our first one this year will be Bridge to Terabithia.
I have several other ministries that I help with on the campus of Concordia Middle School. Every Tuesday morning I lead a small group for 8th grade students. We meet from 7:30-8:15 and sing a couple of songs, talk about the Bible and share thoughts or feelings with each other. In addition to this, I help with a Thursday evening Fellowship Group for students that live at school. The English name for this group is On-Campus Student Fellowship (OSF). This fellowship time is used to play games, talk about God, sing songs, eat snacks, and grow closer as a group of students who live at the school.
Outside of school there are a several other ministries that I help with. Every Wednesday night I help with a Bible study in Chia-Yi City (which is about a 20 minute scooter drive from Concordia). This Bible Study has been a real blessing so far this semester. It started about a year and a half ago. Last March it was down to 2 members who attended, both of whom were members of that church. There were 2 other missionaries who attended that Bible Study with me, and we debated about stopping it for a while, until there was a need again to continue a study at this church. It started to pick up in attendance, but remained a small group of about 4-5 people attending for the rest of last spring. This August has brought great blessings from the Lord. The group has had 23 people attend the last 2 weeks, and every week attendance has been in the teens. Praise God for the growth of this group, and continue to pray that He will guide it and bring more students eager to here about His love.
In addition to this Bible Study, I help at Salvation Lutheran Church, which is my church home here in Taiwan. At Salvation, I help with a Friday Night Bible Study which meets every week from 7:30-9:30. We sing songs, have 4 English Bible classes, and then have snack and fellowship time. There are usually about 40-50 students who attend FNBS, and it has been one of my highlights of my time here in Taiwan.
I am also helping out this year with the Salvation Lutheran Church Youth Group. This group is comprised mostly of Jr. High and High School students from Chia-Yi City. The Youth Group is currently in a state of transition, as Salvation does not have a Pastor, and the old Pastor (Pastor Lio) was the leader of the Youth Group. Pray that God would bless this group in its transition, and that He would build it even stronger than it was before.
Well, I know this is quite a bit of information. I look forward to sharing specifics about these ministries in future newsletters. If there is something specific you would like me to share about in a future newsletter, please do not hesitate ask me.
If you want to learn more about my mission work, I would encourage you to check out my online blog. I am going to try to update this online journal 2 or 3 times a month this year. The address will appear at the bottom of this newsletter.
It’s Prayer Time!
Here are the prayer requests. As always we lift these up according to the will of God, praying for Him to be glorified through everything.
It is great to be back on the field. I absolutely love serving out here in Taiwan. It provides wonderful opportunities to share the love of Jesus. While I serve as an overseas missionary, I also recognize that there is much work to be done back in America. While home in August, I had a wonderful conversation with one of my teachers from high school. We talked about sharing Jesus with people throughout the world, but also talked about how many people back in America need to hear of God’s love. She commented on how difficult life must be without the support from Jesus, our foundation. These words are so true. Christ gives us strength, hope, peace, and joy in this life, and the promise of a home in heaven. This is great news that we can share with people everywhere, even in our home towns and at our jobs. May God give you all the strength to boldly proclaim His love wherever you may be, overseas or in America.
God’s peace,
Mark
I spent Saturday morning hanging out in an old barn on my Aunt Linda’s acreage. She had suggested it as a place to find interesting photo subjects. I scouted it out on Thursday night after work and came back on Saturday morning when there was better light so I could shoot everything with available light. All of the pictures on the inside of the barn were shot with only the light that was filtering into the barn through the one door I propped open and holes in the roof. I’m nice and filled up with dust now.
Yesterday I went to Central Campus to see Obama speak. I didn’t have a memory card with me, so I had to borrow a camera from a co-worker. It is a good camera, but it only has a 3X optical zoom, so a couple of these pictures are very heavily cropped.
I met Nader and my sister Teresa there, but I forgot to get a picture of Teresa. The first picture is of Nader.
I wasn’t sure I was going to see Obama speak this time since I have already seen him speak twice this year. However, my resolve to see him speak hardened when a co-worker went off on a rant about how reading Obama’s books were equivalent to brainwashing. I hadn’t noticed that I had been brainwashed, but if it seems that I have, let me know. I’m willing to go through deprogramming.
Looking to do something to help in the fight against Leukemia & Lymphoma. I have an opportunity for you. First read a little bit about the organization.
Your support means a lot…to me and to thousands of others.
Thanks for visiting my Light The Night homepage. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night Walk is the nation’s night to pay tribute and bring hope to thousands of patients battling blood cancers and to commemorate loved ones lost.The Society funds lifesaving cancer research that has contributed to major advances in the treatment of blood cancers and many other types of cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and stem cell transplants that have prolonged and enhanced the lives of patients. New targeted therapies that kill cancer cells without harming normal tissue have already begun to provide drugs and procedures that are improving quality of life.
But more research is critically needed:
* Every five minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer. Every ten minutes, someone dies.
* Leukemia causes more deaths among children than any other cancer
* More than 20,000 Americans died from lymphoma in 2006
* The survival rate for melanoma is just 33 per centPlease make a donation to support my Light The Night Walk and help save lives. Be sure to check my Web site frequently to see my progress, and again, thanks for your support!
West Des Moines is holding a Light the Night Walk very soon.
Saturday, September 22
7:00 PM
Farm Bureau Headquarters
West Des Moines
If you are wondering. I have nothing to do with this event and I am not even participating. I’ll be at a wedding reception. However, my good friend Sara Junck is participating and looking to raise some money. So if you have a few loose chunks of change floating around and don’t know what to do with it, perhaps you could float it their way. To make a donation, follow the link that I have so ultra conveniently included below:
FNSC added a new auxiliary member this past Friday. Jason Baier joined us on the patio at La Carreta on a brisk summer night. His name will now go down in the annals of history with other Auxiliary Members of FNSC:
Jesse Howard
Teresa Kahler
Dustin Jackson
That Kristy girl Willy works with
Derrick Gorshe
Jen Ensley
Sara Junck
Nate Miller
I’m sure there have been others. I just don’t have the official FNSC Ledger with me at this time where all of our exploits have been documented. Even if I did have it with me, it takes all 3 of our keys to open the book any way.
If you would like to be at least as cool as Jesse Howard, you may one day join us for a Supper Club. All you have to do is give me a call and if you don’t have my phone number, I probably don’t like you that much any way.
After FNSC Jason and I cruised the town in a Rideshare van. You would think this was against “Rideshare” rules, but apparently as a backup driver he is entitled to dip into this 200 mile personal use monthly pool that the drivers get to split up. Only he is the only person that uses the miles because he is running some kind of scam on this elderly lady that is the other driver. I didn’t want to get too much information on the situation in case I was going to have to testify against him at a later date.
We cruised the Rideshare van around, looking awful cool, then stopped and took the picture below:
I would consider it a fairly successful evening.
I have two brief experiences from the last two days to share.
Nader’s 20th Anniversary
This past Friday marked the 20th anniversary of Nader’s arrival to these United States of America. There is a Lutheran church in Gilbert that sponsored Nader’s immigration. They invited him to attend the church service on Sunday to help celebrate the anniversary.
Nader called me and asked me to give him a ride to Gilbert and sit with him in church for this celebration. I knew I would be sad to miss my personal church service, but I figured it would be a good chance to experience a Lutheran church service. That isn’t something I’ve been exactly hankering to do, but I do kind of want to go to a Quaker service sometime.
It turns out that they had forgotten that they had invited Nader to church and were mostly confused by his presence until he explained to them why he was there. They apologized and were embarrassed and promised to have Nader back up for a proper celebration soon.
We sat down in the very back row of what looked like a very new sanctuary. However, the new digs did not translate into comfortable pews. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such uncomfortable pews. Perhaps the pews in the Lutheran church up in Boxholm are close, but not quite as bad as these.
I don’t want to bash the Lutherans because religious intolerance isn’t my bag. I will just say that the service wasn’t very exciting. About halfway through the service I looked over at Nader and saw that he had fallen asleep.
I was impressed. I have known that his capacity for dozing off during a boring movie is unprecedented, but I didn’t know it would translate to the ability to fall asleep during church. Especially in the world’s most uncomfortable pews.
I can’t blame Nader for falling asleep. He isn’t Christian. I’m not sure he has even been to a church service since before the Islamic Revolution. (Before the fall of the Shah it was okay for Muslims to attend a Christian church service. After the fall of the Shah it was a punishable offense.) The service wasn’t all that compelling. I decided to let him sleep and envied him slightly.
The Pastor began the sermon and Nader still slept. The sermon was on the parable of “The Prodigal Son”. Nader still slept. The Pastor tied the parable in with the accepting of new people. Then he referenced Nader. Everybody in the sanctuary looked at Nader. He was blissfully unaware in a state of sleep as his closed eyes pointed towards the ceiling.
After everybody looked back to the front of the sanctuary I gave Nader a shove to wake him up.
“The Pastor just mentioned you in the sermon and everybody stared at you while you were sleeping.”
“They’ll just think I was reading the program.”
“Except your program wasn’t on the ceiling.”
At the front of the sanctuary they were preparing for the sacrament of Communion.
Nader asked, “Is this about over?”
“It looks like they are doing Communion. We could be here awhile.”
“Want to sneak out?”
In reality I did want to sneak out, but I knew that Nader still had to meet with the Pastor after the service to discuss his 20th anniversary celebration.
“No, we better stay. Just don’t fall asleep again.”
Another High Quality Bowling Memory
My Monday night bowling league has started up again. I’m not particularly possessive of this league, it is merely the league that I am in. I’m not a good bowler nor do I even have a passion for the game. It is something to do with Jim and I get more than enough residual entertainment out of these nights to make it worth the effort.
Last year we had a pretty good team. We finished third in the league. However at the end of the season two of the people from the team decided to move on. I actually figured this might be the end of my bowling career. I was okay with that. I would walk away with my lowest career average, but also my highest team finish.
Jim asked me if we found a couple other guys if I would be interested in continuing. I considered the options and decided I would continue if given the opportunity. However, despite being down two guys, neither one of us did any recruiting. We decided just to tell Darryl (The Lord of the Imperial Lanes) just to give us any two guys that walked in the door. We would make them champions.
Truthfully we never claimed that we would make them champions, but we really said that we would take any two guys. Now I’m not saying that Darryl gave us the dregs of society. He didn’t. These two guys seem perfectly nice. However, they aren’t what I would say that I normally look for in a companion. Perhaps that makes me an elitist, but I can handle that label just fine.
For starters, I spent almost the first week after the first night of bowling half convinced that one of them was a murderer. I couldn’t quite remember how I knew him or his name, but I was half convinced he was a guy that murdered somebody back when I was at dear old BHS.
It turns out after some crack detective work by Lowell that he isn’t a murderer. He was just friends with the murderer.
Then during the second week of bowling one of the bowling alley employees called me over for a private conversation. She wanted me to tell the two new guys on my team that they need to improve their hygiene because they were stinking up the joint.
By their physical appearance, I would have guessed that she was probably right, but as soon as I walk into the cancer factory known as Imperial Lanes, my olfactory nerves call it a night and I can’t smell anything.
Last night was the third week of bowling. One of the new guys didn’t show up. However, the other new guy did show up and he brought a friend. Around the end of the first game, I heard the following conversation. I’m cleaning up the language and leaving vast amounts of details out just because I don’t need to relive them.
“This sucks.”
“What sucks?”
“I have to get rid of the porn on my phone.”
“That does suck. Why would you have to do something like that?”
“My kid was playing with my phone and he found the porn.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, I know. Plus some of that was really good stuff.”
“Like that one where that girl [CENSORED].”
“I know I love the one where the girl [CENSORED] is awesome.”
I’m not what you would call an “expert” on pornography. So I was quite surprised that you could even download porn to your phone. I haven’t quite figured out what the practical purpose of having pornography on your phone would be. If anybody out there knows what it is, keep it to yourself.