THE BIG (UNTOLD) STORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

According to this post in one of Joel Rosenberg's blogs, Muslims in the middle east are trusting in Christ for their salvation in record numbers! Of course, this big news isn't being reported in the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening. Here is an excerpt from Joel's report:

Consider the latest evidence:

* AFGHANISTAN --
In Afghanistan, for example, there were only 17 known evangelical
Christians in the country before al-Qaeda attacked the United States.
Today, there are well over 10,000 Afghan followers of Christ and the
number is growing steadily. Church leaders say Afghan Muslims are open
to hearing the gospel message like never before. Dozens of baptisms
occur every week. People are snatching up Bibles and other Christian
books as fast as they can be printed or brought into the country. The Jesus
film, a two hour docudrama on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of
Luke, was even shown on television in one city before police shut down
the entire TV station."God is moving so fast in Afghanistan, we're just
trying to keep up," one Afghan Christian worker told me, requesting
anonymity. "The greatest need now is leadership development. We need to
train pastors to care for all these new believers."

* UZBEKISTAN -- There were no known Muslim converts to Christ there in 1990. Now there are more than 30,000.

* IRAQ --

Cross Post from Scroggles!: The Flood and Global Warming

I'm reading through Genesis right now and have been noticing some interesting details about creation that I haven't noticed before. For example, during the flood account in Genesis chapter 7 the Bible states that:

¹⁸And the water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the surface of the water. ¹⁹And the water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.

I understand that some people argue that Noah's flood could have been a localized flood instead of a world wide flood, but this passage seems to rule out the possibility of this flood not being world wide. When it says that all the mountains under the heavens were covered with water, that doesn't seem to leave any mountains on the earth remaining uncovered.

Also in Genesis chapter 9 after the flood has receded, God makes His "Rainbow Covenant" with Noah and all creation stating:

¹¹"And I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth"

To me, this promising from God seems to negate the possibility of God allowing global warming to cause world wide flooding that would turn the earth into a "water world". This doesn't mean that there can't be localized flooding, but there cannot be another world wide flood to wipe out all creation.

Baby's First Pictures

We just had our first ultrasound of baby! Doesn't baby look cute? You can see in the first picture that baby is waving to mommy and daddy.
(I still can't believe that I'm going to be a daddy!) Here's a shot of baby's big brain:
We decided not to find out the sex of our baby. We think it will be cool to be surprised at the birth. We're about half way through the pregnancy now and it sure did fly by! Baby will be here before we know it!

It was really cool seeing baby moving around inside there!

I'm Gonna Be a Daddy!

So I'm gonna be a daddy! We got pregnant in October and we are due around July 23rd. It's pretty crazy to think that I'm going to be in charge of another life! I'm going to be in charge of nurturing, protecting, and teaching another person. I will have a major influence on this person's life. I can influence their self esteem and identity and purpose. I will even influence what their likes and dislikes are such as what their favorite sport is and where they like to vacation. I will also affect their beliefs about life. I pray that God will help me to make all the right decisions and be the best father that I can be.

I am very excited about all of this as well! I'm looking forward to pouring out my love on this new person. I think I will enjoy protecting and caring for them. I want to share everything that I have learned in life with this person so that they can do even better in life than I have. I also can't wait to share good times with them doing various activities such as biking, backpacking, traveling, playing sports, etc. I also feel that it will be a privilege to introduce my child to my God.

I can't wait to meet this new person!

Scroggles!

My friend Theo (mathematician, philosophizer, programmer, Christian, blogger, pontificator) recently created his own website for blogging, journaling, ... etc. He invited me to join his blogging community and I thought it sounded like a fun opportunity to blog with people I know who also enjoy blogging. It will be cool to read their blogs and have them read mine as well.

I started a blog on his site called jason in real life. On this blog I mostly write down my thoughts on health, politics, news, religion, and other real life topics. I'm also co-blogging on a blog there about with a theme of science and creationism.

Don't worry, I plan to continue to blog on this website as well. I think I will mainly blog about more personal stuff on this site, but who knows. I could mix it up a little bit.

I hope you enjoy my new blogs! And be sure to check out the other scrogglers while you are there as well.

King of the Rockies - The Legendary Tiperary Creek

This was the sixth and final race of the 2007 winter park race. The course was on the legendary Tipperary Creek course which was the first winter park course ever raced on. The race was an epic 25.8 miles long with over 4,000 feet of climbing. The course map can be seen here (follow the dashed white line) and the course profile can be seen here.

This course was a lot of fun. It started out with a huge climb in the beginning, followed by a huge descent and then some up and downs with some pretty technical sections to the end. The overall course gained altitude, so that was good for me.

I completed this course in 2 hours, 19 minutes and 58.7 seconds which put me in 4th place, just 32 seconds off of the podium. The full results are here. I was very happy with this finish however because it gave me enough points in the series to capture 2nd place overall! I ended up with 236 points for the season whereas the 1st place finisher had 247 points and the 3rd place guy had 231 points. The complete series rankings can be viewed here.

I had a great time competing in the winter park mountain bike series this year. The courses were challenging, the scenery was beautiful, and the competitors were all very cool and friendly. I hope to take part in these races again, I guess I will have to upgrade to expert next year though. So much for podium finishes. I'd also like to try more of the Mountain States Cup series races.

Winter Park #5 - Cross Country

This was the fifth winter park race this summer. This one started near Fraser and finished at the base of Winter Park. A map of the course can be seen here and the course profile is here. This race was 24 miles long and it had a huge climb at the beginning to start of the race. The first hill was over 2,000 ft of climbing and over 6 miles long. This was to my advantage since I am a better climber than descender. It was pretty cool that morning and I wanted to be nice and warmed up by the time we started so we parked in Fraser and Kendra and I both biked the few miles out to the start line. Right before the start of my race I rode up the road a little ways to see how the incline was after the start, but I went out a little too far and almost missed my race start! At got back to the start line right before the gun went off. When it did most of us started nice and easy since we had a long day ahead of us and a huge climb right in front of us.

There was a mile or two lead out on a dirt road before we hit the singletrack and the incline wasn't too bad. On the approach I chatted with the guys that I normally race against and are about the same speed as me. Before we hit the singletrack our group moved up towards the front. Once we hit the singletrack I let Brian lead us and we kept the pace pretty steady. Half way up the climb there is another dirt road that is relatively flat and short. I decided to attack right before this road and got a small gap. On the road I caught the guy that was in second place in our category (James Mack) and asked him if we could work together. I drafted him for a minute and then we traded pulls for the rest of the flat section before we hit the "wall". This next singletrack section was extremely steep and rocky. I did my best to just hang on James' wheel for the climb and was successful until the last half mile or so when it really pitched up and was covered with loose rocks. He pulled away from me and summited about a minute before I did. Once I started the downhill, I just hung on the the incredibly fast descent. Shortly after the start of the downhill I passes James who had unfortunately crashed on a water-bar in the trail. There were already medics there so I kept on going. I crashed on one of the couple tight switch backs, but was going slow enough that I didn't get hurt too bad. This allowed Andrew to catch me though and he passed me. I worked hard to catch him and was able to by the bottom of the huge descent.

Andrew and I took turns leading each other for about half of the race, but he pulled away from me on Vasquez Road right before we had to cross Vasquez Creek again. I didn't see him again until the finish line, but ended up in 3rd place! Here's a picture of me crossing the line:


I was pretty happy with my finish and had a great time on this course. It was definitely my favorite course of the series. It took me 2:17:47.7 to finish the race and I was 133rd overall. The complete results can be seen here. Here's a picture of me on the podium :-)

Winter Park #4 - Valley Point to Point

The fourth winter park mountain bike race this summer was the Valley Point to Point. This race started at the Winter Park resort base and finished just outside the town of Fraser. It was 18.8 miles long (the longest so far), the starting elevation was 9,080 ft. and the finish elevation was 8,830 ft. with 1,950 ft of climbing along the way. Which means this race was mostly downhill. There is a map of the course here. And the course profile is here.

The night before the race we camped just outside of the town of Winter Park off of Vasquez Rd. It is national forest so you can camp there for free. Here is a picture of our campsite and our new tent! It was nice spedning the night before up there so that I didn't have to worry about getting up early and driving all the way up there the day of the race. It was a nice night, chilly; but not freezing.

The next morning we got up and brushed our teeth (Kendra came with me of course) and ate some breakfast. Then I started warming up by riding up the road to where the race would be on it and checked out the Vasquez Creek water crossing to scope out what the best strategy would be to get across it. Then I rode to the start line and prepared to start. I saw the regulars in my category and made some small talk before the race. Here's a picture right after the gun went off. I tried not to go out too hard at the beginning.This race was pretty tough for me because I am better at going uphill than I am at downhill. At least it started out going uphill so that I could get into good position before the downhill. I think I was in 2nd place by the time that we started going down. I held my place pretty well on the first serious downhill. I think I might have gotten passed by one person. Then we had another tough uphill where I was able to pass him back. Then a little downhill and the water crossing.

I was actually able to make it all the way across the water without stopping. Putting it in a really low gear was key. Then we rode down Vasquez Rd. for a little before turning off and heading up a challenging climb. Before we got to the climb I noticed that my seat was slowly sliding down lower and lower. This wasn't going to do, so I decided to stop on the uphill to raise my seat and tighten it and I was passed by two or three riders in my category! After this uphill the rest of the race was mostly downhill and I continued to get passed. The final stretch was really rocky and really beat me up. I don't think my suspension was ideally tuned. Eventually the finish line actually showed up though.


I ended up finishing in 7th place in my category, 207th overall. The race took me 1:35:04.7 which was a pace of about 5 minutes per mile. The complete results are here. This wasn't my best race ever, but I survived and I learned a lot. I'm glad that my loose seat post was the worst of my mechanical issues for the year. I got to talk to Brian Kleinman after the race and met his wife as well. He is a pretty cool guy and I would get to talk to him at other races this year, too. I enjoyed racing against him.

Winter Park #3 - Cross Country Super Loop

The third winter park race was on July 7th. The course consisted of one BIG loop at the ski resort. The map can be viewed here. I raced sport category again so my course was 14.7 miles. The race was pretty hard and I only ended up getting 8th place. I think this was largely due to the very long downhill portion of the race. The complete results can be seen here.

WP#2 - Mountain Circuit One

The second Winter Park race was on June 16th. It was a cross country circuit race which means it was a loop that you do several times. Our category did two loops for about 15 miles of racing with 900 feet of climbing per lap. I also talked my friend and coworker, Derrick, into racing with me. We were in the same category and lined up against each other at noon.

When they blew the whistle I used the same race strategy as I had last week. I fell in behind about the 5th rider and just held on to see what the pace would be. They started out a little faster this week since there was only a short climb at first and then a flat section on fire roads before we hit the singletrack.

I slowly moved up until I was sitting in second place and could see the turn onto the singletrack section. Since it is much more difficult to pass people on the singletrack I made up my mind to get in front before we were there. I was successful and started the singletrack trail in first place.

I held this position for about a mile, but was unable to shake the racers behind me. I was using a lot of energy to lead the way up the climb so when I hit a fairly technical switchback to get around, I had to put a foot down and gave up my lead to two other riders.

I kept pushing to the top and don't think I was passed again. I caught up to some of the guys in front of me by the top of the hill and then we started descending. I was passed by two guys on the descent, but stayed with one of them and passed him again on the uphill part of the next lap. This uphill section was even longer than on the first lap! It was a long hard climb to the top, then we had a very long downhill to the bottom.

When I was almost to to the very bottom, I was going around a tight switchback a little too fast and lost traction on my front wheel. My bike slipped out from under me and I went down hard, scraping up most of the left side of my body. It hurt pretty bad, but I got up right away and got back on my bike. I pushed hard for the finish line and didn't give up my spot. I ended up finishing 4th which I was happy with.

Winter Park Race Series #1

So, I decided to race the Winter Park mountain bike series again this year. I want to try to race the entire series (or only miss one race) so I signed up for the whole series this year. I also want to try to compete for the series title in my category. I signed up to race in sport again and am still in the 25-29 age group.
The first race was on July 9th and was a hill climb starting at the base of the Winter Park resort and finishing on top of the resort at lunch rock. The course is about 5.1 miles long and gains a little over 2000 ft in elevation. There were about 13 riders in my category for this race and we started at 10:27 am. Kendra came with me and was waiting at the start line while I was warming up. I know you won't believe this since I am always on time, but I almost missed the start of my race! The clock on my bike computer is 4 minutes slow and I knew it, but while I was warming up that detail had slipped my mind for a little bit. Once I realized what time it really was I raced to the start line as fast as I could and got there with about 1 or 2 minutes to spare. I think the extended warm up right to the starting time worked out to my advantage though since the course starts out right into the climb and it doesn't let up until the top.
When the gun went off, I tried not to go out too fast, but just fell in the other guys at about 5th place. I wanted to see what the pace was going to be before taking off too fast and blowing up. I just followed the wheel in front of me and the other riders started to fall back. The guy who was way out front started to get reeled in very quickly. Shortly I was sitting in second, following the guy in first's wheel and realized that I wasn't working very hard. At that moment I decided to attack and went around the guy in first and opened up a small gap. I kept on pushing and the next time looked back the gap was pretty sizable. I just kept on pushing at my own pace and I didn't see any of them again until the top! I had actually won my first race! I finished in just over 46 mins. I'm excited to see how I will fare in the overall series rankings for my category...

the wife doctor

I just wanted to share how proud I am of my amazing wife! On May 11th 2007 she graduated with her PhD in Chemistry! I have no idea how she was able to put up with 5 years of grad school, do research, write a dissertation on her research, and then defend it in front of 5 other doctors in chemistry. I am truly awestruck. She has amazing dedication and a very hard work ethic. She is incapable of giving up, even when up against the most difficult of challenges. And she did have many challenges during her career as a grad student, some of them very great. One of the HUGE ones was after developing a new chemical and doing more research on it for over a year, she discovered that the chemical wasn't actually what they thought it was and she had lost all that time spent on researching with it. She amazingly recovered from that blow only to be hit hard by another one. Her advisor's husband got a new job for the Northwest Renewable Energy Lab, so they had to move to Washington state!.... Which meant that Kendra was pressured to finish up her degree faster than she would have (it normally takes 6 years) and her advisor was thousands of miles away, not very convenient. Kendra was able to carry on in spite of this blow to her productivity and finish her degree a year early!



I did get to go to her defense and watch and support her. Her thesis was on something about Synthesizing Nickel(I) and Nickel(II) Diphosphines... whatever that means. Actually, I did understand a fraction of her dissertation because she practiced her defense for me several times. I was very impressed that she had any clue what she was talking about though. Most of it was a different language to me. She had lots of impressive diagrams of molecules as well. AND she didn't seem nervous at all while she was presenting. She did a very professional and excellent job of presenting her defense. She also handled the questions that I got to watch with grace and class.



Well, as you can tell, I am very proud of my wife. I also think it is very cool that I get to call her doctor now. I think she might be the first doctor in both of our families! I better go get my PhD now so she doesn't show me up... actually, I kinda like being out-ranked and out-educated by my spouse. :-)

Praise God for giving me such a smart wife and for helping her to get through her grad school experience successfully.

Mountian Bike Season Kicks Off!

To celebrate my birthday this year, my wife and I went to fruita for a long weekend with some friends: Derrick and Lesley. It was a blast. Unfortunately, Kendra had to work on her thesis most of the weekend and Lesley had to grade papers, so Derrick and I hit up most of the trails just the two of us. We did about 24 miles of riding on friday and 20 miles on saturday. Lesley did join us for a short part friday morning and they both did on Saturday morning. Here are some sweet pics:

are we really free?

I just saw this movie last night on Google video. It is a pretty eye opening documentary on how the government is illegally taxing our income. It also reveals that all of the money they raise by taxing our income goes to pay interest on the federal debt. Did you know that the federal reserve is a privately owned bank? They are making money off of our country's debt and our income taxes are going straight into their pockets. They also have the rights to print our money! This is not right. This film is very interesting as well as disturbing. The entire thing is posted on Google video so that you can watch it for free (on a larger viewer than this too). The movie also talks about how we are headed toward a one world government. I believe that this is true because it was prophesied in the Bible in the book of Revelation. I'm not too worried though because I know that God is in control and that this is all part of his plan to redeem the world. He has already won the victory for me. Are you on His side? Jesus has already paid the price for you to be reconciled to God, all you have to do is believe. This film also talks about how there are plans in the works to implant everyone with an electronic transmitter under their skin that can be used to make purchases and identify you. Could this be the mark of the beast prophesied in Revelations 13:16,17? I know that God will give his people wisdom concerning this so that we can avoid the mark when the time comes. I am so thankful that he is sovereign and I don't need to worry or be fearful. You can visit http://www.freedomtofascism.com to find out more about the movie and it's mission.

bonehead

I made a bonehead move last friday night. I was on my way home from work with my road bike on top of my car and I forgot it was on there and drove into my garage. I even remembered my bike was on top when I pulled into my parking lot, but by the time I reached my garage I had totally forgotten. The collision caused my bike rack's front bar to get knocked off of the car and twisted the bike rack's tray. The tray also got pushed into the roof of the car and scratched Kendra's car pretty bad. My bike fared pretty well, considering. The bike seat was broken off of its rails and my handlebars were a little scratched. That's all I've found so far. Hopefully there isn't any hidden structural damage to my frame. I was able to put the bike rack back onto the car and I think it will still work. There didn't appear to be any major damage to the car where the rack attaches. I felt like a huge bonehead and loser after this happened. However, Kendra got home shortly after this happened and reassured me that I wasn't a bonehead or a loser. She is wonderful. My bike is out of commission for a little while until I can get a new seat. Huge bummer. I guess I'll have to ride my mountain bike in the mean time. At least it's not as bad as it could have been.

TV 'a la carte'?

This article in BusinessWeek talks about how many consumer groups want to see 'a la carte' cable programming available to consumers. If this became a reality, cable customers could purchase only the exact channels that they want to come into their household.



I think this is a great idea and should be implemented by the cable companies. I do not currently pay for any cable because I feel that most TV watching is a waste of my time and a cluttering of my time as well as being fairly expensive. There are a few things that I miss not being able to watch on TV in my house such as Football, Baseball, and Cycling. If cable channels were available 'a la carte' I think I would pay to recieve ESPN, Fox Sports, OLN, and possibly Fox, ABC, CBS, and UPN because they carry football and baseball, but I might decide to not get them because the rest of their content leaves much to be desired.



What do you think?

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The Post

As you know, I work for Ball Aerospace in Boulder, but recently that changed. I now work for Ball Aerospace in Broomfield. They just moved me down to their south campus! This move has both some benefits and some disadvantages.



Benefits: They moved our whole team down here and we are in one large room together so we can all talk to each other easily when we need help or input or just want to talk. I also enjoy the rubber band fights that ensue every now and then. My cubical is an upgrade from my last one (more desk space). There is a sweet cafeteria in Broomfield with cheap food (including breakfast burritos) and 50 cent coffee. The building is a lot newer and nicer and doesn't have asbestos in it like our old one. AND our new building has showers and lockers in the bathroom which is excellent for running and biking at lunch or biking to work. We also have a sweet filter for drinking water that also puts out HOT drinking water. And my awesome friend Derrick sits right next to me and we can talk through the cube partition and shoot rubberbands at each other off the ceiling tiles.



Disadvantages: Location (the drive takes about the same amount of time, but the distance is further so biking to work is a larger task). With this cubicle furniture I have to stare into the corner and face my back to the entrance. I also have a large structural post in the middle of my cube.



Since there is a large post in my cube, I think I should probably name it. Any suggestions?

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Charity

There is a new book out that reports that conservatives give more of their money and time than do liberals. Interesting...

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Being Married Rules!

So, I got married on October 8th to the most amazing girl in the world! (That's one reason why I haven't been blogging much lately.) The wedding was wonderful, I had a great time and everything turned out great. A few things didn't go as planned, but they were only minor things that nobody noticed but us. One bummer was the cold weather, but we didn't let it bother us much. We still put the top down in our convertible car that took us from the church to the reception.

The reception was great. We had a good dinner and a great party with a good band and dancing. It was a lot of fun, but flew by way too fast. We didn't even get to say hi to everybody we wanted to. I really want to thank all our wonderful friends though that helped us make everything happen and supported us through it all. My best man gave a great toast and all the groomsmen were a huge help. The maid of honor also gave a great toast via CD. I also want to thank our parents for supporting us and helping to make everything happen and helping us to survive our lives up to this point. Also, our photographers did an amazing job. Click on these pictures to see their website and our pictures.



Married life is amazing! It is wonderful to be able to live with the person I am most fond of and not have to say goodbye every night. It is also great just living life together and supporting each other. I love making dinner and breakfast for Kendra and really love the lunches she makes for me. It has also been awesome getting our house all put together and fixed up the way we want it. I'm looking forward to the rest of our lives together!

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Seperation of Church and State

I just learned the other day from this article that the "doctrine" of seperation of church and state doesn't exist anywhere in our nation's founding documents. It's not in the Constitution, it's not in the Bill of Rights or even the Declaration of Independence.

"It's not in the Bill of Rights. It's not anywhere in a foundational document. The only place where the so-called "wall of separation" was mentioned was in a letter written by (Thomas) Jefferson to a friend. That's the only place. It has been picked up and made to be something it was never intended to be.

What it has become is that the government is protected from the church, instead of the other way around, which is that church was designed to be protected from the government."

And when Jefferson made this comment he wasn't using it to protect the government from the influence of the church, but was trying to keep the government out of the church's affairs.

"Jefferson politely declined in his letter to use his office for such influence," Hausknecht said, "explaining that the First Amendment prohibited him from doing so because it had created a 'wall of separation of church and state.' Although it's not completely clear among historians as to the complete scope of Jefferson's meaning,
because of the letter's specific historical context it's accurate to say, as Dr. Dobson did, that Jefferson felt the First Amendment protected the church from government interference -- not the opposite."

I thought this article was very interesting because I never knew where the idea of seperation of church and state actually came from and was the intended meaning.

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