Family from Mexico

We had a great time this last couple of days. Our granddaughter Kristen, husband AAron and new baby girl Emma came from Mexico City to visit us and the famioy in the Portland area. they have now gone back with Kristens parents to visit with their family on the Vancouver,BC area.

Ever so relentlessy almost all of our children are now grandparents. And we are getting older!

We had a open house here at our condo clubhouse and Kristen's aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces came to visit. Over 20 of us. I have lots of good pictures, but I will put a couple here knowing I can't get everyone. Here's a couple of the better ones.

Enjoying Life

The last couple of weeks have been truly summer days. We spent the Fourth weekend helping Mark, Shari and Greg build a "shack" or toolshed in Mark's back yard. It came our real nice with Shari's artistic paint job. It was a fun project.

This last week Carol and I travelled to Hood river area on the other side of MT Hood. We picked charries, explored and stayed in a B@B at Parkdale. It was a fun trip all on less than a tank of gas. We came home with almost 30# of cherries. thought we made a good bargain until we went shopping today at Winco and saw them for about the same price!

A Tribute

Tony Snow, former press sec to president Bush just recently graduated-to heaven.
Carol and I just spent a couple of hours watching tributes to him on Fox News.
What a genuine believer in Jesus. He had a winsome testimony and a genuine faith as attested
by fellow journalists and politicians on both sides of the politiaca spectrum.
Genuine-genuine-genuine is the common assesment of his life. A follower of Jesus who was truly salt and light.
More than one of those interviewed referred to a speech he made at Catholic University commencement recently. I urge you to google "snow speaks at Catholic University" and read it
for yourself. At 53 Snow knew what it took to rise victorious in times when many slog through mid life crisis.
Here's what he said about faith in that speech:
"When it comes to faith, I’ve taken my own journey. You will have to take your own. But here’s what I know. Faith is as natural as the air we breathe. Religion is not an opiate, just the opposite. It is the introduction to the ultimate extreme sport. There is nothing that you can imagine that God cannot trump. As Paul said “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And once you realize that there is something greater than you out there, then you have to decide, “Do I acknowledge it and do I act upon it?” You have to at some point surrender yourself. And there is nothing worthwhile in your life that will not at some point require an act of submission. It’s true of faith and friendship. It is a practical passage [of the Bible], especially to marriage.
Tolstoy once said all happy marriages are happy in the same way and here’s what he meant. When both people commit, when they say, “You and I are bound together, forever, period, no questions, no codicils, no pre-nups, no escape clauses,” then all of a sudden, the temptations become irrelevant, and the glories become possible.
There is nothing like the pleasure of being a parent. Waking up the next morning to somebody whose breath has become the echo of your heartbeat. Trust me on this, it does not get any better. Commit."

Wild Men Wild Alaska

Carol bought me a book for Father's Day and I just got around to reading it.

"Wild Men Wild Alaska" is written by Rocky McElveen a missionary kid raised in Alaska. He now operates a guiding service on the western slopes of the Alaska Range near Aniak. A very good read and we also just listened to a radio podcast of "Family Life" with Dennis Rainey which featured Rocky and his wife Sharon, the last three days.

Just in the natural course of living in Alaska and doing what the native people did, we experienced some of the reality this hunting and fishing guide experienced. A love for God's creation, appreciation for alaska game, fish and birds and the challenge of trusting God in some very unusual conditions. Of course Rocky experienced some pretty dramatic stuff and he is a much better story teller. However it still struck a resonant chord with me.

The book is available though amazon.com or you can borrow my copy.

My Music

As some of you know I love music. Almost all kinds of music. After teaking to Marty and Mark and seeing how the ipods work I backed off on my idea that I would never have one. One of my negatives was that I could never use earbuds with my hearing aids.

Merlin and Brenda bought us the above CD player while we lived in Calgary. It holds 200 cd's and with our christmas cd's we have around 130 now. It worked OK, but it was very difficult to play a particular song or a particular cd or to know what cd's we had. It sure does make a good place to store them!

But now.... I have transferred all these songs to my new 8G nano. Over 1000 songs and the Nano is only half full. We also got a temendous buy on the ipod player. It also plays radio, XM radio and single cd's, with good sound. So now I am really back in the listening mood since I can find songs by title, artist, genre my rating etc. Fun and very enjoyable.

The Shack

SHACK:

We lived in what some would consider shacks in our day. I might add that we did not suffer much for it.

Most of our houses in the bush of Alaska had a shack out back. Here our boys and a native girl are giving one of them a new paint job.

I also had various areas in our houses I called my shack. I have a ham radio license and the room or area we operate from is called a "shack".

Carol and recently attended a book lecture by author William Paul Young who wrote a christian best seller (over 1 million copies and growing). It was held in the local christian supply store.

The book title is "The Shack'. I read this novel when Merlin told me about it a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed it, although it is an allegory and allegory is not my favorite form of story telling. But I do like Bunyan, C.S. Lewis because they try to help us understand the mysteries of God. I especially enjoyed and grew by reading Pilgrim's Progress.

So the allegory in The Shack is to try to explain pain and suffering and how God wants to meet with us in our "shacks" of pain. It is not a book of theology, nor as Young pointed out the other night, anything more than a story to try to explain how God wants us to understand how He as the Trinity ministers to each of us in our pain. It is a story he wrote for his kids.

Young has not only been successful in this as evidenced by the popularity of the book, but he has been the object of some serious criticism. I recommend you reading the book if you read it as a story (a pretty good one).It might help you undeerstand a little better the mystery of the Trinity.

Collin Hansen wrote in "Christianity Today" recently:

"The Trinity reminds us that God did not create us because he was lonely. God even draws believers into fellowship with himself through the work of Christ and the agency of the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is no mere abstraction. It is God's plan of salvation in action. God the Father, desiring to restore fellowship between himself and his Creation, sent his incarnate Son, who willingly gave his life as a substitute for sins. After defeating evil by raising his Son from the dead, God sent his Holy Spirit as the seal of salvation for all who believe. So what? Nothing less than fellowship with God is at stake."