Crown in Cartago, Costa Rica

Finally, looks like Meyling and I are going to be able to facilitate a Crown group in her home church in Cartago, Costa Rica. This is something we've been wanting to do for 8 years now! Pastor Esteban and his wife have been very supportive of our efforts and plan to be in the first group. This past Sunday, Aug 26th the announcement was made in front of the church. From that announcement, we got a list of 26+ people. I was told that even more we're interested but for some reason, failed to get their names on the list because of miscommunication or something.

We have a problem here but it is a good problem. We can only have 12 to 14 people max in a group. Because of so much interest I want to do 2 groups. The Crown office in Costa Rica has already told us that they cannot provide additional facilitators, but they can provide us a 4 hour leadership training session. Two 'leader' couples have already shown some interest in doing the study but I have not approached either one of them yet about facilitating a group.

My idea right now, is to try to get both couples to lead a group together with Meyling and me giving them some support while Meyling and I facilitate a group ourselves. I'm overwhelmed in a good way not in a bad way. I'm overwhelmed at how God just dumped all of those people in front of us. I thought after the announcement that we would have 4 or 5 people in a group. Frankly, I'm just shocked at how many people are wanting to do this.

The size of the church is about 350 members. They had about 200 adults there last Sunday. This also just happened to coincide with Pastor Esteban being voted in as the official pastor of the church.

In case you're wondering what Crown is, it is a 10 week Bible study about money. It covers many topics some of which are debt, savings, work, tithing, retirement and training children. The general philosophy of Crown is that our money and our possessions are not ours but in fact belong to God and are on loan to us from God Himself. Therefore we are not owners but actually stewards and must administer these things in such a way that is pleasing to God.

Dave Ramsey has a similar course. See the following links:

http://www.crown.org
http://www.daveramsey.com

Fighting for Jesus

Right now, the boy is riding around in the garage on his scooter singing, "I will fight for you Jesus", "Jesus help me fight for you". What do I do? Do I let it go or do we have a theological discussion? At least he's also singing, "Jesus loves me", "I love you too Jesus."

Some Urban Outdoors Man stories

Yesterday, while dropping off the boy at school (its not a traditional school, they run around and play the whole day) I almost ran over an urban outdoors man sleeping on the side of the road. I was turning right off the two lane paved (busy) main road onto a dirt road. The Urban Outdoors man was sleeping on the side of the dirt road. As I made the turn, he was on the starboard side of the 4x4 vehicle that I was piloting. As I passed him, I honked the horn.

I dropped off the boy. On the return trip, I was determined to wake that fellow up. So I made my decent down the unpaved road and stopped right beside the man's sleeping area. I honked the horn and yelled at him to get up. I asked if he was worried about getting ran over. He slightly stirred but refused to acknowledge my presence. I had to move on, as another vehicle was turning left off of the paved road into the Urban Outdoors man's sleeping area.

Last Saturday, I saw a fellow at about 2:00 pm taking a nap laying perpendicular across the side walk. He was sleeping very very sound asleep as there was a lot of traffic passing by him and he was not moving.

There's this gas station on the west side of Cartago that has a lot of these outdoors man that come by to visit folks while they are filling up their gas tanks. About 2 months ago, when we were getting gas, within 3 minutes, 2 different outdoors men had come by the driver's side window and startled my wife. I had some cold french fries, so I gave one of them the fries. He was very happy and ate them on up.

There's this other dude that's kind of close to the Mas x Menos grocery store. (Pronounced Mas por Menos). This guy has to be about 20 years old and seems to have a serious cash flow problem as he's constantly walking around in the intersection approaching drivers of stopped vehicles at the traffic light asking for money.

About 2 years ago, when I was down here I was approached by an urban outdoors man requesting money. At first I ignored him acting like I couldn't speak Spanish (you know, playing the stupid gringo). This guy then started speaking to me in perfect English. I realized I couldn't ignore him, so we spoke in English for a while. I finally gave him some change. He had spent time in California doing construction work. His English was really good.

New Proposed Flag for US

I'm proposing this as the new flag for the USA (United Socialist America.) Since we are becoming so communist in our mentality we should change our flag in order to keep up with the current culture. Friends, we are a far cry from those rugged, liberty minded individuals who settled our great land and made our country. Never mind that the preamble of our Constitution says "provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare". Now our government "provides the general Welfare and somewhat promotes the common defense". (Look at our border with Mexico)

I like this flag. Notice first of all, there are no more stars. Those stars are outdated representing a time in the past when we had different states, each with different opinions that frankly just get in the way of the "common" good. What business does a state (let alone a people) have governing themselves. With the states gone, its just THE ONE BIG FAT MAMA GUBERMENT takin care of us all.

The hammer and sickle represent the so called working class. I say so called, because that class can shrink on up as there is becoming less and less incentive to work because the fruits of their labor are being reaped by the BIG FAT ONE. To be honest, the hammer and sickle really represent serfdom and slavery. In reality, you are just a serf or a slave. To make you feel better about your condition though, we'll let you think that the hammer and sickle stand for the "working class".

Notice also even though there is the hammer and sickle representing the serfs, there is no symbol representing the entrepreneur, the owner, the owner-operator or any other category of class of a free nation with a diverse economy. That's because THE GUBERMENT holds all of those roles and titles. You are just a serf in this post-liberty feudal system.

Yes, you noticed that the 13 stripes are still there. That's there to make you think that you are still free. A token of patriotism of the past. A means to blind you of your current state. Well quit reading this and get back to work for the ONE GUBERMENT. If you're not working though, don't worry, they'll take care of you......