Crown Update

We are scheduled to start Crown on Feb 14th. (Yes Valentines day, because of that we may move the date). This time around we have 6 or 7 people for the group. Not as much interest as last time; however, one couple who completed the course in November approached us about being co-leaders this time around. I was impressed that they took the initiative. We're also going to get another couple or individual to help co-lead too, as way to grow the Crown leadership in the church faster.

Christian Dog

Yesterday at church during the sermon, a dog walked down the center aisle shortly after the preaching started. At first, he sat down about midway down. One guy hissed at him to get him to leave. The dog just got up and walked closer to the pulpit. He finally laid down about 7 rows or so from the front. He remained there the entire sermon.

Hillary buying votes with my and your money

Typical Democrat tactic. Typical Socialist tactic.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/7842.html

Right winged tree huggers?

Yesterday, Bryan broke a tree limb while sitting in a hammock. The Costa Ricans with us suggested that we just rip the limb right on off and not worry about it. However both Bryan and I saw that the limb had a chance and could be mended back to the tree. We bought 30 meters of twine and fixed it the best we could. Bryan thinks that the limb may have a 50% chance of healing.

We both thought it very ironic that the two most anti-socialist, staunch republicans there were the only ones who took action and made an effort to fix the tree.

Do you like cats?

Almost every night, I hear something walking around on my roof. My roof is made out of some kind of galvanized tin; save the garage, where about a 5 x 10 foot portion of it is some kind of foggy plexy glass. My wife says that what we hear walking around is a cat or cats. A few months back, I even ran up there one day to investigate a noise only to scare a gray cat with yellow eyes. I remember those eyes clearly, because he looked at me with such terror as in disbelief that a human was up there with him. A split second later he dashed like lightning off the back of my house into the neighborhood behind mine.

Even after that incident, we still hear something walking around on our roof from time to time and almost always at night.

Well today has been a kind of rainy, lazy take it easy kind of day. The wife is out doing Christmas stuff and I've been hanging out here with the kids. I've been at this computer for the last 2 hours: checking email, working on a web app and reading the drudgereport while they were napping.

My son just informed me that there's cat crap on the roof. All kinds of questions went through my mind of course, so I just asked him how he knew. He pointed to a black spot on the garage's plexy glass ceiling. I thought it was leaf, so I said, "that's just a leaf." He said that it wasn't. So I went right under and looked up. He's right.

Errrrrrrrr!!! Big goverenment, the Federal Reserve and uninformed / irresponsible citizens

I'm so frustrated. What can I say? I do what I can to make sure that my finances are in order. My family works off a budget. We do not sacrifice raising the children that God has entrusted to us for a better lifestyle - i.e. we don't have a HUGE mortgage on a HUGE house. We have a 10 year old car so that we don't have to have a car payment. We try to pay cash for everything in order to not go into debt (Debt by the way is a form of slavery). We do all of this so that my wife can stay at home with the kids and so that I too can spend more time with them.

We do all that we can to not over spend and live below our means and for what? For the Federal Reserve and BIG government to encourage banks to loan money to people who do not have their act together? To a bunch of irresponsible credit junkies?

These people are loosing their homes, their cars and their shirts and I would say in almost all cases rightfully so! And now what? We hear the network news guys saying things like:

"The Fed is pumping billions of dollars into the economy to help out with the credit crisis".

What does this mean? I'll tell you what this means because I'm experiencing this first hand - its painful - and you will too over time.

This means that somebody at the Fed goes over to a laptop and pushes a few keys to "create" money out of thin air. They then push that newly created digital money to the banks. Let me explain the result of this, I'll try to keep it brief.

This is causing immediate and major inflation of our dollar. Our dollar is worth less every time they do this. If you have cash in hand, it is worth less than the day before the Fed does this. How much? About 4% less or so.

I live in Costa Rica. For the first time that I have known of, the dollar has fallen against the Costa Rican colon. What does that mean? My food costs more. My gas costs more. Everything costs more.

What does that mean for you? Your money is worth less on the global market.

What I'm not sure about though:

Is your house worth less? Well, if you're trying to sell it right now and you have it on the market for lets say $200,000. You put it on the market last week. Today the Fed created more money. You have your house for the same price: $200,000. Your house is worth $200,000 in todays dollars and its worth about $192,000 in last months dollars. Do you see what I mean?!

Maybe, if you don't sell your house, over time, the market will correct itself and the price will go up appropriately. In this case by market, I mean the housing market. Maybe, it will correct itself and reflect the true value of your house in today's dollars and not last months dollars. But how long will that take?

The same goes for any money that you have in Savings or 401K plans. Lets say that you have $100,000. Well that money is worth less now than it was last month. Maybe though, that too will correct itself over the next year and it will increase as our inflation has. (I hope so.....)

My opinion about this? Let those irresponsible people in foreclosure figure it out on their own or with help from private parties. The market needs to eat them (figuratively). This is the fastest way for us to move on. Even Clark Howard says this.

My greater opinion on this? Get us back on the gold standard and eliminate the Federal Reserve. Bottom line, (SO LISTEN UP HERE): The Fed is a private entity. Its not of the government. Don't let the name trick you. This private entity creates money out of thin air and loans it to us and our government at an interest! How absurd is that??? This private entity, the Federal Reserve, is ultimately owned by private individuals. It is to the benefit to these individuals that our government grows, becomes more socialist, takes more responsibility from the private sector, creates more wars, has socialized medicine, welfare, etc...... Why? Because it needs to borrow more of this imaginary money at an interest to be paid back to the Federal Reserve (to these private individuals).

So there you go. I guess that's why Republicans are good at war and Democrats are good at taking care of irresponsible people.

One more thing. What does this mean for me? Well I'm a hustler, I'm a fighter, I'm a schemer and more important than that, I trust The Almighty. I've seen Him do nutty stuff. CRAZY stuff. Sure yeah, I'll keep scheming. I have to. But I know that there's a way out for my family and me that will be provided by The Provider. Not sure what it is right now. But there is one.

No PC for me please

Ha Ha Ha! There's been a Political Correctness backfire in retail America. You know how when you're leaving some big chain store (or mall store) after shopping this time of the year and they say to you "Happy Holidays". If you're like me, there's something inside of you that's actually bothered by that simple phrase; and if you're like me you say back to them "Thanks, Merry Christmas :-)".

Well, it looks like this silly political correctness is backfiring. How funny. These retail giants try not to offend anyone with their "Happy Holidays" but end up offending a huge base of clients called Christians (which by the way are part of the majority religion in the USA).

Why be so politically correct? I really don't get it. If I were in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan and someone said something like: "Happy Ramadan" or "Happy fasting" or something like that, I would gladly respond back to them the same greeting with no qualms about it whatsoever.

Well, it turns out that some of these stores are wisening up. I heard on the news the other day that Wal-Mart is making the switch to now use the phrase: "Merry Christmas".

I used to think that I was probably the only one offended or bothered with the blatant omission of any reference to my Savior in that greeting but it looks like you and everyone else were too.

Living Debt Free being part of a Faith Walk

Today, I've been listening to Dave Ramsey, like I do a lot. He was giving a high incomed fellow advice on whether to buy a house now or wait two years for the cash to be there to just pay for it. While giving the advice, Dave said something like buying things without debt is part of his faith walk.

For Dave, when he wants to buy something whether its a car, house or starting a business; its a spiritual decision. When he's saying that its part of his faith walk, I interpret that to someone buying like this:

"God, I want to buy something; but I do not have the resources to buy it. I will do my part in looking for those resources so that I can obtain what I'm trying to buy and at the same time I will trust you to provide that which I am seeking."

This does spin into a tangent that I won't address in this post and that being that perhaps God does not want you to buy that something (hence, perhaps that's the reason why you shouldn't use credit to obtain it).

One interesting idea is that if you use credit to purchase something then perhaps you are short circuiting God's provision.

But in the USA, they say that you have to have a mortgage to buy your home. But, does it have to be this way?!

Well, back in the United Social America

I've been in Georgia for a week now. Well a week tomorrow. I flew stand by and managed to fly back in 1st class. This was a first time for me. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was quite a treat.

Work has been interesting. We have a new VP who's a soldier. The guy does not take any crap and is cracking the whip on everybody. This has been going on for almost 2 months now. I have to say, that it is a welcomed change though on my part. It is a challenge.

I'm carless right now. Been getting around on MARTA. So far so good.

I was about 3 days shy of being in Costa Rica for 6 months straight. This is the longest time that I've ever been abroad.

Interesting enough, on Tuesday evening, after my first day back in the office, I was walking to the MARTA station. I twisted my ankle on a divot in the side walk. I had a flashback to my first day working from an internet cafe in Costa Rica. That night, I also twisted my ankle while walking on the side walk (See earlier blog post) . This time as well as that time I feared that I would not be able to run for awhile; however that wasn't the case as Thursday I ran a pretty good 4.4 mile going between my sister's and my granddaddy's neighborhoods.

Tomorrow, God willing, the rest of my family will be here. Speaking of the phrase "God willing", Costa Ricans (as well as other hispanics) use a variation of that phrase constantly: "si Dios quiere" ("if God wants" or "if God wills it") . The apostle Paul talks about this in one of his letters saying something like don't say you plan on going to this city or that and'll do business for a time you should say if God wills it then ...... etc.

Crown update

We are 70% through the Crown study. We decided to split up into 2 groups. Meyling has one and I have the other.

Meyling has 11 people. I had 11 but am now down to 10. One lady had to drop it due to recently becoming pregnant and the added stresses and complexities because of that.

Its really exciting. We have 3 more weeks to go and are on track with 21 people graduating! These folks are motivated, dedicated and excited about making wise changes in their lives and seeing God do BIG things.

In my group, every person is capable of leading this study. I'm hoping at least half of the them lead a Crown study in the next year. God willing, we will do one or two more at this church in January 2008.

On a lighter note, whoever is in charge of the bulletin keeps leaving in there: "Thursday night: Bible study at 7:00 pm". The problem is, that Bible study is not going on and has not happened in months! We've had 2 people show up, each on 2 different occasions thinking that one of our Crown classes was "The Bible Study". The thing is, crown is designed to be a closed small group Bible study. Once started, no new members should be admitted in. This is to maintain consistency and promote a more intimate small group study.

The funny thing, in this church of about 200 people or so, only 2 people have come looking for the Bible study in the past 7 weeks!