A Thought for Today

People’s lives can be measured by the size of the things it takes to get their goat.

Have you ever thought about what gets your goat? A wise person once told me that for it to be worth while, it has to matter two weeks from now. What gets your goat that matters two weeks from now? Leave me a comment as I’d like to know.

A Night on the Hill

The other night I just needed some time alone so I decided to go up on the hill behind our place. Just me and my camera. Well, it took about half an hour to get out the door (our German neighbor wanted to talk and I needed to sieze any opportunity to speak German) but finally I was in God’s creation.

Its been a while since I was much of a hiker (did some when I was in high school) but most of my time now is inside with a computer. But I am always amazed when I am out in nature. You can look out into the vastness of the sky or across the fields and just be in awe. Then you can look at the smallest of creatures trying to make it over a peeble and come to an understanding of the limitlessness of God. What an imagination God must have to be able to create all these different things. I just sat in wonder.

Well, here are the photos which you can find in the photo album. Some you might find interesting. Some you might wonder why I took them. But all I can say is that I have a digital camera, and I’m not afraid to us it. Tschuess.

I think I’ll stick with Mommy

This morning at breakfast, we had our family devotional time where we read about King Saul and his son Jonathan being killed in battle because of Saul’s choice not to do as God had said to do (the short version of it – as we know there is more grace in there than this one liner makes it sound). Anyway, when I asked Alex what he would like to pray for today, he want to ask God to help him choose to do the right thing as he didn’t want to disobey God and wind up like Saul.

Then I said that he might want to pray that I get God’s help in making the right choices as it was Saul and all of his sons that were killed in battle that day.

Alex’s immediate reply was “I think I’ll stick with Mommy”.

My son knows me well. Even so, I continue to pray that God will show me the right choices to make and that he will give me the strength to choose those choices.

Geeky humor about new versions of MAMP and XAMPP

Just some geeky thoughts I had today. For those of you that know about XAMPP (stands for “windows Xp Apache Mysql Php Perl) its a great way to have a way of developing web sites and other web applications without having to be connected to the Internet or have your own webserver. It kinda of creates a low tech webserver right on your PC. And the services needed to operate are all controlled within this little box (and pretty much no configuration needed by you). Its very handy.

The Mac version is MAMP (Mac Apache Mysql Php).

So my geeky thoughts were with the release of Windows Vista and the upcoming release of Mac OS Leopard – will the new versions then be VAMPP and LAMP, respectively?

Now the VAMPP might be a little draining but the LAMP might shed some light on the subject.

[Edit: Yes, I know LAMP is already used for Linux Apache Mysql Php]

First (Official) Day in the Office

On Friday was my first official full day in the office and my list of “todos” is humungous. As you can see, we don’t have the whole team in the office right now as summer time is a time for people’s HMA (Home Ministry Assigment – also known as furlough), vacations, children’s graduations and we have a lot of trips scheduled throughout Europe. Come Monday (my second official day in the office), I’ll be the only one.

I have to say I am really excited about getting full time into the work God has called us here to be a part of. Part of my position is to help in formulating a long term technology strategy for what we are going to be doing in eDOT, now and in the future. There is a group of volunteers that are eager to help (but we could always use more if you are interested) whose expertises are just outstanding. I am amazed as I get to know these volunteers just the level of experience that God is bringing to this team. There is a great sense of anticipation as we are on the verge of having more courses ready to be used throughout Europe, as we are starting to having courses translated into Farsi, as we are developing different programs that churches housing computer centers can use for outreach into their communities, and as we develop websites that are going to be doing all sorts of things.

Please pray for us and the eDOT team as we:

• go through yet another transistion from language school to the office
• spend time as a family going through the adjustments of living in a different culture
• work on developing friendships within the German community to both work on our German language skills and to be a witness for Christ here
• look at all that is to be done and feel a bit overwhelmed, that we will be able to prioritze appropriately and move in God’s timing and not in our own

Check out some more photos of my first day in the Photo Album

Gas Prices – Why there are small cars in Europe

Ok, I know most of you are reading this are from America and there you are questioning how come gas prices are going way over the $3/gallon mark especially as everyone is starting their summer vacations. Well, I just wanted to share with you what the gas prices here are like.

Above is pictured one of the cheaper gas stations that is in our area (and on a good gas price day since it fluctuates daily, sometimes it seems hourly). At first glance you might think we have it great here in Germany with gas prices (and compared to some places in the world, it is good). However let me explain the prices to those of you in the states.

The first price (the really cheap one) is for Erdgas, which is pretty much only used in certain farm vehicles. The second price there is for diesel (yes, diesel is cheaper than gas in Germany). The bottom three prices are for gas and equate to the levels of “Regular, Plus and Premium” found in the states. So the price of regular gas looks pretty good at 1.349 but you have to remember that that is Euros per liter. So to get that to Dollars per Gallon, we have to multiply the 1.349 by 3.7854118 (the amount of liters in a gallon) and then multiply the result by 1.35 (the current rate of Dollars to Euros) which means gas currently goes for $6.89/gallon for the cheap gas.

That is one of the reasons cars are smaller here and why bicycles and walking are favored in town transportation (and why we bought a diesel)

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