2nd Snow of the Season

We woke up this morning to the 2nd snow of the season.  Thankfully it was a Saturday (last time was a school day and it was gone by the time Alex got home).  We are suppose to have snow for the next three days too.  Hopefully we can get around as we don’t get our winter tires (required by law) until Tuesday.

Got a few more photos in the Photo Album.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

This last weekend we did a little two day trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber with another eDOT family. This was an old walled city that has origins dating back to the 900′s. In the war (WWII for non-Europeans), 40% of the city was bombed but due to a lot of people’s generosity they have rebuilt the city. Even our German friends think that this is a just a beautiful place to visit and I have to agree.

If you do visit this town, you have to go on the Night Watchman tour. He was an excellent tour guide with a great way of telling you the town’s history.

Check out my photos in the Photo Album.

St. Martin Lantern Parade

Every year, the kids in our village do a Lantern Parade.  This parade is a re-enactment of the search for Saint Martin.  The story (as I am trying to understand the German) goes that there was this soldier who was going through a town on a cold night in the 4th century.  A beggar approaches him and asks for some money.  The soldier, having no money, immediately cuts off half his cloak and gives it to the beggar to keep warm.  Before the beggar can say “Thank you”, the soldier is gone.  The soldier is rewarded by seeing Jesus Christ in the half cloak and realizing that he was now called to be in service to Jesus Christ.  That soldier was Saint Martin.  He spent the rest of his life in service to God and obviously was sainted by the Catholic church.

We start the whole event by meeting in the church and hearing about the story of Saint Martin.  Then we split into groups Read more >>

Updated the Roes Garden

Ok, The Roes Garden has been silent for a couple of reasons this week. One, I took some vacation time. It was (and still is as I’m off until Tuesday) great as I practiced some Photoshop skills and worked on some different web development stuff that I haven’t worked with in a while. Yes, I’m a true geek in that this is what I like to do on vacation. Now you may be asking yourself, “but isn’t that what you do all the time” but the reality is that I am rarely doing web work any more (especially now that we have a part time web developer out of language school and we have several volunteers who do web work). Most of my time is working on more infrastructure type work these days.

The second reason its been silent is that I’ve been reworking and upgrading The Roes Garden. I’ve changed themes and upgraded my WordPress install to the latest stable version. I do have to say that I really like where WordPress is going and what is coming out for WordPress is really making it a nice Content Management System (CMS).

Please stop by and check out the updated site. I’m not quite done with it yet and will continue to make improvements over the next couple of weeks. Please check it out and let me know what you think of it.

10 Reasons you are probably going to fail

I’d like to share with you a “10 Reasons” from one of the blogs I read on a regular basis by Tony Morgan.

10 Reasons Why You’re Probably Going to Fail

1. It’s not your passion. If it doesn’t make your heart beat fast or cause your mind to race when you’re trying to sleep, you’re probably doing the wrong thing.
2. You don’t have a plan. You need a vision, and you need to identify specific steps to make that vision become reality. That includes a financial plan. (I happen to believe you need direction from God on this.)
3. You’re waiting for it to be perfect. Test-drive it. Beta-test that new idea. You’ll fall into the trap of inaction if you think it has to be absolutely right from day one.
4. You’re not willing to work hard. Everything worth pursuing in my life has involved discipline and perseverance.
5. It’ll outgrow you. Keep learning. Keep growing. But more importantly, build a team of people including leaders that can be who you’re not.
6. You’ve had success in the past. I’ve watched organizations hang on to a good idea for too long. Time passes. Momentum fades. It’s risky to let go of the past and jump on the next wave.
7. You’re unwilling to stop doing something else. Complexity is easy. Simplicity takes discipline. You can’t build a healthy marriage if you’re unwilling to give up dating other women. Who/what do you need to stop dating?
8. You won’t build a team of friends. Anyone can hire from a resume. You need to find people you want to share life with. In the long run, great relationships will get you out of bed in the morning.
9. You won’t have the tough conversations. When breakdown happens (and it always does), someone needs to put on their big-boy pants and initiate the difficult conversation that leads to relational healing.
10. You’re afraid of failure. When fear consumes you, it will cause you to do stupid things. You’ll let negativity distract you. You’ll embrace the known, and grow comfortable with mediocrity. The more often you fail, though, the more often you’ll find success

Now why am I sharing this with you? Well, these things just hit me hard and I wanted to share them with you. Work for you?

What are you going to do?

Back in 2004, Krista and I were in Colorado on the US Election Day going through our orientation and appointment to be missionaries with Greater Europe Mission. Bush was re-elected during that time. Funny situation happened as we flew from Colorado back to our (then) home in North Carolina. A man and I struck up a conversation in the Denver airport. He was extremely upset that “W” was going to have four more years as president and continued to describe to me in colorful language how upsetting it was that this was allowed to happen. I sat there listening not really having or wanting to have an opinion to express. (for the past several elections, I haven’t been passionate about one candidate or the other). Finally, the man, after ranting on for a while, asked me what I was going to do. I declared I was going to move out of the country. The man just stood there silent. He saw that I was serious (although for different reasons than he thought). The conversation ended at that point. He walked away.

Later I wondered what went through his head after that. Here was a man who was obviously passionate and moved by a situation. He had a lot of words to go with his feelings but did he have the action to go with it? I am so proud that so many people in the US went out and voted yesterday (no matter who they voted for). That was action!

Where is your passion? What moves you? What do you hear or see that just makes you scream inside that something must be done! Now do something about it.

Thinking about Missions

When Krista and I felt called to go into missions, we knew we wanted to go to Europe. Our hearts were yearning to minister here. Why? We don’t know but God made it clear to us that that was where He wanted us. We also know that some people are called to go, but they don’t know where. If that’s you, take a look at the site WorldMap.org . This site can be a starting point as you can take a look at different needs around the globe. Its also a really cool site to check out all sorts of maps.If you are looking for a place that God may be calling you, please look at Europe. We really could use the help. According to WorldMap.org, there are 784 people groups and 717 of them are unreached with 387 of them being unengaged in Europe.