Posts filed under 'General'Happy ThanksgivingJoin me in singing… “When I think about the Lord, When I think about the Lord, It makes me wanna shout It makes me wanna SHOUT!!!!” Happy Thanksgiving Miss and LoveYou haven’t heard from me in a while. I’m busy living my dream. I’m a Full Time student. All thanks to my Baby-Love. One of these days I’m going to write a deep entry about life as a seminarian. One of these days when I don’t have hundreds of pages to read. True story, I’ve been working like mad to get ahead on my reading, yesterday I finished a 900 page commentary on 1st. Corinthinas. Excellent by the way! I love that class. I finished the last chapter and walked to my computer with a huge sense of accomplishment to check my email and I found the syllabus for an Intensive class I’m taking in Januray. A real breeze!, only 4 books to read and 5 papers to write in the next 35 days. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! So as I was saying, one of these days when I have time, I will write about deep matters and the things I’m learning. For now something light… What I MISS The Most About San Diego: (Things that I really miss, it hurts thinking about them) Our Family -There was something very comforting about having mom and dad 20 minutes away, now it is 20 hours.
Seminary- Going to Class is the best feeling, like a fish in the water. So many things to be thankful for. 11 Things I LikeSometimes you run across something that’s really cool or really useful. Here’s what I’ve come to like as of late. Sudi Kate Gliebe - This one is not as of late but rather most of all. BrowserCAM let’s me test my sites on any and every operating system, browser and version with screenshots and VNC access. And the big secret is that Fundable gets you 1 year access for just $25 (it’s $500 direct from BrowserCam). Trophy Chase Trilogy - A very well-written seafaring fantasy-adventure series by George Bryan Polivka. Great characters and suspense… hard to tell what’s going to happen next. I use my Fulcrum Multi Flex LED Book Light to read at night which is the best $11 reading light in the world. Post Its for Yahoo Widgets - Now that I have a dual-monitor setup I put these post-its on the desktop of my left screen which allows my desk to be clear of the usual dozen real post-its which end up being frustrating. Mark, you might find this one interesting: CodeIgniter model-view-controller PHP framework and the Nested Sets Model (versus the usual adjacency list model) used with MySQL are coming in very handy for my latest project which is the second version of an ultra-flexible CMS (content management system) for myself and my UK partner. SyncBack SE - This is some really functional backup software. At $30 it’s a real great deal too. I ended up using this for my weekly PC to external HDD backups after finding that Windows Vista has a tremendous bug which basically crashes the shell if you try to copy bazillions of files. 8 months later and they still don’t have a fix. I even tried MS SyncToy and that has a fatal, unfixed bug too. Ouch. Thank you, SyncBack SE. Albert Mohler’s radio show. Imagine Bill O’Reilly as a evangelical Theologian without sarcasm and 100 times sharper. That’s Al. Recipezaar - A great recipe site with users’ recipes and reviews. Fantastic ability to search by cuisine, ingredients, etc. Only flaw is you have to be a paid member to see the big photos An American GirlPage 1 of 3 (click graphic to go to next page)
 Today, June 22nd, 2007 the Naturalization Oath Ceremony was officiated by a Judge whose grandfather immigrated to Ellis Island from Italy. 76 countries were represented, 1716 participants became US citizens, 334 requested a name change and 29 are members of the armed forces. A mosaic of nationalities and races coming together with one dream, to become an American Citizen. Among many treasures I received a heart felt letter from President George W Bush with it’s official White House seal. Here are some of the pictures we took of this momentous occasion. Please leave a comment to memorialize the occasion. My True StoryPosted by Steven in General on June 2nd, 2007 at 07:02pm
Beginnings I was born June 15, 1983 in a fast-growing California city called Chula Vista which sits between San Diego and the Mexican border. I had a great American childhood. My parents are loving and made sure I never had to worry about a thing. We lived in a nice suburban neighborhood where I could walk to my elementary school, a brand-new charter school. That was a fun time and place for me. Junior High was rough, as I’m sure it is for most kids during those awkward years. High school was not as rough in the sense that I wasn’t bullied, but it was an infinitely depressing period in my life. I longed for more, for whatever good the future might have held for me and for the freedom to spread my wings. My personality and learning style didn’t fit well in the classroom. What I can appreciate about where I grew up is the diverse population. I checked the statistics for my high school and was not surprised to see that being white meant I was a minority, third to the Hispanic and Asian student populations. Children are innocent and so from my youngest years I never gave thought to the fact that my classmates looked and talked different than each other. In fact, I thought it was like that everywhere in America (and I thought America was the whole world while in elementary school). Knowing that so many people have prejudices, I count myself lucky to have been given the opportunity to grow up being a part of diversity. A Sobering Moment As a child I believed in God and I often prayed in bed at night that God would help the poor, house the homeless and feed the hungry people. From first grade to 10th grade I attended Catholic classes one day a week after school. They taught me to try hard to be as good of a person as possible and to help people in need. While I generally disliked those classes, especially as I got older, I didn’t doubt God’s existence until I was 14-years-old. While riding the school bus home I made a casual comment about God to my friend, Fred, who responded by saying, “I don’t believe in God.” I said nothing but internally was surprised that someone could not believe in God. A short moment later I realized that I had never even considered the possibility that God might not be real and that my belief in God was not actually a conscious decision I had made but rather a tradition that I was following automatically. It was a sobering moment. Enlightened Atheist During the next two years I became more convinced that there was no God, with all the suffering in this world, hypocritical Christians, the assumption that all those animals couldn’t possibly have fit on Noah’s ark, various [what I now know to be unbiblical] Catholic traditions such as confession to a priest, praying to saints (dead humans), etc. Thoughts like these ruined for me the idea of “religion” being divine. Clearly religion was man-made. I considered myself to be an atheist for the rest of my high school years and at the same time considered God-believers and Christians to be idiots of the grandest kind. I had the view that a) belief in God was for weak-minded people and b) I was being intelligent. I was proud to claim this newfound enlightenment with my friends at school but of course not with my family. At 15-years-old, I had my Catholic Confirmation… and not once during that year of preparation did anybody ask me if I even believed in God. All that “confirmed” to me was that religion was not where I could find truth. Now What? However, my unbelief in God wasn’t entirely satisfying. I still had a hunger for knowledge of something higher than myself. But rather than allow myself to be confronted with the possibility that God still may in fact be real (even independent of religion), I used the Internet to seek out alternate options. I started to grow an unhealthy appetite for anything paranormal or godlessly spiritual: ghosts and hauntings, the possibility of being created by aliens, attempting astral projection (that’s what I desired most), seeing auras, lucid dreaming, telekinesis and so on. I got to the point where I was so into these things (reading about and attempting them nightly) that I felt (but didn’t accept) that it was somehow ridiculous to be open to anything but the possibility that God could be reality. Nonetheless, I squelched that feeling and continued on my paths. It was more comfortable that way (now I know it was because to acknowledge God would have been to make my imperfect self accountable to a perfect authority - scary). Meeting My Future Wife While I was still in High School I met Sudi. She was an intern at my grandparents’ church from Mexico City who had graduated from a Bible College in Minnesota. She was living with my grandparents and she (other than a little girl on the playground in third grade) was the first person I recall personally raising the question of God with me. I liked her (there was something different about her) but I was done with religion and so I told her I didn’t want to talk about it. More School… or Not After what seemed like decades, I graduated from high school. I was thrilled to be done with that chapter of life. I must have been the only graduate to race off to the parking lot and leave without his actual diploma in hand. Community college came when summer ended and it proved to be an equally depressing experience. Two days into my second semester, after realizing that my “web design” class was a joke (no computers and an instructor with no experience) and that two to four more years in college would kill me, I dropped all my classes and returned my books. Going Into Business That’s when I started my web design business from my bedroom. I remember my dad being supportive by getting the “doing business in Chula Vista” packet (I was putting off the paperwork). He also bought me a nice phone and built me a really nice big desk (he can build anything). Deep Questions This now was the post-9/11 world we were living in and I found myself asking Sudi tough questions about the now possibly relevant issue of God. I needed a reason to believe there could actually be a God before I would give weight to anything the Bible said. She patiently answered my questions and when she didn’t have an answer, she would say, “I don’t know but I will find out and get back to you” and she did every time. Her answers about God, of course, all came from the Bible: answers that satisfied me (though I always had more). I reluctantly accepted to go to a mid-week Bible-teaching at a church in the neighborhood with her and found myself deeply interested in the lessons which basically were just readings from the Bible (I never actually read the Bible for myself before this). Sudi encouraged me to pray and ask God to reveal himself to me. I figured that was reasonable so I did. What If Months later, I would be considered an agnostic by some definitions (after all, you would have to be God to know everything to know there is no God and you can’t be God and an atheist at the same time) who was interested in the truth, whatever it may be. I wanted to know if there really was a God instead of avoiding the big question altogether (laziness, fear) or making mockery of it (easy, unintelligent). At this point I was giving the Bible a shot: I read the Gospel of John and during the summer of 2002 I was listening to the book of Matthew in MP3 format each night before bed. I found the parts where Jesus spoke to be the most interesting. On July 31, 2002 I was having a very anxious time with my not-so-flourishing new business and decided it wouldn’t hurt to read something in the book of Matthew. I opened my Bible up and started reading the story of Jesus walking on water starting with verse 22 of chapter 14.
A Liar, a Lunatic or Something Else At that moment I realized I had the same condition Peter did. When I read that Jesus said “why did you doubt?” I didn’t have any more excuses. It’s like C.S. Lewis noted: Jesus didn’t leave us any other option than to call him a liar, a lunatic or Lord. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) This was the moment I believed Jesus was who He claimed to be. My heart beat hard and I prayed for forgiveness (this was also the moment I first realized I needed forgiveness), acknowledged that Jesus was the Lord of all creation and out loud told Satan to get out of my life. I literally felt weight lifted off of my chest. I was right all along: religion is man-made and not necessary for having a relationship with God. Forever About one year later Sudi and I got married at sunset at the beach in La Jolla, California. She is my best friend and the love of my life. I could go on about how my business finally took off and how I’m happily married and live in a beautiful place with perfect weather but that’s all irrelevant. What matters is what is eternal. And what is eternal is my soul. God promised me forgiveness of sin and everlasting life, not a “peachy” time on earth. In fact, He promised persecution for me; he says I will be hated for putting my trust in Him. What I will boast about then as a believer is that I was a completely hopeless sinner destined for an eternity of deserved punishment (my sins were my choice) in hell that has been forgiven, not because of anything I did, but because a perfect God came to earth as my fellow man in the person of Jesus to be sacrificed as payment for my sins (including my future sins) and defeated death by His resurrection.
Citizenship InterviewThe interview was a success. Praise The Lord! It was scheduled for 11:30am and although my attorney told me they usually run late, they called me in right on time. The interview was the shortest in history, I was in and out in 10 minutes. I was asked to lift my right hand and swear to tell the truth, it was very exciting! The officer who interviewed me Fred Mapanao was very kind and quite funny. He was very impressed to see that I was carrying a U.S.A flag in my hand and when he told me, I smiled and showed him my other flag on my lapel, then he was REALLY impressed :). He asked me the basic NO questions, “Are you a habitual drunkard?” etc. And then the YES questions “Do you agree with the laws and regulations of the United States?” For my history test, he asked me only 6 questions and I got them right. Colors of the flag, three branches of the government, when was the independence declaration signed, who was the first President of the United States etc, I was hoping he would ask me all 100 questions that I know by heart, but he only asked me 6. I signed a bunch of papers and pictures and before I knew it, he stood up and congratulated me. One thing I noticed was that I was the only one with an attorney. I told Mr Linkon I was lucky to have him. He has been a real champ through this process and we thank God for His life. After the interview, my baby-love took me out to lunch to my favorite restaurant in Del Mar “En Fuego”. Here’s a few pics of my big day. Dusty ShoesWe are on “Dusty Shoes” week. Learning about being the “salt” of the earth and the “light” of the world. Make Him GladPosted by Sudi in General on February 15th, 2007 at 10:20am
And who are thus privileged to make the Saviour glad? His church—His people. But is it possible? He makes us glad, but how can we make Him glad? By our love. Ah! we think it so cold, so faint; and so, indeed, we must sorrowfully confess it to be, but it is very sweet to Christ. See, loving heart, how He delights in you. When you lean your head on His bosom, you not only receive, but you give Him joy. It is in your power even now to break the alabaster box, and pour the precious oil of joy upon His head, as did the woman of old, whose memorial is to this day set forth wherever the gospel is preached. Will you not perfume your beloved Lord with the myrrh and aloes, and cassis, of your heart’s praise? -Charles Spurgeon Heaven and ChristThis morning for my devotional I read: “Heaven and Christ are the same thing. To be with Christ is to be in heaven, and to be in heaven is to be with Christ.” “O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without thee, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have thee still, it would be a heaven to me, for thou art all the heaven I want.” All we need to be blessed, supremely blessed, is “to be with Christ.” -Charles Spurgeon Sudi on Christian Examiner CoverI picked up a copy of the Christian Examiner newspaper at church… and Sudi is on the cover!
"I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."Genesis 12 Calendar
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What I LOVE About Living In Texas:
Without her, everything else below would be irrelevant.
I ask that if you know me as friend or family, please take a few minutes to read this entire article. It’s important to me and may possibly be important to you too. Thank you.