Huckabee Now in Second Place

Yesterday I was happy to write that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee passed Mitt Romney according to the RCP average. Today he passed Thompson and McCain and is in second place behind Rudy.

1. Giuliani (25.5%)
2. Huckabee (13.8%)
3. McCain (13.7%)
4. Thompson (13.2%)
5. Romney (10.7%)
6. Paul (4.7%)

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Mike Huckabee for President

Mike Huckabee has passed Mitt Romney and is now in fourth place according to the RCP average for Republican candidates. We’ve seen Huck go from 2% to 4% to 8% to 10% and now 12.8%. They say he has no chance. Oh yeah? Well, now less than 2% stands between him and the second slot. He’s also leading in the most important state right now: Iowa. This all from a guy with no money and no major endorsements. How do ya’ like them apples?

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Happy Thanksgiving

Join me in singing…

“When I think about the Lord,
How He saved me
How He raised me
How He filled me
With the Holy Ghost
How He healed me
To the utter most

When I think about the Lord,
How He picked me up
And turned me around
How He placed my feet
On solid ground

It makes me wanna shout
“Hallelujah, Thank you Jesus
Lord You’re worthy
Of all the Glory,
And all the Honor
And all the praise.

It makes me wanna SHOUT!!!!”

Happy Thanksgiving

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Miss and Love

You 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.
Our Church- Best church and pastor in the world, irreplaceable.
En Fuego- Best Fajitas ever… so many great memories.
La Jolla- Our favorite place.

What I LOVE About Living In Texas:

Seminary- Going to Class is the best feeling, like a fish in the water.
Slower Pace-Things are quiet here and life is peaceful.

So many things to be thankful for.
God is Good…All the Time!

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11 Things I Like

Sometimes 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. Without her, everything else below would be irrelevant.

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

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No Alcohol in Benbrook

I read this about our town on Wikipedia.

In 1949, two years after Benbrook was incorporated as a village, the sale of liquor and beer was made illegal. In 1951, the citizens voted to make taverns illegal. A few years later, in 1954, an election was held to determine the legality of selling alcohol for “off-premise consumption,” but there were not enough votes to allow its sale. In 1971, the residents of Benbrook chose to prohibit all alcohol sales, except for beer to be imbibed off-premises.

You can buy beer (and only beer) but you have to get out of town to drink it! Benbrook has the third lowest crime rate out of the 42 cities in Tarrant county. Correlation? I don’t know, but I like a town that understands nothing good can come out of alcohol consumption.

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From The Lone Star State

Earlier this month we moved to Benbrook, TX (population 22,000, map) which is on the southwest corner of Fort Worth (population 650,000). It connects to Fort Worth by Interstate 20 or the “back way” through a little country road. Fort Worth is about 30 miles from Dallas (Arlington is in between). The whole area is called the DFW Metroplex and has six million people. Fort Worth is the cowboy side of town where life is a bit slower. They say this is where the west begins. Sudi’s school, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is about 10 minutes from Benbrook.

Gettin’ Here: The Drive

It was a 1,300 mile drive (our route) from Mom and Dad’s in Chula Vista, CA.

The rocky hillsides leaving San Diego County are beautiful (pictures below). Seeing them was worth the crack Sudi noticed our windshield had suffered. We saw Mark and Dan’s Cracker Barrel in Yuma, AZ. In Tucson, we couldn’t find a stinkin’ Subway so we gave up and kept moving until we got to a nice little town called Benson where they had our Subway. Aside from a short drive through some impressive boulders, the rest of the drive through Arizona was like watching a never-ending slide-show of cactus and Dr. Seuss trees. We passed through a huge storm and noticed that apparently nobody lives in New Mexico. That is, until you get to Las Cruces which is set in front of some 8,000 foot mountains where we spent the night and ordered a pizza. Day one was a ten hour journey.

Day two was under eight hours because we floored it. We passed through El Paso on the border and noticed things starting to get green while the mountains started shrinking. I had no idea the area near El Paso was made of lush farmland. We left the I-10 for the I-20 toward Fort Worth and passed through Midland which is where President George W. Bush was raised. Lots of oil pumps around there. It got progressively greener heading toward Abilene then finally on into Fort Worth which greeted us with a wonderful thunderstorm. We spent a couple nights in the seminary’s very nice hotel before moving into our apartment in Benbrook.

What’s Different from San Diego

Here it’s greener, more hamburger-only restaurants, less crowded, friendlier people, more telephone poles, hotter, less health food stores, bigger ants, more trains, triple the rain, most houses are brick, no ocean, many lakes, flatter (but somewhat hilly), more laid back, Target sells groceries, more butterflies, cows and ponies. And old ladies drive trucks. Fort Worth is fairly diverse with a mostly white, black and hispanic population.

Mom and Dad: no worries. We are OKAY. Within an eight mile radius we found Tofurkey, veggie burgers, rice milk, soy ice cream, nutritional yeast flakes, tofu and Nayonaise. Mark, no worries: we live one mile from Cracker Barrel and there’s a steakhouse on every single corner.

Here at Home

Our apartment is the same size but here we have a fireplace, dishwasher, washer, dryer, garden tub and covered parking. We have four windows in the living room which makes it nice and bright. As in La Mesa, we are a mile from a lake and have a little bit of a view from the balcony (not of the lake but of the suburbs and green areas below). Lucy is here visiting and next month Mom and Dad are coming in their motor home. Sudi starts school later this week.

Here are pictures from our drive and of home here in Benbrook. You can see our pictures here: Driving San Diego to Texas and Our Home in Benbrook, TX.

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The Blackhawk

On July 1st our church held our annual God and Country Celebration service. It was a beautiful service as all the veterans that have served on all wars were invited to come forward to receive a medal of appreciation. While the choir and a male quartette sang “You Lift Me Up”, the congregation gave them a standing ovation.

We also saw the presentation of the Flag and the Flag Folding Ceremony, something I had never seen before, it was very solemn.

As a special surprise our Pastor invited a Blackhawk helicopter to land on our softball field and we were invited to take a little tour of the plane, meet the pilots and get our pictures taken. Being the obsessive-compulsive-photography-family that we are, we were the first ones in line on Sunday morning. They turned out really nice and it was a special gift to me since this is my first 4th of July as a US citizen and also because we might never have this unique opportunity ever again.

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An American Girl

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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.

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My True Story

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.

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.

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

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.

Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign Lord. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live. (Ezekiel 18:23)

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

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