Ade Ileke 27: Linhas na Amazônia

linhas na Amazônia...

gravuras dos deuses antigos?

Do Rio Bravo à Boca do Acra

há enchentes e ameaças de dilúvios.

os deuses estão voltando para casa.

 --

Lines in the Amazon lands...

etchings of the ancient gods?

From Rio Bravo to Boca do Acra

there are floods and threats of deluge.

The gods are coming home.



pix: Google Earth

Does Mind Matter?

Do a thought experiment and imagine a Universe where there is no Intelligence: nothing to perceive the physical processes, nothing to record them, no narrative of the passage of time, no histories, no sciences; there is merely the "stuff" of Science if Intelligence were ever to exist.



Is such a Universe possible? Would Matter exist in that way without Mind or Intelligence?



The answer is actually No, it does not nor would not exist in such a way.



The Thought Experiment of a Material Universe without Mind is itself an element of the Universe that has Mind. The Universe without Intelligence is part now - since we have just made the thought experiment! - of our history of Intelligence. And Universe without Narrative is obviously part of the Universe of Narration.



In other words, the "Material Universe Without Mind" is a concept that cannot be conceptualized, else it disappears.

--

Gold

Olaf Stapledon somewhere writes about a primate society of the future which exhausts itself in the frenzied pursuit of essentially useless bright and shiny metals, and they melt back into the undifferentiated mass of primates from which they sprang.



He also wrote in the same book about the frenzied use of fossil fuels by mankind, mostly in aeroplanes and ritual flying, but he was spot on about the eventual depletion of fuels and the baleful effects this would have on the present and the future.



Getting back to the apes and their pursuit of Gold and Shiny Metals: as much as we have inveighed against Wall Street working at phantom financial instruments that add nothing to the "real" economy, we do not seem to mind that Gold adds nothing to the economy, either.

We are so used to phoniness that real investment eludes the majority of us. Gold is a bright, shiny, and essentially worthless metal, unless you need its malleability or the fact that it does not tarnish.



This business of phony investment seems to be so ingrained that only a catastrophe may change it. When a society values economically worthless things over items that have real value and contribute to the betterment of society.... well. draw your own conclusions.

--

The Other Side of Fear...

Wisdom is on the reverse side of Fear... it is the side B, the side rarely played.



This side is the side of Miracle.



I really cannot explain it beyond this.

--

Pure Ideology is the Death of Democracy

The Club for Growth sez:



http://www.frumforum.com/lets-primary-this-rino-reagan



... America would be better off served by somebody like Michele Bachmann. She is ideologically pure. 





To be ideologically pure is to remain "chaste" in the face of differing opinions; it is to refuse to compromise and negotiate.



Any politics that does not listen, negotiate, and compromise, must by its very nature cycle between eras of violence and discontent, for the only way that parties "out of power" can make themselves heard is by acts of violence or separation and withdrawal.



Consider the Fascists, the Bolsheviks, the Nazis... all insisted on ideological purity and they all realized they were enemies of Democracy, and they made it plain that they were above and better than feeble Democracy that cannot accomplish anything because it was always locked in confrontation. Back after World War I, the democracy in Italy could not agree on things, so it needed Mussolini to effect even such mundane things as "making the trains run on time".



We are not viewing dysfunction in Washington, D.C.; we are viewing an alien ideology and philosophy which seeks to actively subvert a Democratic process. It seeks to destroy the Government by refusing to allow revenue increases in a sane long-term proposal to reduce deficits; the aim of this alien ideology is the death of the country as we know it and the introduction of some new version that is "cleansed" of the bad elements of a "promiscuous" Democracy.

--

Reverse Darwinism

I has been pointed out that Tea Partiers are not Evolution deniers; they are proponents of "Reverse Evolution"; i.e., survival of the goofiest.



I'll be darned.

--

Am I "Frum" Canada?

Someone asked me why I read FrumForum. And why, in the name of all that is holy, do I have a link to it? Why do I not have a link to a liberal outlet, for example, and balance things out?



Well, Frum is a conservative from Canada...



I was at University in Canada, and I spent 6 of my most formative years living in Canada for 9 months of the 12, and spending the remaining 3 visiting my Canadian girlfriends. All of my friends from that time (who still speak to me!) are Canadian, and my wife's family on the maternal side comes from Quebec. My brother-in-law Bill, God rest his soul, has a place on Lac Achegan, near St. Hippolyte, Quebec, that his boys still own - even though they now neglect to send me invites.



There is a Canadian way of looking at things that is extremely different from the American way, and is also quite different from the British way.



Everyone that has been touched by Canada experiences things differently, and they never lose their sense of Kaskeyihtamowin... their "nostalgia", their painful longing (and that is what 'nostalgia' means in Homer) for their home, for Canada.

Love America as I do, Canada is my Godfather and Godmother.



--

note:   kaskeyihtamowin is a Cree language word.

-

Ah! In My Youth... #2

Who'd of thought:



we would ever see an Anti-Science wing of politics become influential in the Republican Party, starting back in the days when George W. Bush, clueless in Gaza, used to allow faith-based administrators into Science programs; it is a far cry from the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, when Science was an important part of public policy.

Other countries continue the quest into Space. We shall be there, acting as their faith-based janitors.



--

Reprise: Night People

I am repeating this post from 2009 as it fits in well with my post "Image of Obsession: Old People in Exile"

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/08/image-of-obsession-older-people-in.html

on August 20, 2011.

The old people come out at night. The have become feral and feline, sleeping during the day. Night is not a metaphor for the darkness of the soul anymore, not the evil of pitch black, but the silhouettes of night have become the archetypes of all things.

We, the old, stalk the shadows of the city on our quest for the Virgin Mary's bicycle parts.

The things of the earth lose their detail, the thorns of life that prick us, bleed us; the day people want to help - so they say; they want to minister to us, to provide medicals. We call them "leeches", like in old times; they want to leech us to whatever icon they have of old people should-being. They task us. They harry us like dogs chase the fox. Their old-age homes are dungeons run by their Ministry of Love.

They leech and suck our blood with their taxes, and their wars, and their guns and violence.

They speak in a cenobite tongue of the most profound profanity. We hear their blasphemous language, which they find comical, and it tears at us. All words are used: every vulgar profanity, every curse gets a laugh.

Discourse is invective.

The old word for conversation was "intercourse". Intercourse of days is now vile: it is either violent, or it is a graffitti on the walls for everyone to gaze at, hard colors on concrete drawing tears from the tender eyes of the day people...eyes used to Death and Cable.

We drive at night and see the blackwork buildings sentinel on silent streets. We watch the Sunset Channel with its documentaries of nightime streets, where you can actually see the streets and sidewalks; they are not obscured by the opprobrious burden of multitudes of people, walking like a living carpet of many-coloured knots, woven at random seeming along the night-time weft we inhabit. At night, the weft is empty...Penelope-like, the ragged carpet of care is unwoven every night, and we wait for the Master Weaver to come...

The day is the time of massacre of the two-year old boys, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and busy with their toys.

Christmas was at night, our loves, our joys...

Night is the holy time, when we mend broken hearts with bicycle parts, straighten spokes, adjust the brakes, pump up the tires; night time, priapic with meaning and engorged with arts!

pics 1,3,4: arnold pouteau

pic 2: broken hearts & bicycle parts

Ah! In My Youth...

Who'd of thought of:



a major political party having the majority of its presidential candidates not believing in the Theory of Evolution?

--

My Goddaughter

Goddaughter Throws Frisbee At Pontiff

Elsewhere I have mentioned my travelling goddaughter and her uncanny propensity for tossing frisbees at people. She is a member of an Ultimate Frisbee team (Manchester United Tossers, or Ann Arbor Chuckers or something like that) and to them it is equivalent to a "G'day, mates!"

The photo below was from when she was on the Amazon River causing wonderment among the locals:

Recently she was in Rome:

If Benedict calls, I'm not here!

American Sign Language and "A Stedman Caters Of Crows"

This post was to be about using Sign Language in employing Venery (definition #2 below!) terms, but I'm not sure it ever came fully together. That is a sad fact, but I'm sure it will be taken care of by some other brainy, signing type.



Venery comprises two arts: (1) the art of love, and (2) the art of giving names to teams and squads of animals. I am talking of the second. If I were to be involved with the first, I would indeed be "just talking" and/or "blowing smoke" as I did so.



An example of a term of venery would be a "pride" of lions. There very often is a conscious effort to do synecdoche in the venery term: a part standing for a whole, as in our example, the lion's proud bearing is extended and changed to mean a group of lions.

Of course, there is a lot of the joker and trickster in all this, and good venery terms should bring a smile to the face, a good example being a "rash" of dermatologists.

For other example, we see that The Periodic Englishman has a post titled Like A Murder Of Crows - That's All  http://cricketpage.blogspot.com/2008/11/like-murder-of-crows-thats-all.html 



The word "murder" in the title is a venery term for a team or herd or whatever of crows. Since "murder" is a bit too "zero at the bone" for a whole bunch of us, I tried my hand at it, but the best I could do was the latter part of the post title above.

A "stedman caters" is a type of English bell change ringing, and I have heard it used in memorials, so there you have it. The crow is a somber and sullen bird, even when dipping the old beak into a festive road-kill gazpacho.

Well, I never was one for the brisk, light, and breezy. I prefer my attempt over "murder", since "stedman caters" sounds a good deal like "Scatman Crothers", an actor, whom I enjoyed, and a "scatman crothers" of crows is not too bad, either.



There are other possibilities. Arabic has a phrase: slower than Noah's crow which suggests other routes. I think of Noah's crow as a guy taking advantage of the situation: there Noah is, water all around, no place to go, totally castaway and isolated... except for the winged breeds. They can just fly away.

Of course, crows, being crows, would milk this opportunity for everything it's worth, neglecting the fact that sooner or later, the flood would recede, and the slow, cud-chewing bovines would again rule the world of Hamburgers and Light.



This post actually was to deal with signing among the deaf. There is the possible "venery" term : a hush of deafs, or a hush of hearing impaireds. Personally, I think "hush" is becoming over-used, being as it is already used in the well known "a hush of ushers", which usage seems to be the definitive usage, according to H.W.Fowler, who spoke of the officious blighters who "ushed" the chapel in his youth, and went about with their index fingers held to their thin, pale, manta-ray-like lips shushing all the lads.



Signing has always been a very sensual experience in my part of the world.  I mean, the utter joy of the flow of words from a good speaker - or signer - added to the fluid gestures... and if she plays the acoustic guitar afterwards, so much the better. I do not mean to imply anything here. I just happened to have delved into the joys of hearing-impaired intimacies in my youth.

I was, indeed, magna cum gallaudet for a brace of years.

--

The Central Bank and The "New" Wall Street Journal

Read it there:

http://www.frumforum.com/nice-central-bank-you-have-here#more-102030



and



http://www.frumforum.com/time-to-downgrade-the-journals-editorial-colum#more-101814

--

To The Climate Deniers

Bertolt Brecht

Truly, I live in dark times!

The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead

Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs

Has simply not yet had

The terrible news.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it suggests silence about so many horrors?

Bertolt Brecht, To Those Born Later



--

The Future Is Not Fixed

An important thing to learn is that it is impossible - absolutely impossible! - to talk to God.



Once you learn this fact, you discover that you may talk with God.



This leads you to your first understanding of how Irony - or Reversal - works in the scheme of things.



Similarly, you will soon learn that you can see far into the future, but the future is infinitely flexible and can be changed at a moment's notice, for the future is filled with potential Reversals, and all it takes to change it is a change in the hearts of mankind!



That's why the future seems so determinate and unchanging, not because it is a rolling rock whose momentum will cause it to overwhelm us, but because our hearts are so dull and sluggish and refuse to make even a little change.



Wisdom is not discovering Hardship and Fear and believing it to be forever. Wisdom is finding the other side of Fear...



--

La Grande Illusion

I saw La Grande Illusion on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and I recorded it, and so far have watched it twice. It was made in 1934 (or thereabouts) by Jean Renoir. Jean Gabin was a lead in it. It seems to have been Jean Gabin day at TMC. Pretty good stuff.

It is a very good film about war, and if you watch it, you will readily pick out scenes which were bodily lifted into other films, like Casablanca and The Bridge Over the River Kwai.



What caught my interest was the fact that Captain Boeldieu, a member of the aristocracy, was pessimistic about the place of his class in the future. He apprehended that after this bloodletting, things would change, and the privileged class would sort of waste away.

The film was set in World War I, and was a creation of the mentality of those who lived through that time.



I mentioned that I had been reading Mary Roberts Rinehart's murder mystery, The Yellow Room, which was published in 1945, and was a World War II creation. Similarly, the rich and privileged were sensed to be passing away after the present bloodletting. Carol Spencer, the main character, muses on how different things will be after the war, when the privileges her dowager mother is used to will continue their erosion, which had been started by the rationing and shortages of war.



Now once again we face a privileged class: the 5% of the population wherein most of the wealth is concentrated. Shall we once again face some cataclysm and general bloodletting? Will it be war, civil war, or oppression?

I do not know, but it seems that our Capitalistic way of life is cycling through similar scenarios every generation, and there are plenty of warnings, but I guess the overall message is that we are too stupid to see them, for it may well be that concentration of Wealth and Power in the hands of the Few may not merely be injustice and rapacity, but instead may be a symptom of a cancerous disease rampant through the fabric of the Body Social!



The dynamics of history are not Capitalism nor Socialism. The driving force is nothing we have been able to put our finger on. But the stories are there in front of us: Pride goes before the Fall. And all the violence and bloodletting is just the murderous implements that are used by a people who know no other way to conduct themselves when their lives are out of joint.



Over and over, the bitter ironies play out, because we cannot grasp the need to avoid being put in the position where a sudden reversal will wreck our lives.

--

Blue Heron

The Blue Heron is my totem animal. Most of the time I see him, he has nothing much to say. He is searching for food.



So I go on and leave him to his hunt. You cannot force meaning. But you should not ignore meaning, either. We have those two problems: we force meaning where there is none, and where there is something, we are too busy to attend to it.



Those powers are not like roses that you can stop and smell. The power in the universe - if you mean to pay attention - demands a chunk of your life.



--

Veritable Cinema

If you read this blog, you are used to my heavy-handed use of films for just about anything: I use them as my logic, my inspiration, my references, and my whipping boy. I use films like slate: throw them down as stepping stones on the wet ground to get from Point A to Point B. I disregard them like Schopenhauer's Causality Tram... once I get to Point B, I dismiss the means of my transport, and send them packing back to the archives.



Now, if you wish top read an account of film done finely and insightfully, try this review and discussion of Ozu's films:

 

http://oliverlunn.blogspot.com/2011/02/great-paradox-of-ozus-masterpiece.html



--

Image of Obsession: Older People in Exile

 Fahrenheit 451 Monorail Scene

An Image of Future

I have been obsessed by Images and complexes of Images all my life. Their vividness has interfered with my ability to function at some times. For most of my life, they were just nonsense Images, similar to OCD behavior maybe, not quite as strong, not quite as compelling... maybe. Since the turn of the century, however, these Images have taken on more reality and seem to have been forerunners of the images we see in the daily news.

One of the Images that have beset me throughout the last 40 years has been that of old people gathered into their own communities of exile, living out their days apart from a society which does not want them. Over time it became a mimicry of the final scene in Fahrenheit 451 : Oskar Werner reciting and memorizing a forbidden book, walking with Julie Christie, surrounded by the other old people who recited the forbidden books they had memorized; as the camera pulled back, snow began to fall.



It also took the form of an elderly Lord of the Flies, and at times a Swiss Family Robinson combined with Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome... and every day we recite "the Tell", the story of who we once were and where we came from.



There is a sense of having escaped into a refuge; it is a hard life, but better than the one we (yes, "we"!) escaped from, and there is a good life somewhere in the Future!



From Beyond Thunderdome:

Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our trek, we gotta' travel it.

And there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna' lead. Still in all, every night we does the Tell, so that we 'member who we was and where we came from...

And we lights the city... for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there come a night, when they sees the distant light, and they'll be comin' home.

I am beginning to see the Image become Reality in the News.

 

Monorail Trash being used to Shelter the Homeless

--

pix

http://oliverlunn.blogspot.com/2010/12/british-landscape-in-frenchmans-film.html

http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=200412114840.french_monorail_trash

Old Posts

Over time, Blogger has had some issues which have caused all of my older posts (and I do not know where the dividing point is)to have lost all paragraph separation, so everything is run together in one paragraph.



Sorry. I'll try to fix some.



--

Literary America

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer."

D. H. Lawrence





I had this quote on a post about Fight Club, and I never felt entirely comfortable with it... until now, that is.

Having read part of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, I see that it is spot on, at least to our souls. The book deals with  KGB sadistic rapists, bisexual girls with fetishes being raped and brutalized, and evil psychiatrists who - by the way - are pedophiles.



What a glorious Boschean depiction of Hell! And how much we enjoy it, turning the book into a phenomenal best seller! What a thrill it must be to read it!



I thought it juvenile... nasty juvenile... juvenile of the dark side, and I threw it away from me and returned it to the library, for I think it bad luck to leave such items within one's house.



The essential American reader's soul is hard, isolate, and a killer.

We are what we create with consciousness. Please stop creating echoes of evil within yourselves.



--

Evil

Evil does not require the stereotypical expressions of actors portraying villains. It does not require harsh laughter, sneers, icy genius, darkened rooms; evil can be bright and sunny and just as normal as that guy next door who would not hurt a fly.

Evil may be eight kids on a camping trip to the cabin of the uncle of one of them, and there may be no escaped lunatic killers lurking nearby, nor any mutant sharks in the lake. Just a sunny day and friends. Good and evil are aniconic: they have no real depictions. They are real choices of real people and are as ordinary as the morning toast.



--

Sand Dune Therapy

For my birthday, we decided to go to The Pinery Provincial Park located at the southern end of Lake Huron, about 33 miles ENE of Sarnia, Ontario.



It is all about sand dunes, man! Just as there are enormous sand dunes in Michigan on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, there are dunes and sand on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. There are nine beach areas in the park, and the young girl at the entrance did not give me a senior discount, saying it was reserved for Ontario seniors.  However, she did not give me a map of the facility, either, so I think she was merely incompetent. I am going to write to the proper department anyway.

I have to complain a lot to Parks departments. I suppose it is all due to budget cuts. Last year in Maryland there was one that suckered me out of my money at the entrance, leaving it for me to find out after I drove in that nothing was actually available on that day, and, by the way, thanks for the eight bucks!

Using the telephone number on a sign at the entrance, I managed to get hold of the part-time manager while he was eating lunch. He was taking a break from selling real estate, his full time job, and expressed considerable sorrow that I felt short-changed. He gave me an address to write to ask for my eight dollars back.



Getting back to The Pinery, I found that after a day of sand-surfing up and down the dunes, the next day that the ligaments and muscles in my legs felt better than they had in months and possibly years. I had feared re-straining a ligament, but discovered upon waking there was a sense of youthful wholeness I had forgotten ever to have possessed, leg-wise. (I had a full six weeks off from jogging due to the ligament in my right knee, and was now slowly working back into running again.)



I remember runners that used to train for the Olympics by running on beaches and sand. I think they were New Zealanders, or Aussies... it was a memory from a long time ago. People probably still do it. It could have been the swimming, too: the movement of the legs against the slightly resistant medium of the water.

It could have been both things. And it could have also been sun and clean air.



We had ended up on the dog beach. We do not own a dog. There were many well-trained dogs that were a pleasure to see. There was no inconvenience whatsoever to anyone... except for the fact that just before we were going to leave, a golden retriever caught a frisbee in the water and stopped to do his business right there... in the water.

The owner went through the motions: he held the bag up where everyone within eye-shot could see that he did indeed pick up after his dog (or "stoop and scoop" as they say in Toronto). He stood at ground zero and surveyed the scene with intent. But he showed no inclination to step into the water and aggressively deal with the situation. As the waves broke upon the beach, there was enough turbidity that he could not see the object he wished to take care of, and, being a normal bloke, he did not want to go thrashing around blindly and run the risk of stepping on the blasted pile.

Which, or course, was the entire point for the rest of us. Or, I think it was. Perhaps I was alone in this. This was the dog beach, after all, and perhaps the major portion of the clientele was much more blase to what I took to be serious social gaffes.

I do not think that I have never seen a dog do anything like that in my entire life, and perhaps, being a hunting dog, this dog may have been trained to go in the water so as to not interrupt his hunting chores of looking for ducks and charging through the bullrushes to retrieve them. I have seen a lot of dogs romping in the water, too.



Oh, well. We also went to a ghastly restaurant in Grand Bend. I cannot understand why a restaurant that is within 10 miles of a maple syrup producing farm feels that it has to provide one with a container of "pancake syrup" to accompany its grisly pancakes. It is a syndrome associated with vacation areas, I guess. They have a knack for sucking the life from food.

The antique stores were pretty good, and everything was enjoyable. Just "caveat" swimmer on the doggie beach, and always "caveat" eaters in restaurants: beware of the things one knows are fraught with slapstick and enjoy the time.

--

Ade Ileke 26: Famille Féerie

la mère était Brillante, qui en Arcadie a vécu;

le père était Arcas, éloigné et disparu;

les enfants, dix en nombre:

Maia, Gaia, Ciel, Thermidor

Halcyon, Marin, Ambrée

Le Feu, Le Gel, et Victor;

en Arcadie ils ont vécu,

en Arcadie, où oeillets de poète ont poussé.



--

the mother was Shining, who lived in Arcadia

the father was Arcas, far away and disappeared;

the children, ten in number:

Maia, Gaia, Sky,Thermidor

Halcyon, Marin, Ambrée,

Fire, Frost, and Victor;

in Arcadia they lived,

in Arcadia, where the Sweet William grows.

The Fruits of Unreason

Standard & Poor’s director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default — a position put forth by some Republicans.



Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said.



“That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”

First SSTV Image Received From ARISSat-1

I have been waiting for the new bird ARISSat-1 to pass by and tonight at 21.03 UTC I was in luck. Above is my first ARISSat-1 SSTV image received at my home QTH using a Yaesu FT-847 and Dual Yagi Satellite antenna array. I am looking forward to some closer passes and better reception over the next few days.

Early Start For Short Wave Listening

During the weekends and holidays the family and I have been spending plenty of time up at the old QTH (the shack on the hill) taking in the fresh Moorland air. When we bought our new family home we decided to keep our old Moorland QTH which comprises of a luxury 40ft Static Caravan up at 1000ft asl on the edge of the Pennines here in Yorkshire. Its a great place to hangout with a wonderful view!



The old shack is still working as well as ever with my trusty FT-767, FT-890, FT-2600m and VR5000. The rigs are all connected to my original antennas. The antennas are also holding up exceptionally well. I have still got my home made IO-10EL Sat beam up as well as the 20m Delta loop, Hustler 6BTV, X200 Co-linear and 10m vertical.



Our lovely baby daughter is starting to take an interest in the hobby of amateur radio, She has the makings of becoming a keen SWL.



Hope to work some of you from both of my shacks/QTH during the next couple of weeks as I enjoy my summer holidays. 73 have fun!

NOAA 18 - Image of todays weather (UK & Europe)

Whilst surfing the HF bands on a lazy Sunday afternoon I had my satellite tracking equipment on standby ready to receive and decode NOAA - 18.

Here is the received transmission from NOAA-18 received at 3.15 pm (local) at the QTH of 2E0HTS - Yorkshire, U.K.

If your intrested in recieving signals from NOAA Satellites check out NOAA SAT Status for frequencies and up to date information.

Yesu ni Bwana!

There is so much to be grateful for I hardly know where to start.

Things are going great at home because men and women are rising to the challenge of a shared life, Shammah is doing well, Jerry’s biopsy was clear; see (http://yippee-leukemia.blogspot.com/2011/08/august-10-good-news.html), people are coming to Christ, the Ingathering is almost here, the church in Nakuru is growing both numerically and spiritually.

The pastors we’re meeting with each week are thriving and taking everything back to their people and inviting new pastors to come. We had a great time of fellowship and outreach with the local community during the Kingdom Hikers talent show and all of us in George’s house are doing well and high spirits.

Once again, I find myself so busy living this Life I can’t seem to find the time to write about it. At least the other “sent ones” have been faithful in this respect. You can read their blogs to find out what’s been happening throughout the week. What a great bunch of people.

 If you don’t know where their post is, here’s the list. Just click one and enjoy;

Amma’s….   http://haviylah.blogspot.com/

Tara’s…..      http://tara-livingchristslife.blogspot.com/

Doug’s…      http://rcvdoug.blogspot.com

Brandon’s...  http://thestuffyoumayhavemissedinafrica.blogspot.com

Yahshana… http://yahshana.blogspot.com

                                    

                              The Growing Household of God

It is such a profound truth that the Kingdom of God is like a great dragnet cast into the sea, pulling up both good and bad fish. Then the good fish are placed into clean vessels and the bad ones discarded. 

(Matthew 13:47, 48)

We are watching the Master fisherman drag His net onto the land and sort out the fish. Sometimes the sorting happens quickly and sometimes it takes a long time. Those who prove themselves worthy are placed in clean vessels. Then he changes them into true sons and daughters of God. Soon they begin maturing and learning how to fish themselves.

 Last night we went to one of those “good fish” houses and saw what her own net had brought up. She had gone to all her neighbors and friends asking them to come to her house that night to hear the message of the Kingdom of God. God began the sorting right away.

At the end of our time together one of those friends left with new Life and two others expressed a desire to be joined to Household of Christ. The good fish’s name is Zipporah or Zippe for short. The next day we met with Zippy's husband who after witnessing our fellowship the night before expressed a desire to be baptized into our Life.            

             

       The Fun filled Outreach of the Kingdom Hikers Talent Show.

 

It took a lot of work and preparation to pull it off, but the Talent Show was a great success. There were snacks to get ready, signs to make and a whole lot of planning.

We had to extend the “tent of meeting” to accommodate all the people that would come. Here is some of the crew that “pulled up the stakes and lengthened the tent”.

Then there was lots of dancing…

Lots of singing…..

And lots and lots of fun!

        The 5 hour Gathering and Fundraiser Extravaganza.

Years ago there was a war movie called … “The Longest Day” …it was given that name because they obviously hadn't sat though last Sunday's Gathering. It had to be five hours long. Although, I must admit it was a lot of fun. It’s a good thing we stretched the tent, because every available space was filled. We need more chairs.

Now on the way to the gathering George mentioned something about a “fund raiser” but we had no idea of what he meant. It was a stimulating experience. The raising of funds was a cross between a Village Auction of desert goodies and a Village wedding fun night.

The cause was good; raising money for a more permanent meeting place than the tent. Amma was delighted because nothing was auctioned but vegetables. For a full description click on Amma’s blog that is listed above..

Here are some of the pictures of the Fundraiser…

Words cannot express what is happening with the pastor’s meeting. All I can really say is our Father is gathering an army of dedicated spiritual leaders hungry to be on the front lines of this spiritual war we're in. I hope to do a separate post introducing each of these wonderful men.

Well there is plenty more going on, none of which would be possible without your prayers and support. Please continue to lift us up as we enter our last month, we want it to be the most productive yet.

Oh, something kind of funny, I sent David D. in California an update of what’s happening here in Nakuru and ended it with what I thought was Swahili for Praise the Lord. He said he looked it up on Google translator and it said I had written ….Rebel lord lima bean!

Soooo…. while I work on my Swahili, I’ll leave you with… Praise the Lord!

Much love … your sent ones.