Yes I realize that I have not been keeping up on writing my blogs as much as I would have liked. There are a lot of things that go through my head almost daily that I want to write about, I just don't take the time to sit down and write them. I will try to make the time to do this though. I want to write blogs often for a couple of reasons. One is that I like to keep people updated on the events of my life. The other reason is that I like to be able to look back on the blogs myself to see what I have done, almost like a life journal. So here is another entry in the life of Jon.
Two weeks ago Stephanie (Danae's sister) came out to visit. It was a fun and enjoyable time, where we went to church, the zoo, out for hikes, and various other places. Even though there were some sister fights and tension (as expected between sisters), for the most part the visit was very enjoyable for all of us. One day, we had a great oppertunity to drive through the mountains. It was a beautiful sunny day and the area that we went into had a lot of trees that were changing colors. It really shows the creativity that God has to make everything the way that it is and just the beauty that is in things that no artist can fully capture. How anybody could say that it is all here the way it is by accident is beyond my comprehension. Sadly, I left my camera home that day so I cannot share with you the awesome wonders of God's nature that we saw.
While at the zoo, one of the first animals that we got to see was the giraffe. Something intereting that I learned is that the giraffe has valves in it's blood vessels in its neck near the head, so that when it lowers its head down and back up it does not pass out from the blood rushing to its head and then a sudden rush of the blood rushing out of its head. My question to evolutionists is this, how did the giraffe know that it needed that? How did the DNA in the giraffe's body some how create this necessary body part that the giraffe could not survive without? It just makes no sense to me! The theory of evoultion is so fairy tale like sometimes that it stuns me to see how intelligent people could even consider it to be true. Anyway, enough about that.
So Malikai seemed to enjoy himself at the zoo a lot. There was one animal that was making a weird noise and Malikai tried to mimic the noise. It was funny to listen to. Every time the animal would make the noise Malikai would try something similar, but other than that he was pretty quiet all day. The zoo that we went to was nice, but it did make me miss the San Diego zoo. Now that is a nice zoo! At least it was the last time I went there years and years ago.
During the last couple of days we were enjoying playing some games, both UNO with custom rules, and baulderdash. The UNO game was interesting. The rule we had was that whoever won a hand, got to make up a new rule for the game. My rule was to have an undo card, that whenever you want you can play a 0 and make the last person take back the card they played and skip their turn. The girls, however, made different type of rules. Danae's was that you had to go outside and burp loudly whenever you play a wild draw 4. It did make people want to play the draw 4 less often, but I didn't enjoy the burping outside. Stephanie had a rule where you had to do an UNO cheer anytime you played an 8. So have some fun with these new rules and play a new exciting game of UNO!
The Saturday before Stephanie left I got real sick and had to call in sick from work. The bad thing was that I couldn't do anything all day because I was sick, but Danae and Stephanie took advantage of having the car so they went out for a few hours to go for a hike and a drive through another mountain road that is tucked away behind Garden of the Gods. So I stayed home with Malikai, mostly slept and watched movies but it was nice to have a day off from work. The following day I was feeling better so we went to church and then followed that with lunch at Cracker Barrel, which was some great food, but Malikai started to fuss a lot and was annoying the other people around so I had to just go pay for the food and sit in the car with him while Danae and Stephanie finished up their brunch. Malikai is getting really hard to take places sometimes, which makes me wish that we had a baby sitter so Danae and I could do things together.
While Stephanie was here we bought our two cats (see the previous blog) and we finally decided on the names. Mine (the bigger gray one) we are calling Merlin, and the smaller female we are calling Kunkali, or kali (pronounced collie) for short. Malikai is doing great with the cats, he seems to be enjoying them a lot. He still follows them around and tries to play with them. I'm glad that we made the decision to get the cats. Now the next big decision, to de-claw, or let them claw? As long as we stay on top of trimming their claws they are not destructive, but even with the claws trimmed it still hurts. We will wait and see what we will do.
Also that week I had a job interview. I have got to say, that was the strangest job interview that I have ever had. The first thing that really got me was that he asked for previous websites that I have built, so I pointed him to ETM and he spent a lot of time looking through the articles, he said he was just trying to figure out what I believed. After he mentioned something about how other Christians reply to his question about the sabath I asked if he was a Christian, and he was, so it started a 5 to 10 minute conversation about the Bible and what we believed and stuff. I know that it isn't the politically correct job interview discussion, but it is nice to have a conversation with a brother or sister in Christ like that. Then later he encouraged me not to take the job, because I would lose my security clearance if I did that. So yeah, the stragest interview that I ever had.
I had a good feeling about the company, people and job, but I never got called back so I think they picked someone who was asking for less money. The job would have been nice, but I'm kind of glad that I did not get it. I have been thinking about this a lot lately and I have finally decided what I want to do for the time being. I want to be a Windows Sys Admin, those jobs generally pay better and I'm good at it too. I just hope I can get into a job that will give me some serious Unix hands on experience. So if you have a job and you want to hire a Sys Admin, preferably in the Colorado Springs area, contact me! In the mean time, I updated my resume for this position I am going to pursue and I have been applying at a few jobs. Focus on the Family just happened to have a similar job opening show up on their website so I applied for that. Of all the jobs that I applied for, that is the job that I hope I can get. Even if they don't pay as much as some of the others, I would look forward to working in a Christian environment and especially at a job that is so close to my home. In the summer I could ride a bike to the job in about 20 minutes, or be lazy and drive the 5-10 minutes to the building. Some friends of mine know someone that works there, so hopefully I can get ahold of that person for a recomendation to help get my foot in the door.
We will see what happens, just please pray for me that I will find the job God wants me to be in. The shift work that I am doing now is tiring me out a lot and my sleep schedule has been completely off this last week. I don't know how long I can keep up these hours and the long drive. Plus, the longer you have to drive each day the higher the chance for an accident, especially when tired after a 12 hour shift. This week someone from our building got into a head on car accident outside work and is in ICU. Please pray for her, for God's healing if He wills, but most importantly that their family will be comforted and that she will come to know the Lord if she doesn't already. It just goes to show that you never know what may happen that will take the lives of a loved one, or a co-worker, or even ourself. No matter how tragic the incident may be, it is so much worse that we, the body of Christ, did not take the oppertunities that we had to share the gospel message with them. The latest statistics say that less than 2% of Christians evangelize (quoted from the Way of the Master) so if we don't reach out to those that we know, the chances are that nobody will.
Romans 10:13-15
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how
shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear
without a preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad
tidings of good things!
Oh that we may preach the gospel boldy to this lost world. I heard a quote from Charles Spurgeon that said something like "If this world does leap into the lake of fire, may they do it by leaping over our bodies trying to stop them, if they do want to go into the burning pit of hell, may it be with our arms wrapped around their knees trying to hold them back.." Why do we let this world blindly walk over the cliff of eternity into the pit of hell while we stand by and watch? How can the Christians of this world be so cruel? How can we care about our own comforts so much that we would not get up from our lazy boy chairs in front of our televisions or computers to stop these people from running into eternal damnation! How cruel the body of Christ has become in these last days... we have all the authority and power of the world, we can heal the sick, cast out demons, and offer Jesus's blood stained hands to these people to bring salvation and eternal healing, but we would dare not do that because we would be made fun of or feel scared.
How many people do crazy stunts for the feel of fear? Going on roller coasters, jumping out of an airplane, doing insane jumps with skateboards and motorcycles, we even go to horror movies that have the very purpose of scaring the living daylights out of us, but when it comes to saving the dying....
I guess in the end it doesn't really matter... let those who live in their sin spend an eternity in a place seperated by the grace of God, a place where they mourn over the truth they realize they have rejected, a place of nashing of teeth and burning of flesh... none of that really matters as long as we Christians are comftorable.
Really what it boils down to is a simple mathematical equasion. (
m >
c) Where
m is our concern for our own comfort, and
c is our concern for others. If we could just learn to care more about the lost than ourselves, to have a heart full of compassion then no excuse will keep us from sharing the gospel. Like a firefighter who runs into a burning building to save a family of 4, knowing that he may die and not even save them, but his care and concern for them is far greater than his concern for himself. Or like the Chineese Christian who recently went missing while trying to smuggle Bibles into China, the concern for getting the gospel to those who needed it far outweighs the concern for himself. We in America rarely face such drastic consequences, so what are we afraid of?
A lot of why Christians don't share their faith is because of the churches today. The churches teach that Christians should live rich and happy comftorable lives (which, by the way, is nowhere in the Bible). So that is what Christians do, they try to get rich, be happy and comftorable. That is why this generations churches are producing Christians that will tell God on the day of judgment "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' and then be told by God "'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matthew 7:22-23)
I will end here and say good night. May God bless you and give you the compassion to reach out to the lost.
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Malikai sleeping with his teddy bear.
Eating some blocks, one of Malika's Christmas presents.
Malikai never actually opened any presents, he just played with the packages for awhile.
Cats, for Christmas? Malikai and the cats playing with a box together. 
Stay away from my box!
Sleeping under the tree, before it got destroyed. 
A picture of Malikai's birthday cake. It tasted so good!
My sexy wife! I'm so glad I married her, she's the greatest person I have ever met! Nobody could ever come close to replacing her. 
BONUS! Some more pictures of Malikai smiling. 
