Click on the picture to leave your caption idea on Flickr._____________________________________________
Labels: Ellie
Before the snow starts to melt and nobody wants to see pictures with snow(maybe it is too late for that..) I decided to put up some pictures of birds from around our house. I hope you enjoy them!
Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?
Matthew 6:26
Labels: Photography
Sunny days ahead
Our students have been extremely busy since getting back to the Bible Institute in January. Besides the regular class workload, they are helping each weekend with the Snow Camps that we run for 6 weekends. Some of them will be having a real change of scenery soon. In less than two weeks I will be leading a group of students on a short missions trip to Jamaica.This certainly won't be a holiday.. Between March 9 and 19 we will be ministering at
6 churches,
7 schools,
2 nursing homes,
2 orphanages,
1 waterfall,
and doing open air evangelism at a few locations in the evenings.
This will be the first student missions trip for our Bible Institute and we are doing it in partnership with ABWE Canada. We have 16 students going plus 2 alumni, 2 students for next year, and one other staff person. This trip will be their entire March break, so those going will not have much rest or any "break", but we pray that it will be an encouraging time for them as they get to share the Gospel with the people of Jamaica.
Prayer requests for this trip:
1) For wisdom as there is a lot for all of us to do in these last two weeks before we go.
2) A few students are still short on their funding for the trip.
3) A few students are waiting for their passports to come in._____________________________________________
Our students have been extremely busy since getting back to the Bible Institute in January. Besides the regular class workload, they are helping each weekend with the Snow Camps that we run for 6 weekends. Some of them will be having a real change of scenery soon. In less than two weeks I will be leading a group of students on a short missions trip to Jamaica.This certainly won't be a holiday.. Between March 9 and 19 we will be ministering at
6 churches,
7 schools,
2 nursing homes,
2 orphanages,
1 waterfall,
and doing open air evangelism at a few locations in the evenings.
This will be the first student missions trip for our Bible Institute and we are doing it in partnership with ABWE Canada. We have 16 students going plus 2 alumni, 2 students for next year, and one other staff person. This trip will be their entire March break, so those going will not have much rest or any "break", but we pray that it will be an encouraging time for them as they get to share the Gospel with the people of Jamaica.
Prayer requests for this trip:
1) For wisdom as there is a lot for all of us to do in these last two weeks before we go.
2) A few students are still short on their funding for the trip.
3) A few students are waiting for their passports to come in.
Labels: Ministry Update
In the last week Ellie has learned two important names. She now occasionally refers to Adelaine as "Andennn" instead of just "baby". The other name is more important.. She now identifies a certain man in some of her books as "Jesus". This is a name we pray she becomes very familiar with and says throughout eternity as her Savior!
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Recently I was invited to tag along with the annual gym class curling trip so I could get some photos for the yearbook. We had to take the students over two days as we have almost 50 this year, but I got lots of action shots... mostly of people falling on the ice. It was fun.
This is Kate. She complained the other day that she hadn't made it to my blog the other day. So here is a montage of Kate's curling experience.
Now to be fair.. I could have easily filled this entire post with pictures of other people laying on the ice, but Kate did want to be here. And she was on the ice more than anyone else.
And then there was Dave. Dave has been gifted with the ability to crash stuff. He has had a number of incidents this year (lets just say he isn't allowed near my van..), but he now has an added distinction of being the only person I know to break a curling rock. Well, the handle at least. He fell on top of it with his back. So here is insult to that injury.
There was more going on than people falling.. some curling happened too. This is Maressa. I don't think they have curling in Brazil, but she was doing pretty good.
Eric was practising his ballerina skills while Marty the vampire curler cruised down the ice.
See! It is real curling happening here.
No major injuries and everyone had a great time.
Naomi is celebrating an undisclosed birthday today. So..
Happy birthday to my wonderful wife!
Coincidently... it is also my mother's birthday. I'm not going to say which one it is.. I want to eat when I visit home next. So..
Happy birthday mom!
Definitely a day I can't forget._____________________________________________
Happy birthday to my wonderful wife!
Coincidently... it is also my mother's birthday. I'm not going to say which one it is.. I want to eat when I visit home next. So..
Happy birthday mom!
Definitely a day I can't forget.
Some friends sent me a thought provoking article:
Read more at American Thinker: A Necessary Apocalypse
Certainly not a Christian work, but an interesting look at the history of environmentalism as a pseudo-religion, complete with it's own series of end-times apocalyptic events. If you are old enough (and I barely am..) you may remember some of the previous dire warnings of the doomsday scientists: nuclear winter; over population and world-wide starvation (which led to b-movies like Soylent Green); the global cooling scare of the '70s._____________________________________________
A man who ceases to believe in God does not believe in nothing; he believes in anything.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
The apocalyptic vision of global warming serves a deep need of the environmentalist credo, the dominant pseudo-religious tendency of our age in the prosperous West.
For good or ill, human beings are constructed to believe, and faith has its demands.. Along with the concrete elements that demand belief (that fire burns and that it's not wise to walk off cliffs, for example) there exists an apparent necessity for a belief in "the rock higher than I" - a belief in a superior entity that can inspire awe and gratitude, that can be turned to in hard times, that can act as witness to injustice and dispenser of mercy.
Despite the claims of our current crop of militant atheists such as Dawkins and Harris, this is not simply brain-dead foolishness. Religious belief is hard-wired into human beings, by what means and for what purposes we don't yet understand.
When religious belief is subverted, it does not, as Chesterton implied, simply vanish. It is almost immediately replaced by another set of beliefs on a similar level of abstraction and serving the same purpose. Sometimes it's an import, such as Buddhism or TM. Sometimes it's a creed deliberately created to serve a political agenda, as we see in Nazism and Communism. Sometimes it's the goofy SoCal syncretism currently expressed in Wicca and Neopaganism. ("If people seriously want to be pagans," the late Joe Myers, a Christian brother of my acquaintance once said. "They'd become Roman Catholics.") And sometimes they're a combination, a weird melange of ideas picked up from various sources that (and usually not coincidentally) also serve a political purpose. Which brings us to environmentalism...
Read more at American Thinker: A Necessary Apocalypse
Certainly not a Christian work, but an interesting look at the history of environmentalism as a pseudo-religion, complete with it's own series of end-times apocalyptic events. If you are old enough (and I barely am..) you may remember some of the previous dire warnings of the doomsday scientists: nuclear winter; over population and world-wide starvation (which led to b-movies like Soylent Green); the global cooling scare of the '70s.
Labels: Climate Change, Rants
This morning I put a new promotional video for the Bible Institute up on YouTube. Check it out:
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Labels: WOLBI
My love/hate relationship with the windows in our house continues.. On a few windows the glacial ice sheets retreated and were replaced with frost again this week, while others saw drops of condensation freeze overnight.
See Frosted Glass Part I
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See Frosted Glass Part I
Labels: Photography
If you ask Ellie who the silly goose is, she will dutifully point to herself and say "sill goose".
Ellie's vocabulary of essential phrases continues to grow. While running around the house at top speed being a silly goose she may say "so fast" repeatedly. Or she may respond to you with an affirmative "okey dokey" or a "yes siree". Sometimes she also says "ohhh! Daddy burp."
Other recent photos can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/johnstonekids/
Since it is the main topic of discussion around here now days, and since most of my blogging co-workers have already blogged about it, I may as well too.
Owen Sound area is getting lots of snow lately, which is great for our Snow Camps. Plus it offers a great cardio workout that actually accomplishes something, like finding your car. Why, just the other day I shoveled 3.5 feet of snow off my deck that had accumulated in the previous 3 days. We have had several family members call us recently to ask about our snow because they had heard about our snow dunes in Alberta and New Brunswick.
The typical forecast we have had since early January.
Snow hanging off the roof like a giant quintuple chin.
We have finally stopped the guys from taking short cuts through the field. Of course, the deep snow there may have had something to do with it.
Once winter finally hits, we generally get snow every single day for weeks. Lake effect snow can fall on a clear day with blue sky overhead..
The banks of the walkway to the office are getting pretty high, as is the snow on the roof above.
Dedication = BBQing even in a blizzard.
Perhaps you need some Ubuntucilin.
Linux humour.. isn't it great?
Image from gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=52912
Labels: Linux
Ellie has finally reconciled herself to the fact that she is Canadian and that she should enjoy winter. Instead of crying when she is taken outside in the snow, she now cries when being brought inside from the snow.
More new photos at www.flickr.com/photos/johnstonekids/_____________________________________________
More new photos at www.flickr.com/photos/johnstonekids/
Labels: Ellie
Recently I took a couple of weeks off for parental leave to help Naomi with the kids and just to enjoy being a family. During that time I also sorted through some 14,000 photos of mine looking for some interesting ones I could post. I happened across a bunch from some Canada Day fireworks from the past few years and decided it was time to share them with everyone. I hope you enjoy them.
Labels: Photography
The windows of the house we are renting are the old sliding aluminum framed type, which are only slightly better than the older wooden framed sliding type, which are only slightly better than stiff paper. They at least keep the snow out, and usually stop most of the wind. Each window has two sets of single pane glass, and none of them shut real well.
Anyway, with the cold weather lately they tend to frost up. Let's see how the weather looks outside today, shall we?
Nope, can't see out the kitchen window..
Hmm.. can't see out any bedroom windows. Maybe the sliding door.
A little bit..
When it is cold we can often only see out the picture window in the living room, but even that sometimes steams or frosts up because the seal is broken on it. Our first year here it was so cold that for weeks we could only see outside if we opened the door.
The upside to this is that it gives me an interesting photographic opportunity. Crystal growth.
Click an image for a larger view.
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Anyway, with the cold weather lately they tend to frost up. Let's see how the weather looks outside today, shall we?
Nope, can't see out the kitchen window..
Hmm.. can't see out any bedroom windows. Maybe the sliding door.
A little bit..
When it is cold we can often only see out the picture window in the living room, but even that sometimes steams or frosts up because the seal is broken on it. Our first year here it was so cold that for weeks we could only see outside if we opened the door.
The upside to this is that it gives me an interesting photographic opportunity. Crystal growth.
Click an image for a larger view.
Labels: Photography
Forget the hype about storms, coastal flooding, or having to hang up my snow shovel. That is the small stuff. This is what scares me most about the climate change hype:
French president Jacques Chirac has hinted about the same thing in recent years, and you can see this working towards a single, world-wide government.
Now that is scary._____________________________________________
"Climate change is going to be more responsible for bringing about a borderless world than free trade," U.S. economist Jeremy Rifkin at the environment conference in France.CTV News article: Support shown for new global environment agency
French president Jacques Chirac has hinted about the same thing in recent years, and you can see this working towards a single, world-wide government.
Now that is scary.
Labels: Climate Change, Rants
