Project: Water of Life

Sunday afternoon Karen and I attended the World Vision Experience: AIDS (www.wvexperience.org/). In case you're not familiar with it, let me explain. World Vision sets up a tent (this time in our church gymnasium). Before you enter, you are given an ipod shuffle with headphones and you listen to one of 3 stories as you follow an audio tour thru the tent which describes the life of a child in Africa. Each is the story of violence, starvation, and/or AIDS. As you progress thru the tent, you're not only exposed to the individual story, but also the staggering statistics of the atrocities taking place in Africa. Needless to say, it was extremely touching.

It is easy to feel like there is nothing one can do from here, so far away. How can one person impact such overwhelming issues? For both Karen and I, the first response was to sponsor a child. Although we won't make a huge difference for Africa with just one child, we can make a huge difference for that one child! Child sponsorship is nothing new, certainly. And we were left feeling like perhaps there was more we could do. But what? As I thumbed thru the "Donor Catalog" that World Vision provides, my eyes were drawn to the "Traditional Well". For the cost of $5390, World Vision can establish a new well in a village that provides enough clean water for 150 people to bathe, clean, cook, drink, water livestock and irrigate their land. This is for people who would otherwise either have NO clean available water.

Hearing the stories of people who have to walk miles to draw water from infected, dirty waters (if any available at all), really puts things in perspective. To think of my own frustration when my daily shower (how many gallons do I use?) runs a little cold!

The struggle is, $5390 is still more than Karen and I can afford on our own. So, we've decided that what we can do, is draw attention to the need as well as the opportunity. We have established a website, www.firstgiving.com/water_of_life, to raise awareness and provide people an opportunity to donate. Our goal is to raise $5390 by the end of February 2009. If we fall short, the monies donated will still go toward "shares" of a well, but how great would it be to say that together as friends & family, we were able to provide a well for an entire village?! Please don't feel obligated to contribute, but give it a look, pray about it, and see if this issue touches you the way it has touched us.

Of course, please feel free to pass along the website to encourage others to get involved!

A business trip to remember

Last week I got to spend Sunday - Thursday on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. I was there to provide some training to crew members of the project I'm working on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-based_X-band_Radar). Although it may sound glamorous, it was 10 hours of flying time + a 6 hour time-change, and I spent the better part of 3 days inside a trailer (complete with fake wood panelling). That said, I did get to go aboard the vessel and had 24 hours of free time that I spent touring the North Shore, the Windward Coast, and the Pearl Harbor monuments. We toured the USS Arizona, the infamous battleship that was sunk in 9 minutes, blazed for 2 days, and continues to leak 2 quarts of oil a day. We also toured the USS Missouri which was built in the middle of WWII, the treaty with Japan was signed on it's deck, and it was the first to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles in Operation Desert Storm. Despite being away from home for so long, I gotta say, it was a great business trip!

Phone is back on!

So I haven't gotten a new blackberry yet, but I've been told I'm "on the list"... I expect maybe in January when new budgets come out. Anyway... in the meantime, we got Karen a new phone for free and switched her phone to my number, so all in all, I now have a phone again. Same number.

Fall in New England with Grandmom & Poppop

A weekend of apple picking, hiking, and playing in the backyard! We had a blast! Mom & Dad left us with remains of apple crisp, apple pie, apple muffins, apple sauce, and another 1/2 bushel of apples. So, not only a fun weekend, but tasty too!

90.4!

The beginning of this year's band season was off to a rough start, but this weekend they did amazing. Saturday started off with practice from 8 to 10 in the morning, load the buses and travel for an hour to compete at 12:30, then practice for 3 hours, load the buses up again, travel for about another hour, stop for dinner then, our second competition at 9:15. I was a long day, but well worth it. We came in second with a score of 86.9. The band did a pretty good job and we were pretty happy. During practice we worked on some suggestions the judges had given us and made some other changes. One thing the judges have consistently told us this year is that the kids have the skill and working hard on the show, but they are not performing. They are just going through the motions and it was starting to affect our score. The staff is not quite sure what happened, but while we were practicing, the band started to show the performance attitude. The second competition was amazing. I actually believe it was a better performance than our championships last year. We received a standing ovation from all the other bands. The kids were so excited. Then when we heard our score of 90.4, we knew our hard work had paid off. That is a higher score than we ever received last year. We are currently in first place. They are going to have to continue to work hard to stay in first place. This is a video of the score announcement.

No Cell Phone!

When I travelled to DC last week, I left my cell phone in the hotel. An hour later I remembered and checked with the front desk. It was never turned in. I checked later, and it was never turned in. In the meantime, Verizon says someone is using it! The number has now been suspended, so don't try to call me on my cell. As luck would have it, I'm up for a new phone as of Wednesday... so I'll keep you posted when I get a new one! I'd love for my work to get me the new blackberry storm... but don't think that's happening just yet!