Doctors, Tests & Pushing On – All Glory To God!

I snapped this picture this morning at the doctors office. It pretty well summarizes what I like so much about him and his office. They are laid back, very personal, yet offer the best of care. Hopefully he’ll last at least as long as I do so I won’t have to find a new one again!

I went in at 8:30 AM, turned in my 24 hour heart monitor. Waited and then had an echo cardiogram. No one told me not to eat so it took a bit longer but we got what was needed. Then after much more waiting I did the “stress” test on the treadmill.

Through the years I’ve heard a lot about how hard and strenuous this test is and I was a bit apprehensive about it since I’ve lost so much of my conditioning in the last few months. Well they’ve either lowered the standards quite a bit or I have a lot of out of shape friends – because it was a breeze!

The fastest the treadmill went was 2.5 miles an hour. Anyone in the distance walking/hiking community will tell you that speed, on flat terrain, is really slow! I mean Poky McSlowville kind of slow!  I didn’t even breath hard for the 15 minutes it took, much less work up a sweat.

I need to listen to myself more often when I teach on how fear always magnifies things far beyond what they really are.

Anyway – bottom line the old heart is fine. I’m officially cleared to do what I want. So I’m keeping up the hiking to rebuild my strength and endurance. I will also be starting to diet and get rid of this 40 pounds of blubber I picked up over the last year starting January 2nd. I hope to enjoy Christmas and New Years but not too much on the food side. Then in January it’s on!

I want to say that I’m so grateful to God for allowing me to do this at this stage of my life. I know plenty of people who can’t, and by all rights I should be one of them. Most of my adult life I’ve been sedentary and overweight. Somehow through all that my heart has held up. I am a blessed man and believe me I know it and am grateful to God for it.

Thanks for your prayers and concern. Now start praying God will kick me hard in the booty and these slabs of fat will fall of starting in the new year!

 

A Much Needed Reminder For Those In Ministry

I just read an article over at Christianity Today that is really excellent and makes a fantastic that applies to everyone in the Ministry or who has been trained for it. Here’s the quote:

We as trained exegetes and theologians can and should also have this posture, but honest self-reflection reveals that for most of us, our learning often creates layers of distance between us and hearing the Bible as God’s Word to us. Although it was obtained for the supposed goal of bridging the gap between us and the biblical text, our training in fact often creates in our hearts and minds an elaborate structure of paper walls and divisions that create a maze of distance between us and Scripture. Relegating meaning to the sensus historicus, obtained through the employment of an elaborate skill set, and making understanding and application secondary steps only opens the door for this deferral more widely. Instead, we can learn from our faithful mothers-in-law that to read Scripture is to seek to hear and obey God now in very practical ways. Anything less is not reading Holy Scripture according to its purpose.

His point is that over focusing on the historical, historical, language side of things we under focus on what a passage means to us right here and right now.

That’s a real issue for many of us and I find it happening to myself all too often. It’s something to be very aware of so we can make sure it isn’t happening to us. You can read the whole thing here and I hope you do.

I Want To Go Here Someday

Here’s a place I’d love to see someday. Probably won’t get there, but it would be soooo cool!

The Bro Bible

Okay, so here’s a little bit on insanity for you. I used this at the start of my sermon today. It came from a joke I did last week that got a good response. Then I started thinking about it – always a dangerous thing.

Then I starting creating this in my head – even more dangerous. And finally I googled it and found all sorts of strangeness. What’s below is the result.

Good luck with this.

From the Top to the Bottom & Back to the Top Again – Grand Canyon May, 2016

Here’s all the pictures I took on my one day hike down the South Kaibab Trail and then back up Bright Angel Trail. It was quite a trip – about 11 1/2 hours hiking. Totally exhausting and totally worth it.

Just a bit of sound track at the start and then you can listen to whatever you’d like too.

I hope you enjoy.

My Camino – Sept. 2016

Well I’ve finally gotten around to doing a long form video of my time on the Camino de Santiago this past September. I’ve been wanting to put something out but just never got to it – as usual!

So, I threw all the pictures into Corel’s quick video maker and then did a bit of editing and put some titles in to help make sense of it. I also took out the soundtrack because I didn’t like it and didn’t really have time to find music that YouTube would be okay with.

So now you can provide your own soundtrack but you might want to get really comfortable and have a snack on hand because this is LOOOONG! 55 minutes long! Happily you can pause it anytime you desire.

My thanks to all the souls I met along the way. Whether we spent much time together or not it was interesting to meet so many from all over the world, including Phoenix! And a special thanks to those who traveled with me for days at a time. I’ll never forget some of you that’s for sure.

Hope you enjoy!

A Bit of Audio From Dad’s Book

I haven’t been putting up anything here about my gaming because I know most aren’t interested. However below you’ll find my latest video embedded because of a computer glitch and what followed.

My little laptop has been having trouble with my video recording of late. Not sure what’s going on and I hope it’s not reaching the point where I’ll need to get a new one! Yuck on that!

I’m playing a scenario the US Marine invasion and liberation of Guam. My father was a part of that battle and writes about it in his book, Once A Raider. So when the audio of the first eight or nine minutes of the video was completely unacceptable I decided to delete that part and do a voice over.

Instead of just rambling about the game I chose to read a couple of excerpts Dad wrote about his experience in the first day and evening of the battle. He played an important role in that battle for Hill 40.

If you’d like to hear a little bit about that you can listen below. If you’d like to check out the book on Amazon just click here.

New Tales From the Scrypt Series

I just got back from recording this week’s edition of Tales From the Scrypt. The reason I’m posting about it here is that it’s  the beginning of something I hope will be special. I’m doing an eight part series on the week leading up to Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection on that first Easter Sunday.

[Note: I just got a call that I need to go back and do it again. I recorded it the first time but hit the wrong button so it actually didn’t record. The second time through I thought it went really well. Just heard they had a technical glitch and so I’m off to go back into town and try it again! It worked.]

Yep – eight weeks which is by far the longest series I’ve done so far and I have to say I’m really looking forward to it. You can listen online at KLPZ1380.com.

Doing this show has been a really interesting experience for me. At first I had some trouble with it because what I do on the show is tell stories. But what I’ve done for a long, long time now is teach Scripture. So my first impulse was to dig into the passage and find the meaning and the message. When I teach and preach I try to be very careful not to add anything to the text or take anything away for that matter. To be a good teacher you have to be precise and drive to the point.

Not so much with story telling. It’s taken a while to learn this how to do this. It’s a skill that’s closely related to teaching and preaching but is different. Now I do add somethings in that aren’t spelled out in the text, like how someone feels, or a dramatic description of what’s happening, etc. You have to do that if you want to be a good story teller.

I love writing these little stories now. I’m 64 and am leaning a new skill and having a great time doing so. 

Retirement? Bah Humbug to that!!  I’m too busy having fun, and am planning on expanding my ministry into other areas as well when the time is right and I am able to do so.

Anyway, if you get to listen to the show let me know. It comes on on Thursday mornings, sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 AM. Keith does live radio so there’s no set time to air the program. So if you tune in at 9:30 Arizona Time you should hear it.

My New Trail Running Shoe

Update – I sent them back as they were too narrow and gave up on Trail Runners until this past Friday. Bought a pair of Asics Gel-Venture 5 shoes in Havasu. Fit is good and I walked 6 miles in them yesterday and they felt pretty darn good. So we’ll see how these goes but I’m planning on wearing them for my mostly pavement, next to the road walks and the boots for the desert, off road hikes.

Last week I decided to take a shot at trying using Trail Running shoes instead of hiking boots. There’s a lot of debate about which is better and after looking things over and discussing it at Thanksgiving with my Nephew John who is quite knowledgeable about all things related to hiking; I jumped in.

I bought, from Amazon of course, Salomon Men’s Speedcross 3 Trail Running Shoe.  They were waiting for me when I got home so I popped them on and without any warming them up took the trail this afternoon.  Below is a picture for those who haven’t seen them.

The Good:

• Amazing grip with that amazing sole. Nearly like having cleats on!
• Lightweight. My boots are lightweight but these things are amazing. Makes your feet seem super light.
• The way the shoestrings tie. They’ve come up with a system that I’ve never seen before that everyone ought to use. Hard to explain but really nice.

The Bad:

• My foot moved around quite a bit in the shoe, more than I’m used to in a boot for sure. This could be my not having the shoe tightened correctly or perhaps they are a half size off? But it concerns me.
• Lack of protection. I’m not so much talking about ankle support here, though that is an issue with all trail runners. That didn’t bother me too much. Instead I’m referring to a lack of stiffness in the sole of the shoe. My feet were a little sore after just over 5 miles. The terrain was rough and I walk hard, still this could be a problem for my old feet.
• The shoe was very comfortable in some places and not so much in others. I’ll have to get used to them and let them break in a bit before I know if this is a serious issue.

This is going to be an interesting experience and hopefully work out ok. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m going to get another pair of boots in the new year (more on boot issues in another post soon).

But I do hope that these will work well as they are cool and breath like crazy so would be perfect in the heat of our long summers.

02 Strategic Command WIE – Toe Hold In England

Believe it or not I’ve actually managed to grab a toe hold in England! So Sea Lion has happened but will it succeed? And will I ever post anything on this blog again other than Wargame stuff?

The beginning of the answer to the first question is below, to answer the second you’ll just have to stay tuned!