P.F. Chang's

We ate at P.F. Chang's today. It's the first time I've ever been. It was not what I was expecting. It was awesome.

Why Write Romans?

At orientation we have been reading through Romans and I have been thinking about a couple of things. What was Paul's real purpose in writing Romans? Have you ever thought about that? Was he just introducing himself before he came, or did he have more motivation. Well in reading this, I thought that maybe he was correcting what others were reporting about his teaching. Here are a couple of reasons why I came to this thought:

1.) Paul mentions that reports about his teaching were slanderous (Rom 3:8). The false idea he was correcting was "Let us do evil that good may come." I find it interesting that Paul comes back to this in Chapter 6, "Are we to continue to sin so that grace may increase?" and to a lesser point, "Shall we sin because we are no longer under the law?"

2.) Because Paul has mentioned the false report and then dealt with the issue in depth, could it be possible that the other issues (all related of course) were other misconceptions of his teaching?

3.) There is much dialog about the Jew/Gentile issue. We can see throughout the New Testament that there were some within the Jewish community concerned (and even opposed) to the inclusion of the Gentiles. Could Paul be using sections in Romans to correct some misconceptions on both the parts of Jews and Greeks on what Paul was teaching.

These are just some initial thoughts, and I was just wondering what some of you readers think about it. So What do you think?

New blogging tools!

Since I'm back on the blogging bandwagon there have been some things that have come along to make it easier to set things up. I have been working on setting up something easy for Stacy and I to use to update everyone as we live in Prague. This new blog is at http://dyckczechin.blogspot.com. The current blog you are reading will be remain random postings from me. Here are some of the things I've found.

Feedburner- It has been around awhile but how long have you been able to let people subscribe via email? I had something else I used before, but I don't know if it works anymore. I will probably set this blog on something similar. I do all my blog reading in Google Reader, but know that not everyone is embracing the RSS feed ... yet.

The email post option- I knew that you could do this before, but never really embraced it. I just sent a bunch of photos through email and instead of uploading them all individually again to blogger, I decided to forward the email. It was so much quicker.

Picasa- Yes another thing by Google. They will own the whole web soon, but so far they have either made or bought most of the sites I use. Let's see what all I use regularly now: Google search, Gmail, Blogger, Google Reader, Google Docs. And now I'm on to Picasa and Feedburner, too. Oh, my.

But do these things really add to a blog?

One thing that does add to the readership on my blog is how it is feeding facebook. I know that more people are probably reading this (if you are still with me) through face book than any other way.

Half way through

Stacy, Jack and I have been hanging out in Virginia. Well, hanging out isn't quite what it's been. It's been a quite a lot of work. Orientation is half way through, and the last four weeks have seemed like a year. We are so anxious to go to Prague, we can't stand it. We have also made quite a few new friendships. Both Stacy and I have been sick, and both of us are better.

Today we learned about the Myers/Briggs Personality Type Indicator. It is basically a tool to tell you about yourself, because it is important to be self aware and know how you function best. We have both taken it before and today we have each confirmed that we understood our personality type. I am a INTP, which means I am introverted, I take in information by seeing the big picture instead of focusing on details, I make decisions based on thinking over feeling, and I prefer being flexible over scheduled. This is the exact opposite of the "normal" missionary. The difference between Stacy and I is that she is extroverted and relies more on feelings to make decisions.

So, what is your personality like? Ever thought about it?

400 cubic feet

If you ever want to be stressed out all you need to do is move. If you want to be more stressed out than you have ever been go through all your stuff, decide what is most important to you, and watch two guys shove it into a wooden box (that they are breaking apart to make it fit) that will travel across the ocean on a boat. Keep in mind that you don't know when you will see this stuff again.

Well, we are out of our apartment. That lightens the stress load some. I will be rid of my car soon. I took it to CarMax today and they will give me more than I thought they would. We have almost packed everything ready to go to orientation. we will be able to take 4 checked bags more to Prague than to orientation so we are trying to decide what we will use in the next two months.

I'm not sure how often I will be able to post in the near future because of time and access to the internet. But I'm trying to keep everyone up to date. Take care!

Homework

I am reading this book for one of the assignments of orientation coming up. It is a great book. You can really see how God is working in different parts of the world and that you can take some of the western cultural things out of church and still have a biblical body. As the author states it is more descriptive than prescriptive and focuses on what has happened instead of theories. If you want to learn how God is working in the world pick this book up.