gratitude & hoopla: This & That

gratitude & hoopla

"Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace." G. K. Chesterton

16.1.06

This & That

Yesterday our church sent off a missionary to Mozambique. Her name is Emelyn Hart, and she will be working with Iris Ministries. Check out the pictures at her website. They will be updated frequently. Also, read more about her ministry here. And if God leads you to do so, please give generously here. She is a very inspiring young woman.

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Milton at Transforming Sermons has just marked the first anniversary of his blog. Milton is dedicated to finding and sharing the best writing on discipleship and on preaching that he can possibly find. Two posts per day, five days per week. He's a trooper! And he's an eyes on the prize sort of blogger, keeping the main thing the main thing. I value him highly.

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Nate at Eight Strings has declared January "Mandolin Month." And to celebrate, he went to see Mike Marshall and Chris Thile in concert together. That's something like Clapton and B. B. King playing together, I suppose, only in this case both musicians are in their prime. Wish I coulda been there, Nate!

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Speaking of Nate, he and I are embarking on a new blogging project. We've both been kind of hankering to read some good fantasy, and were discussing what books are out there, what sounds intriguing, etc. Anyway, Nate got the bright idea that we should both read a fantasy epic (preferably multi-volume, of course) and discuss it together at a joint blog especially created for the purpose.

So that's the plan. The fantasy epic we've decided to read is George R. R. Martin's highly-regarded, "A Song of Ice and Fire." The first book in the series A Game of Thrones. This is an experiment in blogging, one that affords me the sheer joy of connecting with Nate in a new way, and of talking about what I'm reading (which I often do ad nauseum). Call it a two-person blogging reading-group. The blog, by the way, which has as yet only my introductory post, is called A Blog of Thrones.

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Ah, books. I continue to read through America's history via biographies (like Bill of Out of the Bloo, I love a good "backstory"). Each new book in this reading plan picks up about where the previous biography left off. So, for example, the last book I completed in this series was David McCullough's justly famous biography of John Adams. Now, Adams died in 1826, so my next biographical subject must have been born near that time, preferably a little before. I've chosen Brigham Young, who was born in 1801. The book is called The Lion of the Lord, written by Stanley P. Hirshon. Young, by the way, lived to 1877. Who shall come next?