Not Normally a Calorie Counter

I'm not making any New Years resolutions. I'm not even obsessed with my weight.

My wife and I play racquetball two or three nights a week, depending on our schedule. (At least twice a week)

I'm trying to "cut back" on things just to get my weight down after all of the eating I did over Christmas in Oregon. My mom's love language is cooking. (Conveniently, one of my dad's love languages is eating....it's a match made in Heaven.)

I found on the Starbucks site the nutritional information for their drinks. http://www.starbucks.com/retail/nutrition_beverages.asp

If you are squeamish...please stop reading.

My drink of choice....Double Tall Caramel Machiatto....

180 calories
45g fat
100mg sodium

Oh my goodness, gracious!!!!

Now, "drip" coffee
5 calories
0g fat
10mg sodium

Uh, I guess I'm on the drip for a while. **SIGH**

It's Cold, and There are People Who are Invisible

This is a duplicated post of a post on Pam Hogeweide's blog. Ken Loyd and I met last November at an event here on Seattle's Eastside. I've blogged about him before. He's the one who said that our homeless friends feel two things, that they are invisible, and that they are defective. Why? That's how we treat them.

That cut me to the heart.

Anyway, here's the post from Pam's blog. There's a link to her blog here on my site as well. All I ask is that, in this Christmas season, you do something...anything.....it's cold out there, and NO ONE should be invisible.

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HOMEpdx: Are We Broke Yet?

Hey all, here is the latest email update from my friend Ken Loyd of HOMEpdx here in Portland, Oregon. Ken and his devoted team of HOMEpdx'ers have been loving on the beautiful, invisible folks who live outside, aka The Homeless. Below is Ken's financial strategy and report for how they meet practical needs of our city's poor.

If you live in Portland, consider making a one-time donation or becoming a regular contributor to this vital community. HOMEpdx is not an outreach or a mission. They are a group of people who both live indoors as well as outdoors. It is a missional church in the rawest sense.

If you don't live in Portland, I urge you to consider what ministries and charities in your area are helping the poorest of your city. Consider sending them a little note and a donation of any amount.

Hope everyone is doing well this holiday season. Portland is having some extraordinary winter weather as is much of the country. We are in the midst of a series of three winter storms in a one week period. My friend Erin blogged about why Portlanders have such a hard time driving when we get ice. Totally crazy!

Stay warm!

Are We Broke? You Bet!
by Ken Loyd

We've figured out how this whole nonprofit deal works: A) get money and, B) spend it as fast as we can on our friends without houses in downtown Portland.

We're good, no, read that, just about the best at doing the "B) thing". Socks, toiletries, bus tickets, cell phones, food, clothes, coffee, burritos, ID, rent,and a dozen other spending opportunities wave frantically for our attention every day.

The A) part, however… we're just about the worst at remembering to ask for money.

Wow! Who Would Have Thought this was a growth industry?

It's only taken me about a year and a half to figure out at least part of the problem: April Fools Day 2007 was our first day under the Hawthorne Bridge. We had ten of our outdoors friends show up. We gave them socks, hoodies, toiletries and whatever else we could dig up. Our food team prepared a banquet. We had a great time!

This October our last Sunday under the bridge (we're indoors for the winter) saw us doing the exact same thing, but this time we served over 200 people! We were averaging 100-200 each week. What fun that is! Our food team, as always, was more than equal to the task. Each food team buys the food, prepares, and serves our meals. We, the HOMEpdx core team do the rest. Our cost per person has increased by more than 50% due to higher prices and the fact that we give away a greater selection of necessary items. A 1500% increase in one and a half years shows our success at the "B" part of the formula— serving our friends who live outdoors. The "A"— getting money— 0% increase in income.

I'm pretty sure our balance sheet is out whack.

Common sense says, "Cut back."

However, increased need does not wait for increased income. We, at HOME will continue to love and serve our friends, no matter what. We must. Common sense, I believe, is overrated, if it turns a blind eye to our society's throwaways. (As I am writing this temperatures are dropping in the 20s. Our core team is larger, more talented and working harder than ever. We are seeing our friends truly helped. Could you just walk away from this if you were me?)

Here's where you can come in.
If you choose. You can send a one-time gift. Or, better yet, you can partner with us and let us know that you will be sending a specified monthly amount. With you as a part of a small but mighty team of partners, who knows—we could go from a daily losing scramble to doing some planning! What a novel idea for us. Our year end goal is to raise $20,000 to give HOMEpdx a strong foundation for 2009, which looks like a year where the needs of our friends will increase dramatically.

It's quite easy...you can even donate via PayPal from our homepdx.net web site.

And pray you ask?
Kathy Escobar, from Denver, who serves people who have next to nothing (one step up the food chain from us), says," Don't pray for us. Our prayer team is full. Send money." She was kidding. I think.

Whether you are able at this time and choose to give to our friends without houses through HOMEpdx or not, we'll still be friends.

Love,

Ken
HOMEpdx (a 501(c)3 nonprofit
3934 N Borthwick Ave.
Portland, OR 97227
http://homepdx.net

PS A FEW RANDOM 2008 NUMBERS:
Volunteers 150-200
Meals served: 5,000-7,500
Pairs of socks given out: 6,000-9,000
Burritos handed out: 2,500
Age of our outdoors friends: 14-65
%who live outdoors year around: 85-90
Value of our friends: Priceless
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Thanks for listening!

Brad

Projection of self

My good friend Levi, namesake of my own little boy, just left. I dropped him off at the airport.

One of the things that we talked about in the short time he was in town was the concept of "projection". Scot McKnight in his book, "The Blue Parakeet", describes a survey he gives to his Bible students in which they ascribe characteristics to Jesus. At the end of the exercise, the students can see that what they have done is ascribe their own moral characteristics to the character of Christ.

McKnight goes on to say that is how we often read the Bible....we all want to be right, so we project our own morality into the Bible. Of course, that's dangerous because it really needs to be the other way around. I'm not done with the book yet, but I don't see that he is denying our ability to interpret scripture. Nor does he ever declare that there is a right (or wrong) way to read the Bible. He simply asks that we be aware of projecting ourselves into the reading.

Levi, a former pastor, used various examples from his own ministry and from other writings.....he added more books to my list....that confirm this "projection" fact.

What do you think?

War...what is it good for.....

Try and read that title without the grunt between “war” and “what”. **GRIN**

Last Friday, I went to lunch with some friends from work. As we drove to the restaurant, one of my workers travelled with me. He looked down and saw a small metal model of a tank; a pencil sharpener, actually. He picked it up and identified it, immediately, as a Patton tank. (M48 for those who are interested in that kind of thing.) He’s Israeli, and little did I know that he served in the Israeli-Lebanon war in the early 1980s….as a tank driver. The rush of memories that overcame him when he saw the pencil sharpener was incredible.

We talked.

I had the tank in my car because I simply hadn’t taken it out. It was my grandfather’s. He drove a tank in Italy in WWII for the Canadian military. His was a Sherman tank, not a Patton, but my aunt has his Sherman model. Grandpa meant a lot to me, and his tales of “The War” were common conversation points. When he died, one of the things he left to me was a copy of the war memoirs of his regiment. Pages after pages of pictures, names, and handwritten notes had me in tears. One, I miss him so much. Two, he had pictures, with faces circled, and comments like, “The first friend I saw die in combat.”

My wife’s uncle was killed in Vietnam. (My father-in-law’s little brother.)

I have friends who are Army Rangers, and have either served in Iraq or are serving. I know others who are just soldiers, but equally important.

I have worked in my career on projects for the U.S. military machine. (One of which I am extremely proud of. Why? It allows the Army to easily determine the location of ANY individual solider in the field within a 3 day period. This may not seem like much, but it’s better than anything they’ve ever had before. It all came about when a U.S. Senator wanted to send a note to all of the troops from his district, and the Army said, “We have no way of knowing where they are.” I am extremely proud that I helped make it possible for families and society to reconnect to individual troops.)

My college roommate is in Iraq right now -- in Baghdad. His wife is left in Maryland to care for their two children, one of whom is borderline Asperger’s syndrome…a form of autism. He’s going to be gone for a year. When he called me at 9:30pm Pacific from an airport in Maine on his way out, I was nearly in tears. He’s almost 40 and is going back to a war zone.

Another college buddy is a helicopter pilot in the Navy.

Another is a pilot in the Marines.

I don’t normally let me feelings be known, but I’ll say it now. I’m not for these stupid wars...Iraq, Afghanistan.

Preemptive strikes are not the right way to solve the problem.

In fact, I don't think there's a human way to solve the problems in the Middle East.

I do know this. I don't care who the politicians are that are in power. I cannot condone war.

Don't get me wrong, I fully support our troops, and will honor them for their service when they return.

I get tired of Christians who are more up in arms over abortion, but turn a blind eye to the murder being done in the name of our beloved country.

Both things break my heart.

I hate war.

CCF made good

So, my former post about the Christian Children's Fund.....update.

They made good.

Apparently, it was a rogue CCF agent.

GOOD FOR THE CCF!!!!