Category Archives: Web Schtuff

7 Quick Takes: Lent Madness, Hope for Westboro Baptist Church, and Orphan Needs

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Kaia has a family. I found out on Tuesday that Kaia has a family committed to her. This is awesome news!!!

Her adoption grant, however, only has $278 in it and her adoption will be probably around $20,000. Could we up that a bit and help her adoptive family? Go show them some love.

— 2 —

Brett. Our boy here still needs a mama.

His profile is here. Share his profile with anyone you know who might want to adopt.

He is also part of the Forty Days to Forever fundraiser. Go to the site and check out what is going on with the fundraiser right now.

— 3 —

Lent Madness! Why am I not surprised that the Episcopal Church has found a way to combine March Madness and Lent? I am sooooo participating in Lent Madness this year! No idea who will be receiving the Golden Halo this year (Mary Magdalene won last year) but it looks interesting.

For those who want to accuse me of heresy because most people on this link-up are Catholic, Busted Halo has a lovely Lenten calendar with interesting challenges. (I wanted to say “Lenten Advent calendar” but that would sound silly.)

— 4 —

Really? I was gobsmacked when I saw that this app existed. I mean, “Bang with Friends”? Really? This isn’t just being marketed to college kids — this is going to 13 year olds!!! And 260,000 users in the first nine days? This is evil.

The makers have referred to the critics as “prudes”. Count me incredibly proud to be a prude.

— 5 —

Hope for Westboro Baptist Church. Remember the link about Libby Phelps Alvarez who left Westboro Baptist Church? Two more granddaughters of Fred Phelps have left the church including Megan who was their social media person and heir to the legacy. (Their statement about it is here.) This gives me hope that that the church will either cease to exist within a generation or somehow God will reach them and convince them of their error.

— 6 —

Help this boy with his tumor. We have a matter of weeks to raise $100,000 for visas and surgery for this little boy to get his tumor removed. If you can’t give, please share this story around. If you know some organization/trust/corporation who can help, let them know.

— 7 —

Update on Katya. I won the giveaway on Welcome Home Katya! which is trying to fundraise to pay for the dental work she needs to help with her speech acquisition. For those who don’t know, Katya was adopted from the Ukraine by the Duecks. Currently, her hair is falling out from a hematoma which I’m not sure if they can fix medically. (Katie???) Keep her in prayer and if you feel led, toss some funds their way for her dental work.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

Because Bloggers Get Nothing Done…

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Rage Against the Minivan: dear pastor mark: pontificate this.

Back story: Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church decided to mouth off via Twitter and claim the following:

Mark Driscoll's tweet

Kristen Howerton of Rage Against the Minivan excoriated him in this post and one of my Twitter buddies (whose name I am forgetting at the moment — sorry!) listed off a whole host of things with the tag #bloggersgetthingsdone.

By the way, have I mentioned that Mars Hill Church sues other churches that try to use the name Mars Hill? I hadn’t realized that they had copyrighted Acts 17. Huh. [/sarcasm]

My take on all this: I will readily admit that I do a fair amount of pontificating — I blog to get the unhealthy crap out of my head and sometimes that means that I blather about how the world should be. However, it’s not all I do. Kristen listed the things she’s been part of as a blogger so maybe I should do the same. 😉

[+] Raised money for Afghani women and put together an afghan to send over there. (2005)
[+] Raised money for Lutheran World Relief (2006), International Justice Mission (2007), First Book (2008), the Preeclampsia Foundation (2009), Direct Relief (2010), and Reece’s Rainbow (2012).
[+] Discussed the issues involved with food stamps/WIC/being part of the 47% and worked with blogger Thomas Fuller Jr to think of solutions.
[+] Raised awareness and advocacy for preeclampsia and HELLP Syndrome so that other moms won’t have to go through what I did.
[+] Worked to get two special needs children (Brett and Kaia) adopted through Reece’s Rainbow.
[+] Raised money for sex trafficking victims.

These are just the things off the top of my head. Whether you want to argue that *I* personally got those things done is irrelevant — I feel like it’s a team effort and there are so many bloggers that contribute. I participated in Blogathons for 5 years and saw people raise awareness of resources for rape victims, make schools safer places for GLBTQ kids, and put their health/bodies/minds on the line to stay up for 24 hours because they had something to say.

I will readily admit that my faith in Jesus Christ is what motivates me to do all these things but there are bloggers who aren’t religious that do the same things. All of us understand that we have voices and that these voices when combined can change the world.

So tell me, Mark Driscoll, what have YOU accomplished today?

I Am Stunned and Saddened

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Social media guru RickCaffeinated dies of natural causes before crash.

I met Rick through blogs4God in late 2002/early 2003 where we were both moderators. He and I exchanged friendly barbs via our blogs and got to be friends. When I was denied candidacy for ministry in the ELCA in 2003, he was one of the people who helped me pick up the shattered pieces of my confidence. When I had an ovarian cyst and insurance decided not to pay for it, he sent me some money to help me pay some of my medical bills with the stipulation that I not worry about paying him back. He guest-posted when I was on vacation and we exchanged Christmas cards. Our friendship continued on Twitter where I would mock him and his wife when their tweets got too mushy for me.

People talk about how the Internet is a faceless place. I beg to differ. He was part of a community of people online who came with me on every one of my moves as a pastor’s wife. My world is definitely better place because he was part of it.

Please pray for his wife Vicki and their kids Trace and Cammi.

As a way of paying tribute to him here, I’m linking his guest posts.

Guest Blogging & Politics
Giving Props
HBD
Travellin??
Winter Weather

God speed, Rick. I look forward to you showing me all the cool coffee places when we meet again someday in Heaven.

7 Quick Takes: Turkey Pardons, iTunes Giveaway, and Thanksgiving for Health

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

Ahem… iTunes giveaway to benefit Brett. You see the adorable little boy on my sidebar? His name is Brett and he finally has a mama. To help his mama bring him home, I’m doing an iTunes giveaway to raise some funds. Here are 7 reasons to participate in my iTunes giveaway. I haven’t had any takers yet and I’m getting a little depressed about it.

— 2 —

A prayer request. Huffle Mawson, one of the first cat bloggers I “met”, has passed away. Her humans Tracey and Kendall got a message while on vacation telling them that she was at the vet in liver failure. She passed on the next morning. They are still on vacation and coming home to a really emotionally devastating situation. Her mom, Tracey, was really supportive of me during my pregnancy and my heart is breaking for her right now. Please keep Tracey and Kendall in thoughts and prayers right now.

— 3 —

I finally have my laptop back after 5 days of waiting for a new hard disk and then getting it installed. The church’s data person was able to get all of it back though I’ll be deleting out duplicate files for a good month or so. (My hard disk was that bad.) He also managed to recover all my email and my Firefox bookmarks.

— 4 —

It’s Thanksgiving so here’s the Turkey Pardoning Ceremony from Wednesday. I’m linking this not because I like turkeys or President Obama. I’m linking it because of the Nate Silver joke.

— 5 —

Link-Up Love! Grace at Camp Patton has a Thanksgiving link-up. I haven’t posted mine yet because my clothes are already in the washer on account of the mysterious sweet potato stains up and down my left arm. *looks suspiciously at the sleeping toddler*

— 6 —

LOL Cat in training. After we got back from our walk at 9:30 p.m., we were gathered around my mom’s computer looking at pictures from a family gathering in Washington when my sister-in-law told me that I might have to fight to get my laptop back. I looked behind me and my mom’s grey kitty Homer was curled up next to it. My dad took a picture but I doubt my parents would give it to me if they knew I would possibly make it into a LOL Cat.

— 7 —

Something to be thankful for this year. Last year, my Quick Takes on Thanksgiving were written from the PICU at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose where Daniel was admitted after waking up with a fever of 103F… just as dinner was going on the table. So seriously, I’m thankful for health this year, especially Daniel’s health as it meant that we were all able to have dinner together and not have to worry about him or be thrown up on. (My mom needs to be thanked because she was so nice about that one…)

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.

Two Announcements

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Two announcements:

1.) I’m going to be hard to find this week because the hard disk on my laptop failed and I lost everything. Please pray that the church’s tech guru can get my files off of it and that the new one can successfully be installed. I’m sharing a Netbook with Jon and it’s been an adjustment to learn to type on it.

2.) I’m doing a giveaway over at Blogging for Brett to raise the extra $4000-$5000 that his family needs for his adoption.

Go check out the giveaway! Do it now!

Just A Small Request

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In the 12 years I’ve blogged, I’ve known about Mark Shea for probably 10 of them because we used to be part of blogs4God, a now-defunct blogging portal. I think I’ve read his blog a handful of times because I’m not Catholic and we occupy just very different parts of the Christian blogosphere. I respect him as I respect most everybody because he knows his stuff and I’ll defer to him on the subject of Catholicism as he would (hopefully) defer to me on Lutheran stuff.

So… having said all that, he’s under attack because apparently he doesn’t like Mitt Romney and he *gasp* showed admiration for a gay man. Yeah, I know… the world somehow did not implode and my life will go on.

So… could I please ask Thomas McDonald (my mistake — his was satire), Fr. Peter West, and all the other people who have decided to rip Mark apart and make his life hell (because, you know, his writing is a source of income for his family and the scorn of these gentlemen’s followers could really mess with that) please get your heads out of your butts and act like Christians? God is not glorified by any of this and actually, it gives Catholics a bad name when you cannibalize each other.

And, as I’m sure Fr. West and a few others might want to link this blog as an example of the kind of unsavory characters that stand up for Mark Shea, BRING IT!!!! Just remember that my first name is spelled with one “n”, I read ecclesiastical Latin fluently (even though I’m a heretic Lutheran), and if you say one bad thing about my son Daniel, SO HELP ME GOD, I WILL BEAT THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF YOU!!!!!

Snuggles,
jen

P.S. Thanks to Calah for the head’s up!

7 Quick Takes: All Star Game, Whining, and A New Addiction

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

I finally did the post-mortem on my 101-in-1001 list… two months after my deadline. Recapping for those who don’t usually read my blog, I completed 19/101 goals and that means a $82 donation to charity. (As an incentive to complete as many goals as possible, I donate $1 for every goal I fail to complete.) My charity choice this time: Brett’s adoption account at Reece’s Rainbow. I’m glad that I accomplished almost 20% of my goals this time — they’re all about bettering myself so it’s all good in the end.

— 2 —

I got just a *little* bit mouthy while watching the All Star Game on Tuesday. All those who follow me on Twitter are probably saying, “A little, Jen?” Can I help it if the evil teams are all in the American League? I mean, you’ve got the Texas Rangers, the New York Yankees (evil personified), and the LA Angels. (OK… technically, they’re the Anaheim Angels. They’re still evil.) I do enjoy a good skunking and this was a glorious one. I’m also amazed they let the minor league team from Oakland send players. [/trash-talk]

— 3 —

I hate heat. It has been in the triple digits here. Did I mention that I hate heat? I think that relocating to Alaska for summers would be a capital idea. Did I mention that this heat is oppressive and that I’d prefer it to be -20F?

— 4 —

Seriously, why is me flipping on my turn signal to change lanes a sign that people should speed up and keep me from passing? Someone did this to me last weekend in Elk Grove and nearly caused an accident. As I swerved back into my lane, the driver flipped me off. Um yeah… YOU almost caused the accident and you’re flipping *me* off? Great one. They’re freaking lucky that I didn’t call the police and report them for reckless driving.

— 5 —

We have an abundance of mulberry pollen. Did I mention that I’m allergic to mulberry pollen? This has led to lots of sneezing on my part as the A/C has to be on (and seems to be the entry point of it into the house) and Daniel is laughing uproariously every time I sneeze.

— 6 —

Oh great… I have a new addiction. I managed to kill 90 minutes of Daniel’s naptime today by surfing PassiveAggressiveNotes.Com. This is not a good thing for me to discover, especially as I think I could outdo some of them. (I learned passive-aggressiveness from the BEST.)

— 7 —

Argh. I did not find a short URL where you can donate to Brett’s adoption account. My bad. Meanwhile, you have 19 days to go if you want to participate in the Bottle Challenge and 15 days until Brett’s Blogathon 2012.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.