Last night my stepdad came into the Twin Cities on his way up North to Baxter. He stayed the night and for dinner we were invited over to Amy’s parents. It was a good time. I could tell he didn’t feel comfortable being in an environment so foreign to him, but he said that when we got into a discussion about the Bible he became really interested. He has so many questions!

If any of you know my stepdad at all or if I’ve talked to you about him you know that there is nothing short of a miracle of God that would change him. I do believe that he has changed.

“There is nothing so bad that God can’t use it for His good.” I’ve heard that said many times. Right now my mom is divorcing my stepdad. I don’t agree with it and I believe she knows where I stand on this, but I do see that God has used this to turn my stepdad around. He is a broken man and constantly reminds me that the only thing keeping him through this, keeping him alive, is God.

It has reshaped my reality. What I’ve known of him for the last 20 or so years is so different than what I am seeing now. I woke up this morning to him asking me if he could take me out to breakfast and that he wanted to talk to me. I couldn’t help feel afraid that he was going to say, “Eddie, I don’t believe any of this stuff I’ve said about God. I’m just using it as a ploy to get your mother back.” This was my weakness, because when we talked at breakfast it only reaffirmed his change. I do believe that he has accepted Jesus! This is crazy to me! I had so little hope that it would happen. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I find that I have to remind myself to keep trust in God’s power because I start to be fearful that I will say or do something that would turn him away from Christianity. Because this is so weird to me, I sometimes feel like he is so fragile and I don’t want to disturb the Truth that he’s finally accepted. I remind myself that God has control over that. I just pray and hope that he is the seed that is cast on good soil and that he takes root eternally into Jesus.

I get scared sometimes because I am laying my heart out before him and talking about Gods’ grace and I am afraid that it will be pushed aside and thought naive. When I talk with him sometimes this grip of fear forms around my heart and I start to wonder if he thinks I’m foolish for believing something so strongly, but his eyes and constancy tell me otherwise. There is some crazy stuff going on here. It’s good for me too.

There is much more to this story, more than I would feel comfortable posting on my blog, but please hope and pray for the healing of my family and rejoice at the homecoming of a 54 year old prodigal.

I made a link to my unit in an earlier blog and have since then amended that one and added a new site. I am hoping to use the site for my student teaching next semester. If you view it make sure to maxmize your browser so as to get the full effects of the interctiveness. I designed it around the idea that kids these days are becoming more and more multi-task thinkers. I’m looking forward to testing it out.

OK, I will now amend my last entry. Yes, the snow is beautiful and it can seem warm after it just snows, but dang!!! It’s honkin’ cold when that wind chill kicks in and your car is over twenty years old. I was even led to pull out the old electric blanket last night so I wouldn’t overdue it on my electric bill this month using the register heaters on the wall. Maybe I’m just getting old, but yesterday I wore the old flip-flops, then ended up changing into boots. You know, sometimes I just don’t like feeling cold…

So there you go; just call me Sybil.

During the night it snowed a two-inch quilt over all the maple trees and train tracks and traffic lights. When it snows it feels warmer. I’ve said this over the years when people would gawk at my bare feet in flip-flops; it feels warmer with snow on the ground. It’s worse the several weeks before it snows hard (almost like feet need to become acclimated). But I think there really is something that changes, at least at the ground level, when it snows. I’ve told those who think I’m crazy for wearing sandals in the winter that my feet melt the snow into water, and water is a great conductor for heat.

The steeping warmth that thaws numb fingers and toes after coming in from several hours in the cold, like after skiing or snow shoveling, is better than wet roses and whiskered kittens. Going from a ball of layers to socks and long johns, (a little wet around the ankles and red around the cheeks), thighs a little itchy, and plastered hair… I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy living on a tropical island, but with what we got here in Minnesota and her four seasons, I’m content.

Well, I a total of 2 hours sleep Friday night after coming home from work and finishing my unit (still a work in progress). I went to class from 9 AM to 12 PM, came home at around 2 PM and listened to my messages. My finger was heavy on the play button, but when I heard the message I suddenly was rushed with adrenaline. Amy’s cousin Erica’s fiance Peter invited me to his bachelor party. The party involved paint (but no stripper! HA!) and pain.

I bought my own paintball gun this summer and have fruitlessly tried to find a group of guys to play. Finally I got my chance. I took an hour nap, got up to test the site on my gun down by an old abandoned Mississippi bridge and headed to Peter’s house.

When I arrived we left to pick up some other guys, ate some pizza and headed to an indoor arena. The huge warehouse building had two rooms: one with huge inflated, yellow bubbles and cones and one that was like a large room with walls with windows, random couches and inner tubes, and a ton of this weird saw-dust stuff on the floor (kinda like with what you soak up puke).

We spent most of our time in the latter room broken into teams of four. I got some pretty good hits and liked to think I use more skill in my shooting than the “let’s see how much paint I can shoot out of this gun before I get shot” guys. I was usually one of the last to survive, and sometimes the last, but once it was just me and one other guy left. We were having this great volley, then somebody yelled, “Hey! You guys are on the same team!”

My favorite room was the one with the blow up obstacles. It was like a combination of Running Man and The Matrix. Nearing the end of our paint, our teams got smaller as guys ran out. I had a lot of balls left and ended up sharing some with Peter and a couple other guys. We went 2 on 2 and I got hit in the crown of my head. It didn’t hurt much, but I still have a little bump from it. In this particular game if you get hit you just have to go to the back of the room and touch the wall. I did so and came back with a vengence. I didn’t even go for cover. I just came out, pointed my gun, shot and marked both of them. It felt pretty cool.

I do have to say that the most fun was afterward at one of Peter’s friend’s house where we showed our wounds and told what was going on in our heads and finding out who shot us. We laughed a lot realizing that everybody really didn’t know what they were doing. But I think that’s what made it fun.

Anyway, as for war wounds, I only have that bump on my head and a little red circle on my stomach (which was from my own team member). Would I do it again? Of course, that’s why I bought the gun. But I probably won’t in the winter as it ended up costing me $36 dollars to rent the space and pay for balls. It would have been cheaper but two guys backed out. Although now I have a couple new contacts for next summer when I’m feeling a little trigger happy. One of the guys had his own gun too and has a big wooded back yard.

Even though I am lacking in sleep and down $36 dollars, I am still glad that I went. I was starting to go a little nutty behind my computer screen and needed a little ventilation. Nothing like getting wacked with several rounds of paintballs to get one’s sense of reality back in check.

So the semester is winding down and final projects are piling up like a Porta-Potty reserve. The next project sliding down off that heap is a teaching unit incorporating media and technology. I am planning to make it practical and hope to use it during my student teaching, so I have decided on building it around the texts my cooperating teacher gave me. One of the classes I will teach will be 10th graders with a Nature/Science focus. I am excited about that because, Mmmmm, you put English and Nature together and you get Art and adventure. Well, I’ve chosen to use Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild . Have any of you read it? If you have I could use your help. As you may or may not know, it is the story of Kris McCandless, a college graduate who abandoned all the comforts of his well-to-do family and toured the American West ending up in Alaska on the Stampede Trail in Denali National Park. That is where he died. (Sidenote: in the book it almost seems he turns to God at the end, which is queer considering he is a devout atheist throughout the previous chapters of the book.)

Now, this unit is more of a focus on the the themes of wildness and nature in literature, so I am also planning on using the documentary on Shackleton’s expedition and even incorporating Hemingway’s “Big, Two-Hearted River.” What I would like is to add is some kind of supplementary technology or media based projects to inculde into this unit. For example, a guided web-site exploration on any of the above topics (for this I am lacking any real interesting sites from which to start). I have found some helpful site such as this and this and this, but not much else for my students to explore.

So, any ideas? Did I mention this is due on Saturday?

Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay