Sunflower Seeds
November 24th, 2007Despite being disallowed, children try to sneak food onto the van when they are picked up for Tuesday Bible study. The policy, that children are not allowed to bring snacks onto vehicles, come in part from people who have to clean the vans. The cleaners will often find chips, candy wrappers, soda bottles, etc on a vehicle following a Bible study. They will sneak them in their pockets and devour them when their van drivers are not watching.
One food in particular which is easy to snuggle on, but leaves an obvious residue trail is sunflower seed. The pack of seeds are concealed in their pockets until after they are driving. The child then pulls out the seeds and begins popping the seeds in his mouth and pitching the shell to the floor. It is frustrating to see seeds on the carpet, on the seat, and on the rear bumper (pitched out the rear window).
Recently, I began thinking about the journey and boomerang effect of the sunflower seed. If you study its history you will see that the Mennonites seem to have made it popular in North America. The Mennonites from Russia (which is where I came from) brought sunflower seeds along with them when they moved to Manitoba, Canada. They went on to setup the first sunflower seed extraction plant in America. (www.mbconf.ca/historian/03-06/feature-1.en.html)
I believe the “Mennonite” sunflower seeds have come back to haunt this Mennonite.
Zoomify Test
November 15th, 2007I posted this picture as a test. It uses Zoomify for high resolutions high but keeps the load time down. I may use this function more.
Tell me what you think.
This is a picture of Jethro and I when we went flying with his para plane.
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Lessons on Conflict
November 14th, 2007Last night we had the weekly children/youth Bible study. It was a circus. This is not a circus that you enjoy, but rather one that has your mind spinning. Most of the classes are doing a series on how to avoid conflict. It seems as if we are not doing any good. We had conflicts before class, during class, and after class. Right in the middle of talking about how to avoid conflict, we had conflict. I tried to use it as an object lesson for how they should have responded. If that wasn’t enough, right after class I had to break up a fight a couple of my youth boys got into out on the street. Though it was a stressful evening and at times I was about pulling out my hair, I still loved it.

