believer's baptism

Today at church, along with Gabriel and Clare, I was baptized. This was significant for me to do in front of brothers and sisters with whom I have shared the last two years here in Argentina. I was baptized as an infant, but it wasn't something I remembered or understood the signfigance of at the time. Hence, today was my "believer's baptism". Somewhat delayed, by 9 years or so, but it was done as a profession of my adherence to Christ. A reaffirmation that the purpose of my life is to live His example for His purpose. On top of that, Rick prayed for me (the Southern Baptist missionary I meet with weekly for discipleship), and Craig performed the baptism, which was something that was extra cool for me. Here are some pictures:

Fall in BA this year

not as many reds in the trees so far. much more yellow this year. very beautiful:

we can live with a lot less than we think

I think the word "need" has gotten out of it's proper use box and multiplied like streptococcus bacteria. Exponentially so. With the same effect as strep throat on our lives. We "need" a new ipod. We "need" a new cell phone. We "need" a well-paying job straight out of college. We "need" to start saving for retirement as soon as possible. A Roth IRA is the way to go.

None of these things are inherently bad in themselves, but they are bad when the become a priority in front of the Holy and Mighty Living God. I am know myself as more guilty than anyone when it comes to these things and this mentality. So many of my prior and even current motivations are based on a misconstrued notion that I need this or that. They consume my thoughts and time, which is time spent where I could be praying, serving someone else, or singing to the Lord as an offering of worship to Him.

One thing the Lord has taught me from my time in Argentina, which I knew intellectually before, but have had more actual "on the ground" living experience to back it up, is that I don't need that much to live a life that is richly joyful in Christ. Less things, more of Christ. Financially, I'm not raking them in here. I make 1600 pesos a month, or 503 dollars, and my expenses are in pesos. That would be equivalent to earning 1600 dollars a month, or 19,200 a year if I were working in the US (considering expenses are roughly equivalent here in pesos, the 3 to 1 exchange makes buying plane tickets a challenge). That would be on the low end of things in the US. I'm confident I'd thrive just as well as here. With all that said, I'll say again that my life has been very rich here. It's not coincidence that there's not a big salary in the picture. Once again, not a bad thing if it is there. I think the Lord encourages one to be a good financial steward of the resources that are entrusted to him, but at the end of the day, all of it is His and for His Kingdom. It could be summed up in these three steps: 1. Work as hard as you can. 2. Make as much as you can. 3. Give as much as you can away.

It made me think. When we budget, for those of us who do budget, we normally do it like this: we start with our income, then figure out how much to tithe, how much rent/car/gas/savings/food will cost us a month, and then detail our budget accordingly. What if we turned that around?

What if we started with how much we can live with per month with a somewhat minimalist mentality? I'm not advocating not paying for health insurance and eating Raman noodles every meal. Go out to eat once or twice a week. Budget in a movie or movie rental per week. I believe God also created those things for our enjoyment. If we are sure to accurately budget our expenses first and not plan in opulent and excessive living, but a style of living that is more focused on living out a faith-filled life rather than making the almighty dollar...then how much would we be left with per month to give to worthwhile earthly Kingdom building projects? I think we'd be surprised, and I'm fairly certain that it would pass the "10%" figure that most people have in their minds.

Where is our treasure truly found? Remember, our actions speak much louder than words. What do we really spend our time doing?

Taking air for granted

Yesterday and today are much better from the thick smoke that's been covering the city this past week. I am really thankful for clean air. I no longer have a constant headache, watering eyes, runny nose, and a chest that feels like it's 200 pounds.

To celebrate normal air, I went running last night and just tried to breathe as deep as possible multiple times. The people I ran past probably understood all the noise I was making sucking in large amounts of air not contaminated with smoke.

It felt so glorious to run last night. And with normal air that buried in deep into my lungs. My appreciation for the EPA is much greater after this.

really smoky in BA

So I don't write this complaining, just sharing what's going on here in BA. It's ridiculously smoky. Visibility is limited to less than 1/2 a city block. Your eyes constantly water, your nose and throat burns, and there is an ongoing headache from smoke inhalation. But you can't get away from it. It's all over BA. The smoke creeps into houses, it's in our school, when you blow your nose you taste smoke in your nostrils. I don't think this can be healthy for anyone, even regular smokers who might be more accustomed to smoke.

Some farmers wanted to clear some more land, and the fires got out of control and are still raging out of control. The wind isn't blowing it away, but rather helping the smoke cover the city. There have been more deaths than normal on the provinces highways and freeways due to reduced visibility. This is on the heels of the recent farmer's strike, which won't help either side in their push and shove grudge match. The government is pointing fingers and calling all farmers in Argentina greedy extortionists. It doesn't seem to be a resolving, uniting type of talk/negotiation style. I think things are going to get worse from here. Hopefully not though.

read the news article

why is "organic" more expensive?

Why, really, is organic food more expensive? It seems that high processed food, with added chemicals, processes to put those chemicals into food, would be a costlier process than not doing all that stuff and letting food grow at a normal speed on its own. I don't know the technical rules for "organic" crop raising as set out by the USDA, but I would imagine that technological uses such as machines and even some herbicides and pesticides are allowed, as long as they comply. And so the process out in the field of raising the food seems more or less the same costs. As well as the transportation costs of getting it to the store. 1 pound of organic tomatoes seems like it would be the same cost to ship as 1 pound of not-organic tomatoes. But maybe not. I know nothing about farming and admit that. So more or less, to me it makes logical sense, in our technologically advanced day and age, that the inputs to produce organic food and conventional food are much the same.

Most likely, quantity supplied is not meeting demand for organic food as well as it is for conventional food, and so prices are higher. But is demand for organic foods that much greater than the amount supplied? Part of it, I'm thinking that organic food is conventionally more expensive because of food companies' marketing departments who have really helped to raise the level of demand. They've added enough hype and scientific studies or word of mouth buzz to merit a raise in price. Organic crop acreage has been rising substantially over the past 7 years, and so maybe supply will catch up to the demand for organic foods, and organic foods will come down in price. But maybe not. If more people continue to desire organic food, and there aren't leaps in supply, then the general higher prices for organic food will stick around.

Has anyone ever noticed that the produce at local farmers' markets tends to be cheaper than even mass cultivated "conventional" food sold in the supermarket? And has anybody thought this is all backwards? We call food that is special "organic" because it is cultivated more according to how nature intended it to be. And people pay a higher price for something that is more natural. Huh?

either way, that´s old!

101 or 94, that´s still old to run a marathon:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7346616.stm

and is he smoking in that picture?

Psalm 33

Let this be a prayer for the nation of Argentina...

Psalm 33

direct correlation

It's not some difficult formula or hard chemistry inverse equation to understand. I've noticed that the more time I spend in the Word, there is greater joy in my life, I feel closer to God and have a better sense that I'm living (or not living) as He would have me live, and that problems or difficulties that come up in life are handled in a less anxious manner and with a better perspective. Not that I am holy myself per say, but that I am closer to holiness, which I guess makes me more holy by nature of my close proximity to it, if that makes sense? Here is an off-shoot mathematical representation for you, because I'm a dork:

Joy = Scripture(t), where t = time spent

more time spent in Scripture, greater the joy, more holy living; less time spent in Scripture, less joy, less holy the living

It makes total sense. When we get a new cell phone or new electronic device, we take it straight out of the box, and we skip over the instruction manual. In doing so, we miss learning about fundamental operational features of the device, or we might skip over learning how to use extra features/added gizmos of the phone. Try it. Start navigating through various menus of your phone. You'll get to some feature you never knew was there.

We do that all too often in our lives too with God's Word. It's the best guide we have going for us. Better than any book by any pastor or any book that might come off of Oprah's book club list. The Bible is true. It's complete. It's full, and it's very rich. I hope you, dear reader, have already realized this a long time ago.

weddathon 2008

So it appears 2008 is the year of weddings. I have scheduled, as of now, assuming no more engagements, six weddings to attend this year. None of them are mine, sorry mom. This is both in Argentina and the US, so it can't be that something is in the water one place or another.

It's probably global warming.

Weddings are great things. They are great celebrations of life and joyous occasions. I'm looking forward to all of them. They serve as mini-reunions as well, which will be nice having been out of the loop for two years or so. I'm mostly oblivious to people's lives and what's happening in them back in the US, but that's a part of being 5000 miles away. I'm really looking forward to getting back and knowing friends on a more regular basis.

next...

This doesn't have anything to do with the point of this post, but I played 5 hours of soccer yesterday. It was a national holiday to commemorate the Falklands War. I went to a "pik-nik" with the Spanish church youth group. 5 hours of soccer was awesome.

Anyways, I made my decision for grad school. I'll be in Nashville for the next two years getting a M.Ed at Vanderbilt. I'm excited, but nervously apprehensive about it. Part of that is going back to the good ole USA, which I'm also excited about, but it'll be a significant change.