Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Yellowstone
Yellowstone feels like heaven every time I go. The clouds from the waterfalls, glow and color of the hot springs And the plain old beauty.
My Dad
My dad is in Colorado Springs, Colorado coaching olympian cyclists at a training camp with
Andy Sparks. I'm heading up there Friday to see him then we're heading to Yellowstone
Andy Sparks. I'm heading up there Friday to see him then we're heading to Yellowstone
 |
| My Mom, Dad and me at Lower Falls in Yellowstone |
 |
| My Dad: Kent Menzel |
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| Old Faithful in Yellowstone |
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| Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone |
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| Morning Glory in Yellowstone |
Monday, July 7, 2014
Communion on the Moon: July 20, 1969
(This is an article by Eric Metaxas)
Forty-two years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface
of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.
"I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.
Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he
confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask)."
The background to the story is t hat Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas
during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented
in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to
help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the
following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every
person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate
the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio
communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read
a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:
"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.
I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon,
the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am
the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
you can do nothing.’
“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had
requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at
Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting
for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of
Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does...share it if you've
felt God's Love.
(This is an article by Eric Metaxas)
Forty-two years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface
of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.
"I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.
Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he
confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask)."
The background to the story is t hat Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas
during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented
in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to
help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the
following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every
person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate
the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio
communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read
a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:
"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.
I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon,
the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am
the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
you can do nothing.’
“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had
requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at
Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting
for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of
Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does...share it if you've
felt God's Love.
_____________________________________________________
Apollo
11 Commander Neil Armstrong working at an equipment storage area on the
lunar module. This is one of the few photos that show Armstrong during
the moonwalk.
Image Credit:
NASA
Smoke and flames signal the opening of a historic journey as the Saturn V clears the launch pad. .
Image Credit:
NASA
Buzz Aldrin climbs down the Eagle's ladder to the surface.
Image Credit:
NASA
Crater 308 stands out in sharp relief in this photo from lunar orbit. .
Image Credit:
NASA
Now, on the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history.
At 9:32 a.m. EDT, the engines fire and Apollo 11 clears the tower. About 12 minutes later, the crew is in Earth orbit.
After one and a half orbits, Apollo 11 gets a "go" for what mission controllers call "Translunar Injection" - in other words, it's time to head for the moon. Three days later the crew is in lunar orbit. A day after that, Armstrong and Aldrin climb into the lunar module Eagle and begin the descent, while Collins orbits in the command module Columbia.
Collins later writes that Eagle is "the weirdest looking contraption I have ever seen in the sky," but it will prove its worth.
When it comes time to set Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility, Armstrong improvises, manually piloting the ship past an area littered with boulders. During the final seconds of descent, Eagle's computer is sounding alarms.
It turns out to be a simple case of the computer trying to do too many things at once, but as Aldrin will later point out, "unfortunately it came up when we did not want to be trying to solve these particular problems."
When the lunar module lands at 4:18 p.m EDT, only 30 seconds of fuel remain. Armstrong radios "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Mission control erupts in celebration as the tension breaks, and a controller tells the crew "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again."
Armstrong will later confirm that landing was his biggest concern, saying "the unknowns were rampant," and "there were just a thousand things to worry about."
At 10:56 p.m. EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world. With more than half a billion people watching on television, he climbs down the ladder and proclaims: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Aldrin joins him shortly, and offers a simple but powerful description of the lunar surface: "magnificent desolation." They explore the surface for two and a half hours, collecting samples and taking photographs.
They leave behind an American flag, a patch honoring the fallen Apollo 1 crew, and a on one of Eagle's legs. It reads, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Armstrong and Aldrin blast off and dock with Collins in Columbia. Collins later says that "for the first time," he "really felt that we were going to carry this thing off."
The crew splashes down off Hawaii on July 24. Kennedy's challenge has been met. Men from Earth have walked on the moon and returned safely home.
In an interview years later, Armstrong praises the "hundreds of thousands" of people behind the project. "Every guy that's setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or woman, 'If anything goes wrong here, it's not going to be my fault.'"
In a post-flight press conference, Armstrong calls the flight "a beginning of a new age," while Collins talks about future journeys to Mars.
Over the next three and a half years, 10 astronauts will follow in their footsteps. Gene Cernan, commander of the last Apollo mission leaves the lunar surface with these words: "We leave as we came and, god willing, as we shall return, with peace, and hope for all mankind."
The bootprints of Apollo are waiting for company.
_____________________________________________________
Not many people get a picture of
this proud bird
snuggled up next to them!
snuggled up next to them!
Freedom and
JeffFreedom and I have been together
11 years this summer.
She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings.
Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery,
it was broken in 4 places.
She's my baby.
When Freedom came in she could not stand
and both wings were broken. She was
emaciated and covered in lice. We made the
decision to give her a chance at life, so I took
her to the vet's office. From then
on, I was always around her. We had her in a
huge dog carrier with the top off, and it
was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to
lay in. I used to sit and talk to her,
urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay
there looking at me with those big brown eyes.
We also had to tube feed her for weeks.
This went on for 4-6 weeks, and by then she still
couldn't stand. It got to the point where the
decision was made to euthanize her
if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't
want to cross that line between torture and
rehab, and it looked like death was
winning. She was going to be put
down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in
on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go
to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't
bear the thought of her being euthanized;
but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone
was grinning from ear to ear. I went
immediately back to her cage; and there she was,
standing on her own, a big beautiful
eagle. She was ready to live. I was
just about in tears by then. That
was a very good day.
We knew she could never fly, so the director
asked me to glove train her.
I got her used to the glove,
and then to jesses, and we started
doing education programs for schools
in western Washington .
We wound up in the newspapers,
radio (believe it or not) and some
TV. Miracle Pets even did a show
about us.
In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I had stage 3,
which is not good (one major organ plus
everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of
chemo. Lost the hair - the whole
bit. I missed a lot of work. When I
felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey
and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would
also come to me in my dreams and help me fight
the cancer. This happened time and time again.
Fast forward to November 2000
the day after Thanksgiving,
I went in for my last checkup.
I was told that if the cancer was not
all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last
option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they
did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for
the results. I went in Monday, and I was
told that all the cancer was gone.
So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and
take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty
and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her
up, and we went out front to the top of the
hill. I hadn't said a word to
Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me
and wrapped both
her wings around me to where I
could feel them pressing in on my back
(I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she
touched my nose with her beak and stared into my
eyes, and we just stood there like that
for I don't know how long . That was a
magic moment. We have been soul mates ever
since she came in. This is a very special bird.
On a side note: I have had people who
were sick come up to us when we are out, and
Freedom has some kind of hold on
them. I once had a guy who was
terminal come up to us and
I let him hold her.
His knees just about buckled and he
swore he could feel her power course through his
body. I have so many stories like that..
I never forget the honor I have of being so close
to such a magnificent spirit as
Freedom.Hope you enjoyed this!
She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings.
Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery,
it was broken in 4 places.
She's my baby.
When Freedom came in she could not stand
and both wings were broken. She was
emaciated and covered in lice. We made the
decision to give her a chance at life, so I took
her to the vet's office. From then
on, I was always around her. We had her in a
huge dog carrier with the top off, and it
was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to
lay in. I used to sit and talk to her,
urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay
there looking at me with those big brown eyes.
We also had to tube feed her for weeks.
This went on for 4-6 weeks, and by then she still
couldn't stand. It got to the point where the
decision was made to euthanize her
if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't
want to cross that line between torture and
rehab, and it looked like death was
winning. She was going to be put
down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in
on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go
to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't
bear the thought of her being euthanized;
but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone
was grinning from ear to ear. I went
immediately back to her cage; and there she was,
standing on her own, a big beautiful
eagle. She was ready to live. I was
just about in tears by then. That
was a very good day.
We knew she could never fly, so the director
asked me to glove train her.
I got her used to the glove,
and then to jesses, and we started
doing education programs for schools
in western Washington .
We wound up in the newspapers,
radio (believe it or not) and some
TV. Miracle Pets even did a show
about us.
In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I had stage 3,
which is not good (one major organ plus
everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of
chemo. Lost the hair - the whole
bit. I missed a lot of work. When I
felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey
and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would
also come to me in my dreams and help me fight
the cancer. This happened time and time again.
Fast forward to November 2000
the day after Thanksgiving,
I went in for my last checkup.
I was told that if the cancer was not
all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last
option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they
did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for
the results. I went in Monday, and I was
told that all the cancer was gone.
So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and
take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty
and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her
up, and we went out front to the top of the
hill. I hadn't said a word to
Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me
and wrapped both
her wings around me to where I
could feel them pressing in on my back
(I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she
touched my nose with her beak and stared into my
eyes, and we just stood there like that
for I don't know how long . That was a
magic moment. We have been soul mates ever
since she came in. This is a very special bird.
On a side note: I have had people who
were sick come up to us when we are out, and
Freedom has some kind of hold on
them. I once had a guy who was
terminal come up to us and
I let him hold her.
His knees just about buckled and he
swore he could feel her power course through his
body. I have so many stories like that..
I never forget the honor I have of being so close
to such a magnificent spirit as
Freedom.Hope you enjoyed this!
But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint.Isaiah 40:3
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint.Isaiah 40:3
You can go along for years in remission
and then one day it pops its head up again.
If you ever have it you will never be free of it.
Pray for the day there will be a permanent cure.
A SMALL REQUEST...
Dear God, I pray that You will guide someone to find a cure for cancer in 2012.
In Jesus Name, Amen
All you are asked to do is keep this circulating.
Even if it's only to one more person.
In memory of anyone you know who has been
struck down by cancer or is still living with it
_____________________________________________________________________
Looking at Colton Burpo today you would never know that he almost died as a four year old in 2003. His father, Todd, wrote about the near death experience in the book, Heaven is for Real.
"He started throwing up in the toilet," remembers Todd. "At first we thought he had the stomach flu because the Doctor said it was going around."
Colton's condition only got worse as the days passed. His doctor discovered his appendix had burst and infection was spreading in his body. Time was running out.
"We knew we were in bad shape when the nurse said, 'You need to come out to the hallway.'" recalls Todd. "They separated us from everyone else and someone came and started talking to us. 'We need to have surgery on your son.'"
Colton's mom Sonja remembers, "it was tough, seeing your boy lifeless, when he was a very vibrant child."
"It was at that moment we were looking at each other and I remember my wife holding Colton in that hallway. It was just us and Colton wasn't even moving." says Todd. "We went to the surgery prep area. I remember them taking him away and him just yelling at me, 'Daddy, don't let them take me. Daddy, don't let them take me.'"
"Then I went back to the pre-op room and I was finally alone," remembers Todd. "And I just broke down. I was mad at God. I was just frustrated, fed up. And I remember telling him, 'God, after all I've done for you, and now you're gonna take my kid? Is this how you treat your pastors?'"
"I was calling our prayer chain," remembers Sonja. "I was calling anyone on the other line to get Colton on the prayer chain because it was bad."
"We were in the waiting room maybe an hour and a half total," says Todd. "And then I remember the nurse coming out,'Is Colton's daddy out here?' I'm said, 'Yes.' And the nurse said, 'Well, Colton is in recovery and he is screaming for you.'"
“And I’m sitting there with him,” says Todd. “And I remember my son in that room tlooking up at me and he says ‘Dad, do you know I almost died?’ And my first thought was that maybe he overheard the nurse say that. Or maybe they thought he was under anesthesia and he wasn’t. It wasn’t until four months after we got out of the hospital that we finally listened to our son.”
“And that’s where I got to see heaven,” said Colton. “Jesus and some angels came and flew me up to heaven.”
Todd asked Colton, “What did Jesus look like?
Colton remembered, “I knew that the first person I saw was Jesus. He was wearing white robes with a purple sash and He just came down nicely and gracefully.”
Colton continued to talk about Jesus having "markers," so eventually Todd had to ask what he meant by "markers?"
"He drops his toys down, stands up and just points," says Todd. "'Dad, they are right here.' And he takes his fingers and points to the palms then he bends down and touches the tops of his feet, and looks up at me. 'That’s where Jesus’s markers were Dad.'"
"I was in the throne room of God to start with," says Colton. "So I got to see what that looked like. I was upset because I didn’t know what was happening. What God did was He used people or things that I liked to calm me down. From then on I felt better."
"One day we were traveling," remembers Todd. "And Colton looked up at me and said, 'Dad, you used to have a grandpa named pop, didn’t you?' And I said, 'yeah.' 'He's really nice.' So I said, 'Really?' 'Yeah, you used to play with him as a kid and fix… work with him on the farm and shoot stuff with him.' And I said, 'well yes, how do you know that?' 'Well, he told me.'”
Today, Colton is a healthy eleven year old and he shares his heavenly journey with boldness.
"I learned that heaven is for real and you're going to like it," says Colton.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
communion on the moon
Communion on the Moon: July 20, 1969
(This is an article by Eric Metaxas) phineasandferbinthebackyard.webs.com
Forty-two years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface
of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.
"I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.
Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he
confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask)."
The background to the story is t hat Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas
during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented
in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to
help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the
following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every
person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate
the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio
communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read
a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:
"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.
I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon,
the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am
the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
you can do nothing.’
“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had
requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at
Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting
for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of
Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does...share it if you've
felt God's Love
(This is an article by Eric Metaxas) phineasandferbinthebackyard.webs.com
Forty-two years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface
of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the
Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it.
"I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon.
Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he
confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask)."
The background to the story is t hat Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas
during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented
in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to
help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine.
And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the
following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every
person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate
the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio
communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read
a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:
"In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.
I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon,
the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am
the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
you can do nothing.’
“I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had
requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at
Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. “I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the
intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting
for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of
Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does...share it if you've
felt God's Love
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