Smug

Yes, I can see why people are wondering why Miriam is so smug over there pretending to be better than us. I don't know why. I don't see any reason for her to cop such an attitude really. I mean ice cream vendors have their opinions, too. I don't know much about it.

I don't think her husband could possibly be that guy that Margot set me up with that time on a blind date. There is no way that those could be the same people, not that I would recognize those guys if I ever saw them again. It was a dark night. I don't remember much, just driving around town.

Lance

Yes, it goes all the way back to ninth grade in Miss Fran Marken's honors English class when Lance Starin gave his report on Greek mythology. He talked about the various trysts of the Greek gods and godesses, Jupiter and all those guys, and hypothesized that these mythological tales were the precursors to the story of Jesus and his birth of the Virgin Mary. Lance went on to hypothesize that the truth was probably something like Mary had gotten in trouble, been raped or also just been fooling around with her boyfriend, and the parents, in order to cover up the truth, had concocted some farce about her being a virgin when the "angel" appeared to her, rip snort, chuckle chuckle. So that is the type of anti-Christian garbage being thrown around by that particular clique of American losers at high school. It was very shocking to me to hear him say that. I cannot be associated with that. Obviously Lance is a complete pagan and not someone to talk to even if he was sort of way cool and plays guitar, at least in my opinion. After all, if you cannot believe in the Virgin birth then Christianity doesn't mean very much, now does it? If Jesus was just another guy, just another teacher on the high school staff, then Christianity is only one of several competing philosophies all flowing around the ying and yang of things, the endless struggle between darkness and light. So why don't you just move to Babylon and become a Zoroastrian? Lots of pagans are good people, too. But it is not about whether we are good or not. It is about Jesus and who he said he was. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me."

High School

Yes, I remember after high school talking about how I regretted not being able to witness to my classmates. They are so lost in sin and yet much too proud to ever admit they don't know much of anything, or at least nothing useful. Their heads are filled with silly garbage and they do not have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ the Savior. They know nothing at all about me and my family. Most of the time they are just guessing. But do you think that I would be able witness to them or tell them anything at all? No, it is impossible. They despise me and treat me like garbage most of the time. It is very dangerous to talk about anything personal with these people. It is just not possible.

Dead Men Walking

Someone said that my great-grandfather when he was a missionary in China once prayed over a dead man who came back to life. My great-grandfather was a very early Pentecostal missionary who was not highly educated in terms of theology being that he was a butcher by trade, but he had received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit at Azusa Street and had felt called to ministry. In those days early Pentecostals were much disdained and maligned by the intelligentsia as lowly boors and ignoramuses. These negative stereotypes of Pentecostals are very common even if unfair and prejudiced, not that I know very much about this. Interesting how even today people can be so scrupulous about being fair to Indians and Latins and yet show such contempt for Pentecostals who believe in signs and wonders, as if there were something unbearably naive about believing in the Virgin Birth. If God can do anything, then why doesn't he? We just don't know. God says to us, "My thoughts are not your thoughts." Thus we have these Southern Baptists sneering and looking down their noses at us for believing in miracles. And yet God often does honor the faith of those who sincerely pray in faith believing. Still, these prejudices against us make us want to avoid the word "Pentecostal" like the plague because, well, lots of people don't seem to know what it really means and, well, sometimes the word gets attached to things that don't really represent what we actually believe or should believe. But even for all the "mistakes," perhaps, of those early years, although I don't know a lot about this, the Pentecostals did have a profound impact on religion in America and all over the world. All the Greek and Latin skills and knowledge of centuries could not provide the power that came down from heaven. Not that there is anything wrong with education necessarily. Education is good. Education has its place but it doesn't make up for a lack of anointing.

Japan

I have no connection to Japan. I was not made in Japan for sure. When I think of Japan I think mainly of the fact that one of our classmates was Japanese, Yasushi Takeda. Does he still work at the White House press corp in Washington D.C.? I have no idea. I never even talked to him in high school. He was just there in class of course except for those times that he went back to Japan and then came back. I don't know anything about Japan. I just see the pictures on TV like everybody else.

Prayer

Yes, if we were all such spiritual missionary families why didn't we all just stand around and pray for Aubrey Lampp to be brought back from the dead? I don't know. Anything is possible with the prayer of faith believing. But for some reason I do not remember whether anyone stopped to pray for Aubrey. It was all just a matter of CPR or mouth-to-mouth resucitation as far as I can recall. But sometimes people have been raised from the dead by prayer. Just think of Lazarus in the New Testament and also that boy and his mother. Other missionaries of the past have prayed for the dead to rise as a sign to unbelievers. Sure, it could have happened that way but didn't. Perhaps the super-spiritual missionaries of Panama could have done better. They would have just prayed and all would have been made right because they are so ministry oriented. But we perhaps cannot hold a candle to that. Anyway, it wasn't supposed to happen that way. The Lampps were supposed to outshine us but they didn't have a chance to do very much. Still, the Florida district is in charge of the roasting of us and so who can fight with that? Not I.

Dog training

Yes, there is a certain philosophy which speaks of putting your dog's nose in it accompanied by a little swat so as to train them not to do it in the house. But there is a limit to the effectiveness of such behavioral manipulation. There is always a danger that some dogs might not get it. Other dogs will feel so utterly humiliated that they will start acting abused and skulk around. Fortunately for me I don't have a dog to train so it is not my problem. However, I definitely can say that if I had a daughter there would be some things I would not do the way my mother did. I would not have a maid and so my children would have to do all their own chores and learn responsibility a lot younger than I did. I wish my parents had been stricter about certain things but they weren't so I can't go back and do that over again. My mother is not really such a perfect mother as you might imagine but having a maid really makes it a lot more complicated than you might imagine. I wouldn't want to do that to my children. Having a maid is not really a good thing and while it was considered necessary down there it is not required up here. I am the person in charge of my life now. So maybe the maid deserved a pay raise but at the time it was not my decision to make. Now that it is I would rather keep the money thank you very much.