Yo ho ho and a bottle of JD

Florence, on her birthday evening, feels quite generous, bites the bullet and poses for Dan's Jack Daniels advertisement. Withholding your beauty from your camera-wielding younger brothers is never a way to go, children! Share the love!
(Also, don't be surprised when you turn out looking a little less romantic and stunning than you intended. Also, don't be surprised when the brother in question decides to superimpose red lipstick onto lips upon which there had previously been no red lipstick. Also, don't be surprised if you look like a Russian woman following the smell of her KGB lover.)
And here is an extra picture for you of Dan's fine arts: A Unicef-worthy picture of African hands reaching into a peanut butter bowl.

Robbie

The Gem of the Century: A man that we all know and love, looking quite spiffy, and--none can deny--quite Steve-like (enough to give you the heebeejeebees).

Praying like no manana

I thought, in the spirit of professional discipleship, and living on the principle of trusting the Lord for supplying every little thing that I need, I would try something interesting for my birthday. Something sort of the equivalent of asking my Boss for a raise--a birthday bonus. So my dear friends, if you wanted to give me a birthday present, you could shoot up a prayer (a general, all-encompassing prayer counts for something too!) for these things for me and it would be just as good as giving it. (BIG SMILE) The main reason why I will write this here is because I think everyone should do this too, because it's quite inspiring to write and think of how easy it would be for the Lord to supply one or two or ALL of the things on the list--and because I want to prove the Lord right here and now so that he will answer my (and your!) fervent prayers.

Things I Want to Ask Jesus for On My Birthday
(Which I Could Have Asked For Any Time, Really, But Only Got the Idea For On My Birthday)

• A new house with thick walls, a big genkan, big living room in a private corner of the house, big windows, big kitchen and diningroom, close to a train station on a main line.
• A fruit contact that gives us fruit every week (and not just bananas, but ALL sorts of things, especially mangos!!).
• Comfortable good-sample sandal-heels to wear on outreach (and elsewhere), since I've worn out the first pair the Lord supplied for me. (I've been wearing them since you gave them to me when you left the country. They have served me well!!) Answered!!! Thanks Marie!! I love them!!
  
• Money to travel and meet sheep and 12FS students.
• An outreach partner.
• A piano.
• A nice witnessing bag.
• Good quality make-up.
• Good shampoo and rinse and body soap for the whole home (and the HCS too.)
• Good pens (as much like "hi-tec" pens as possible!)
• Yummy coffee pick-up, enough for all the homes in the area. ANSWERED 2 days before my birthday!!
  
• Good lap-tops for Marie, Mars, Gene, Josh, and Nozo (who are ever so deserving)
• Modern-looking, nice furniture for living room and dining room
• Big TV and/or projector and cables
• A small camera to take pictures for testimonies and PR album
• Good work space in new house (lighting, nice chairs and desks, etc)
• Hard disk and flash disk ANSWERED!!! Thanks Mom and Dad!
  
• Total healing of my hands
• Yumi to be able to come every week from Tokyo for 12 FS, like she wants to.
• A classy, good sample watch, to replace this faithful sports-watch that I have been wearing every day for 2 whole years (and is looking quite...not so pretty).
• PDA
• A keitai (with no paperwork trouble like last time)
• Good songs from Heaven, and more opportunities to use them.
• Nice wonderful hard-working deoderant for everyone on the earth.
  
• To be able to do more COLs with Bayside.
• To have a successful Christmas outreach plan.
• Enough money to buy my friends presents on their birthdays.
• More time for exercise.
• For the Landlord to let us move with 2 month's notice.
• For a good speedy desktop to install hefty programs on.
  
• UPDATED: See Ryan and her kids once a week.
  

Ninja cat

This one's for Horii-sans all around the world. I recommend it even for non-cat-lovers (such as myself).


Ninja Cat

Jesus knows

There are no guarantees.
From the viewpoint of fear
None are strong enough.
From the viewpoint of love
None are necessary.

Lessons about patience

I ordered some goodies (guitar inclusive) from online about 5 days ago. To hear Dan's sweet rave reviews about the time that he ordered his headphones, "they deliver it the next day!!" But it has been a good many "next days" of wasting brain power hoping and hopping out of bed in the morning and hanging around the genkan hoping for a ring of the doorbell. What a glorious opportunity to learn myself some patience. And perhaps some Sagawa Express people might be learning themselves some HIP HIPPETY HOP TO IT-ness.
I am now listening to a remix of "We're Still Waiting" and I cannot help but realize that I am reminded over and over again of what it is that is causing me so much anguish at this moment. I imagine this song might be frustrating for people who are waiting for a long time for something. My apologies, please listen to it with discretion.

Not a "Ha Ha" post.

It's so awesome how we in the Family have the massive privilege to be able to live in a sheltered sort of environment where no one kicks us out on our asses when we fail a little, or when we don't make the kind of effort that we really ought to be making, or when we're kind of lazy and can't seem to do very much and don't seem to care. I call it a massive privilege, because it's wonderful that we're surrounded by such patient and merciful people that they haven't felt the need to shovel some of us on out with good reason, but it's not so wonderful that lots of us take advantage of this sort mercy and become a little stagnated pond of fronds in a head that gradually becomes lazier and lazier and doesn't want to get on top of anything.
We not only have the above privilege, but it's a miracle how little we actually require each other to work. For most of us, the concept of "initiative" is a little nebulous unless we're doing it solely as unto the Lord by faith, because of how much our initiative can still be undermined by the lack of initiative on the part of the rest of our home members.
I figure, as we go into the Offensive, there's a lot that we need to do to up our personal standard to make us the kind of people that professionals in the world can actually respect. We need to improve a lot to be the sort of group that professionals feel like they can still learn from, get help from, that they won't be pulling us along because of how slowly we move and how little we believe we are capable of. We need to be the kind of Family members that are actually succeeding more than we are "losing inspiration," because the Lord has promised that it's possible. When we can become that kind of Family, I believe many people who have left the Family in the past will see that we are going somewhere and presenting a constant challenge, and will want to come be a part of us again.
Wouldn't that be so awesome? That's the Family that's worth living and dying a part of. I'm just desperately hoping that I can cut the mustard and hold on to my horse with ya'll. Hi five!!

Glad backwards spells Dalg

Today I am in an eager mood. Better than eager though, I feel productive, which is not actually something that I feel often these days. It's been sort of difficult to manage to feel happy and inspired about the sort of things that I just NEED to do to stay on top of work (or...somewhere in the middle of it) recently, so to have an enthusiasm for the things above and beyond that is sort of rare for me. Right now, I have an actual desire, and the TIME, to do some of the things that I've been putting off for a long time. For example, laundry. Between traveling and getting sick and running out the door on follow up appointments and running up the stairs to the office for some emergency work times, there was a surprising amount of love that appeared in my room now and then in the form of laundry that was transformed from the pile that I had previously been familiar with (somewhat rumpled and in need of a good wash-wash) into a nice squeaky (what fun squeaky clothes would be!) clean pile in some central area of my room. As much as this makes me sound like a very neglectful person, I cannot prize my dignity above my unerring desire to thank this special angel of laundry-washing. Thanks, you!!
Now I have this fun fun sort of feeling deep in my belly. I think, number one, my room is empty of people for the next few days, with the exception of the person that is me. I also think that this happy feeling has been partially contributed to by the fact that it is quite cool today. It was so cool last night that when I went to bed I thought ahead (subtle rhyme, made less subtle by the fact that I've just pointed it out to you. HA! I am quite clever.) and brought another blanket, which gave me a NICE blanketty kind of sleep, something I have been wanting for a while. Also, this morning, since it was still chilly, I got to wear a hoodie for a FEW minutes, which made me glad.
Other small happinesses include:
I have knocked off about 15 PMA assignments in the last 4 days. Now, if you knew how far behind I was and how much strugglation I've been experiencing, you would ALSO be rejoicing.
A sweet girl that I met only in July just became a General Member, and this makes me GLAD as the moon is round.
I have not often had new clothes recently, and just got some! Yay! (Super boring sentence)
I am still as busy as ever, but feeling less so. It must be Jesus, perhaps I am over the hump and now going "Whoooppeee" down the hill, like the little train that did.
My Word times lately have been QUITE good, and this is something that I was struggling with because of how many Word times I've had to take on trains and at 12:00 at night and while waiting in the car, etc. Jesus makes me so happy.
And I am done and dusted and back to work. (I do this whole parenthesis thing too much.)

Halharious

Gimme a minute to sit down and type something up and you'll have your next blog post, mmkay? For now, this made me happy today.

The best post ever