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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Camping... |
 I have come to understand this about myself, I don't really like camping.
Many of my friends look back to their childhood with fond memories of family camping experiences. My father wasn't the sort to take us all camping, there were five kids each a year apart in age - I guess it was too much of a hassle or something, but I don't really have any memories of camping as a child. Later, as a young adult, I did go camping, but as I was not walking with the Lord at the time, the camping was just the excuse we used to become intoxicated and party, party, party. We could have been under a bridge for all we knew - we weren't camping, we were just getting drunk together outdoors.
So it is that I have no real camping experiences to draw upon to compare this weekend to, but I will say this - whatever camping "is" - apparently it involves offering up your body as a living meal to the insect life of a far away forest. You see, we don't really have black flies in Winnipeg, and so when the kids suddenly began bleeding in several places from their heads, it was quite a puzzle. My mother-in-law at first didn't know what it was - the dried blood had turned black and became granular as she tried to examine it. She thought it might be some sort of louse or something, and wanted to take the first child that showed the symptoms into the nearest town, to the hospital. Then the others began to show the same mysterious "symptoms" - bleeding from small, surface wounds on their scalps and the backs of their necks. I thought it might be deer flies or some sort of insect, as in my limited "outdoorsy" experience (I used to work in the bush cutting cords of lumber on a land clearing project) many insects are attracted to the hairy places - and the common thread running through these outbreaks was that they were all around the hairline. So I suggested that before they took the kids to a hospital, perhaps they should talk to a park authority and see if this wasn't some kind of local bug.
Turns out it was just the humble black fly. Like a miniature housefly, but a little blood sucker whose bite often goes unnoticed, but bleeds freely. To be sure, the mosquitoes were more of a problem than the black flies - constantly biting me around my ankles. I have been scratching like a mad man for the last couple of days.
My point however is that camping is not the relaxing, family thing I thought it might be. My wife, who works in our home as not only the best housewife in the world, but also as a homeschooler and attentive mother of four, looks forward to these "family" times because she gets to be away from "work" - which means that, for one weekend at least, the kids are everyone else's responsibility. Well, not entirely, but you know what I mean right? Daddy, in order to be a good and caring husband, must use this opportunity to love as Christ loved - that is, using the opportunity to provide a much needed rest for his bride. I failed more than I succeeded, to be sure - but the stress was pretty high, let me tell you - bleeding kids everywhere, snack food meals, and everyone trying to be outdoorsy, not to mention the driving rain... Did I mention the rain?
One of the main reasons I don't like camping is because it involves sleeping on the hard, cold, earth, and almost always during the rainy season in a leaky tent. Now, to be sure, our in-laws provided a wonderful 25 $USD seven man tent for us to sleep in, I am not kidding - this was by far the best seven man tent on the market in that price range, and frankly, I would have bought a few had I seen them in the store for that price. The first night, or the "non-raining" night, as I have come to call it in my discussions on the matter, the tent was quite a wonder - it kept most of the bugs out, and none of the frost. My wife was sleeping in the heated trailer with her parents, and I was out there shivering to death with three of my children. We started in separate areas, but as the cold continued to chill us, we began to huddle together for warmth - but these little bodies were not giving me much heat - in fact, they were like little heat vacuums, sucking up my heat in order to stay alive. I gladly gave myself over to this process, well, maybe more begrudgingly than gladly, but afterwards, when the body count was zero, I was quite pleased with my sacrifice.
I digress.
The sleeping was not really restful - more like a few hundred cat naps tied together and separated by frightful moments of either right-next-to-your-ear thunder, or a cacophony of right-outside-your-tent avian choruses, which to be fair, were only cacaphonous because of their volume, proximity, and because of the hour - given any other situation the harmony in such a multitude of birds would have been profoundly beautiful.
Oh - the nigh-all junkfood diet? I put on at least a half a pound.
Anyway - I am back now, but busy, busy, busy. A couple of days off and I must catch up for a week! I have zillions of emails to reply to, and several projects that need my attention - not to mention our business meeting this evening, which I must somehow prepare for.
See you in the funny pages.Labels: camping, laughs |
posted by Daniel @
9:24 AM
 
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| 4 Comments: |
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Your TIWIARN (or maybe TIWIW?) posts are always good...glad to hear the critters didn't get your critters...
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I'm going camping on the 13-15th of July Dan and we'll have to compare accounts afterwards of what the experience is like. I have never really gone camping before myself, not becasue I do not enjoy being outdoors away from civilization but becasue my family had a cabin growing up. I am therefore looking quite forward to this camping trip (and the fact that 30 of my friends are going on the same one; we rented a group cite), as it will be an experience in the outdoors different from what I grew up used to.
I must ask about the cold. Surely you did not have a good sleeping bag. A good bag should have no issue keeping you warm in the type of weather we have around here, even a bad one should have performed well enough.
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Bryan - I did not have a good bag, at least for about two-thirds of the first night.
My in-laws were there first, and set up camp, but we arrived around 9:30 p.m., the tent was set up, and kids were already in it. I hastily set up our sleeping area, figuring a comforter we had at home should have been good enough... it wasn't. My son and I were shivering well into the night, and eventually the two girls came over too. But we were all shivery until I forced them to go back to where they were sleeping, find their sleeping bags, and drag them over to us. Then it became warm.
Had I known that my blanket would be so useless, I probably could have had a much better first night.
Camping with 30 of your good friends is an experience that happens far less often after you get out of school. Enjoy it while you can.
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Daniel, this is too funny and I can totally relate to your experience.
There is a sort of manly bravado required to camp in the great outdoors while laughing off the hordes of insects and lack of creature comforts.
I am sure that your children nevertheless had a great time and will look back with fond memories.
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Your TIWIARN (or maybe TIWIW?) posts are always good...glad to hear the critters didn't get your critters...