We are pleased to welcome Jonathan Ian Carlson to the family.
He was born 21:31 10 April 2010 at St Joseph’s hospital in Tacoma, Washington.
He weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and measured 20 in.

May he grow up to love Jesus as his Savior with all of his heart and live for him! He is a handsome little boy, with great sleeping ability and great lungs. We snuck his cousins past the nurses to get in to see him yesterday. He’s a cutie. And Mom is doing real well, and Dad even better. Sophie is a proud little sister. Uncle Tim’s only disappointment was dropping the camera down the well 6 days previous. But we’ll put up Josh’s (Dad’s) photo of the fam (minus little Sophie) here:

You can get our latest prayer letter here.

Thanks for reading and praying!

…or maybe just a good excuse to buy a new camera…

Tonight we were out at the farm looking at the new calves, jumping into hay and going to Pop-pop’s cabin. We also went our to a well-type thing out in the field where we’d seen a bunch of snakes earlier and where Drew and Pop-pop had planted a tree last summer. We were going to check on the tree and take a photo of Drew with his tree (a growth chart for both of them). And of course Drew wanted a snake and I was happy to oblige…I leaned down and moved one of the flat rocks covering the mouth of the well and sure enough, there were a couple under it, no match for my quick hands. I got one and stood up, just in time to feel the (unzipped) camera bag flip over at my waist, the camera fall out, and, kerplop!…into the well. STINK!

Long story short…the well is only about four feet deep, so we got a pole from the barn and fished it out. It was fairly clean water, but of course on the bottom there was sediment. We came home, dried it out with a hair drier and are running a fan on it. And of course I googled “I dropped my camera in water” (lots of auto suggestions for that one). The one thing maybe we could do that I haven’t is to put it into a tub of distilled water and shake it around for a while, then dry it out good for a week. But I think probably this is the end of our Lumix. I suspect the SDHC card will be fine, but the camera, if not a total loss, at best will probably not work well going forward. Oh well.

You can check out our photos from before the disaster here.

Well, we made it here just fine. We had a pretty good trip out, thanks to Delta and Midwest Air. The kids enjoyed the flights. It really was the first for Gavin & Fiona, at least for all practical purposes. And it was great flying with kids who can walk (no stroller) and use the bathroom (no diaper changes) and entertain themselves (mostly) and enjoy the flying.

It’s amazing, though, how 5-6 hours in the air (about the same flying time as to Puebla) translates to a 13 hour day, door-to-door. That’s a bit tiring. And the Detroit airport was pretty dirty (the futuristic red shuttle train was cool, though–we rode it several times just for the entertainment value). And we sat all the way in the back on our first leg, which was fine except that everybody in the plane used the bathroom like two times each, so there was this constant line in the aisle by our seats. Once upon a time, didn’t regular people get to go up front to the bathroom as well as the back ones? Now apparently the 12 first-class passengers share two bathrooms while the 200 others use two in back. And what’s up with the policy of loading planes front to back and children last?

Oh, well, those are minor complaints in what was a pretty good day (and lots worse could have gone wrong). So we’re thankful to be here in warm, sunny PA, “new home to spring-breakers”, where the initial indications are that we’ll have warmer, sunnier weather in April that we did last July…

And now I’ve got to go eat the Krispy Kremes Dad K so thoughtfully brought this AM.

Last week at Awana the kids in Drew’s class were assigned to read Judges 11:34-40 and answer a question (Did Jephthah do to his daughter what he vowed to do? i.e. did he sacrifice her?). We, his parents, didn’t hear about this, but last weekend at Opa’s (Grandpa’s) house he asked Opa to read him the story and talked about it. Well, ask a seminary professor a Bible question and you’re liable to get a seminary answer! Opa, who is astute and thoughtful beyond measure, gave Drew his take on the matter (which happens to be my take as well): God did not allow human sacrifice–in fact he explicitly forbade it of Israel (Leviticus 20:1-5, for example), the passage is somewhat ambiguous–Jephthah “did to her as he had vowed”, not: “sacrificed her”, Jephthah is honored for his faith in Hebrews 11:32 (would a human sacrificer have been so named?). This is a minority view, and the decision could go either way. And Drew, being fairly astute himself, understood Opa’s explanation. Well, the next Wednesday night at Awana, they were asked the question (I have no idea of the context or the story or the teaching point) and wrote down their answers. Those that were correct got an ice cream bar…and Drew, what did he write? “It’s hard to be certain from the passage, but probably not.” And was he commended for his thoughtful handling of Scripture and awarded an ice cream bar? He was not! (oh, the travesty of justice!)

So naturally, when we reported to Opa that his thoughtful teaching moment had cost his grandson an ice cream bar, he stepped up to the plate and made a special home delivery.

The moral of the story: be very careful about teaching your kids (and grandkids) the nuances of studying Scripture. The costs might be steeper than you’d expect!

Update, 4-2-2010: On Wednesday night, his teacher gave him a Snickers bar. She said when she went home she talked with her husband (a seminarian) who told her there are other opinions and that Drew had probably heard from his parents the other side of things. So, very sweetly and unnecessarily, she brought Drew a Snickers. I hope she didn’t read this tongue-in-cheek complaint and feel guilty!

Ok, this is a guilty pleasure…Chick Tracts. Who hasn’t liked Chick Tracts since they were little? Well, maybe growing up in a Christian home makes me a little off-the-mainstream, but I always liked the comics and the stories and then read over the message at the end (‘cuz I already knew it, right?). And I wouldn’t exactly endorse all the content of all their tracts and I wouldn’t share some of the more strident anti-Catholic ones in Mexico (right or wrong, the tone doesn’t really facilitate relationship-building with Catholics). But hats off to a ministry that God has used over many years to share the Gospel and is even willing to put their content online for free. So, here’s a Chick tract in Spanish…now our friends in Mexico need to read this!

“They [the children of God] do not misuse their liberty, for from the heart they aim to serve others and rejoice in doing so. It is not that the new man is required to serve his neighbor, any more than that a tree is required to bloom, or 3 plus 7 are required to equal 10, or the sin sun required to shine.” — Martin Luther (WA Tischreden VI, 153.)

Taken from Gustaf Wingren “Luther on Vaocation” (99). Once again you’ve got to love Google and Wikipedia: I typed in ”
WA Tischreden” and, voila, my ignorance was dispelled.

Pueblo Nuevo wasn’t the ideal place for learning to ride a bike and we never got around to getting a bike for Drew. So we were just bad parents…

So when we got to Tacoma last year we found a bike (two, actually) at a garage sale and set out to teach Drew. Well, we didn’t get as far as we wanted, and then winter set in, and that’s not ideal conditions. But now that the weather has turned nice (really nice), we broke out the bike again. Last Friday tim & Drew went along Chambers Creek and then Tim decided we just needed to go for it, so he took off the training wheels. Drew did pretty well then, but today, he needed no help (well, except for starting and stopping). Here is the raw footage:

While in the seminary library yesterday I browsed a couple archaeology magazines. I think I could have been an archaeologist if the opportunity had presented itself, but God didn’t give that to me (for the moment, I always tell myself). Anway, there were two articles that caught my eye.

One was about maybe the earliest example of Hebrew writing found (you can click on a link at the bottom to “Display Full Article”) , dated to the 1oth century B.C. (forget the BCE stuff, we’ll be politically incorrect on this site). It comes from a hilltop fortress on the western border (with the Philistines) of Israel from the time of David or Solomon. The fort itself was a big find because it gives more evidence of a powerful Israelite kingdom when the Bible says. But the writing is pretty cool, too. And it’s nice to read the article and here the experts say what all the rest of us would too: we can’t figure out what most of this says.

The other article was more disturbing. It’s (from Archaeology magazine) about the possibilities of cloning Neanderthals. The subheading of the article is “The scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles”. But reading it, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of “ethics”. The prevailing attitude seems to be “This is what we’re doing, this is where the study is heading, this is what’s going to happen.” There’s an astonishing “lack of humility here that staggers me” (to borrow from Ian Malcolm). The article tags on ethical concerns at the end, but it seems to me that as soon as the words “clone” and “Neanderthal” (or any other form or type of “human” the discussion should be centered on “should” rather than “can”. And yes, the article is title “Should We Clone Neanderthals?” and yes, it’s a magazine devoted to science, and yes, I realize there’s plenty of debate about this already, and, yes, I realize that animal cloning is becoming pretty standard stuff (only 14 years after Dolly the sheep)…but are we really this careless? For a “Should We” article this seemed pretty much a foregone conclusion.

“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

(And, yes, that’s TWO Jurasic Park quotes in one post!)

I am a helpless addict to reading. Just ask Barbara-Lee. And I’m even more addicted to reading on the Internet. Not real good at writing, but that’s another story… sooooo, here are some things that caught my eye the other day (pulled and edited from an email to my little list of co-readers who put up with my suggestions once or twice a week):

Back from Idaho, doing a bunch of housekeeping before I really get back into the thesis, so naturally I’ve stumbled upon some interesting things (besides reading “The Meeting of the Waters”–which is very promising and merits a running commentary I think.)

Here are some links from the Economist. I’m an Economist junky. I’m lucky enough to be getting a subscription while we’re in the States (airline mileage!) so I get my fix offline, but most of their content is online, too.
Lexington is their US commentator. He (or she, I guess–they write pretty anonymously) has a blog and this entry is about “Faith, abortion and politics“.

The 2 Pew Religion survey results there are worth looking over–they’re kind of long, but the first part is interesting at least.

I’m looking at Al Mohler a bit these days and here are three posts with some worthwhile numbers and thoughts on “gendercide” and blacks, abortion and gender:
“Gendercide“. It’s quite sobering, really, and worth following his links to the Economist. If you’re pro-abortion (and it’s 1 in a million anyone who reads this is) and this doesn’t make you think twice, I don’t know what would.

Abortion and blacks: Ditto. Feel free to call me “sexist”, but never racist.

Gender: Women and children off the boats first? That wouldn’t be very egalitarian, would it? Or maybe complimentarianism isn’t all that bad.

Finally, this is totally bizarre. I saw a letter about this in our current National Geographic (BL ordered it to make me waste more time reading) and it was hard to believe, but here it is: Praying mantises eating hummingbirds (monsters!) and here (warning: not for the soft of heart).

As Louis Armstrong sang, what a wonderful world…