Here's a little something I wrote last night when my computer was not connected to the internet:

August 29th at 2:04am
I guess it's been a while now since I last posted. I'm currently at my friend Jeff's house sitting on a couch in the basement typing this up on my laptop. He just has dialup, so I'll post this when I can hook this thing up to the internet. I just finished watching Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which was recommended to me by Bahb a long time ago, but man I didn't like it at all. I'd have to say it compares to the Passion of the Christ for the amount of violence, but this movie was way more graphic. I now have a very sick feeling in my stomach and I'm actually glad it's over. Throughout the entire movie I was thinking about how evil some people in this world can be and it's just disturbing. Why can't we all just get along? Stupid money. I know things like that don't happen all the time and most people are decent, but there still are people in this world that will kill you with no remorse, people that will rob their own mothers, people that will rape and murder children, and even just generally hateful people.

Anyway, I spent the last few days at Jeff's house and I finally got to see his new daughter. She's sooo cute! Her name is Keeleigh and she's currently about 6 months old. I also went to Jeff's parents' house Saturday night with his wife and we had a great dinner there. His parents cooked us up some barbecued chicken, fish, some sort of delicious cold pasta dish and one of those raw veggie plates with veggie dip. It was delicious! After that, we all played a bit of cards and did a bit of gambling for very small amounts of money. After like 2 hours I was about 10 cents ahead! After this, we hopped in Jeff's car (I drove since I was the only non-drinking one) and headed to my friend John Salter's house. At that point it was Jeff, his wife Lindsay, his sister Bri, John, John's brother Jim and I. Everyone sat around in his garage for a while and then we headed to the Cas-bar and shot some pool for a couple hours. Everyone was playing terribly, but we still had a blast. When the bar closed, we headed back to John's garage for about another hour and finally headed back home to Jeff's house to sleep. I know it doesn't sound like we did a whole lot, but I had such a great time. I got to see a bunch of people that I hadn't seen for a long time and hang out and just catch up on lost time.

Before I got to my friend Jeff's house, I was in Ottawa visiting my mom and her husband Larry. More importantly, I was able to witness to my mom, my grandma, my aunt and my uncle all at the same time. It was really good and I know that it will lead to something positive in the future. Also after having many hours of conversation with my mom, I'd have to say I think she's probably saved. I'm not entirely sure because she still does stuff like pray to dead people, but she did say that she has accepted Jesus as her only Lord and sufficient Saviour. Obviously I don't know what's in her heart, but I really hope it's true. I also raised a really good point with her; I said that praying to the saints and Mary the "mother of God" (not that God has a mother) is like necromancy, which the bible forbids. I think it's in Leviticus 19 but since I don't have an internet connection I can't look it up. Anyway, I looked up the definition of "necromancy" and it said that it's a form of divination from conversing with the dead. Her argument was that people just pray to Mary for intercession and not as a form of divination, but I said to her that one day you might be not really thinking about what you're praying and you accidentally start to ask Mary to reveal something for you or for her to protect someone or for her to provide you with something and POOF, you've just become a necromancer! Also she says that they don't pray to their statues because they're just reminders just like someone would take a photograph of you just as a reminder of you, even though they don't pray to it. I told her that's great, as long as you understand that. Even if 90% of people in the Catholic church understand that there's nothing special at all about the statues, there's still 10% of people in the church, all of the new believers, etc who do believe that the statues are more than just porcelain and paint, who may be inclined to bow down and actually worship the statue. The same goes for praying to Mary. I've personally met people who thought that a little picture of Mary protected her when she was driving in a dangerous place. So my question to all Catholics is, "Why would you want to push the limit of what you should and shouldn't do when it would lead the people who are ill-informed to sin?"

Also while in Ottawa, I purchased some computer equipment. I've had my computer for like 5 1/2 years now and the only upgrade I've ever purchased is a new hard drive, so I decided that it was time for an upgrade. I got a new CPU (AMD Athlon 64 AM2 3800+ dual core), motherboard, 512 meg ATI video card, 2 gigs of 533 MHz ram, a $100 wireless, optical mouse (yeah I know, but I wanted an amazing mouse for once), a cheap keyboard (cuz my other one is shot), a new power supply, and a couple of games (Oblivion and the new Guild Wars). I was going to get a really cool keyboard, but they didn't have any in stock. I also got 3 19 inch LCD monitors for my dad's hotel.

Last night I was thinking about when I auditioned for the worship group at my church and they denied me. But before everyone auditioned, this guy gave us a speech that we shouldn't just be there because we want to be in front of everyone or for any other reason except that it is what we have been called to do from God. It struck me at that moment that I really hadn't prayed about it at all and I was just there because I love making music and it was something that I just wanted to do. Well as I was thinking about that, I was lead to three different passages in the bible. Two of them were about God telling David to appoint the musicians and the third was Psalm 59 (which is for the music director; ... a prayer of David, written when Saul sent men to surround his house and murder him). It's weird because they all mention music in some way, so I'm thinking that I am going to try to turn Psalm 59 into a song somehow. It definitely wouldn't be the typical worship song, but more for someone who feels like they are being persecuted and how he wants his enemies to be exiled from society and then to be "wiped out".

Anyway, it's almost 3:00am now so I think this will be all for now. I'll post this when I get a chance. Good night and God Bless!