August 30

Nasty Sundae

I taught the lesson in Elder's Quorum on August the 19th. The topic was the "Sabbath Day". I usually like to use object lessons, because I always enjoy those when others teach them. For this lesson, I brought a cooler full of ice cream, along with tasty toppings such as chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup,  caramel and even marachino cherries (I dont care for these myself, but we had some in the fridge). I started making a sundae for these guys with all of the good stuff and asked them if they would like some of that. I saw a bunch of salivating Elders nod their heads up and down enthusiastically. Then I told them to wait a minute. I had some more toppings that I "liked". I pulled out some barbeque sauce and drizzled that on top. They looked at me like I was crazy to ruin that delicious looking sundae. Then i proceeded to put on some relish, mustard and italian salad dressing. They became more and more disgusted looking as I added each of these other "toppings". I then went over the "moral" of the story-- There are some things which might taste good by themselves, or on top of something else, but "They dont belong on a Sundae" Just like boating, sports and other activies "dont belong on a Sunday" . Then I asked the question if anyone would like to taste the "Nasty Sundae". Waited 5 seconds as everyone looked around to see if anyone would be crazy enough to do it. Then the green bean missionary raises his hand. Everyone looked at him increduously. "Are you serious!?" someone asked him. "Sure. How bad can it be if it has ice cream in it?" He replies. I go ahead and hand him the sunday with my eyebrows raised. Everyone looks on expectantly (some hoping that he will hurl, Im sure :)). He stirs it up, and takes a big spoonful. (Im sure I heard a slight gag reflex), but went on to finish the whole thing with great exuberance.
What can I say? -- only a greenbean.
I guess i can also say, "Hey, he ruined the object of my lesson!" ;)

August 21

NT- Finito

I finished my online reading of the New Testament last month. As of 7/7/7 I had made it through. It was a pretty consistent run using my Outlook reminder mail to get in my face each day. It was quite a fulfilling accomplishment to get through it in about 5 1/2 months. The only drawback I could see was not being able to 'mark' scriptures that really hit me to look back at later. Although a few times I did just send the URL of the scripture to my email so that I could look at it at a later date. Now after over a months hiatus, I will be moving on to cover the D&C.

August 15

The Bear

A couple of months ago, a bear showed up in our front yard. Nope, not a teddy bear, it was the real deal. We awoke on Saturday morning, the 26th of May to find that a bunch of police officers were roaming our neighborhood. We then heard that a black bear had been spotted roaming near the apartment complex down the hill from our neighborhood. We had come back inside, when about a half hour later, Flash started barking out the front window like crazy. LeAnn went to check on what she thought was another of Flash's false alarms, when she started screaming like a maniac. She ran to find me shreiking "There's a bear, Theres a BEAR!" I ran down to check it out, and looked out the front window. There on the side of our hillside, behind the laurel bushes the bear was sitting with his head looking over the bushes. WOW. It was about 20 feet away from us!

That is our house on the right. It was up in the middle of the brown hillside, just above the shadow of the tall pine tree.
Who needs to go to the zoo, when the zoo comes to you?! I went to grab the camera, but when I came back, I couldnt see it anymore. We decided to sneak out and try and get a picture of it. However, as soon as we came out the door, a lady police officer came walking up to us. She told us we needed to go back inside. (Yes, my masculinity was a bit shattered after I was told by a 140 pound lady that I needed to get back inside). She then pulled out her gun (not that that would do much damage to a big black bear) , and approached the hillside. We went back inside and watched out the window again to see if she would get eaten. No such luck.
After that, it was pretty uneventful. The news crews came and tried to get some footage, but the bear had gone back down further into the woods. So, they ended up taking some shots of Austin dancing. (After a few hours of no activity, people had started going back outside) A bit later, animal control came out with dogs, and some folks with shotguns and tranquilizer guns, but the bear escaped. They ended up finally catching him about a week later 5 miles south of our house. It was quite an adventurous bear! Here is the link from the Seattle Times