Moved

Yup I’m still alive and kicking, afraid I just haven’t had anything noteworthy to say of late.
So just a bit about what I have been doing with my time.

Back at the beginning of the year I started playing around with Joomla which is a open source php based CMS application. It’s core is based off of Mambo (the core development team left Mambo and formed Joomla) and so has a long history and a very active following. I’ve been playing around with the idea of getting our church website setup on a CMS based on PHP and MySQL for sometime now but had never run across an application that didn’t look like just another portal – until I saw Joomla. I downloaded it onto my site and started playing around with it, but my problem is I’m just not the artistic type. Cruising around the Joomla Forum on day I ran across a thread where someone was commenting about the excellent church sites this one company was creating using Joomla. I immediately went and checked out My Church Website. The client portfolio had me sold right off. After contacting a number of churches as well as emailing the developer a number of times, I sold the elders at my church on the idea of letting this company redo our site>> Presbyterian Church of the Atonement. One evening I started an IM chat with Mike Henin from My Church Website and came to find out that he was the company. He’s a young graphic artist who has decided that his passion for web design is not only his business but his ministry. If you happen to be looking for a complete web solution for your church I highly recommend you contacting this company. I’ve been thrilled with not only his product but also with his business ethics.

I’ve gotten involved with the Men’s Ministry at my church. A few months ago I started becoming convicted that I just wasn’t going anywhere spiritually. I wasn’t being fed, I wasn’t trying to learn anything new, I wasn’t being disciplined in my walk and I had baggage that was starting to really weigh on my heart. Reading a number of different blogs I kept picking up on the idea of being mentored or getting into a group of men where I could be held accountable. A few weeks later I contacted John Smart from church. John was the original creator of the church website and he had handed it over to me before being relocated to Alaska. Having just come back into the area, John immediately plugged himself into the Men’s Ministry. He’s a big easy going guy with a personality that always makes me feel comfortable. I asked him if I could meet with the mens team to discuss the concepts of discipleship and mentoring. Now I did this with the very selfish idea of finding a mentor or being discipled but as usually occurs when I do something like this I wounds up being part of the ministry. Not that I mind. I’m still not doing Sr. High Sunday school and have been itching to do some teaching again. So, in light of my initial conversation with the team, this summer we are teaching The Man in the Mirror by Patrick Morely and Character Counts by Rod Handley. I’m also helping coordinate a Mens Retreat for the Fall. Still haven’t found a mentor or a men’s small group, but I’m still working on it.

On a more fun note – 5 more days of work and we’re off to Corrolla, NC (Outer Banks) for nice week long vacation. We’re going back to the same house that we had last year and I’ve been looking forward to this all year. A whole week to do nothing but read, lay in the sun, swim in the pool and take long afternoon naps – OH YEAH – Daddy likes his naps.

Until next time.
Peace,

Rong