Waiting on the weekend...

This week has been jam-packed and exhausting... and it's only Wednesday. Looking forward to seeing these two munchkins this weekend. Can't wait for Friday.


(And if I can get Bobby to tell me this story, that will be the icing on the cake.)

God uses little people to do BIG things

Inspiring, Empowering, Delight-filled, God-glorifying

After an innocent question from his 6 yr old daughter, Jon Acuff, blogger and author Stuff Christians Like, decided to set a goal to raise $30,000 by Dec 31st to build a Kindergarten for kids in a low income area of Vietnam.

This morning he posted the idea for the first time and asked his SCL readers to join the cause: read the post here.

Hearts overflowing with generosity, the SCL readers came through big time. Right now, less than 24 hours after the original post, over $30, 500 has been donated. Read about it here.

Yesterday, in the 4 and 5 yr olds room we talked about David and Goliath and how God can use little people to do BIG things. How he can swoop in to save his people with just a boy and a rock. He just did it again. He used a blog... an online group of his people... to give kids in an underprivileged area a chance to go to school and to learn about Him.

If that's not inspiring, I don't know what is. To quote Bob's last two sermons, live generously and light a candle in the darkness... and watch how God will use you to bless others.

I get things done... efficiently and with a little science-geek flair

Between this cake (our Sindbis-GFP expressing fruit fly holding Sindbis virus balloons) and my organizational emails, I think I just unintentionally secured my position as the Hardy lab party planner.

Where does our information come from?

I just read an editorial in TIME magazine on vaccinations: "To vaccinate or not to vaccinate" by Joel Stein. It was amusing, but I was caught off guard by his concluding statements,

"What I do know is that I'm pretty confident in the way I get my knowledge. Even in the age of Google and Wikipedia, we still receive almost all of our information through our peers. I believe in evolution not because I've read Darwin but because everyone I know thinks it's true. When presented with doubts, I don't search for detailed information from my side. I go with the consensus of mainstream media, academia and the government. Not because they're always right but because they're right far more often than not, and I have a TiVo to watch."

Really? I'm not saying it's completely wrong to reason this way at times. It's necessary because we just don't have the time to seek out all the detailed answers about everything. eg I heard through my roommate, through the internet, through some meteorologist somewhere that it might rain so I'll take my umbrella. But when it comes to big stuff--like is it safe to vaccinate yourself and your kid, you need to look a little farther than your next door neighbor (unless you're living next door to a doctor of medicine or virology.) Just last week I was getting my haircut and one of the ladies next to me was saying something like "I heard that the vaccine has dangerous components that will make it worse if you get the flu." Whaaaatt? No. I've done my research. It's not bad to get information from friends but just make sure you know where they got it--hearsay? media (who are not scientists and can twist things for a story)? or from a reliable source (CDC, WHO, doctor educated on viruses, leading virologist in the field)? And don't contribute further to the false information by spreading things you "heard" as absolute fact.
*Stepping off soapbox now*