Earthquake!

Yesterday, just before 3 PM I was sitting at my computer and felt my chair rocking back and forth. It was as if someone had walked up behind me and grabbed the back of my chair and pushed it back and forth. We have wobbly chairs, so I wasn't sure what had happened so I went into the next room and said, "Did you feel that?"

Megan and Pastor Rajesh both felt it, but Victoria was oblivious.

I immediately went online to see if I could find some observation station with live reporting, but couldn't.

This morning I was greeted with an email announcing an earthquake that struck Bhutan at that time yesterday. It was 6.1 on the richter scale. I think that place is about 260 miles away. Here's a link to the USGS site.

This is the second time we've been able to feel an earthquake here. The first time was just after we moved here.

Frustrated with Microsoft and Google

I'm very frustrated with Microsoft and Google. I just realized (after having spent hours across 3 days designing an html email update) that Microsoft no longer supports background images in Microsoft Outlook (2007 version). They did in the 2003 version. Gmail also does not support background images. This is really frustrating as I know very little about html and design and don't know how to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish apart from a background image. Most email clients do support this functionality.

You can read more about it at http://www.email-standards.org/what-you-can-do/.

So I ended up sending the email as it was. Some people will get it with a picture (if you use a Mac, use Mozilla Thunderbird, Yahoo and several other email clients). Many (maybe a majority) will get an email with a great big space at the top where the picture should have been. Not very professional or nice looking.

If someone knows an easy work around for this for next time, please let me know.

Trish Leads Women's Retreat

“She washed my feet with her hair and her tears.” Jesus can say that of the woman in Luke 7, but I can also say it of my wife, Trish.

In May, Trish and a friend named Jodi, led a women’s retreat for the ladies of Bible Centered Fellowship. The theme was Behold the Lamb. Trish asked me to come and take pictures. When I got there, I discovered that she wanted to tell the story of the woman washing Jesus feet and act it out with me sitting in for Jesus. It was a very moving experience. I really just wanted her to get up and stop. I felt so unworthy, yet at the same time really loved. They followed up this story by washing the ladies feet.

The ladies really enjoyed the participative discussions. They said they’d never experienced a retreat like that.