Them’s Fightin’ Words!

A certain blogress grand diva has impugned my culinary skills by pointing out that my recipe for BBQ beans starts with canned beans and ketchup! Oh, the treachery! She says her beans have to be cooked from scratch!

You know, there are some things you shouldn’t try to cook from scratch. Try making Rice Krispies Treats from scratch some day. Not going to happen. I make my own guitars, amps, bullets, beer…but dang, I’m not going to make my own ketchup or grow beans again. The climate down here kills everything. I couldn’t grow tomatoes if I wanted to.

I respect the whole SHTF movement, but you pretty much have to take over a county if you really want to be self-sufficient. Even in the old days, people bought things like sugar, coffee, and flour.

Anyway, I will defend my beans to the death. They are totally righteous.

La Niña Knows Who’s the Man

The Holy Spirit is God’s Internet. He arranges us in order and coordinates what we do, even when one of us has no idea what the other is up to. The more Spirit-filled the church gets, the stronger and more obvious the coordination gets.

For a long time, I’ve been hearing about “preparation.” Christians all over the place are looking for rural land. They’re buying guns, tools, and nonperishable food. They’re learning how to take care of themselves. It’s spreading to people, even before they know what’s happening. It has already hit me pretty hard.

I live in a suburb where the fungi and bugs and viruses are so thick, it’s almost impossible to grow things. Citrus is dying (not just here, but worldwide). Tomatoes can’t escape the leaf wilt virus. Nonetheless, I have banana trees now, bearing like crazy. I have one magnificent mango tree and another one which is improving all the time. I have all the hot peppers I could possibly want. I have a strong, healthy lychee tree.

I also have unbelievable tools, plenty of ammunition, a good variety of weapons, and a diesel pickup. Plus two freezers.

Today I got a call from Mike. He has moved back to the DC area, near the remarkable church I wrote about last year. Now he lives in a home that has half an acre of ground. While we were talking about God, I suggested he watch Perry Stone. I mentioned Perry Stone’s vision about future crop failures due to flooding. He cut me off and started telling me how he had been buying bulk food. Mind you, he’s not even tuned into the movement yet. He just felt like it was something he needed to do.

He bought a lot of flour. He’s getting containers. He’s starting seeds for the yard. He just feels like bad times are ahead.

There has to be something to it.

I’m going to be sitting pretty, provided the food shortages aren’t prolonged. I’m stocking up. I ordered a tasty Kentucky ham, plus some sorghum and blackberry jam. I have boxes from Gordon Food Service; I’m putting away pizza sauce, pasta, flour, yeast, and other things. I plan to freeze mozzarella, so while other people are paying out the nose for bad food, I’ll be able to pop out $2 pizzas that beat anything you can buy locally. If there are problems with the power grid, I’m in trouble, but other than that, I’m cool.

I’m Googling “La Niña.” I know we’re having a La Niña year, so I wondered if La Niña causes flooding. Sure enough, it does. At least in some places. Look it up. In October, FEMA warned people in the Pacific Northwest to buy flood insurance.

They ought to quit with “La Niña” and “El Niño” and call the whole business “El Padre.” He’s the one pulling the strings.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to buy. Surely rain won’t hurt every type of food. For example, fish don’t mind rain. On the other hand, when one type of food gets scarce, people move to the others, so they get pressured, too.

God is shaking the world. He’s slapping us awake. Those who will listen will get into gear and start conforming to his principles. They’ll line themselves up with his will and get in the blessing and protection pipeline. Everyone else will have problems. They built their houses on sand, and when things shake, well, look at California. Only things built in accordance with God’s wishes will remain.

What will the result be? Persecution, probably. “My Christian wingnut neighbor bought all the meat and froze it! My Christian wingnut neighbor has a bunch of guns! Look how these hoarding parasites are living while we’re suffering!” It will be like post-Versailles Germany. And Jews are eventually going to get it, too. They are part of God’s plan, so the spirit of Antichrist will keep trying to kill them off, as it did in Germany and Austria (as it does in Gaza). Jewish names like “Madoff” and “Stearns” and “Geithner” and “Bernanke” will be persecution code words. There is a reason Jews are figuring so heavily in our economic disasters.

Some people think the Rapture will be a magical event so sudden and inexplicable, it will essentially force people to believe. They’ll see that millions of Christians are missing, and they’ll have no earthly explanation. Does that make sense to you? I have to wonder. I don’t think God would make it that easy. It would be unlike him. I think we may leave the earth in a wave of executions. I don’t know. I’m not a prophecy expert. Maybe the Bible makes it clear that we’ll just zoom up out of ourselves, instantly, but I don’t recall reading anything like that.

My guess is that the enemy’s people will eventually get the upper hand, and we’ll be murdered in large groups, just like the Jews were. After all, we’ll be “the problem.” This is how the political left will see us. It will be like Cambodia and Cuba. At least I suspect it will.

Christians like to talk about claiming victory and defeating every enemy and so on, but the Bible makes it clear that we do not always win. The spirits that hate us are extremely powerful, and God has not chosen to give us an instant or complete victory over all of them. The battle is still going on. Peter was tortured to death, and Paul was beheaded. I think a solid Christian will live in victory for the majority of his life, but that doesn’t mean you won’t die at the point of a sword somewhere down the line.

The Revelation says that even the two witnesses who are full of God’s power will by martyred. The Antichrist will succeed in murdering them. They’ll be resurrected and assumed into heaven, but no matter how you slice it, they will be killed. If they can’t hold off defeat indefinitely, why should the rest of us expect to do better?

I’ll bet the unsaved start rounding us up and slaughtering us, possibly in the name of their gay, non-judgmental, abortion-loving “god,” and they’ll celebrate over our dead bodies, using our stolen wealth. And then comes the Tribulation, and God’s wrath will make them all want to die.

I don’t know if it will happen in the US. Perry Stone talks of a prophecy about an army of interceders (“intercessors” sounds vulgar to me) who will succeed in getting God to restore America. That would be nice, but my guess is that it would come with a serving of chastisement dwarfing what we’ve seen so far.

People generally don’t turn to God out of gratitude. They don’t get everything they want and then show up in church to pass it out and praise the Lord. We turn back to the Lord after severe beatings caused by our stupidity. That’s my situation, and it’s the most common pattern for Christians. So if suffering is ahead, it will surely bring a good harvest.

I read something interesting in Perry Stone’s magazine this month. He’s a buddy of many of the prominent prosperity preachers, and while he’s not in the same category, he does teach that God will give us “shalom,” which includes having our needs met abundantly. In his magazine, he said something that flies in the face of the over-the-top prosperity gospel. He said that if God didn’t reward our offerings here on earth, it meant we were getting heavenly rewards instead. Not “as well,” mind you. Instead.

I don’t think his friends would be happy to read that. There are still a lot of people out there telling Christians they should all be rich, and that “sowing seed gifts” into the “good soil” of their embarrassing ministries will make it happen. I’m glad to see a popular minister shooting that filth down. The mindless prosperity nuts will be the Christian Madoffs, justifying our persecution in the future.

I’m here to tell you, God will not instantly reward financial gifts with “hundredfold” returns in kind. It has never happened to me. Not once. My needs are met, and I’m fine, but if the TV-evangelist, moneycentric gospel were true, I’d be as rich as…a TV evangelist. God is not an enabler, so I think he resists giving you stuff you will use to destroy yourself, and money can be as bad a poison as arsenic. If you want it so you can have a third helipad in front of your orange mansion, it’s probably not good for you. If you want it so you will have the means and the freedom to complete your mission, there is probably no limit to what will come.

I think money is like food. It’s supposed to serve its purpose and pass through you. If you hold onto too much of it, you just end up full of fat and poop. Constipation and obesity are powerful symbols of the things that go wrong with immature Christians.

Not that I know what it’s like to be one of those. Oh, no. But I have heard about them.

I’m going to run to Costco and get some apples for drying. The Bible says that in the days of famine, I will be satisfied, and I think I will be even more satisfied if I have dried apples for pie.

Support the Chosen & Offend the Nutbars

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews invited me to Washington in May to participate in the National Day of Prayer. It was a great honor to be included.

They sent me a photo in the mail. It’s a signed 8 by 10, featuring me and Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein. The rabbi autographed it and wrote a short message.

I considered having it framed, but then I thought, “Do I really want to advertise my support for Israel in my home?”

A new wave of anti-Semitism is coming. It’s already very bad in Europe, and it’s starting to get worse here. Google “BDS” and “Israel” and see. Prominent leftist websites come up, admonishing us to boycott, divest, and sanction. Punish Israel for defending herself against over a billion enemies who intend to destroy the Jewish homeland.

We will probably see a day when American Jews have to hide. When that day comes, will you be able to help them if you’ve already identified yourself as a supporter of the chosen? When the feds start looking for “troublemakers,” I’ll be easy to find.

I guess the photo won’t make any difference. I’m already pretty obvious.

I had some thoughts about this today. What will the future be like for American Jews?

Religious Jews are city people. This is unfortunate. They have to have synagogues, they can’t hunt for food, and they can’t slaughter their own meat. America is full of rural land where they should be able to hide, but rural living would throw their lives into chaos. Christians can be extremely self-sufficient, but religious Jews can’t. What will they do?

I guess they’ll have to establish small religious cells where they can practice their faith below the radar. And they’ll probably be eating a lot of grain and vegetables.

One of my Jewish high school friends lost his dad in the Eighties. It turned out he had $900,000 of cash (unreported) hidden in the wall of his house. At the time, I thought it was just greed, but now I think there may have been more to it than that. Jews know they can’t trust the government or their neighbors. It’s strange that they consistently vote for big government, considering the way strong governments have treated them, but that’s how it is. Maybe this guy was saving for the day when America turned on him and his family.

We use cash less and less often now. What happens when the Nuremberg laws pop up and take effect, and you’re used to using credit and debit cards? If you use plastic, the government will always know exactly where you are, and the nature of the things and services you buy will tell them a lot about you. And the government will be able to turn your cards off. Not a good situation to be in.

I guess my friend’s dad was onto something.

I think Jews need to maintain reserves of cash and precious metals. The cash will work when the government turns on Jews. The metals will work if the currency goes bad. At the very least, a Jewish family will need enough wealth to get them to Israel.

The problem with cash and precious metals is that they attract thieves. Yet another reason for Jews to be armed, with guns Uncle Sam doesn’t know about.

I still believe silver will be the metal of choice. Gold is too hard to spend. You can buy bags of silver coins (90% pure) and hold them until you need them.

Because of Islam, the government’s surveillance capabilities are getting very strong. And the change is showing up in unexpected ways. You know those electronic toll things they have now? The government can use those to keep track of your whereabouts and your travels. Here in Miami, they scan license plates, and they send letters out to people who have problems with the toll system. I received such a letter. In order to make that work, they have to keep records, so obviously, they’re keeping records. This isn’t a big deal to me, but what if I were Jewish, and things were starting to heat up? How would I move my family around? I’d have to avoid every major traffic artery. Either that or borrow a vehicle.

Jews need to think about stuff like this. But 90% of them won’t.

It’s hard to believe anti-Semitism is getting this big. It’s mainstream in Europe now, disguised as support for “Palestinians,” and it’s considered very chic among American liberals. Today they attack Israel. Tomorrow they’ll be bold enough to attack the Jews themselves.

It’s strange that most Americans have never heard of “BDS.” Conservatives used to use this term to mean “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” but now it means “Boycott, Divest, Sanction.” Google it and watch the mainstream leftist blogs come up by the score. It’s the rallying cry of modern anti-Semitism.

How come there is no backlash? I think someone needs to start a “BIG” movement. “Buy, Invest, Go.” Maybe I’ll buy a domain.

Where are American Jews while all this is going on? Are they in a coma? Strange. They noticed Rick Sanchez, but they don’t say much about BDS. Which is the bigger threat?

It will be interesting to see how things play out. I’m glad I didn’t get caught on the wrong side, so I won’t face God’s wrath when the time comes.

God’s Own Cake and the Devil’s Music

I took the Tower of Babel cake to church to get rid of it. It was a great success. Now they want more. I have piles of bananas scattered on the kitchen counter, fresh from the trees in my yard. I guess I’ll freeze what I can’t cook immediately and put the rest in cakes.

My nam wa banana tree finally produced. The bananas are very nice. They’re finger-sized bananas, but they’re not like the lemony guineos we always have in the markets in Miami. They’re very sweet, and they have a smooth texture. It’s a little like banana ice cream.

God keeps working in my life. Last week I led some of the armorbearers on the first Armorbearer Freedom Fast, and Mike joined in. Some of us were fasting to beat gluttony. I was fasting in support of the others. Mike called and said he went to a restaurant after the fast and ordered a kid’s portion. He couldn’t face a regular-size meal. In the past, it has always been hard for Mike to face regular-sized meals, but that was because they were too small. His new attitude is incredible.

I worked at church on Sunday, and when I left at nearly 4 p.m., I hadn’t eaten anything except a piece of cake. I didn’t want more food, but I made myself stop at Five Guys. I got a bacon cheeseburger, Cajun fries, and a large Coke. I ate two thirds of the burger and a third of the fries. I drank half of the Coke. I threw everything else out. I didn’t want it. Today I went to breakfast with my dad, and I left a fourth of my nova bagel on the plate. Not bad. My Armorbearer friend who was fasting because of his weight said he tried to eat something he usually enjoys, and it made him sick, so he couldn’t do it.

Fasting works. My pants and belts do not lie. We are getting supernatural results. And my dad is witnessing all of it, which is also great. One day, we’ll get him.

Church continues to amaze me. I keep meeting extraordinary people there. One of the new Armorbearers is a drummer. His name is Travis. I started talking to him yesterday. I asked him if the drums were his only instruments. He said he played TWELVE, and he listed them. And he said he played them WELL, so apparently it’s not like Prince, who claims he can play forty but probably includes instruments that made noises because he accidentally sat on them in the studio.

I know everyone thinks Prince is a genius. When I see him do something that indicates talent, I will agree. So far, all I’ve seen are weak pop tunes. And he holds a purple guitar sometimes. Wait. I think it’s white. Anyway, I haven’t heard any solos yet.

Travis got a full scholarship to college, based on his ability. That’s what he does now. He said it was largely based on his sight-reading skills. He actually knows who my trombone-virtuoso cousin is, which is astonishing.

So now we have two professional musicians in the group, and they’re not three-chord wonders or rappers. They are real musicians.

The other musician, Zachary, is trying to find a hundred-watt tube amp he can afford. He said he would consider building one, if he had the skills. I used to build temperature and current controls for diode lasers in college, and I have a ton of tools. He sent me links to some sites that have amp plans. Interesting.

One of the guys bought a Bushmaster AR-15. He brought it in for us to look at. We were handing it around and admiring it in a back room. I said, “You know, church has CHANGED since I was a kid.” That cracked Travis up.

My music is going really well. The bluegrass is coming up to speed. My left hand has only had five weeks to get strong, and that’s not enough. When I use a capo (makes fretting easier), I get a taste of what my playing will be like in another month or two. I plan to continue playing bluegrass, simply because it’s great for my technique and it’s wasteful to throw away a whole genre you’ve already learned.

I was suffering with online blues lessons, but I couldn’t take it any more. I got a ZZ Top book, and I started working on “Tube Snake Boogie.” I realize this is not good music for a Christian to work on, but hear me out. The guitar stuff is all blues-based, and it’s HOT. It will get me into electric blues via the side door, and it will help me get familiar with my instruments and amps. I don’t plan to sing this filth in the sanctuary.

I struggled for a week, but today I got it working. I put new strings on my flamenco guitar (like a classical guitar, with a cutaway and a different sound), and I started using it for practice. This is much easier on me than my dreadnought and heavy hollowbody. It allows me to practice pretty painlessly. I actually got through the first page and a half.

I may get hollered at for saying it, but so far, as I expected, this stuff is a complete joke compared to bluegrass. True, you have to go up the neck more, but so what? I’m using elevens, and the guitar’s action is very light. I’m playing at half the speed of bluegrass (or less), the strings are kinder to my hands, and the licks are child’s play. The only real problems are getting used to playing over pickups and coping with the light strings. When you’re used to blasting thirteens at maybe eight notes a second, you can barely feel elevens.

When I used to try to play Stevie Ray Vaughan material, it was difficult, but then he played very fast, and he didn’t cheat by using his left hand to play the notes. He did it just like a bluegrass guitarist.

I’ve noticed that some rock guitarists play runs that seem very fast, but their right hands aren’t keeping up with the notes. Evidently, you can effectively double your speed by hammering on and pulling off and bending the strings with your left hand, between right-hand notes. I wonder how many of these guys could cope with bluegrass. I know some of them have been there; Steve Morse does both styles.

I had a feeling this would turn out to be easy, simply because I know the kind of people who play rock. They are not known for being industrious. Rock guitar isn’t about artistry and sacrifice. It’s about looking cool and attracting shallow women so you can fornicate. That’s what got Pete Townshend started. I know there must be many rock guitarists who woodshed all the time and aren’t afraid of difficult material, but a lot of this stuff appears to be based on using two fingers, the way you might when you’re stoned in the back of a tour bus. And everyone loves nines, and I don’t think that’s totally based on professionalism. It just might have something to do with lack of character, in some cases.

When you play an electric guitar, the gadgetry does a whole lot of the work. It’s pretty cushy compared to killing yourself to get music out of an acoustic.

I look forward to getting a grip on this form of music, and then I want to do a reverse Ray Charles. I want to use bluesy sounds to make music for God. I know you’re supposed to go the other way, ripping off gospel and using it to play secular music. I don’t see why I can’t turn the tables.

I’m glad I held onto that flamenco guitar.

Tisha B’Av is about to start, so if you’re fasting in sympathy with Israel and the Jews, it’s time to get on it.

Life is wonderful.

Fast Over

This morning, my church’s Armorbearers ended a two-day fast. I wrote about it earlier.

Man, do I feel better. Some people say they feel closer to God during a fast. I feel farther away. I get a headache. I feel depressed. It’s pretty bad. I always look forward to the renewed sensation of his presence that comes when I finally eat.

Last night, I felt a powerful sensation of faith as I ended the day in prayer, but that’s not the same as feeling God’s presence. Imagine you’re in prison. This is the difference between a visit and receiving a care package. The care package is great, but you still want the visit.

I hope this fast accomplished things. The person who got it going is a fellow AB with a bad weight problem. I would really like to see him get free. I would like to see the others get free, too, and I would like a renewal of my own weight-loss miracle, as well as better discipline to handle things like lust and covetousness.

The fast was not fun. On the first day, I noticed it was hard to practice the guitar because my hands were weak. On the second day, I decided to skip practice. My arm was sore anyway, so it needed the rest. I had a nutritious Pop Tart breakfast today, but I am still not 100%.

Through an interesting set of circumstances, I learned about a great Christian singer yesterday. Her name is Grace Williams. I won’t bother you with the details, but I came across her on TV, and it turned out I had an unopened Grace Williams CD in my house, so I played it.

It’s wonderful stuff. As music per se, I would not call it great art, but as music intended to help you get in touch with God, it’s first-rate. It’s what Enya might have done, had she been a Christian.

Grace Williams says she startled her family by praying and singing in tongues at a very early age, and she says this is the “new song” the Bible mentions prophetically. I was startled. I have had the same idea run through my mind. Ever since our church’s Rendezvous conference a while back, I have had the ability to sing in the Spirit. It’s very strange. When I’m at church, I just open my mouth, and I automatically get harmony. Very helpful, since I can never learn all the words to the songs they play. It brings a powerful sense of peace and God’s presence.

Here is what Psalm 40 says:

1 I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.

We tend to dash right by language like that, assuming it’s just intended to be flowery and poetic, but it has to have a real meaning. God does not flap his lips just to hear his head roar. His word does not return to him void. Every word means something. If the Psalms say there is a new song that will convert people and make them believers, it has to be true, and I very much doubt that David was referring to the Psalms themselves. Nobody every listened to Psalm 40 and “feared” because of it and “trusted in the Lord.” It’s a fine psalm, but it’s not that fine. If God led David to say this about Psalm 40, God exaggerated, and he does not do that.

I’m assuming David wrote this psalm, because he wrote so many. I don’t know that he wrote this one. Whoever it was, God spoke through him.

The rabbi of a nearby Messianic synagogue wants to go shooting with us and get our help in forming an armorbearer squad. Pretty cool. Hope that happens in a week or two.

Life is good. I can’t wait for lunch.

Scope Advice

One of the Armorbearers at my church is very gung-ho about shooting and other AB stuff. In fact, if he were any more gung-ho, I would suggest he change his radio call sign to “Francis.”

See the movie Stripes if you don’t get the joke.

He wants advice on scoping an AR-15 rifle. I don’t know what to tell him. I assume he will want something useful for self-defense, not varminting.

Help a bruhhh out.

On Second Thought, Don’t

I can no longer keep up with the good stuff God does in my life. I just don’t have time to blog it all.

On Saturday, I cooked for our church’s Rhythms Lounge event. Young people come to the cafe and perform. Some play music, some recite, and others sing. This weekend, we had a guest performer: Zach Freeman, the son of two of our pastors. He plays guitar and sings.

What a show we had. We have a regular house band composed of church members; oddly, it’s not the same band that plays during worship. They jammed with Zach for maybe an hour. We heard a lot of blues and even a long funk session.

I can’t describe the quality of the playing. I had no idea these kids were this good. They were so tight, you would think they had been playing together for years.

Zach started off with his Strat and some effects, and he created an ambience you could almost swim in. I wish we had recorded it. Ordinarily I’m not a big fan of reverb and sustain pedals, but he used them to draw us into a world that did not exist before he started playing.

When the other players got going, we heard bass licks that started and stopped the show at will. The keyboard player, who claimed he couldn’t play blues, performed gymnastics that had everyone gasping. When it was over, the whole crowd started yelling and crying out. A friend of mine leaned over and said, “They’re praising God in Creole.”

I couldn’t ask for a better end to my first week of renewed guitar practice.

It gets even weirder. I have a new guitar! For a long time, I’ve wanted a thinline Gibson guitar with single-coil pickups and a Bigsby, but doubting that I would use it, I never gave in to temptation. This week I started reading up on Epiphone guitars. This is Gibson’s Asian line. Ordinarily, I won’t go near an Asian instrument; Japanese dreadnoughts sound like cigar boxes and have actions that tear up your hands. But I kept reading reviews, and I thought to myself, “If I get one of these things, I have 30 days to try it out, and if it works, it will be a fantastic asset, and the price will be so low, even if I get a better instrument later, I’ll be able to drag this one when I travel without worrying about what happens to it.”

I drove down US1 to buy some bird seed, and I was praying in the Spirit while I drove (good way to redeem the time), and I started thinking about Guitar Center. I felt I couldn’t stop myself, so I decided to go with it. I went in and found an Epiphone Riviera on the wall. I still didn’t intend to buy it. I asked the salesman a few questions, looked it over, and told him I would take it. I felt like I had to do it. I think he nearly fainted. I didn’t even ask to play it. There was no point.

This guitar was made in China. They get spotty reviews that go in two directions. Some instruments are written off as junk. Other buyers say they can’t understand how Epiphone can sell such gorgeous instruments at this price point. It looks like I’m in the latter group. This thing is virtually flawless. It sounds good. It plays well. So far, I’ve only been able to find one tiny imperfection in it. And it cost about 13% of what a new Gibson would cost. I could put a thousand dollars’ worth of upgrades into it and still be way ahead.

I don’t know what the story is. Maybe it was God. Maybe I just like shiny new stuff too much. But I try to walk by faith, and this felt like God’s urging, so I didn’t want to screw it up.

On Saturday, the music materials I ordered arrived. I got a copy of Tony Rice Guitar, plus Dan Crary’s Flatpicker’s Guide, plus a giant tablature book called The Big Slab of Tab. I used to play things from these books, many years ago. Back then, I had some trouble with a little bit of the Tony Rice stuff, but as I noted the other day, my practice habits were completely wrong. Fifteen minutes a day.

I got these books because I feel that God is restoring my life and undoing past failures (and also because I owed Tony Rice a royalty).

I’ve been working on the tunes, and it’s crazy, but there is a big long Tony Rice lick I could never conquer in the past, and after two days, I nearly have it beat. I figure I should be able to play coherently, with the correct super-heavy Dunlop pick, within a week. Maybe I’ll upload an MP3 when that happens.

To get back to church, I cooked for the first two services yesterday, and then I served as an Armorbearer at the last service, and I attended a meeting at which we welcomed four new ABs. Guess who one of them is? Zach Freeman. He goes to college in another state, but he’ll be here all summer. I spoke up and informed him of the rule that ABs have to give each other free guitar lessons, and he said, “I GOT you.” Ha!

I keep meeting remarkable people at my church, semi-ghetto though it may be. The background of the people is totally unrelated to their potential and the contents of their hearts. Some are from the neighborhood, which is pretty depressed. Some are from areas that are more affluent. But there are incredible human beings there, from all sorts of different areas.

When I met Zach on Saturday, I was looking forward to meeting a young man everyone admired so much, but he treated ME like a celebrity. He kept talking about my cheesecake and how great it was. I’m just the guy in the kitchen. He, not me, was the talk of the church. It’s wild, how God raises up powerful people and keeps them humble. With his help, an camel really can go through the eye of a needle.

I may have to make him pay off on that lesson thing, although when he sees how hopeless I am, he may wish he had kept silent.

Another new AB has a wonderful trait we needed badly: he’s Cuban. That means he can FISH. And we need that, if we are going to keep angling for my dad. We talked about dolphin fishing, and he told me a few things even I didn’t know. So I’m hoping we can get him on the boat in a few days. He’s also a professional photographer, so maybe we can preserve a few images.

We don’t get very many Cubans in our church. Strange. I know a bunch of Puerto Ricans, though. God tends to recruit from the bottom of society, and Cubans are at the top.

Today I got up, hoping to rest after a busy weekend, and what did I see on Drudge’s page? The Supreme Court has INCORPORATED THE SECOND AMENDMENT. At least, that’s my understanding of it. I don’t think I’m exaggerating, but I haven’t read the opinion. I’m sure liberal judges and lawyers will do their best to interpret incorporation out of the decision. Anyway, Wayne LaPierre says firearms bans can no longer be enforced anywhere in the US. This is gigantic news. God has worked a real wonder.

For a long time, I’ve believed God was going to preserve and expand our gun rights, even as our government pushed farther and farther in the directions of sexual perversion, anti-Semitism, military weakness, weak boarders, and socialism. It looks like I was hearing from God, and not from my own limited mind.

An evil time is coming. When it does, people will remember the Jewish names Madoff, Stearns, Goldman, Sachs, Bernanke, Emanuel, Frank, and Geithner. I think these names will be used to justify a wave of anti-Semitic barbarism. In that day, Christians and Jews who have armed themselves, bought rural land, and learned how to use tools will be way ahead of the game. I strongly suspect God is getting us ready. This decision will certainly help.

What will God do next? I can’t even guess. The spectacle is exhausting me.

King of the Closet

Yesterday I had a major guitar breakthrough. I think I connected with an amp and electric guitar.

I already had two amps. One is a Fender Blues Jr. (tubes) and the other is a cheapo solid-state Crate. The Crate is just unforgivable; I only got it because it gave me some hope of getting distortion at low volumes. The Blues Jr. sounds fine but doesn’t do much until you turn it up (or maybe I don’t know how to use it).

I picked up a Vox AC4TV (tubes), and I cranked the power down to 1/4 watt, which is 1/60 of what the Blues Jr. consumes. It didn’t sound all that great. I had the tone control up pretty high, because I thought this would fuzz up the tone, and I had the volume control very low, because…silly me…I thought this would reduce the volume.

I decided to try it the other way around. The amp only has two sound controls, so it’s not like I had a big choice. I turned the volume way up and turned the tone way down. What did I get? Neat fuzzy distortion, like Otis Rush. Actually, it’s more like his voice than his guitar. It sounded wonderful. I couldn’t put the guitar down.

A long time ago, when I was shopping for an electric guitar, I found an ES355 (or was it an ES330?) which had a similar sound. This is the sound I like.

Don’t try to help me understand why “volume” means “tone” and “tone” means “volume.” I don’t care. It works.

“COINCIDENTALLY,” I’ll be cooking for my church’s Saturday-night Rhythms Lounge event tomorrow, and guess who the guest is? Zachary Freeman. He’s a jazz and blues guitarist. His mom is a pastor at the church. Pretty cool. I haven’t heard him, but people at church rave about him.

IT’S COINCIDENCE! DARWIN! DARWIN! SOCIALISM! VIVA CHE! OBAMA WILL SAVE US!

Whatever. You believe what you want. I’m going to stay connected to the power supply.

My miracle weight loss is continuing. I put on a few pounds while I worked on desserts for my church, and I also discovered Five Guys, so I have been concerned. Today I weighed myself, and it appears that the weight loss is progressing again. Fantastic. Only God could do this. I don’t diet; I’m not gifted with perfect willpower. I’m just not a fat person any more. It’s as if I had been born to be thin. I hope I knock off ten more pounds, so none of my pants will be able to intimidate me. I wore my super-thin black jeans to church on Wednesday. I still need to lose an inch to make them comfortable. I bought them for riding motorcycles; grease and dirt don’t show up much on black jeans.

I got to the range yesterday and chronographed some 10mm ammunition. I don’t have the results before me, but it looks like 12 grains of No. 7 powder will give me good results, and 12.5 might be ideal. At 12 grains, I get 1200 fps, and I want 1250. One disappointment: my Wolf primers seem hard. Two out of twenty failed to go off on the first try. This is fine for target practice, but for self-defense, I’m going to need something like Federal. I am told Federal primers are the softest.

The primers and cases looked okay after firing.

The gun shoots great. My accuracy was affected by the way I had to contort myself to fire through the chronograph, but I shot more than well enough to splatter an assailant’s brains. The recoil tires my hand a little, though, so I think the gun would tend to lose accuracy after a dozen or two dozen rounds. Not enough to matter in a self-defense situation, but it would be annoying in practice sessions.

The consistency of the handloads (especially the low-powered target rounds) was very good. I plan to load defensive rounds one at a time, for total confidence, but for routine target shooting, I think I can rely on my powder measure.

I also tried my Bill Springfield AR trigger. It’s better than the stock trigger, which is not exactly a surprise. I’m not sure I love it, though. Still seems a little balky.

I had to buy cheesy PMC .308 ammo, because I left my Radway Green at home. I don’t know how good PMC rifle ammuntion is, but their pistol ammunition is the worst I’ve tried.

Yesterday, I was shooting into an area the size of a baseball at 100 yards. Acceptable under the circumstances, but I would like to do better. A range officer who shoots .308 says reloading is the only answer. If I start reloading, I think it will be time to consider a .260 Remington upper, which was my real goal anyway. Maybe the .308 upper was a mistake. It looks like I can’t do precision shooting with cheap ammo, so the money I save may be a hollow blessing. Still, if times get really hard, cheap ammo in large quantities may be a real asset, and I can’t get that in .260.

The Leupold scope is a dream come true. I don’t even understand all the knobs yet. The field of view is gorgeous, and everything is sharp.

Speaking of hard times, a man named Hank Kunneman appeared on Sid Roth’s show yesterday, claiming to be a prophet. He said God had showed up a couple of things. First, the next couple of years will be pretty rough, and it will seem like Obama is doing very poorly. Second, God intends to reverse some of the bad legislation Obama has signed, and he intends to change the Supreme Court.

He reminded us to pray for our leaders, and he was right about that. I think Obama is an embarrassment and an obstacle to God’s work, but I have resolved to pray, daily, that God will change his heart and the hearts of our other leaders. The Bible tells us we have a duty to pray for our leaders, so I’m going to stay on it. I also pray that God will take down leaders who refuse to change, replacing them with godly men. So I’m covered either way!

I hate to say it, but I feel bad for Obama. I believe he is in for a long stretch of humiliation, and if he doesn’t get right with God and the Jews, there probably won’t be any end to it. Remember Nebuchadnezzar, wandering around on all fours, eating grass.

I don’t know if Hank Kunneman is the real thing or not, so caveat emptor.

I’m out.

“Did You Just See Something Fall Out of the Tuna Tower?”

Today I achieved an important goal. I got my pastor and a few of his relatives to go fishing on my father’s boat.

It was wonderful. They hung out on the flybridge, shooting the breeze while the rest of us tried to catch fish. Now my dad knows Christians don’t have horns, and we don’t come from Mars. We are reasonably normal people.

Actually, “normal” isn’t right. My church is full of nuts. Ordinarily, you would expect Christians to be more reserved than other people, but we’re the weirdest bunch I’ve ever seen.

This weekend, my pastor preached a sermon with a live lion on the stage. A bunch of us had to push the silly thing around in a cage. I told one of the other Armorbearers, “If that lion barks at me, I’m turning his lights out.” I was fully prepared to buy the owner a new lion if I had to. But he turned out to be very good-natured, like a big gentle dog that was upset over being stuck in a travel kennel.

I was worried because I went on a private tour of Miami’s Metrozoo a few years ago, and they hand-fed a white tiger a few feet away from me. This thing was NOT good-natured. It hated the keeper and tried to kill him. I would guess this animal weighed 250 pounds, and it flew up and clung to the bars with all four feet, in less time than it would take a human being to snap his fingers. It hung there like a giant suction-cup Garfield in a Prius window, trying to eat the keeper through the steel grating. I realized how fast it could move if it wanted to. If one of these things got irritated with you, your efforts at self-defense would be about as likely to succeed as the effort a slug would make if it tried to outrun a kid with a salt shaker.

I have no faith at all in people who keep exotic animals. Remember the Siegried and Roy thing? And what about the two people who lost faces to “tame” chimpanzees in recent years? Every wild pet is tame and trustworthy until it rips your genitals completely off and throws them (the way one of the chimps did) or until it takes your neck in its mouth and bites through a major blood vessel (the way Roy Horn’s tiger did). Remember Timothy Treadwell? He believed he could “commune” with bears and make friends with them, until one ate him. Animal nuts can talk all they want about their status as “experts.” There are no experts. There are only amateurs who haven’t been attacked yet.

So anyway, I was completely ready to blow this lion’s brains out if it managed to outwit us (not difficult) and escape during our highly questionable attempt to move it from one cage to another. I guess there would have been some hard feelings, but I would have gotten over it.

Next week, we’ll have a horse on the altar. I don’t think firearms will come into play. Unless he aggravates me.

Week before last, we had a couple of bald eagles in church. Before that, we had a really fat Indian python, trying to climb the drum set. This is not a normal church.

RE shooting lions with a pistol, I had an interesting conversation with a fellow customer when I went to the gun shop to order my 10mm. A commenter here had expressed surprise that Miami Cubans hunt wild pigs with .22 rifles. I mentioned that to this customer, and he said he did it all the time. He said it had sounded wrong to him, too, until he proved it to himself by shooting a wild pig in its bony forehead. So it looks like my commenter is behind the times.

Shouldn’t be a big shock, since the .22 is the standard implement for slaughtering huge hogs on farms.

To get back to the subject, we had a big time on the boat, and we managed to catch a nice cow dolphin. Unfortunately, I was up on the tuna tower when it hit, and nobody bothered to tell me, so we lost the school and two sets of end tackle before I could sort things out.

On the way back in, we stopped in Biscayne Channel so my pastor’s son Taylor could jump off the tuna tower and cool down. First thing you know, the pastor was nowhere in sight. I asked someone where he was, and they said he was with Taylor. Up on the tower. He went up there and jumped off! Talk about a time for prayer. I could see myself trying to help the church staff understand why I had allowed the pastor to leap to his death at the age of 56. But he came out of it okay.

The crew was extremely helpful cleaning up the boat, and they made a good impression on my father. I’m hoping that will make him interested in hosting more Christians. Some guests get tanked on beer and then hide when the scrub brushes come out, which infuriates the other guests and causes problems. These folks were not like that.

If this is the kind of work you have to do to be a good Christian, count me in. I’m really pooped, and I don’t want to fish twice every weekend, the way I did over the last four days, but I achieved something of lasting importance, and I had a good time doing it.

Now I finally feel like I can relax. For four days, I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Two fishing trips. Three cheesecakes for the church kitchen. My prayer group. A Saturday service. Now I want to DO something. By that I mean something which has nothing to do with church or fishing. I don’t know what I want to do. I just know I want to do it. I have free time. I want to FEEL free.

As soon as I can make myself get up.

Sometimes a Christian Has to Face Hard Jobs Like This One

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. On Friday, I finally got one of my church’s Armorbearers out on the boat. Sadly, all we caught were triggerfish and grunty-type things, but we had a great time, and my dad was exposed to Christians, which is the main thing.

Funny sidelight: I gave my dad the last names of the guests I expected, so he could inform the marina guard. Their names are “Victory” and “Christian.” Seriously. He asked if I was joking. Only Victory showed up.

Tomorrow, I am planning to take my pastor out on the boat, with some of his relatives. At least one of them is also a pastor, and my AB friend will make another appearance to help me take care of everyone.

This is tremendous. My father finally has an excuse to associate with Christians. He loves to fish, but my secular friends have dwindled in number, and suddenly we find ourselves supplied with courteous, responsible, industrious, grateful Christian guests.

In other news, I nearly blinded myself today. I decided to put a new trigger in my AR10. I got it from Bill Springfield, who modifies stock triggers for a reasonable price. I started yanking pins out of the gun, and as I was trying to get the old hammer out, the hammer flew out so fast, I couldn’t see it take off. It spun so hard I could hear it, and it flew by my left eye so closely my eye could feel the wind it generated.

I was horrified. I had no idea this thing could jump out. I would have worn safety glasses, had I had any clue. I have to thank God for watching over me. Right now I could be at the ER, listening to a surgeon debate the feasibility of saving my eye. Is there ANY job you can do with tools that doesn’t require safety goggles? I’m starting to wonder.

I hate brushes with disaster. For hours after they happen, I relive them over and over in my mind. I can’t help thinking about what could have happened.

The AR10 is wonderful, even though it tried to kill me. Everything fits so well. It’s nothing like an AK, where they sort of hammer the parts in any way they’ll fit. The pins that hold the upper and lower together are extremely precisely fit, but I can remove them with my fingers. The pins for the hammer and trigger are nearly as easy to deal with. The whole job took maybe 20 minutes.

I don’t want to sit around dry-firing it, not knowing whether the gun will be damaged, but I had to dry-fire it a couple of times, and it feels great. One thing I noticed: I can’t activate the safety unless the gun is cocked. I can’t remember whether it was that way with the old trigger, but I don’t think the new trigger and safety have any differences that could account for a change. All the obvious differences in the fire control group are in the front end.

Can’t wait to get to the range.

I also want to try out the new 10mm. I made up 70 rounds of ammo for it, including 20 rounds of defensive stuff, in two batches of 10. They carry different charges. I want to chronograph them and look at the cases after I shoot, so I can see if they’re safe to use. I’ve never used my chronograph. I hope I don’t shoot it.

I like the 10mm so far. I got some Hornady factory ammo for it, and I tried carrying it. It’s only half an inch longer than my 9mm, and the width is not much greater. It fits in the same pocket holster and has the same capacity, but the ballistics are infinitely superior. Nearly equal to .357 Magnum. I think this may be the best possible compact carry gun, barring obscure calibers I’ve never heard of.

Supposedly the 10mm is “inherently accurate.” I have never understood what this means. You would think any uniformly made ammunition in any caliber would be accurate, since you would expect it to repeat its performance reliably, but I guess that isn’t how it works. Ballistics is a black art. Mankind has been creating new calibers for centuries, yet we get big improvements all the time, which suggests that it’s not an easy puzzle. If the answers were obvious, we would already have them, right?

I considered getting an AK pistol for the truck, and I still might do it, but I took the Vz 58 out to the truck to see how it handled in the cab, and it was very easy to deal with. Fold it up, turn on the laser and flashlight, and you are ready to obliterate any assailant within a hundred feet, with no need to shoulder the arm. A pistol would achieve the same result, but it might be heavier, since it’s an AK, and it would be a fresh cash outlay. Of course, one attraction of the AK is the knowledge that it’s a cheap piece of junk. Were it stolen, I would care very little. I would hate to lose a pretty Vz 58, though. Maybe a second-rate Century Vz 58 is a good solution. Functional and light, cheaper than the better models, and equipped with a buttstock.

I could put a pistol foregrip on the Vz, which would be illegal on the AK.

I guess it sounds silly to have a long gun in a vehicle, but it’s not. Watch videos of actual gunfights. People with long guns hit things, and people with pistols miss. That says it all. Add superior ballistics and high capacity, and you end up with a picture in which pistols, not long guns, seem silly. If you arm yourself at all, you tacitly acknowledge that you want effective protection, and a pistol ain’t it. Not even close. A pistol is a very dumb idea, except when there is no other choice. In a vehicle, you have a choice.

I hope we get some fish tomorrow, and that my dad makes a good connection. I put in a lot of preparation today, and my AB friend is donating a day of his time. Let’s see what God does for us.

His Price is Far Above Rubies

Went to church tonight to do some work on the kitchen and work security for the Tuesday service. While I was there, THREE women stopped me to tell me how amazing my cheesecake was!

I knew this would happen!

More

I got my press ready for 10mm today. Problem: since the gun isn’t here, I can’t check the ammo to see if it chambers and ejects. I made five rounds without powder or primers, and when I get the gun, I’ll see if the external dimensions are okay for the chamber. Once I have it working, I don’t think I’ll need to adjust anything but the seating die.

I have relatively cheap Laser-Cast bullets for practice. I plan to use a recipe that gives about 1060 fps in a 5″ barrel. Internet sources say I’ll only lose about 5% of optimal velocity with a 3″ Glock barrel. When my Speer Gold Dots arrive, I’ll be using a 1250-fps recipe, so I should come in at about 1200.

The modified primer feed on my press is working great. There is nothing like having your own machine shop.

RETRACTION

Lots of stuff to do today.

Tonight, I serve as an armorbearer at church. Before I go, I need to weld the church’s handtruck back together. Now that I’ve seen a few Chinese welds pop, I am a little nervous about trusting welded products.

I also need to make 10mm ammunition before my new pistol arrives. I have the makings, but I need to get the press set up and start cranking the handle. I looked around for 10mm practice ammo, but it’s hard to find here. Some people would recoil in horror at the thought of endangering a Glock warranty with reloads, but I think that’s stupid. For a single repair, which is all you’re likely to need over the life of the gun, the warranty has a maximum value of about $500. In reality, you probably won’t use a Glock warranty, and if you do, it will probably be a repair you could have gotten for $20. You save at least $12 per box with reloads. Over $200 per thousand rounds. Let’s see if we can figure out the right choice! DUH!

Good defensive rounds cost about $45 per box, delivered. I can save something like $30 per box. And I can run them through a Chrony and make sure they’re right.

They wouldn’t even be reloads. I found new Starline brass online. Probably a mistake. I think I should use it to make some defensive rounds and buy once-fired for everything else.

I don’t know why people get so spastic about gun warranties. You have to weigh what you’re getting against what you lose.

I also have to order some pots for the church. I have to take care of Father’s Day. And I should take my angle grinder to church and remove the 24″ piece of 5/16″ angle iron protruding from the kitchen floor. Maybe I should take my rotary hammer and try to remove the stub from the concrete.

It’s too much for my tiny brain to handle.

My cheesecake and brownies are selling really well at church. I’m thinking I should put an oven in a warehouse and see what I can sell to bakeries and restaurants. How hard can it be? I already have an empty warehouse.

Bye.

Cheesecake Assault

I had an incredible weekend.

First, I made three blueberry cheesecakes for church. I stuck two in the walk-in cooler, and we sold the third. People were oohing and ahhing. If I could only get the women to quit dieting…

It’s no wonder they want to diet. They refuse to drink diet soda. Must be an island thing. We don’t even have diet soda in the fountain. I guess all those Pepsis add up, and then you can’t have cheesecake.

Second thing: I got a key to the church kitchen. FINALLY. I was driving the guy who passes out keys crazy. I even went to his Facebook page and posted “Isaiah 22:22!” Now I can get in there and DO things. Today a bunch of us plan to tear through the kitchen and utterly abolish the disorder. I’m going to take some tools so I can hang a clock.

Third thing: I was feeling frustrated and sort of unappreciated because I could not get a key to the kitchen, and it seemed like the Armorbearers were in a rut. I couldn’t help them get them to communicate so we could organize to do things. But I got the key, and then the Armorbearers had a fantastic meeting after church. We managed to get a couple of things worked out. We’re planning to bring a guy in to give us krav maga lessons, and we’re gearing up for paintball. One of the younger guys suggested it. He said it builds unity. I don’t know about that, but it sure builds welts.

I had dinner with some Messianic Jews on Friday. They want to form an AB squad for their synagogue, and they want to go to the range with us and get CCW permits. Hopefully, we can work that out.

I talked with one of my chefs yesterday, and we made some tentative plans about equipment and food. I’m checking stuff out at Instawares. I plan to take some of my beautiful Chinese cookware with me today so people can check it out and see if we should order some, and I think I’m going to donate some of my useless, overpriced Japanese knives. They have gathered dust for three years, at least. I don’t like giving cast-off stuff to the church, but these are too good to throw out, and I refuse to use them here.

Life is sweet, thanks to God.

More

This is from a friend named Celeste. Found it on Facebook.

I cry out with my whole heart; hear me, O Lord! Psalm 119:145
Family, PLEASE I am asking for urgent prayers for my brother Jim who is in the hospital. They are running tests and we are praying for a miracle. Thank you. xo

Not by Sight

I should finish writing about my trip to Washington, DC, for the National Day of Prayer. I left you at the National Holocaust Memorial.

After our tour, Mike and I were stuck in the city. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews had a dinner scheduled, and we did not have enough time to go home and shower. We made our way to the Crowne Plaza on K Street and headed downstairs to the banquet room.

They had a table set up, with little gift bags for everyone. I got a package of Dead Sea girly stuff. Mud pack or something. We also received Rabbi Eckstein’s latest CD. He sings.

We met a number of donors and IFCJ staffers. One of the staffers is a food critic. She said she would like to see my cookbook. I didn’t know what to say about that. It’s not the kind of material Christians ordinarily read.

The Rabbi showed up, and each of us got to pose for a photo with him. Very nice guy. Not stand-offish at all. No entourage. No hovering assistants to keep donors away. He even posed with Mike, who, as I have noted before, isn’t even a donor!

We sat at our tables in the banquet room, and food started coming out, and speakers appeared. I was amazed that prayer in the name of Jesus was tolerated.

I shouldn’t even have to point out that almost all of the donors were Christians.

The Rabbi spoke. He said he did not want to talk politics, but he referred, in a general way, to the problems Israel was having with the current U.S. administration. Barack Obama is not a conservative Christian, and he does not have the pro-Israel attitude conservatives expect when they nominate a candidate. He sees Israel and the Jews as spoiled by previous administrations, and he is determined to bring about “even-handedness” in our dealings in the Middle East.

“Even-handedness.” There are about 15 million Jews on earth. They have one tiny country they can flee to when persecuted. They have 1.2 billion Muslim counterparts, many of whom are determined to destroy Israel, and many of whom hope to exterminate the Jewish people. But our President wants “even-handedness.”

I can’t tell you how good it felt, watching an Orthodox rabbi tell us he was frustrated by a liberal administration and pleased to have the support of conservative Christians.

He gave us a song or two, using a beautiful guitar a supporter made. And we heard from some other speakers, and then we had conversation.

My table was wonderful. We started talking about weapons and tools and so on. We had a Pentagon employee (Army, I think) and a retired military guy and his wife, and most of us were on exactly the same frequency. Linda (the IFCJ rep who invited me) told everyone about my cookbook and my guns and tools, and we started exchanging information and opinions.

I think Mike was a little weirded out. We were sitting with total strangers, yet there was an instant rapport. We were talking about prophecy and how America was declining, and one of the guys started quoting Perry Stone, whom I have mentioned to Mike many times. Everyone wanted to know about concealed carry and reloading and so on, and I told them what I knew.

There was one couple–Baptists, probably–who seemed almost taken aback by the passion and conviction we all displayed. But the rest of us were completely caught up, like no other group at the dinner. I told Mike that when you start walking by faith, this kind of thing happens all the time. I said, “It’s going to keep happening for the rest of your life.”

By the end, we were talking like old friends.

The next morning, Mike and I got up and headed for DC again, to hear the Israeli ambassador. His name is Michael Oren, and we were scheduled to hear him at the Ninth Annual Israel Solidarity Event, at the Israeli Embassy!

I spent four months on a kibbutz in 1984, and for a long time, I’ve longed to return to Israel. The embassy is considered part of Israel, so it was a pretty good substitute.

We met some of our new friends outside the security building, and we made our way through the metal detector. It was odd to hear the peculiar, brusque Israeli accent again as the guards and staffers worked to get us checked in.

Before we began, a pianist and singer performed Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel. Funny thing, it’s based on the same folk melody as Smetana’s Die Moldau, which was one of my mother’s favorite pieces of music. When Hatikvah was banned by the British Mandate, some radio stations played Die Moldau in order to get around the prohibition.

The Star-Spangled Banner followed.

Christian speakers including Gary Bauer preceded the ambassador. They talked about the worldwide increase in anti-Semitism and the need to stand by Israel’s side in these strange times. Once again, prayer in the name of Jesus was permitted. Amazing.

I believe the only Israeli speakers were Noam Katz (Minister for Public Diplomacy) and Michael Oren. If memory serves, Mr. Katz openly admitted that American conservative Christians were the best friends Israel had. It may have been Ambassador Oren, but I don’t remember it that way. In any case, it was stirring. What a change in the Jewish perspective.

Ambassador Oren was wonderful. He’s a historian (born in the US and schooled at Princeton and Columbia), and he told about American’s long association with Israel and the Jews. He told us that one of the Founding Fathers proposed putting Moses and the Hebrews on our national seal, as a metaphor for our crossing the Atlantic and leaving the British behind. The British were our Egyptians. Ambassador Oren also pointed out that a surprising number of early Americans were schooled in the Hebrew language, and many believed it to be the language of heaven.

When the Israelis spoke, a serious-looking young man stood to the side of the podium, staring out over the crowd. I took him to be a Mossad bodyguard. An armorbearer! Just like me, except he actually knew what he was doing.

I found myself seated next to a donor I hadn’t met before. We found ourselves talking a great deal. She and her husband had been at the dinner, and a group had prayed for him, and his ear had been healed. She complained that now he could hear her muttering about him!

She asked about my church, and I told her about Trinity, and that we belonged to the Assemblies of God. The woman I was talking to said she thought it was a sign that she should check out a local AG church she had wanted to visit. A lady in front of us turned around and said she was AG, too. I seem to have made a much better impression on people than I had any right to.

I told her what I could about charismatic Christianity. I believe prayer in the Spirit builds us up (as the Bible claims), and that it gives us faith and changes us from within.

Naturally, I also talked to her about food. I took her email address and told her she could have any recipe she wanted. Since then, we have corresponded. Her husband’s ear, which had been screwed up for years, is still fine.

I was glad I had managed to be of some use. When you walk by faith, God chooses the people you meet.

I touched the stones of the courtyard on the way out, saying goodbye to Israel once again.

I can’t tell you everything that happened on Saturday; it’s fairly private. We went to the air and space museum at the Smithsonian. I felt like God was showing me the wonders he had done for this country before it turned away from him. I wondered what was in store, as our rebellion continued.

On Sunday, Mike and I went to church. His wife wanted to take their son fishing, so they didn’t go. But Mike was very gung-ho. I got him to go to Trinity Assembly of God in Lanham, Maryland. I found it on the web a while back, and it looked promising. And how about that name? Same as my church in Miami Gardens.

We got to the church, and I told Mike to pick seats for us. I was confident that God would do something weird with his choice. We ended up near the back on the right.

The music was very good, and I even knew some of the songs. I guess charismatics tend to gravitate toward the same hymns.

Mike has been having some difficulties with his family. I don’t want to say more than that. Guess what day God picked to get us in church together? Mother’s Day. The whole service was about wives and mothers. Very appropriate.

Before things really got going, we heard some testimony from a lady whose prayer for a baby had been answered. When I heard her voice, it was another great surprise. Many of the people in the church were black, but until she spoke, I didn’t know they were island people. Just like Trinity in Miami Gardens! How did that happen? We were in Maryland, not Florida. They had Hispanics, too. The pastor’s name is Tino. The only other Tino I know goes to Trinity.

The pastor had us pray sort of randomly early on. This is not unusual at a charismatic church. Mike and I went at it, and as we did, each of us felt a big hand land on his shoulder. An older man in the row behind us was praying for us, asking God to take us in hand and change us and make us his instruments. It was wonderful. I turned and thanked him.

When the prayer was done, the pastor sent a Mother’s Day bouquet to his own mother, who was attending. The person with the flowers walked right toward us and then past us. To a lady in the row behind us. Standing next to the man who prayed. Evidently, Mike chose seats directly in front of the pastor’s dad.

The pastor’s wife gave the sermon. She talked about great female figures in the Bible. Ruth, Esther, Deborah, and so on. But toward the end, she became agitated and kept saying she felt like she had to talk about restoring marriages and families. She started talking about all the things the church had to offer. Counseling and prayer and so on. And she kept repeating, “You have to do the work. You have to do the work!” This is exactly what I tell Mike all the time. You can’t wait to get your life in order before you turn to God, because he’s the one who fixes your life. You have to make time and go.

She became so agitated, she began speaking in tongues, which Mike found a little alarming. But that’s part of the package.

He has gone back to the church since our visit, and I’m hoping he’ll join. How many “coincidences” do you need to witness before you give up and get on board?

I accidentally left my IFCJ gift bag in Mike’s car. Now he’ll have everything he needs, if he decides to do a Dead Sea mud pack.

There wasn’t much more to the trip than that. We went to Five Guys again, and then I got on a plane.

If you read all three installments of the story, it should be obvious to you that I was guided on this trip, and so were the people around me. This is what my life is like these days. I am not perfect in obedience or faith, but I am on the path, and I am seeing God’s power in my life. The Bible says he lifts us out of the miry clay and sets our feet upon a rock and establishes our goings. It is absolutely true.

I wish I had time to write up all the things I’ve seen. I can understand why the Gospels say the world could not contain enough books to hold the complete story of Jesus’s ministry. I’m a nobody, and I can’t even cover what happens to me.

Escalation

I’m making the jump to 10mm. I decided it was worth it to spend the money and tolerate a slightly larger carry piece.

After reading all the BS, I have come to the tentative conclusion that you need speed to make a handgun bullet expand, and you need a big bullet with lots of penetration if expansion doesn’t occur, and that adds up to “not 9mm.”

The argument never ends, and it is impossible to draw a firm conclusion. Six months from now, I may think I made a big mistake. But you have to make the most of the information you have.

At the gun shop, I talked to a guy who has fired the AK-47 pistol. He says it will do exactly what I want, i.e. provide excellent accuracy and stopping power at short distances. With a laser, it should be the ultimate non-registration vehicle weapon. I may be wrong; I need to take my Vz 58 outside, fold it, and see how it behaves in the truck. If it handles okay, it would be considerably better than the AK, because of the option of using the buttstock.

I would need to be able to secure the rifle when I’m not in the truck. I think a bicycle lock might be the simplest way. I can carry it legally in a nylon bag, but that won’t keep thieves from grabbing it. When I park in an iffy area, the bike lock would add enough security to defeat most of the goofs who are likely to try to steal the gun. There is no way to keep it away from skilled people who really want it.

It’s legal to carry a long gun in a vehicle in Florida, but you have to have it “securely encased,” which means almost nothing. Same rule for pistols. If you put a pistol in the center console of your car, it’s securely encased under my reading of the law. It should be legal to have an AK pistol in a box or zippered bag.

Our gun laws are pretty stupid. Ted Nugent says the Second Amendment is his carry permit, and he’s right. It says we can “keep and bear” arms, and “keep” means “own,” and “bear” means “carry on your person.” The Constitution says we have the right to “own arms and carry them with us.” Unfortunately, the courts and some state legislatures have screwed it up. Imagine living in a state where you can’t have a gun rack in the window of your pickup. It’s un-American.

I can carry the nastiest pistol made just about anywhere I go, as long as I conceal it, but if I let people see it (so they have a chance to react appropriately), I can be charged with a crime. I can’t leave it out on my car seat, even though that’s better concealment than a long shirt. I can’t carry it onto school property, so if I see a young coed being gang-raped, all I can do is wave and say, “How’s it going, guys?” None of it makes any sense. Anyway, I can put an AK pistol in my truck, and I may very well do it. Ordinary pistols just don’t cut it; they’re desperation weapons, for times when you can’t get to a long gun.

One nice thing about 10mm is that it appears I can make handloads which will work beautifully for self-defense. The Speer Gold Dot hollow point has great performance, and they are readily available as components. The .45 HPs I got from Hornady are said to be lame because they don’t expand; I just use them for practice. I found good recipes for 10mm, so I shouldn’t have to do anything but load and shoot. I got a Chrony a long time ago; maybe I could set it up and test the ammo.

Guess I’ll sell the 9mm. Or keep it in case the new gun pops a spring or something.