Christmas presents

In the picture ----->>
you can see the wonderful presents that I was given for Christmas, but anyway just for the sake of taking up blawg space I will describe them. In the lower right corner you will see a lovely mini-iPod with 30 gigs and that plays videos (these are new on the market) along with a grip holder thing for it. In the upper right and middle I have received some Stetson cologne, because 15 types of name-brand cologne wasnt enough for me. In the lower left corner there is a body-size pillow case (which will go with the body-size pillow I sleep with every night). In the lower middle is some incense to add to my collection. And in the upper right corner there is a box of some Starbucks cookies that I really like. Also in the very top right of the picture you will see a bit of wrapping paper from the big pile that I created, and in the very lower center of the picture is a small portion of my foot (very interesting, indeed).

Other presents I received from other relatives included a bible cover, some green cargo pants from Aeropostale (to wear at basketball and football games, because I love to wear cargos to games for reasons you will have to ask me in person about), and some chocolates.

Well anyway, I've had a fun day today (today being National Return Our Christmas Presents to the Store and Wait in a Long Time to do so Day). I went to Bro. Isaac's house to watch the Motor City Bowl (Memphis vs. Akron) with Nawill, Matt Case, John G., Seth, and Bro. Zack as well as Bro. Isaac's kids. And tomorrow I am hoping to get to go to the Gonzaga game in the FedEx Forum with some of the GC guys. Not to mention I'll be able to see them at church Wed. and throughout GC's meeting, so we'll all probably be sick of each other by next week. Also I'd like to say that I am 19.69234% of a member at GC, but the other 80.30766% of me still belongs to Southaven.

I'd like to conclude this post by again reminding anyone who has not yet visited my church's website to please do so by clicking here.

God Bless yall,
Joe

Christmas Eve Blawg Post

Due to strong influence by a certain friend of mine I have decided to make another blawg post because I "dont make them often enough." So for you wonderful blawg readers who have grown impatient for me, here is something to satisfy your needs for a little while.

In case anyone is wondering why I have not been idling on AIM every second over the past 2-3 days, I have been out of town, in Florence, AL, visiting my folks for the Christmas holidays. Here are some lovely pics of my grandmother (widow of my late-grandfather who passed away just a month ago) and my other cousins and family.

My dad, my Grandmother (aka Muhner), and my cousin Lucas who is about 9 (I think).

Andrew 15 in the pic, 16 today, and me, as you can see he is very entuasiastic (actually he was sort of sick) and I am giving my lovely pscyho-face look.

The three pictures below have a more interesting story behind them. You see we (being my dad, Andrew, Grace, and I) went to Big Lots one afternoon and bought some cat nip for 80 cents. We decided to try some on this big obese dull cat that lives across the street, in an attempt to see something lively out of an otherwise life-less cat. We all got a pretty good laugh out of watching this cat get "stoned" so here's some shots of it all:

Also I just want to wish a Happy Birthday to my cousin Andrew (pictured above) who is turning 16 today, and my good friend Lydia Poe (aka teh Lydginator) who is turning 15 today, and will be driving soon (everybody prepare for Lydgination!!!) and we all know how wonderful of a driver she will be (we're all doomed!!!).

Church Website

Ladies and Gentlemen, its finally here!!! Its my church's website!!!! Check it out, you can click HERE!!! or you can scroll down on my sidebar and click on Southaven PBC.

Primitive Baptist Church map

Primitive Baptist Church map

Yall please go to this map page, and zoom in and find your church's actual location (actual street address) and put a marker there. In the "Name" box please put the name of your church, in the "Message" box please put your pastor's name (Elder/Brother and then the pastor's name), and in the "Link" box please put the link to your church's website if they have one, if they dont then it can be left blank.

I've already put in a marker for all the churches in the Memphis area to show how it should look like. Those markers have been put at the exact street address for those churches. Please reference to those if you have any confusion. If you still do not understand please email me at joe444477@gmail.com or joe444477@hotmail.com.

Also, one last time and I'll stop bothering you blog readers with my rambling. Please everyone post this link on your blog and get the word out!!! I want this map to be huge, like nation wide, maybe we can even get churches in India, the Phillipeans, and/or Tanzania on it!!!!!

My Sister Got Engaged!!!

Well its official now (though I must confess I've known about this little secret for a few months now). My younger sister, Grace, is now engaged to Dustin!!! Personally I have mixed feelings about it all (too early...), but of course I know its not my place of business to have anything to say about any of that. I've seen it happen before where family and/or friends tries to intervene in a personal relationship like that. It was not a good experience, so I refuse to be a part of any of that, and I will just be happy for the both of them. Here's the letter I was sent:

Hello, all! I have some great news to share with y'all! As many of you know I have been dating this wonderful guy named Dustin Lambert for exactly 7 months and 3 days. Well, last night, Frday December 9th, Dustin proposed to me, and I said "Yes"!!!!

But now I have to tell ya how it happened.... OK, there's this student organization here in Martin, TN called the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministry) and every month they have this event called He-Brews Coffee House. It's for anyone of any denomination/religion/whatever to come and hang out with a great bunch of people and drink free coffee and snacks and have free entertainment.

Well, because his birthday is Dec 16th which is next Friday, I decided to set a surprise up for him at Coffee House. I bought him a cake and I asked this guy named Ben to go up to the microphone at a certain time and Say something to get the audience to start singing happy B-day to him, then i came out while they were singing and gave him the cake with all teh 21 candles lit...

So, we are standing in front of the stage, in the middle of the room, he just blew out the candles, then a guy on stage hands him a microphone and he says "Well, I had something planned, but... " Then he hands me a beautiful rose and on the top of it is the engagement ring! At this point I almost drop the cake, which is still in my hands, but I manage to set it down on the stage. He takes the ring, gets down on one knee and asks me to marry him. I, of course, say “Yes” in this tiny little squeaky voice. And then we hug and kiss for like 5 minutes and all the while everyone is clapping and screaming. Then all the girls go up to me and hug me. All the guys go pat Dustin on the back and then lift him in the air.

By the way, Karen Taylor (one of my best friends and my future maid of honor) was there and a bunch of my other friends. Now that I think about it, there was a huge turnout at that event yesterday… haha… that makes sense now. It turns out that Dustin had a big thing ready. He was going to do a devotion about the love of God and then ask me to come up and then he'd propose, but I messed things up a little. It's OK though, he doesn't care and we agreed that this worked out better!

So, now I have finals to look forward to next week, I haven't started studying for a one. Then i'll be back in Memphis late December 16th or early December 17th. I can't wait ot show everyone the ring, its GORGEOUS!!! For those of you who don't live in Mempho, I will be sending pics out ASAP!

Everyone have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, good luck on finals, and God bless!

Love, Grace

My new found fame

There it is, the school newspaper that contains the comments from yours truely. All because my boss came up with the brilliant idea to schedule me to work 1-5pm in McWherter on Tuesdays for the semester. So with my new found fame I'd like to say that me and my fellow quoted coworker Brad will be holding an autograph session next Tuesday at work, we'll both also be available to have your picture taken standing next to one of us, for a small fee of $4.95. Proceeds will go to the lady GCS basketball team to help them fund for those uniforms so they can stop trying to fatten me up with donuts.

(Also, just to rub it in, please note that my quote was on the FRONT PAGE of the school newspaper. Whereas Ryan's, back a long time ago when he had his time of fame, was in the middle somewhere where nobody reads)

Whatever you call this stuff...

Not that I really wanted to be a part of this "trend" this, but since I was tagged by Ryan I am left with no choice. So here it goes:

1. To do before I die:

--Play in the NBA.
--Become a millionaire so I can buy our church a new building finally, so we can get out of that hotel room we've been stuck in for the past 3 years.
--Travel to the upper Northwestern part of Northwestern Territories, CA, or somewhere in Antartica.
--Get married and have a family.
--Become a much better Christian and better member of my church.
--Move out of my parent's house.
--Preach a sermon.


2. I cannot do (and would very much like to):

--Be left-handed.
--Play PG for the Memphis Tigers (and start on a gamely basis).
--Have a blood type of AB.
--Take an interest in things like plays, opera's, and musical (wouldn't say 100% that its a "cannot do" but indeed its not very likely).
--Lead singing (this will change soon, I hope)
--Make straight A's, or at least all A's and B's.
--[insert any from the above question, because they are mostly the same answers as I would have put on this one]


3. That would attract me to my future spouse:

--Faith.
--She has very attractive looks.
--Friendly/personable.
--She likes to laugh about stuff a lot (not too much) and she is one whom I can make laugh.
--She isnt all nit-picky about small stuff, she is someone who still would like me despite our differences on some things (because no two people are the same, but that doesnt mean that those two people arent necessarily perfect for each other, sometimes difference is a good thing).
--She loves my desire to always set up nice ambiences (eg. when I like to set up a lovely candle-lite dinner)
--She will encourage me in many aspects of life that I may struggle in (eg. how to become more of a intellectual person, or to be in better control of my emotions).


4. Things I say most often:

--"I"
--"Go Tigers!!!"
--*banging into my front door after running downstairs*
--"yall"
--"main what!!!!!"
--"cool"
--"o boy"


5. Seven books I love-- (I'm supposed to come up with 7!!! please dont laugh yall)

--The Bible (KJV 1611)
--Requiem for a Dream
--The Great Gatsby
--The Outsiders
--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
--Waiting for Godot
--The Odyssey


6. Movies I could watch over and over:

--The Longest Yard (actually pretty much anything with Adam Sandler is good)
--Halloween 1, 2, 4, 5, H20, The Resurrection
--The Ring (the original one)
--The Village (well.... it was ok, I just really couldnt think of anything else to put)
--Anchor Man
--Signs
--Birth of a Nation
(I havent really seen a lot of cool movies lately, plus I have sort of a different taste than most of yall)


7. People I want to tag--
--Adam
--Lacey
--Justin
--Lydia
--Seth C.
--Kaity
--Tommy

A Week of Worldliness and Politics

This post is for everyone out there who has debated, or seen me debate politics, and viewed me as more of a Liberal than a Moderate.

So I believe my last post explained what happened at my Grandfather's funeral. Well I'd like to speak a little more about my family and my altercations with them as I spent time with them over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Basically a lot of my family on that side of the family, have been very worldly. My cousin was arrested and (as I found out from his younger brother that weekend) the charge against him was "vehicular manslaughter." Also I have an uncle and an aunt (both siblings, and son and daughter of my late Grandfather who's funeral we were all in town for) who seem to live very worldly lives sometimes. I believe it was Tuesday evening that I got into a little debate with them over the usual, politics and faith. Them, both being hard-nosed liberals, put me in the conservative seat on this debate for the most part, which got it focusing more on religion, because that is where I have a most conservative view on things. And of course the discuss just had to lead to the issue of "legalization of marujuana." Now my uncle voted for Nader in 2000, and guess why? Yes, I shamefully admit that my uncle smokes weed on occassions. And he has really done his research too, because he gave me every argument in the world for why marujuana should be legal in America. He basically has me convinced that marujuana is safer than cigarettes and alcohol (not that this really convinces me it should be legal, but convinces me more into thinking that cigarettes should be illegal too). The only thing that was really difficult about this, was to explain to him why I disagreed, and why I thought marujuana should remain illegal, because to be honest, I dont know all my facts on the particular issue. Personally I dont think I did a very good job of debating with him, but what hurt was what he was saying just a couple days later.

We were playing cards late at night (around 2-3am) a couple nights later, and of course the same issue comes up again. This time my uncle was more frustrated because I had just beaten him in Rook 3 times in a row, and when I win, I am rather open about it. I actually struggle not to act braggy quite a bit. But anyway, he goes so far as to pretty much encourage me to try weed. Me and my partner after a hand of Rook, have a score of 420, and yes he had to make a smart comment about "wow, first time ever Joe scores a 4:20" (for those who dont know what 4:20 is, count your blessings).

So after this night, I have questioned myself about whether I ever want to see this particular uncle of mine again? None of my efforts to influence him of a more Christ-like behavior have been successful, and its very discouraging to continue speaking to him about all this. I even told my parents once we got back home, about what he said, and they were both very upset with him about it. Most of my behavior after this Thanksgiving trip seemed to be a lot more worldly for awhile, until I heard a good and encouraging sermon from Brother Warren on Sunday about Sin, and how we should flee from it. It also lifted me back up a great deal, to hear Brother Isaac Guess's study Wed. night on some of Hannah's Prayer in the book of Samuel. It also felt good to see some of my P.B. friends again, and to speak to them face-to-face.

So through all this that happened over the past week, being able to speak to people on the other side of the political spectrum, than who I speak with on the TROG forum or in person when I have political debates with most of you conservative blog readers, what would yall say, am I a liberal, or a moderate?

God Bless,
Joe