TO DAVID AND MICHELLE

I just wanted to let you know that i am praying for you everyday. Having children is one of the biggest life changing events you will ever go through. You are on the brink of a new path sometimes tough always wonderful.  Please let us know how you are. David write you MOm.

We love you so much!

Seven days and counting at 25:55:27…

I’ve got a lot to say in this post but I will start it off by saying happy birthday to mom and dad and happy mothers day mom. The baby has not been born yet I will call Mom and dad when it is though.

that’s the time it took me to run roughly five kilometers today.You see I’m planing n running in a charity race a 5K to be exact…

Rewind reality about six months and that’s where the notion of me and my poor knees running a five kilometer race comes from. Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with running and would do more of it if I could. I play football (euro) all the time here and actually run quite a bit while at it, the only saving grace, grass. For almost three years now my knees have been giving me trouble, I can manage most of the time and it doesn’t bug that much but if you throw in to the mix a good hour of hard core jogging on cement paths and my left knee will be out of competition for about a week and the right knee will be right behind it. so when some one told me about this race I said “I wish I could but there’s no way my knee will let me”.

I wasn’t even thinking about the race until exactly one week ago when I came home from work and said “That’s it I need to spend sometime alone with my thoughts and a good dose of music” my normal work out wasn’t going to cut it, I’d had to much of the same old. I started to go through my options: I got in to biking awhile back but, as is the way of things in this world, the bike broke and lacking the money to fix it, or more appropriately spending the money on something else, I decided against that too. That left hiking through the woods or jogging. The woods here are nice and I like them and all but this is the middle of the season for mosquitoes not a good choice , if I was going to be out side I needed to be moving fast. So after going through the long list of alternatives which surprisingly took a short time I decided to jog.

Now you know me if I’m gonna do anything at all I’ll do it all the way, and in this case that meant timing myself. I had been told that from the last house on our street to the high way and back was more or less five kilometers, why not give it a try. So I did, not expecting to do any better then say 30 mins, if I did any better then that I’d give the race a chance. I did it the first time in 26mins 47 seconds.

The next day however had me thinking twice. My left knee screamed at me to stop and I hadn’t even gotten out of bed and when I did my calf muscles stared talking and they weren’t very nice about it. I stretched a little and that seemed to help the muscles a bit, but I knew that if I couldn’t do something for my knee then I wasn’t going to run the race. I thought of wrapping it in an ace bandage and was on my way up the stairs to do just that when Mimi told me she had a knee brace I could have. Not sure if I wanted to be seen wearing one of those as it is a bit of a sign of weakness but having only two other options neither of which made me look any stronger I tried the thing on. Right away it felt better and I could tell that this was exactly what I needed.

The next day after that (Wednesday) I went jogging again and this time there was no pain in my knee, my calf’s still hurt and I ended up getting blisters but it no knee pain, and whats better then that I finished in 24:15:10  a whole two minutes and a half better then last time.

“So why did it take you longer this time around” you ask and the answer is very simple, my mp3 ran out of battery half way through the run and when all I have t listen to is the sound of my squeaky old lungs rattling with breath, well you get the picture. On the upside it’s good practice for the race when I won’t be allowed to use an mp3 player, it’s against the rules, and I’ll just have to make do with out.

This has been a sports update stay tuned for the final results of the race on the 30th, and an exclusive interview with Pedro R. Anderson the favorite to win.

what the…

what is going on this site is so dead. I can’t believe you guys.

Snow

Yes ladies and gentlemen this is my sorry excuse for a merry Christmas post. BTW MERRY CHRISTMAS everybody GOD BLESS US EVERYONE!!!

This is a post I wrote about two weeks ago but got lost in the editing stages (hey my wife was an English major) so now for your edification I’ll be posting it.

Snow

It comes and it goes, and in a strange way it brings warmth and light to an otherwise cold and dark winter. You all living there in Texas probably don’t know what I mean by that since your winters, if you can call them that, are very mild. But here where winter spans a good four months of the year and some time stretches on to take up most of the rest of it snow is one of the few things that makes winter worth bearing.

The fall months are the absolute most boring part of the year. The cold that is wet, and because of that all the more biting, is a very powerful reminder of where you’re living after spending summer sweltering away under a sun that is not as hot as it should be to make you sweet like you have been. The shock will force you to stay inside as much as possible and only let you out when you really need to. The ground is wet from  the rain that has turned your once green football (for those of you in the US read soccer) field to mud, so you can’t even go out to for a fulfilling form of exercise. During this time of mixed cold and warmth is when your body is the weakest, or at least not at its strongest, and so you are left open to at the least annoying and at the worst debilitating sicknesses. All the while you struggle to find the right clothes to wear, the perfect mix between warmth and comfort, one day you wear your winter boots and wool coat and find out that it’s the warmest day of the month, you sweet it out, and fell like a fool. The next day determined not to make the same mistake you wear a nice light jacket and a smart pair of dress shoes, you come home with cold feet and a sore throat that leaves you talking in a strained whisper. The leaves fall off the trees like you knew they would and in the place of their warm greens and yellows is left hard cold browns and grays. And all the while there’s the thought that “this is just the beginning, it will get much worse before it gets any better.

Then the month of December rolls around and you say “now it’s really winter, here comes the snow”, Pack up the cleats and swimming trunks make way for the hats, scarves, and down jackets. A week goes by and the weather stays the same, one day warm the next slightly colder. It drops below freezing and still no snow. The weather forecast said it snowed last night but by the time you got up it was gone, melted by the barely above freezing temperatures. You say to your self “here goes the first global warming winter in Ukraine, no white Christmas, and Happy Honokaa, sore throat.”

You wake up next Thursday morning and the windows are all fogged up, just like they always are, you don’t bother to look out anymore. Without even going down for coffee you start in on your work (please note this is a very rare occasion) you have to send three emails off before you eat breakfast. Half way through your last message your loving wife comes in and says: “Honey, it’s snowing outside.” You grunt and say “yeah right.” But secretly deep down in side you hope that it’s true, the promised end to the gray and the mud in spite of this you still don’t look, to busy.

You don’t look until around 10:00 about three hours latter when you step out side your door to find your backyard covered in a thin sparse clothing of white stuff. Not exactly sledding material you think but it’s a good break from what it was yesterday. This week is starting to look better at least the city is anyways. After a long day out in the cold you get on the bus to go home, it’s still snowing. “Merry Christmas” you say to yourself, your throat feels fine.

Ps. As a bit of an update we got about 10 inches of snow over the past week and it got down to about 6 degrees Fahrenheit, but now sense the it has gone above freezing. You know what that mean right, wet water every where, not that you would want to drink any. it’s also raining so that  will make the now melt faster, which is good in theory but it could mean that I we (Michelle and I) won’t have a white Christmas, sniff sniff.

Pss. I also got Skype just recently so you can call me there my name is marshal.j.nash so give me a call or something see ya and have a happy new year to.

Atrophy

This post is about a song that I think deserves some attention. By talking about this song I’m nt saying that I like all of the groups work (The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus) I’m just saying that this song is one that makes you think and is worth having a listen to, that being said I do not recommend that those of  you in TFI (The Family International) add this to your listening list without cheeking it with the Lord first. Below are the lyrics

Atrophy (The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus)

Don’t tell me that this is your last chance to change
’cause if you do, then you would be telling a lie but

I warned you
what could happen if you should decide
to live your life from the 9 to 5
and I mourn you
for the detail that is left unsaid
is a reminder of the time you bled

Return to days when you knew you still felt alive
Reveal the way you felt when you could look inside

They’ve sold you
everything you need to fix you up
and you feel good now but you can’t wake up
they found a way to reassure you
that everything would be okay
reach out today now I emplore you
to remember who you are

Return to days when you knew you still felt alive
Reveal the way you felt when you could look inside

So you felt it, but you don’t know,
why you can’t explain at all
why you felt it, ’cause you don’t know,
no you don’t know

Break the walls between building atrophy
causing all your problems to recede
break the walls between (break the walls between)
causing all your pain (causing all your pain)
you’ll never learn

Return to days when you knew you still felt alive
Reveal the way you felt when you could look inside

(Break the walls between building atrophy)
Take back
The beat in your heart
Why fight
When you can’t be bought?

(Causing all your problems to recede)
Take back
The beat in your heart
Why fight
When you can’t be bought?

(Break the walls between)
Take back
The beat in your heart
Why fight
When you can’t be bought?

(Causing all your pain)
Take back
The beat in your heart
Why fight
When you can’t be bought?

What to me this song is trying to say is, don’t get stuck in the downward grind of a life that you don’t want. The warning signs are out there and if we as human being can open our eyes to see what the hell is really going on around us we’ll have a lot better chance if doing the things that really matter to us, a better chance at doing some thing that will really make a difference in the end. it brings to mind the point that I got from the movie Troy “what the hell am I doing with my life that will make people take notice when my name is said after its all over”.

The point I’m trying to make is that when we get all bogged down in the details of life and the daily debt grind we miss out on the chance of a lifetime, that is to say lifetime its self. I’m not saying that you should go out and cut up all your credit cards or quit your job, what I’m saying is that we as humanity need to have a shift in our focus. Are we here just to consume the things that mass media tells us will make us happy without a thought for the affects that happiness will have n others, or are we meant to pursue happiness in a way that considers  the needs of those around us.

Now before you write this off as the babbling of some angry teenager who has no idea what it takes to run a life and deal with it, let me tell you that I have been living a life that while not perfectly happy and free of problems has given me a great deal of happiness and peace of mind knowing that my happiness is not bought at the expense of others. I have not arrived and I’m not in a perfect state of being but at least I know that I’m doing something that will count when the boks are finely drawn up.

We each are meant for something more then to walk through this life we are each ment t be special. We have each had or will have an experience similar to this line,

So you felt it, but you don’t know,
why you can’t explain at all
why you felt it, ’cause you don’t know,
no you don’t know
, What we each need to realize is that this is something more then just a feeling, this is what we’re meant for why we’re here, and allo f that philosophical stuff. When that time comes around and we feel that, what ever it is, then it’s our job to size it.

now that I have said my peace take a listen to the song and make your own conclusions and tell me what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDUbOJi_aAU

(sorry its just a link I don’t know how to embed the video)

here we go again

The truth is I had no idea what it was and I still have no idea where it came from, but the simple fact is that it was here, and now it’s gone. I had what you call a cystectomy. It wasn’t painful (they put me under for that part), but before I went to the doctor to find out what it was it was very painful. I couldn’t walk at the end and forget about sitting down comfortable. It was on my tailbone.
Thank the Lord we’re friends with the head surgeon at a hospital not too far from us that has a good standard of cleanliness, which by pure coincidence (Hehe) we happened to be taking a load of humanitarian aid to. The home took me there and after all the necessary tests and questions (they did a cardiogram and took a blood test, as well as asking where I was from and what company I worked for and if I had medical insurance, and blah bla blah) they took me to the operating room and knocked me out. An hour later I woke up on a stretcher a few feet from my new room for the next day or so, which by the way is the best in the place.
I slept all right last night and the day has been going by lazily. I have plenty of time to think and pray about my upcoming wedding, which you’ll be glad to know is in ten days. I should be able to go home sometime today but I’ll have to come back to change the bandage every day. In the meantime I’m sitting here on my stomach with a bandage on my butt feeling very much like a baby in a diaper. Don’t forget to pray for me, and Michelle whose eye, thanks to your prayers, is doing much better but is still bothering her.
From Ukraine with love.
PS. I’m making this sound like I’m all by my lonesome, well not to worry Michelle (read ‘Blond Wonder Woman’) has faithfully stayed by me through thick and thin. I love her. Also Mom please don’t worry about me I’ll be fine.

PPS. I wrote this yesterday while at the hospital. I’m now at home safe and sound though I had to spend another night there. It’s good to be HOME.

please pray for Mich

Michelle got hit in the eye the other day with an  apple we to her to the doctor and he said that she has multiple “erusions” on her eyeball. They give her a bnch of stuff that she needs to put in it and said it will take tw to three weeks to heal, they also said that there is a high risk of infection. We need to pray that it doesn’t get infected and that it heals up faster then three weeks, also that the pain will be minamul and that we can keep up with the midication, which is quitea lot and takes a lot of time to apply. Thank you sol much for your prayers guys they really help. I love you.

happy birthday dale

sorry it’s taken so long to post this
but happy birthday man may this next year be a blast

A Hair Cut

Well most of you already know I cut my hair but for those who didn’t now you do here are some pictures I took with Gabriel last Thursday

You can’t see my hair so well but they’re cute pictures.

I love you mom and happy birthday

{sings}

Happybirthdaqy to you

happy birthday to you

Only one will not do

Born-again means salvation

We know you have to

and we love youuuuuuu!!!!

Happy Birthday MO