This blog and its contents (photos, videos, text) is copyrighted by Hans Mast. If you want to reproduce any of it beyond fair use excerpts, please drop me a line (hansmast at hansmast dot com) and I will probably cheerfully give you permission to use it.
Becca Yoder is buddy of mine right here in local Meadville, PA that does really lovely painting and photographing. She’s just launched a new site to promote her art. To promote her site, she’s giving away the original of one of her nicest works: Nature Song. Go take a look at her site and all her wonderful art and then share it on Facebook/Twitter/Pintrest/Blog to get a chance to win as well.
There was a tragic accident in our community involving our sister church, Cedar Crest Amish-Mennonite. All the children from Cedar Crest were on a Sunday School outing Sunday afternoon four miles from our house and four children fell out of the bucket of the tractor. One 12 year old boy (my brother Dietrich’s classmate, reading partner, and friend) was killed, two of his sisters were lifeflighted to Wichita, and one other boy was taken via ambulance. There is an excellent video by a Wichita TV station (KAKE10 ABC) with a bunch of footage from our church service (which was in part a memorial for the boy who died and prayer for those surviving) and an interview with Gary Miller, one of our pastors:
PARTRIDGE – A 12-year-old died Sunday after falling off the front-end bucket of a small tractor during a hayrack ride near northeast of Partridge.
Three other youths who also fell were taken to Via Christi on North St. Francis in Wichita. One was taken by Lifewatch air ambulance, one by EagleMed air ambulance and one by Reno County EMS, said Reno County Undersheriff Sheldon Stewart, who was on the scene of the accident.
The three injured are Hadassah Miggiani, 11, Magdalena Miggiani, 8, and Derek Sch[m]ucker, 11.
Medical crews pronounced the fourth child dead at the scene. Stewart did not identify the deceased, saying extended family needed to be notified. He said law enforcement could release the child’s name as soon as Tuesday.
My Aunt Miriam has a good blog post about the accident, writing in part:
This has been a heartbreaking day because of an accident that took the life of one child from our sister church (Cedar Crest), and left three others injured. Two of the children who were injured were the sisters of the boy who died. I also grieve for the kind young man who was the driver of the tractor that had been used for a Sunday School outing involving a hayride. He was my student in years past, and he is certainly not a careless, risk-taking person by nature. I’m so sorry this happened on his watch. He’s Shane’s age.
[...]
At this point, it appears that none of the three injured children have life-threatening injuries, but one of them has a broken pelvis, and several of them have bad bruises and scrapes–one of them on the arm near the shoulder, and the other about the face and neck.
The family with the death and two injuries has five children in one grade in school. The father is a doctor, and the family was built by birth and adoption. The child who died was born to them, as was one of the injured daughters. In the family, there were three homemade children and five who are African American or Asian.
The only other injured child was involved in another serious accident a year or two ago when he fell onto a welded wire cattle panel and was impaled on a thin rod that punctured his chest and came very close to piercing his heart. So this was his second emergency-vehicle transport to Wichita. The first time was by helicopter and this time by ambulance. He has a badly bruised upper arm/shoulder this time around. I’m thinking there’s no need to explore and experience any other options for emergency transport to Wichita. Derek has been there, done that.
Please pray for the Miggiani family that lost a son and had two daughters injured. (Derek Schmucker has been released from the hospital, praise the Lord!) Also please remember the driver of the tractor.
One of the primary points of using a site like CNet’s Download.com to download little freeware programs is that they are a trustworthy company that has established a solid reputation for ensuring that all the software is virus-free. They even include a little blurb “Tested spyware free” with every download. Their Software Policies page says the following:
We test all software products submitted to us against a comprehensive set of criteria. In addition to screening for common viruses and spyware, we also look for other threats that might interfere with our users’ security, privacy, and control. [...]
We will not list software that contains viruses, Trojan horses, malicious adware, spyware, or other potentially harmful components.
Now I realize that it’s very difficult–nearly impossible in fact–to detect a custom-written virus made to be distributed in a certain program, especially if the virus/program writers are smart enough to time-delay payload delivery/internet communication.
However, detecting a standard-issue, in-the-wild, generic virus like Win32/Funlove which was first discovered in 1999 is beyond easy for a company like CNet.
Therefore it is inexcusable that they are hosting a program (Wave To Text 5.5890.9831) that is a delivery tool for this virus. It puts their entire inventory of files into doubt and shows that their testing procedures are not adequate.
Beyond the aspersions it casts on their testing procedures, they apparently don’t even do rudimentary monitoring of the user-ratings of the software. This piece of software (which CNet editors rate as five star) has a 1.5-star user rating with most of the ratings screaming “Virus!”
We had an amazing time at the Midwest District Beachy Youth Fellowship Meetings in Hunstville, AR. Great friends and great services! It was a huge blessing!
Elam Stoltzfoos was the speaker and he proved to have an uncannily insightful understanding of the conservative Mennonite youth psyche. He incisively identified five different types of perspectives that we have in our conservative Anabaptist circles, mostly segregated by age. He showed why these perspectives were formed (as a wise response to the times and issues in which that age group grew up in), why they are valuable perspectives to the church as a whole, and lots of practical advice on how the different perspectives can relate to each other in a Godly, loving, mutually beneficial, and upbuilding way.
I believe that every young conservative Mennonite person (or middle-aged or older person that is interested in learning to effectively bridge the generation gap in a way that brings every age group into a spirit-unity for an effective and healthy church that is building the Kingdom) should listen to these messages. I think you should listen to them all and I’m quite sure you won’t regret investing time in listening to them all, but if you must listen to only one, please listen to the first one (“The Church and Its Youth”).
These are some of the most uniquely insightful (and practically helpful) messages I’ve heard preached about conservative Mennonite (and perhaps it has broader applicability to other denominations) youth thinking and what we need to do to effectively serve the Lord in our churches. I have not been this excited about hearing a set of sermons in a long time!
Benji Mast (my brother) and Gideon Yutzy both gave outstanding devotionals that I recommend as well. Benji especially had a good talk about how we establish a “Moral Authority” and a right to speak up about church issues in a way that the older folks will respect and appreciate what we say.
Here are some pictures of the native Lisu people of Pang Klang, a Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel, a couple from our church are living. (I previously posted this and this and this from their village.)
Here are various pictures from Pang Klang, a Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel, a couple from our church are living. (I previously posted this and this from their village.)
Enjoying treasures from the U.S.!
Craig demonstrating how he teaches English in the “town hall”
Rosene’s darling little munchkin
Neighbors’ house
Josh explaining with his signature expressiveness
Cutting pineapple
Contemplatively surveying the village from his doorway
Visiting Craig and Rachel’s first home in Pang Klang
Standing in front of their starter castle
Craig and Rachel standing in front of their current home in the setting sun
Here are some more pictures from Pang Klang, the Lisu village in Northern Thailand where Craig and Rachel are living as workers. (I previously posted a picture of Pang Klang’s shaman.)
The reason there’s a whole post on cooking pictures is because that comprises a large part of Craig & Rachel’s day. Cooking over a cook fire takes just a bit longer than popping something in the microwave!
The Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute’s annual Night of Music is being moved from Antrim in Greencastle, PA to the SMBI campus here in Harrisonville, PA. (Because of the blizzard moving in.) Please pass the word around and link here so people can get any updates. The service is still happening at 7:30 PM, Feb. 5.
Drudge simultaneously lambasts the health care bill for being too long and complex (”Pelosi’s biggest one yet! 1,990 pages…”) and for having a high money/word ratio (”$2.2M A Word), which is contradictory. A simpler/shorter bill will have a higher money/word ratio.
I got the below email from Amazon this morning after having ordered a new International Kindle. They’re giving me a $20 refund because they decided to drop the price! This cements my status as a very loyal Amazon customer. I have an Amazon Prime membership, getting free Second Day Air shipping and Overnight Shipping for $3.99 per item. Their prices are excellent and I don’t need to waste time driving to town and shopping, so what’s not to like? When you find WalMart contacting you after a purchase, offering to give you a $20 refund because they just dropped the price, let me know. In the mean time, I’m even getting some of my groceries from Amazon. The email:
Hello,
Good news! Due to strong customer demand for our newest Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6″ Kindles. As part of this consolidation, we are lowering the price of the Kindle you just purchased from $279 down to $259. You don’t need to do anything to get the lower price–we are automatically issuing you a $20 refund. This refund should be processed in the next few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.
We’ll also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been completed.
We hope you enjoy your new Kindle. Please send us your feedback at: Kindle-feedback@amazon.com
Becca Yoder is buddy of mine right here in local Meadville, PA that does really lovely painting and photographing. She’s just launched a new site to promote her art. To promote her site, she’s giving away the original of one of her nicest works: Nature Song. Go take a look at her site and all her wonderful art and then share it on Facebook/Twitter/Pintrest/Blog to get a chance to win as well.
