Being that it’s been five days since my last post, I would suppose it’s time to write something again. But what? I suppose I can write about this weekend. This post will actually go back a bit though, since earlier events pertain to this weekend. For the most part the weekend was quite ordinary. 4th/5th grade ministry on Saturday night and Sunday morning, the service I went to at 8:00, er I mean 9:00 (sure felt like the earlier time for some reason… You did set your clocks forward, right?), dodge-ball for gametime, yep- quite ordinary. So let’s focus on the other stuff.
First off, back in January we started something which should have become regular. As I make a video every year for my cabin at summer camp, I was asked to make some short videos for the regular service every few weeks. Well, they handed me a camera back then to record the kids at various moments during the services I was there. Another filled in for me at the third service. Mission part one accomplished. Part two would be editing, and that became the big problem. They have a Mac set up at the church where they do their own editing using iMovie. Now, if I had a job at the church this wouldn’t be a problem as I would just use this computer, but I don’t, so I could easily use mine instead. Not so easy in fact. First off, my computer is not a Mac (though I have experimented a bit with OSx86 to turn my computer into what’s known as a hackintosh by installing OSX to my external hard drive). I quickly found out that the Firewire port on a Mac is not the same as an IEEE-1394 port on an HP (two names for the same thing, only “Firewire” is copyrighted by Apple) so the firewire cable they had didn’t work. We tried a USB cable for the camera, but that required drivers my computer didn’t have, and I couldn’t find one on the web. A few weeks went by, and we experimented in saving the videos on their Mac then transferring them to my computer. Let’s just say slow and awkward. The default format on the Mac of saving video is a format with the extension .dv. I could save each video as .mp4 or try to find a program on my computer to convert the native .dv files. Yeah, too much work. So they look to get the right cable to go to my computer. They find one at Radio Shack for $20 and one online for 50¢. Which would you go with? Well, they bought both, hoping to be able to return the overpriced Radio Shack one should the cheap one not work. Last Wednesday, fingers crossed, we tried the cable. Worked like a charm. We finally got the video from the camera to my computer in a format my computer liked, mpeg-2. So, Friday night I worked for a few hours to get that first 4-minute video done, and brought it with me Saturday night. Popped in on the computer from my flash drive, which held both .wmv and .mpg versions of the video, and we were ready to go. Not so fast. No audio cable from the computer to the sound board. Sigh. Well, I just played it in silence since the worship team was practicing anyway. We left a message for the tech director to leave us the proper cable, and come Sunday morning they had one waiting. Then, we had the computer taken away and replace with a different one because they needed the one elsewhere. The one they gave us was not turned on and literally took 20 minutes to boot up, log in, and finish loading Windows. Good thing I had the .wmv version as there was no way this computer would be able to handle MPEG-2. In any event, mission completely accomplished. Hopefully next time we will record a new video and do it again, minus the mishaps. Ideally I will transfer the videos before I leave for the day.
This weekend was also a time I got to teach again, finally. I last taught in December. I taught a lesson on stuff. No, I am not being general. The theme of the year is living like a Christian, so this week was about having and wanting stuff, whatever that stuff is to you being video games, stuffed animals, trading cards, or whatever. The start of James chapter 5 tells us a bit of God’s feeling on this topic:
1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. (James 5:1-6 ESV)
Stuff- not so bad. Love of stuff- watch out. It is not wrong to be rich of course, but if your heart is with your money or things, then that’s a problem. After all, Jesus Himself said you can’t serve two masters. If you serve money, you will not be able to serve God at the same time. I showed them some pictures of way overdoing collecting stuff (here and here for example), and I acted out a person on the phone trying to get something no matter what it took, even hurting someone to get it. I thought my teaching went fairly well, though still a few minutes long. There was a video at the start (not the one I put together) that I should have ended earlier than I did.
