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We receive many donations like clothing, blankets, bibles, store donations (Bed, Bath & Beyond), church supplies, and toys. We keep them in our small warehouse at the San Diego office. Due to being so busy I have not been able to place everything in order. Thank goodness for the thoughtfulness of our pastor's wives that came down to spend the day cleaning and putting in order everything in sight. Each week we receive donations and each week pastors from our pastor boards come down to pick up donations and take them to families that we serve. This poses a great opportunity of follow-up with the families we build homes for. The pictures below are of the before and after results. You be the judge!

Quote from Maria Meraz wife of Pastor Fausto Meraz, "We do this gladly because of all that Amor Ministry has done for us."

Truly I'm amazed at the creative thought put into giving. I mean at times we can limit ourselves so much to certain standards of giving that we would rather not give at all.

God gives us the talent (resources) to use and watch it grow.

There are donors who not only give of their finances, but go beyond that and give of their talent.

For example, a participant emailed me saying that a fellow worker brought with her on the trip some curtains she has made and gave them to the family. As she watched her friend give them to the family she noticed their faces...They were beaming with enthusiasm due to the fact that the curtains personalized their house and made their house into a home.

Another group of from a participating church has sent beautiful quilts. Quilts with no doubt filled with love and prayer. Many children will benefit the warmth of each quilt and the thought of knowing that they are loved

Yet many other groups have taken upon themselves as a project to bring clothing, toys, school supplies and Bibles to give to the families

There are always opportunities to give...It might be the building of a house...It might be supporting financially Casa De Amor...Or it could be using the creative talent God has given you to supply the need of many

My disc golf career has seen it's share of disappointments this year. And not having necessarily to do with an defiencies with my skill either. I have had two major tournaments that I have been unable to attend, even after months of planning. This has put a pretty serious dent in my morale this year, and it has shown in my game, as well as life in general.

Round I

The first major tournament of the year that I was planning on attending is called The Memorial. The Memorial is the first National Tour event of the year for the PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association). The Memorial is a huge tournament hosted in Arizona and it happened back at the beginning of March. Being that it is the season starter, there is a huge buzz about it, and I had been conversing with players from around the country about the tournament quite a while before hand and I had really been looking forward to competing against some of the best amateur disc golfers that I had been talking smack with since November. After a not-so-great '04 season I was really looking forward to starting off the '05 season with a great showing. My confidence was high, everything seamed great, then the unthinkable happened. My car broke down two weeks before the tournament. I knew that the weekend was going to cost me around $300, and I had saved for months to get the money together. When my car broke down I didn't know how much it would cost to fix it and I was faced with the difficult decision between being responsible and withdrawing from The Memorial, or forgetting about the car for another week and worrying about it when I got back. Tough decision, and I almost chose the to compete, but I know how ill it makes me to be in debt due to not-so-smart decisions. What makes it worse is that after I called the tournament director and withdrew from the tournament I recieved a very substantial bonus from my work. Enough that if I had known about it, I would easily have been able to fix my car and do the tournament. Three days too late, as soon as I withdrew someone from the waiting list for the tournament was selected to take my place, irreversible.

Round II

Last year I had the opportunity to go up to Oregon to compete in two different tournaments. From playing up there I made some very good friends who I still keep in contact with and see occasionally at tournaments throughout the country. This year I was planning on attending Oregon's first ever National Tour event, the Beaver State Fling. The Fling was scheduled to happen at the end of May. And once again I had been planning for it for months. I even got permission to take the time off from work over two months in advance. But the closer it got to May, the less likely it would seem I would actually be able to make it up. I had already worked out lodging with a disc golfer friend of mine from Portland, Oregon, and worked it out with one of my friends from San Diego to go up with me. By the end of April I gave up hope as the money just wasn't going to be there. My friend who I was going to travel with got 4th place, and I stayed home, again. I recieved emails from my friends wondering why I never showed up, and it was depressing to have to respond with the same message from the Memorial, "The money just isn't there".

Round III

Fast forward to today. I am sitting here looking at the invitation I recieved to compete in the 2005 Disc Golf World Championships. I would have a scanned picture to show, but as my luck is going, I can't get the stupid scanner to work. Anyhow, I'll write the first line of the invitation: "Congratulations! On the basis of your play on the PDGA Tour, you are 1 of more than 1000 players to recieve an official invitation to the 2005 PDGA Disc Golf World Championships..." Sweet, I have been waiting for this opportunity for well over a year and it is finally here. I have been invited to compete against other elite Disc Golfers for a World Title! One problem, a week before I got this letter my mom informed me that my cousin is getting married. Sweet, my cousin is getting married...the week before the Worlds competion...crap.

So here is the story I find myself in. My cousin is getting married on July 30th. The Disc Golf World Championships are August 8th-13th. Theoretically it is possible to attend both events, however there is, of course, another problem. The Worlds Competition is in Arizona, and my cousin is getting hitched in Oregon. Still possible, until the idea of $$ comes into it. Driving or flying up to Oregon, then coming back to San Diego and having enough money to go out to Arizona for a week is not possible for me financially. This would be so much easier to cope with if he were just getting married the same week as Worlds! Once again I am going to be forced out of something I have been planning and looking forward to for a VERY long time. Oh Joy. So I am bitter, angry, depressed, and generally disappointed. YeeHaw!

Update: 1) "lydon" is Oliver Graf. Thanks, Oliver! 2) the tests all pass now.

"lydon" contributed a recipe for using FastCGI with CherryPy's new WSGI interface. Thanks! (I notice he or she also used my brand new recipe for the Virtual Path Filter—nice to know when someone likes your little side projects.

Peter Hunt has contributed a very nice WSGI server, as well. See the latest SVN trunk for the current version (here's a link to the Timeline.) There's still a bug in the WSGI server; the test suite isn't completing, because the server isn't shutting down when it should. I'm trying to track that down and fix it tonight.

I had some time to kill last night...

via Sam Ruby

The really cool thing this would allow would be the ability to use standard diff tools (subversion, anyone?) on Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. This will make our PR staff very happy.

There was still enough snow over Memorial weekend to go to Mammoth and learn how to snowboard. Here's Ryan, Matt, and Dan, and our new friend Tiffany.

As you can see, Ryan is the tallest. Here's more proof of that:

We all learned on "Sesame Street" (the easy run)—I did all right but couldn't get into the toeslides very well. It didn't help that my boots were a smidgen too large. So this run was definitely out of the question:

But the view at the peak was just as good at 0 mph as it would have been at 40 mph.

Link: http://www.mammothmountain.com/

I'm too tired to write about my first experience with snowboarding. I'll probably put down some words later. Until then, here are some pictures from Mammoth Mountain...

um...yeah...their logo

Gondola's are cool!

Matt, about to fall off of the summit.

At the summit.



Gondola's are cool, 200 feet up!

Hmmm, gondola architecture is cool too!

Huffalump!

Working here at Amor Ministries I've found myself amazed at God's provision. I mean there has been instances that I just don't know how we are going to provide for this or that project. Recently, we had a pastor in Ciudad Juarez who is in need of Bibles for his congregation. Then a week passed and a participant called me and asked if they could send money for Bibles for Mexico. It turned out that a very dear member and leader in their church had passed away and she specifically did not want flowers to be sent to her funeral, but to buy Bibles with the funds instead. She left a legacy of Hope by way of providing Bibles to those who didn't have any. There goes one answered prayer request.

Another request answered was in my ministry apart from Amor. I have a puppet minstry at a child abuse center every Sunday. There we share the Love of God to many hurting children. There has been an open door to give the children Bibles and I have been able to give out over 500 Bibles & devotionals. Each week a new set of kids come into the center due to the increase of children in the foster care system,and each week over 20 kids come to Sunday School! I have been running out of money to purchase more Bibles. (I usually buy them with my own limited funds) Then little by little I have been receiving funds that would help me buy more Bibles. I thank God for touching the hearts of donors. It only inspires me to give more!

Link: http://www.livejournal.com/users/groovy_baby_220/19542.html