Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We have many things to be thankful for, not the least of which is being home with family this Thanksgiving. I have been looking forward to this weekend ever since we arrived home. I'm overdue for some big family time and definitly overdue for a large turkey dinner!

Scott's mom, Betty picked us up from New Minas yesterday afternoon and we are at their house in Dartmouth until tomorrow. Tomorrow (Sunday), we will travel to Porter's Lake where we will celebrate Thanksgiving Monday with a large family gathering, lots of Turkey and pie. I am so excited! I imagine that I'll pack on the pounds this weekend (the doctor told me I had to gain 10, so that's okay), however, I was planning on gaining it slowly, 5 in October, 5 in November to avoid the whole yo-yo thing with the fast gain that doesn't last.

We'll be in Dartmouth still on Sunday morning.. I don't know where we'll go to church? Maybe 'Grace Baptist'... Betty mentioned that she would like to try it out, as a possible church for them to attend, so maybe we'll end up there tomorrow... who knows?

Anyway... I'll end this by saying that we are very thankful this year for all of the blessings that God has given us (of which there are many), among those blessings, we are especially thankful for our ever-growing family and for the time we get to spend together. (... and lest we forget... turkey of course).

A New Song

I've uploaded the first take of the first part of a new song. Check it out here.

Finally getting a start...

Well, since my last post I finally have a job! I am a cashier at Kent Building Supplies. I just started training today (I had safety training yesterday). It's not really in my field (that is the one I went to university for); but, it's a job and a pleasant work environment with a helpful and friendly staff, so it's pretty good. Scott is still applying for jobs, but as of yet has not heard from any of the places he has applied... hopefully he'll get an interview soon.

Reuban Dixon (our youngest Dixon nephew) took his first steps yesterday, for those of you who have not heared. It was really cool... we were cheering him on (he walked to me the second time he did it), he looked awesome, stumbling forward with his belly pushed out, it was so exciting!

I guess that's all of the news I have for now, we don't do too much these days... Scott is still enjoying school and we've started going to a Reformed Presbyterian Church in Kentville, that we both enjoy... style of worship wise and liturgy wise.

Anyway, I'll try to keep this updated for our faithfull readers of whom there are a few (I guess, maybe there aren't any, but I think there are at least two... and if you're reading this, you're probably one of them).

Studio Ghibli

I find myself longing to see Kiki's Delivery Service and Whispers of the Heart. I think it helps to talk about it.

Job seeking woes

So, we've been on the job hunt for like three weeks now and not even a smidgen of hope! Every day I apply for more jobs, every day the phone fails to ring. I've now exhausted all of my options in New Minas... handing out something like sixteen resumes, so tomorrow it is off to Kentville to try my luck there. Things in Kentville seem a bit brighter since I read online that Lawtons there is looking for a Pharmacy technician... someone to help the pharmacist with labelling, cataloguing, organizing... that sort of thing. So, I'm hoping that they'll at least consider me... I do have lots of experience with chemicals and biological things and with labelling and organizing (thanks to my Biology degree and all of my labs that up to this point have proved completely useless in my job search).

So, tomorrow morning I will bike to Kentville and scout out the territory, hand out some resumes and hopefully I'll finally get some interviews. I did have two interviews at Sears, but they were only looking for someone for 6 to 20 hours per week and they decided against me in the second interview when I told them that I didn't work on sundays (after they told me that they would soon be opening on sundays). So much for people saying that we wouldn't be discriminated against in finding jobs if we refused to work on sundays for retailers!... I'm not bitter, really. It wasn't that great of an opportunity because I'm looking for full time and they were only offering minimal hours. Also, they said that on friday nights I would have to work until 11pm setting up displays for saturday morning... and I'm not too keen on working until 11pm, then walking home in the dark from County fair mall. So, it was all for the best I guess.

Home at last

I apologise for not keeping this site up to date lately (for those of you that read it). We are now at long last back home in our native land! We have been home in Canada for two weeks now, but already it seems like forever... like we never even left. We moved into our own place in New Minas, NS on Monday evening and have had a busy week. I have been busy printing off resumes and looking for work. Scott has been going to school at Acadia Divinity College, studying and already working on his first report. When I'm at home I keep myself busy with arranging and decorating things the way I want them and I think I have everything looking pretty good. Everything is unpacked and arranged in the different rooms anyway. It is so nice to have our own place and so much space.

I have yet to post our last pictures from Korea, but I promise to do so soon. I need to get a bunch of our pictures printed off so that I can make a scrapbook of our time in Korea... that will be a big project, so I have to get started soon.

Anyway, I have to go finish getting ready for church. We will attend New Minas Baptist Church today, but we don't know where we will go permanently. We were going to try out the presbyterian church in the area, but upon looking at their website discovered that they ordain women reverends at their church and have women in leadership roles, which we do not agree or feel comfortable with. So, we now have three to try over the next few weeks... New Minas Baptist, New Minas church of the Nazarene, and a new church just starting up: Heritage Baptist church (independant Baptist). So, as of right now, I don't know where we will attend, but hopefully we'll settle into a place before the end of the month, I don't like hopping around.

Coming Home

So, we now have approximately fourteen hours until we fly out of Korea! I am so excited! Most of the day will be spent in preparation to leave tonight. We will go to church this morning, then when we come back to the apartment, we'll do some last minute preparations and then we'll depart for the airport at about 4:30pm (it's about an hour and a half drive to the airport, but with weekend traffic, probably longer). We will take the 'airport limousine' bus to the airport and we'll arrive about 2-3 hours before our flight, hopefully with plenty of time to get all the check-in etc... done.

Yesterday, our last full day in Korea we actually did very little. We went out for breakfast in the morning, then Scott had to go to work for his final day (he had to work until 1pm). While Scott was at work, I did some last minute packing and then went for my final trip to the gym here... working out very hard in an attempt to make my body tired enough to have no choice but to sleep on the airplane. After the gym, I cleaned up and went upstairs to the school to meet Scott, we ended up staying for the staff meeting at 1pm. We then went home and I went out to do a little grocery shopping, just for some snacks and a bit of food for the next day. At 6pm we had a school farewell dinner for us and our roommate Wasseem, who is leaving to teach at a public school. When we came home at about 8:30pm, I finished packing and went to bed. So, overall it was a pretty uneventful day, but oh so relaxing.

Last night I had a terrible sleep probably partially from excitement and partially from the food I had eaten at the staff dinner (galbi always does a number on my digestive system after I've eaten it). It was actually a good thing to have a bad sleep though because it gave me the opportunity to hear Scott talking in his sleep once more. At about 3am, I looked at Scott to see him having some kind of spasm with his hands in the air (he must have been dreaming... about what, I have no idea)... anyway, I asked him "What on earth are you doing?" and he replied "We have to get ready to start the conversation class, we're going to start the conversation". Thinking that I could amuse myself by actually having the conversation with him while he was asleep, I said "okay, what do you want to talk about?", unfortunately he partially woke up at that moment and said "oh nothing". So, I didn't get the conversation I had hoped for, but it was still pretty funny.

I can't wait to get home and see everyone! Unfortunately I have a long flight ahead of me and I don't like being in the air that long, but if it's the only way to get home, so be it.

We sang a duet at worship

Here is a link to our performance. You must watch it in Internet Explorer. We sang Psalm 111 from our new hymn book, Cantus Christi.

Spinoza

I guess July 27th was the 350th anniversary of Baruch Spinoza's excommunication from his Jewish community. Spinoza is a giant among philosophers. Funnily enough, although I majored in philosophy, I don't think I ever learned about Spinoza or read his works. I know vaguely that he was a pantheist, but Rebecca Newberger Goldstein claims that he gave us modernity. Modernity is basically summed up in the title one of Kant's books, Religion within the Bounds of Reason. According to Goldstein,

Spinoza's faith in reason as our only hope and redemption is the core of his system, and its consequences reach out in many directions, including the political. Each of us has been endowed with reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it. Ceding this faculty to others, to the authorities of either the church or the state, is neither a rational nor an ethical option.

Our religion should thus be tamed by our reason, and reason should build the foundation of our religion. All revelation is disallowed. We need not be contacted from the outside, but only sit in our room with a paper and a pencil and pull our ethics and beliefs from within us.

But when we sit in our rooms, we all start from different places, and we take different paths. So it's no surprise that we end up in different places. There are plenty of ethical systems, and though many are similar in letter, they are very different at heart. Utilitarian and emotivism and categorical imperatives and divine command theory, and darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, and so on and so on. Reason will not unite us.

Reason is not our redeemer; Christ is. From the beginning, reason is compromised (cf. Rom 1:19-21). God can be known, is known in fact, by everybody. They who don't believe in him are merely "suppressing the truth" by unrighteousness (vs. 18). We see, then, that righteousness is neccessary to have proper reason; obedience is key to getting things right. We must be regenerated, given new hearts, before we can depend on our reason at all.

Even then, however, a man is likely to suppress the truth. A man's decisions always look good to himself, but he will often believe things simply because they suit him. So, he must, contrary to the quote above, submit his reason to other authorities, secondarily to the church, and primarily to the Word who speaks in the scriptures. Where a man's thinking differs from these he must obey them, even when he doesn't see the reason. I'm pretty sure he'll understand it eventually: "I believe that I may understand," goes an old saying.

A better book title for Christians is Reason within the Bounds of Religion (there is such a book, by Nicholas Wolterstorff). But in school we were all taught to think like Kant, and sometimes it's quite hard work to begin to think like Wolterstorff. But keep trying, because it's Christ working in you for His good purpose.

Science and Logic

Michael Shermer notes, in his essay for Scientific American entitled "Folk Science," that our intuition of causes is often wrong. "To discriminate true causal inferences from false," he writes, "real science trumps folk science." As an example, he mentions intercessory prayer, and how many attribute their convalescence to it. He claims that the following experiment refutes this. 1802 patients were having coronary bypass surgery and two thirds of them were being prayed for by some churches. Half of those being prayed for were told so, and the other half were told that they might be prayed for. In the end, there was no significant difference in recovery. Prayer had no effect: "case closed," pronounces the Sherminator: the god of the christians is impotent.

That's it? Hold on a second, Mr. Shermer. Let's lay it out. The experiment is set up thus: if there is a statistical increase in the recuperation of prayed for patients, then intercessory prayer works. Straight up conditional. But the statistics were the same. Therefore...the statistics were the same. That's it. That's what we get. The falsity of the antecedant doesn't affect the truth of the consequent. If A, then B: not A: therefore, not A. This argument, which seemed to speak so loudly and which he thought strong enough to close the case, doesn't actually say anything. Teach your kids logic, folks. It'll serve them well in the fight.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

This past Saturday we went to the Seoul Zoo and though I do not have much time to talk about it now, it was awesome! It was such a big zoo and had so many cool different types of animals. Unfortunately I couldn't get pictures of them all... all of the primates were inside for the day, so the gorillas and chimps and orangutans were behind frosted glass and I couldn't get a good picture of any of them. It was a really great time though and we had great weather, so if you'd like to see them there are some really cool pictures of animals that we took, they are posted on our photo page. There are also some pictures of when we visited a palace, but when we arrived, it was closed for the day, so there are only a few pictures of the outside.

Lasts

So.. we now have only fifteen more days to wait until we fly home to Canada! It's really exciting! However, with the recent terrorist actions.. I have had to check the websites for Korean air and for Air Canada to check on recent changes in baggage allowances. The only changes are that we cannot have any liquids or gels in our carry-on, which really isn't that big of a deal I guess since neither of us uses hair gel or spray. Having no toothpaste and handcream will be kind of a drag (On a fifteen hour flight... hello bad breath), but like I said, not a big deal. Actually I think I recall that there was toothpaste in the plane bathrooms on Korean air when we came.

It's fun to think of the last things we are doing here and when the last of each will be. For example: My last choir practice... Sunday Aug 13th, my last choir performance... sunday August 20th, our last time teaching specific classes, our last time teaching all classes... Friday August 25th. Anyway, you get the idea. I'm really excited to get home and spend time with family and to see our new place.... just fifteen more days!

My favourite people

I just wanted to show everyone who doesn't know them, who some of our favourite people are... our nephews and nieces. They are all here in at least one of these pictures... all but one, Liam... My brother Shawn and his wife Heather's baby, was not in any of the pictures (I stole these off of the Dixon family website.. sorry guys, hope they're not copyrighted :) ) The names of our nephews and nieces by family are:

The Robert and Carolyn MacDonalds: Alley and Daniel
The Shawn and Heather MacDonalds: Liam
The Dixons: Caleb, Katie and Reuban
The Morris': Jaime (soon to be joined by another in December)

So anyway, wanted to show them off because they're so cute and because we miss them so much and can't wait to see them soon!

Love you

Can't beat the heat!

It sure has been unbearably hot here lately! Everyday this week it has been at least 33 degrees or more and the humidity has been between 86 and 100%! The good news is that rainy season is over, the bad news... it's only going to get hotter. I've been trying not to complain too much because it seems that no matter what the weather is like, everyone finds something to complain about, and I complained enough about the rain last month, so I should be rejoicing that it has been sunny all week. It is difficult to feel good about clothes sticking to you and constant sweatyness and heat rash, but we're trying to hang in there.

Things we've been doing to try and survive in the heat and humidity: -drinking lots of water and water popsicles -keeping the lights off and blinds shut during the day -keeping the fans on all day even when we're not home -putting buckets of ice in front of the fan facing our bed at night to make it bearable enough to sleep.

It's all very strange... I'm not used to the extreme humidity here, it's weird to get to sleep and wake up twenty minutes later all sweaty.

Oh yeah, another thing we've been doing is to take cold showers... this however is not by choice... our apartment building has shut off the hot water in the building for the entire month. Why? We have no idea, but I have to boil water to wash the dishes etc.. and we have to take cold showers.. a lot of times I shower at the gym though, to avoid the icy water, Scott also showers at the gym sometimes because he thinks his cold is partially due to the cold showers.. who knows, maybe?

Time here is winding down... we have only 23 days left until we fly out.. It's very exciting! I can't wait to see everyone again and to have hot water and having our own place finally is going to be awesome! I am very excited, I started packing some of the stuff we won't be using, but once I started I wanted to pack everything, so I had to give up on that, I'll have to resume closer to our departure date.

Our Trip to the East Sea in GangNeung

Since Thursday we have been on a one week vacation from our school. We decided to take a little vacation to refresh ourselves for our last month of work and so Friday morning we took a bus for four hours to the next province and to a place called GangNeung. GangNeung is geographically bigger than Seoul, but Seoul has about 13 million people and GangNeung has about 220000. Quite a difference. GangNeung is on the coast of the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by mountains covered in dense forest, it is clean, the air is fresh and it is beautiful! On Friday, when we arrived it was raining, so we didn't get much done. We went to the tourist information office and got a brochure and a map, then checked in to the first hotel we saw, which turned out to be really nice and really cheap (I think it was cheap because it was quite far away from the beach and there were many many hotels in the same area). We then took our umbrellas and headed out for a walk around the are which we hoped would end up at the closest beach (gang-po), the beach turned out to be farther away than expected, so after a couple of hours walking, we hailed a cab. The beach was pretty empty as it was raining, so it was a good day to walk along and enjoy the scenery and the breeze. We ate dinner at a korean restaurant near the beach and then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we got up pretty early and got a bus to Odaessan National Park, it's a really big park with tons of mountains, rivers, temples, mineral springs etc.. It was about an hour bus ride away (by coach bus to the smallest town I've ever seen, you could walk through the whole thing in about ten minutes), then took a regular bus to the park entrance. We first explored the first temple near the entrance, then the pine forest, then we hiked in the mountains. The mountain is almost untouched... the paths are barely paths at all, so it was extremely beautiful, though because it was wet from the previous days rain, I did what I'm best at. Again, I ended up taking quite a tumble. Near the end of our hike, on the way down, we were rushing to get out of the woods before the sun went down and I slipped on a wet piece of ground, hit a big rock and then fell about three feet into a shallow, rocky part of the river, landing face down in the river. Suffice it to say, it hurt a lot and it was probably the first time I've cried in pain since I was a kid. Scott didn't want to move me at first, so I laid face down in the river until I was able to assess the damage. As it turns out I was pretty lucky, just ending up with a lot of bumps on my legs and arms, some bloody spots and a lot of bruises all over my legs, arms, wrists and shoulders. I was super lucky that I didn't hit my head on a rock though. I had a bit of trouble walking after that but since we were near the end and with Scott's help, I made it. We actually missed the last bus out of the park though, but were luckily able to wave down the one cab in the area that had just happened to drive someone up the mountain. When we arrived back at the hotel, I took a hot bath and felt much better in the morning, though to be expected I'm still quite sore.

Sunday morning we got ready and took a bus to a really big church near Gang-po beach. It was Kang - nung (another way to spell GangNeung) Presbyterian church and there was no english translation, it was all in Korean, so it was kind of hard to sit through the sermon, but their choir was beautiful and we knew the tunes of the hymns and some of the words so we hummed and sang along in English (Scott actually sang along in Korean because he can read the symbols, though he doesn't know what they mean). After church we walked to the beach, this time it was really sunny and hot. After changing our clothes we found a spot and went swimming for the first time in the Pacific Ocean. It was extremely salty which really stung my cuts, but it actually made me feel a lot better. It was really refreshing and relaxing for both of us, so nice to be in the ocean and lay on the sand feeling the hot sun (although Scott got a really bad sunburn on his back)... yes we were wearing sunscreen 45 spf. After our time at the beach, we headed back to the bus terminal area and had a late lunch at a nearby korean restaurant after buying our tickets, then we went on the four hour trip back to Gwangmyeong.

It was such a relaxing and refreshing trip, we both felt refreshed for our last month here, knowing that we can make it through with our new found energy. Some of Scott's energy may drain though, as he has a really bad cold now! I have never heard someone sneeze so much or go through so much Kleenex! I thought that maybe he had an allergy, but to what? Anyway, hopefully that will clear up soon and he'll be on the mend.

Sorry, this post was so long... to those of you who made it through the whole thing, there are lots of new pictures of our trip, if you'd like to see them.

Sorry, I forgot

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the latest song that I've recorded is a hymn and was not written by me. I didn't mean to mislead, and I'll be more careful in the future. It is called "The Day is Past and Gone." The music is EVENING HYMN by Elisha West and the words are by John Leland. I've recorded two verses, but there are 5 verses in total.

Amateurish poetry appreciation

"The Old Familiar Faces" by Charles Lamb has seven stanzas, each with three lines. I here suggest that Lamb chose seven stanzas to reflect the passage of time by reference to the seven days of the week. Thus, the first stanza represents the first day of the week. It also talks of Lamb's early days, as one can see from the word playmates: "I have had playmates, I have had companions" The next stanza is about the next stage of life. Lamb is now with friends: "I have been laughing, I have been carousing" and it is now Tuesday and time is running out. After having friends, the next step in life is to fall in love: "I loved a Love once, fairest among women." The next part isn't so staight forward. It goes from being in love to having a great friend: "I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man." This is Thursday. After love, or rather, later in life, there is man to man friendship again, and it is more intimate than the young friendships. This was Wednesday, and it is the last day of new relationships. On Thursday, in the fifth stanza, Lamb is pacing "round the haunts of [his] childhood." He is remembering and longing, "seeking to find the old familiar faces." On Friday, we're near the end of life here, he simply laments that his bosom friend was not a member of his family, for then he would be there now, and they could talk. They would talk of what Lamb thinks to himself in the final stanza, namely, what has happened to all people they used to know: "some they have died, some they have left me/ some are taken from me; all have departed."

Each stanza ends with an elegiac line about the old familiar faces, for example, "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." So, in each day of the week, that is, in every period of life, there is the sense that time will take what one has and it there will remain only a memory, both pleasurable and painful.

The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb

New Song

Who's that soprano and alto?! Fantastic!!!

Things wonderful

Every so often one ought to read up on the important things, and here's what I found when I did. I really think that Nintendo has a chance get back into the system race. The new Wii system looks like it will be extravagantly fun. It's controller has motion sensor technology, so for many games one simply has to move the contoller rather than press any buttons. For instance, if one if playing tennis, one has to use the controller as a racket; just swing it when the ball comes to your character. Likewise with baseball. In the Legend of Zelda, one can swing the controller like a sword. On top of the controller, Nintendo Wii will have free online access, with the option to download famous games from Nintendo's past library. That includes the original Nintendo, the Super Nintendo, the Turbo Graphics 16, and the Nintendo 64. That in itself has made me want one. Also, Nintendo will have a space for independent games on its server. Developers who want to make games but don't have a large budget can make games and send them to Nintendo, and players can download them and play them.

In other news, the Nintendo DS, the handheld which also has motion sensor technology, was the highest selling video game system in June (I think).

Argument

The use of argument is to persuade, and not primarily to bludgeon. Arguing to win is a form of pride, and pride is not our friend, and however often he shows up, he is not welcome (Father, forgive me for I have sinned). Truth is satisfying; it fills and delights the soul. As we want to put food into the mouths of the hungry, so we want to put truth into the souls of the ignorant. Argument is a tool for getting that truth into those souls, but if a person is particularly receptive and doesn't need the argument, then nothing is lost.

To reverse a phrase from some musician, we haven't just been loved, we've been told. God loved us, and part of that love was telling us things, speaking to us about the good things which He has planned and prepared for us and of the good things He has done for us. And when such a one tells you things, you must simply believe and rejoice.

The problem with argument is that sometimes one can be skilled at argument and yet reach conclusions that are face down in a ditch somewhere. On the other hand, one can believe what one has been told by a reliable source and therefore know the truth, and have no argument to support it except, say, "my parents told me so." For instance, what year were you born?

Of course, such an appeal to authority depends on the reliability of the authority. When my parents tell me when I was born I believe them. If I met a drunkard on the street, however, and he told me that he was my father and that I was born in 1975, I wouldn't believe him, nor should I. When the authority is God, you have to believe, because God is perfect and cannot lie and is perfectly able to communicate. Therefore, many people, anyone who can hear or read, can believe lots of truth, and very important truth, without any argument at all.

Argument isn't useless, but argument's main purpose is destructive. It is a maxim of presuppotional apologetics that the role of apologetics is to shut the mouth of the opponent, not to convert his heart. The latter can be done only by the Holy Spirit. It is the role of apologetics to show that every worldview apart from Trinitarian Christianity is self-contradictory. Through argument, the apologist reveals all the holes and inconsistencies in opposing worldviews.

One should develop one's ability to argue, but arguments are not the greatest thing we have. They help one speak with clarity, with coherence, and with connecting ideas, but truth is what we cherish most.