Him We Proclaim

          Things have been going well on Chestnut St. I had a my weekend class trip last weekend, and my last class trip is this weekend. Last Sunday we actually got to go climbing outdoors--a nice surprise for the February trips. No such luck this weekend though. Patrick is taking a step or two here and there, but still lacks the confidence to stand alone for any period of time, even though he is capable. Maggie and I, on the other hand, sometimes forget that we aren't capable of standing on our own. There seems to be a constant temptation to start worrying about the future and take matters into our own hands. And a frightening forgetfulness to commit those things to prayer. God is gracious. Pray for us in this.             I think I've really come to appreciate Oxford. When we moved here I dreaded being in the flat country and farm lands. I had concluded that I was either a city person or a backwoods person. Something in betwee...

Last Thursday, two of my Youth Climbing Team students made me very proud. They led up our indoor wall. There are two type of rock climbing with a rope: the first is top-roping, where you have an anchor at the top. The rope goes from the climber, up to the anchor, and down to the belayer, who takes up the slack as the climber moves up the wall.  Lead climbing is the second type, where the rope is tied to the climber, and as he moves up the wall he clips the rope into anchor points in the wall along the way. The belayer feeds more slack to the climber as he moves up the wall. If a climber were to fall top-roping, he would fall maybe 2 feet. In lead climbing, you fall the slack to where you last clipped in to an anchor--and that much more (if you're 5 ft above you're anchor, you fall 10).  Where as top-roping can require no previous experience, lead climbing requires hard work at skill and technique. I had these two students training on more and more difficult routes while sti...