Last night I got the opportunity, along with my dad, to speak to families and teens at Grace Baptist Church in Lancaster. We did record the event so once it becomes available I’ll post up some highlights on YouTube.

Talking to folks afterwards

The talk was sponsored by the Coalition of Homeschoolers Across Lancaster County (CHALC) and the topic was Homeschooling Teens and New Family Dynamics.

My Dad speaking

One of the members of the CHALC board (get it?)
had this to say on her blog…

After Steve Demme spoke his son, Ethan, came up. This guy connected with everyone so well and with such humor. Mikey said afterward he felt like he was watching a stand up comedian. The points that this 25 year old homeschooled, college graduate got across were great!

Between the two speakers here are the highlights:
1. The Love of God for us and then the Love within the family.
2. Children are to obey their parents.
3. Parents are responsible for the instruction of their children.
4. Fathers are reminded not to provoke their children to the point of anger.
5. That parents should not be hypocrites. Our children know us better than we know ourselves.
6. The importance of the company we keep.
7. How important it is to understand the learning style and personality of each child. It matters!
8. That we are raising these children to be adults so there is a time that is hard for all involved as changes happen and we let go more and more…
9. God has no grandchildren and so the spiritual walk of the child will be different from ours. We are not making clones of ourselves, spiritually.
10. Teaching kindness and compassion for others.

Read the full post here

I think I may just have to try that stand up comedian thing sometime

If you missed out and would like to see my dad and I speak, we will be doing a full family seminar Feb 22-23 and Feb 29-Mar1st.

Check out my dad’s website TheFamilyThatStaysTogether.com for more details and to sign up.

I’m working on some upgrades and fixes to this blog, everything should work fine but just in case it doesn’t well this is your warning.

I am back in PA for the next month and plan on doing some heavy duty blogging so check back often and give me some feedback.

P.S. the trip to New England was a blast – once I finish posting the trip report i’ll let you know where it is…

Teaser Photo

If you stopped by in the last few days you notices that the blog was down.

The reason was my webhosters decided to migrate my MySQL databases because I was getting to much traffic (a good thing I guess) but with the move they accidentally deleted all the databases for all my websites. And after much hard work they were able to get everything up through April 30th restored. So all my blogs are missing the last two months.

Playing giant vollyball

I am up at Joni and friends camp for the next few days so I’ll get back into the swing of things when I get back. Meanwhile if anyone happens to have any of the previous months posts hidden away in your RSS feeds or email boxes and would like to send them to me I would be your friend forever.

Lesson learned… Backup all databases… now I just have to learn what that means.

I’ve been busy lately, I rode down to GA last week with my wife and motorcycle we visited the inlaws and attended a wedding. Since I’ve been back I have launched a new blog and updated one I’ve been working on.

My new blog is MyMcCainBlog.com and on it I’ll be posting all the latest news about John McCain and the 2008 elections. So if you interested go check it out.

I also updated my Travel Blog with Singapore Day 2 and the first installment of the GA/TN motorcycle ride.

I’m doing the multiple blogs so I can keep this blog from being to cluttered with extraneous things.

Do you like the multi blog format?

When I was a lad of 8 I had (and still have) a sweet tooth for all types of fruit (especially the dried kind) and it was an ongoing battle between my mother and her growing boys to save the dried fruit for a salad or meal she had on the menu. My brothers and I (I being the chiefest of sinners) would root through the cupboards and drawers to find the fruit and eat it before we were supposed to.

One day I heard my younger brother Joseph sneak into the kitchen, shuffle around in the closet and then silence. Moments later he walked into the living room and I said, “you just stole some dried fruit didn’t you!” Joseph nervously asked how I knew and I told him “because I just stole some and knew where it was hidden”

I had a thought the other day, (I know that’s hard to believe) in response to a great blog post and a book that I am in the midst of reading. The blog post can be found here. In the post Tim Sanders says that “the only reason to blog is to change the world.”

While there is a time and place for “fun” blogs I can see his point. The book I mentioned is “Strictly Speaking” by Reid Buckley. Here are a few of the many things he says to do…
-Try to be funny
-Be anecdotal
-Be practical
-Avoid any mention of sports

With the combined restargeting of my focus from these to great men here is my goal for this blog as well as a new tact to take in public speaking.

One of the biggest problems I have found in growing up a member of the homeschool community (and the rest of the world for that matter) is the lack of crititcal thinking amongst it’s members. This fact was taught me by my brother Isaac.

I had been reading books on finding Noah’s ark. I would read a book and be convinced that Sir. So and So the explorer had daringly found the true Noah’s ark. Each Time Isaac would explain to me the logical problems with the guys story. Finally after being convinced of the Ark’s location once to many I reasoned that the ark couldn’t be in 7 places at the same time. This created in me a healthy scepticism (i.e. I didn’t want to be made a fool of again)

The last time I was handsomely fooled was the year 2000. I along with my family (and the majority of conservative homeschoolers) stocked up on canned food, lentils, water pumps, and generators in preparation for the end of civilization, as we know it!

Because of that and now because of the exhortation to blog to change the world that is what I am endeavoring to do. Critical thinking is of utmost importance a.k.a. be wise as serpents and pure as doves (Math 10:16b)

So join me in my journey towards this goal, if something is not being thought about critically I’ll post it here and if I’m not being wise comment and let me know.

-A work in progress,