First time on the Beach!

Cheers!
This was my first time on the beach. When I came here and my mom was still visiting I got the opportunity to stay in an apartment with a beautiful view of the beach in Copacabana, but I never got to go to the actual... sand, much less water. So one of our friends invited us to go at night time and have a beer or two. It was so beautiful! There's a mountain right next to it and the ocean looked so refreshing! God's such a genius!

The first two are the view of the apartment in Copacabana.





Here's Marie and I with Rafa, our awesome friend, a true gentleman. Night at the beach.









For more information, check out Marie's Blog.

Knowledge shall be increased...

Man's knowledge has also increased in these last two years, as it has in other recent years, but it now heads in more dangerous directions than in the past. The Evil One has led many scientists to experiment with life itself--attempting to clone human beings, attempting to grow body parts and organs, attempting to fuse man and beast in the embryo, attempting to genetically modify man, either directly or through the foods he eats, which work on him from the inside. They walk a perilous path, one that they do not understand, for the Devil is not the creator of life, but the destroyer. The things that they create will not unlock the doors to more and abundant life, but will instead unleash unprecedented plagues and pestilences that they do not foresee.
As men seek to unravel the secrets of life in their carnal, scientific way, they also seek to combine it with machine. They seek new and improved robots to serve man, giving them artificial intelligence and mobility such as they've not had before. They seek to make man himself more of a machine, implanting chips, sensors, and electrodes to enhance man's powers and intelligence.
( Excerpt from Endtime Series, Part 1. )

And now for some AI intelligence...:

For some reason I can’t look at MIT’s Leonardo robot without an involuntary shudder - I think it’s the lifelike fur and the evil, calculating eyes. Even scarier is to see it in motion (and there are videos after the cut), when complex facial mapping techniques have taken human expressions and reworked them for the robot’s face (which has 32 degrees of freedom).

He's analyizing you!

Of course the clever people at MIT aren’t just making a particularly impressive toy; their intent is to research new ways of human/machine interaction, where robots are used to give a computer a naturalistic interface that users are comfortable working with.

“Once a task is learned, the robot should then be competent in its ability to provide assistance; understanding how to perform the task as well as how to perform it in partnership with a human”

Capable of being instructed by tutelage, where a user guides Leonardo to complete a task, by imitation, where Leonardo copies a demonstration, and social referencing, where Leonardo responds to a users reaction to a task, their goal is to end up with a machine that can learn from humans in their own terms, rather than them needing to be experts in programming.

Here's an example of teaching the creepy thing:



And just for fun:


Heheh... notice how he twitches?

Ree Ree's Birthday!!... in the Buff.

I'm not the most creative person in the world, but I sure hope this suits your fancy. I'm not feeling very mushy right now, but I love you very much. I wrote you a poem for your birthday. HAVE A GOOD YEAR, BABY!!!!!!!

Swimming in the Buff

I was awoken to the thought of you

Your twenty-second birthday lingering in my mind

I rushed to make you something special

Nicole and I... boy, aren't we kind?

I'm so glad you're with me here

I know that without you things would be tough

But together we can lose ourselves

When we go swimming in the buff.

Life is so full of surprises

And many will come to you this year

The Lord made you so freakin' special

And to remind you of that, I got you beer.

It's amazing what the Lord does

And how wonderful is His love

Just lose yourself in Him

When we go swimming in the buff.

Yes, people may laugh and say

"What wierdos, no one does that here"

But are we going to care?

We're celebrating a wonderful year!

We'll be bare before the Lord

With no clothes and no handcuff(s)

It's just Jesus, you and I

When we go swimming in the buff.

So let's get drunk, get drunk on Jesus

Let's get drunk on Him

To be naked before Him and others

Is no aweful sin.

So let's put on our birthday suits

Our flaws can make it tough

So just stay humble, drink Him in

When we go swimming in the buff.

The End.

I love you tons!!!!!! Let's go swimming in the buff! (By the way, that's what we're about to do.)

There's Change in the Air

I'll be buying my ticket in a few days, if not tonight. In approximately thirty days I'll be in the air... changing a country, changing a lifestyle, changing to a different language, meeting completely new people.
There's nothing like following the Lord even though you can only see two steps in front of you. All you're doing is holding His hand and trusting Him entirely like a child trusting a father will do his best to take care of them. There's nothing like it... it's peace. It's excitement. It's knowing.
I can think of somebody who's a perfect example of forsaking all like this, to an even greater extent than I am. He went somewhere where he had never been to in his life (I was born in Brazil and lived until I was five. I just haven't been there in thirteen years), where he knew nobody, and he left EVERYBODY he considered dear to him just so he could devote himself entirely to the Lord and go where the Lord wanted him to.
I'm so proud of him. It's amazing to see the change that can come over somebody in only a few years time. I thought I was the one helping him at first, but... the tables pulled a three-sixty on me and now I can truly say that he has helped me through so much. He has been eager to help me, always standing by me, holding me in his prayers, getting me prophecies, giving me sound advice from the Word and leading me to it. The amazing thing is that this isn't at all how it started. I felt like I was the one trying to stuff the Word down his throat (metaphorically speaking, of course), but I found myself being the one being spoon-fed and all I can say is... thank you. Thank you for being part of my life. Thank you for encouraging me. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being so understanding. But most of all, thank you for being you. O.O
Now he's in Romania, happy I hope (and I pray) and experiencing things he never dreamed he would. Dre, I'm sooooo proud of you! I'm praying for you and I know the Lord has so much in store for you. What you're experiencing now is only a drop in the bucket compared to what He has planned. He'll use you so much, simply because you're yielded, humble, and willing to go where He will take you--willing to be used. I love you so much and even the silly words on this page can't adequately describe how much.

What an Invaluable Experience!

I'll put up some pictures later. I don't have my picture CD with me right now, but I have this picture. We would walk up and down this road at least 20 times a day. It led to our dorm. Of course, it wasn't always this misty, but this is a beautiful picture nevertheless.

Recently I went to a one month intense discipleship training camp for seventeen year olds. It was like living in a combo home with eighty people. I saw so many possibilities in having a home like that and only wished it could have lasted longer, haha. I heard of this one camp that was supposed to last for one month, but because it had gone so good they decided to extend it for another two weeks. Ours was going just great! Why couldn't we extend it, too? Well, the Lord knows.
So it all started with David taking Sara and I to San Antonio where all the attendees in the states would meet up and take a bus to the border. Jamie was his co-pilot, and we took Dawn and JP with us to make it easier on the other homes. Well, the Devil really hated the fact that we were going... so the Winnebago (our choice of a vehicle) broke down. After praying and trying to get some help for about forty minutes, we decided to give pushing the Winnie (our nickname for Winnebago) a try. So PUSH!.... AND KEEP PUSHING!! Woo! The Engine started! What a miracle! We all praised the Lord.
Back on the road and we're all happy. Guess what? It broke down again about ten minutes later. So push, push push... And what do you know? After a strenuous push the engine started again!!-- our legs ached. We broke down two more times and eventually when we were about five minutes away we called for help. Everything worked out great and we got there that night. From what I heard the public bus that about thirty staff and attendees were on broke down, not to mention they had like a twenty-eight hour trip. Even the trip there for a lot of people was a battle. The Jerk of a Devil was trying to stop us. Isn't that great? We must have been doing the right thing, ha!
That night we were united with all the other teens and it was great. The next day we all got on the home's bus and made our journey to a border town... I don't remember what it's called, but it was near El Paso. The bus trip was quite fun, actually. At the campground we met some church members and got to witness to them and they were amazed at how we had been to other countries, we were young and serving the Lord, etc... We all slept in tents and some of us were a bit loud... but praise the Lord for His forgiveness!
The next day we crossed the border by walking across with all of our luggage in the mobile trailer we also took. Half of us would go by public transportation and the other half to go to Creel in the mobile home. Hahahah, well, there were about fourteen of us going in public buses with like 28-30 suitcases so there would be room in the mobile home for the rest of the teens. At every switch of buses we would horde around these giant things and load them up on the next bus.
I've fallen in love with Mexico and one day I will live there... somewhere there. I don't even know exactly why I like it, but I do. Who knows? We got some Mexican candy, a big bottle of water, coffee, all this after switching our desired amounts of dollars into pesos.
At CREEL I got to meet a lot of new people. It was different for me because I was used to going to camps where I knew practically everybody and if there was someone new, I wouldn't be afraid to get to know them and introduce myself, but here in Mexico... everybody knew each other and I, along with a few other people I knew from the states, were new. But it was good! Had to break out of the box and have some fun in a totally different environment with different people. Everybody was so great. It was a pleasure getting to know them and their different personalities. Eighty people and only thirty days... so much to know and so little time. I was also reunited with some people I had known from way back or from camps, but hadn't seen in years. It's interesting to see how people turn out, how they grow and change, and how friends you know get together with other friends you know, and how they change in their interactions with people over time. Well, it was a training camp and my training had already begun, probably ever since I started pushing the Winnebago and had to claim the keys and expect a miracle--which did happen, thank the Lord.
We got settled in and found our team shepherds and dorms and we were told that we could have the day off, sort of, and just relax and get to know people and whatnot. We ended up having an inspiration in the front of our dorms and did some dancing. It was kind of cool and spontaneous, and probably a good sample to the security guards who were always our constant neighbors. Oh... and we had an inspiration inside... with lots of friendly faces at the window... what a nice surprise. ^_^; Love you, and to be continued...