Yesterday we were able to kill some time up at Ha Ha Tonka State Park. Around the turn of the 20th century a mansion was built on the top of a bluff, looking down over the water below. Fire destroyed the mansion, but the solid rock walls stand to this day. See the pictures here.
Last Sunday morning our hosts told us out about a lady who had been visiting the church for several weeks. Although she had grown up in a “Christian” home, she had never truly accepted Christ as her Savior. She and her husband had been uninvolved in any church for some time until a family invited them to visit the church we were at. They began to attend fairly regularly. On Easter Sunday after our drama she came forward for salvation. Please pray that the Lord will use her testimony to reach her husband.
1 Peter 3:1-2 (ESV)
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives–when they see your respectful and pure conduct.
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I really didn’t intend this blog to become a tour of BBQ in the central
states, but when a guy comes up to you after the service and the first
thing he asks is if your planning on stopping somewhere for BBQ, you
better take his advice. He suggested two: Arthur Bryant’s and
Masterpiece (as in the sauce). I ran the names by two friends of mine,
who are far more experienced with BBQ, and both said Arthur Bryant’s
would not be disappointing. We had some downtime before a service, so I
took the van over to Bryant’s. This was the original location since
Arthur took control of the restaurant from his brother. I don’t think
much has changed since the 1930s. Arthur Bryant himself called it a
“grease house.” The atmosphere is a bit like the Beacon in that they
yell at you, not as caustic, though, but then again, you don’t go to
Bryant’s for the customer service. I ordered a pork sandwich, which is
sliced pork. The bread looked like regular white bread, but the amount
of meat they put on it is somewhat staggering. I’m sure it was at least
four inches thick. The sauce was very good, a little bit spicy.
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Well, chains are sort of looked down on by the real barbecue connoisseurs, but I did find the wood pile, and besides it is like 50 yards from the hotel. 
The ribs have great flavor, but I better put the phone down or I’ll get sauce all over it.
(I do realize this is a crummy picture, but that’s what you get with cell phone cameras.)
This town’s name seemed really familiar to me, so I asked the pastor we were with if it had some historical significance. He said that it was the end of the Chisholm Trail. The cowboys would drive the cattle herds here and then load them up on rail cars headed for Chicago. See Token Knowledge about the stock yards. The Chisholm Trail fell into disuse as inexpensive barbed-wire closed in the cattle and the railroad opened up the west.
You can see the new gallery here.
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Wamego, KS is about 10 miles off the interstate, but is home to the OZ Museum. We watched a little bit of the film there, and I think my favorite line is, “What would you do with a brain if you had one?”
Token Knowledge: The original actor casted to play the Tin Man had to be rushed to the hospital after a few days of shooting because the aluminum dust they put in the make-up had coated the insides of his lungs. When he tried to breath, none of the oxygen could get to the blood. He spent a long time recouperating. He was replaced and so was the make-up. They switched to an aluminum paste in the make-up.
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I’m by no means a great judge of a barbecue place, but this one looked more along the lines of a mom and pop. What really clenched my decision to go was the pile of wood out back, something a mentor of mine has said to watch for. I just had the pulled pork sandwich, but it really was good. The sauce was pretty sweet and even a hair spicy. It was the best barbecue since leaving Greenville. Quite frankly, though, it wasn’t hard to beat the alternative, which was Taco Bell.
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On our way out of Nebraska, we saw a billboard advertising a Family Fun
Center that had lazertag. It was Friday, our day off, so we were able
to stop and play. Unfortunately, Sarah wasn’t feeling well, so just the
five of us played. It was the first time I had played lazertag on an
actual course. When we were young, our uncle got us a set of vests and
guns that we played with, which was really fun to run around the house
with. We were all pretty tired after running around in the room for
fifteen minutes, especially since it was pretty hot in there.
It did almost seem that fast. We were there for about two days, saw two cities and 400 miles, and that was it. One of the church’s pastor was down at BJ for Bible Conference, and he allowed us to stay in his house as a team. That’s always a nice opportunity to catch up on correspondance, reading, or rest. We’re now in Kansas, and will be here about two weeks, so I’ll hopefully get some blogs up.
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Certainly we’re not all perfect. I’m sure you could find grammatical errors in this blog. However, if you get frustrated by being docked for spelling in classes other than English, wait till you’re the CG guy at Fox, perhaps that expectation will help you avoid misspelling “soldier.”
Last Thursday night I had the opportunity to stay with a friend of mine from school, David Phillips, who graduated last semester. He works for Rockwell Collins, “a world-class provider of aviation electronic and communication solutions.” Just about everything that flies in the skies has some device built by them. David works in the government projects division, hence the title of this blog. I really did have to leave my camera cell phone with the security officer. At Rockwell Collins they design and manufacture GPS devices for the military as well as radio and satallite communication devices. David is currently working on a project called JTRS. It is a radio system designed to be modular, so that it can be reconfigured for any number of situations, allowing one box to talk air-air, air-ground, air-satellite, etc. on any number of frequencies. Don’t worry, this is all on their website, I’m not divulging national defense secrets. There are numerous labs that have pretty high security before you can get in. When they bring visitors in you have to sign in and out, and they push a red button, which activates a red rotating beacon light to warn the workers of a visitor in the room. It really was a fascinating tour, and very educational for me.
We hear that phrase often in Chapel and Sunday morning, but don’t often get to hear how the Lord answers the prayers. Jon and I stayed with a pastor and his wife, who are both BJ alumni. Last semester, they were going to have an early morning service and then breakfast afterwards. When she started working on breakfast, she bent down to get something out of a cabinet and her heart began to pound, she couldn’t catch her breath, and almost passed out. She convinced her husband to just take her home, so she could lie down in bed. Her husband continued with the second service and preached on what it meant to be a true saint and there were several Catholics in the service. The next day they took her to the doctor’s office and when the doctor heard what had happened he told them to go straight to the emergency room. When they got there they discovered that she had two blood clots in her leg, so they had to do surgery right away. Later, a friend of theirs told them that the morning her pain started, BJ had prayed for them in Sunday church on campus.
The new gallery is up and you can see it here.
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(Click on image for full size.) I’m working on a new gallery of a farm we stayed at, but here’s a panorama of one wing of their hog house. He raises about 2,500 pigs at a time. They come to him at about 10lbs and leave at about 300lbs. The smell was an incredibly strong ammonia smell. The floor has slits in it and there is a holding tank that is as wide and long as the building and about eight feet high. Every year and a half they empty it and use it as fertilizer.
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Chicago and Mall of America, OK, but Des Moines, IA? No offense to my friends in Iowa, but what does Des Moines have to offer Steve Jobs that the booming metropolis of Greenville can’t?
There have been a couple times when the name on the side of the van has brought about some interesting run-ins. Once was in the Minneapolis area when we were at a Sam’s getting some water. A couple came up to our van window, and introduced themselves. They attended a church that we would be at later that week, and they were actually signed up to keep Jon and I.
Another time was when we were heading out of Minnesota and stopped in a small town called Albert Lea, MN - population 14,000, to get gas and eat supper. We were eating at Quizno’s and an older lady came in and said, “Are you guys from the University?” We told her we were and she said that her husband graduated from there and actually got his doctorate there
as well. Her husband came in after a little bit, and we had a chance to talk for quite a while about faculty and staff, who were
mutual acquaintances.
Perhaps the most critically timed incident happened just the other day. Jon and I had stayed with an elderly couple. After the service, their grown daughter was over at their house with her daughter, and we talked for quite awhile. Well, the next day when were leaving after the chapel at the school, we had driven quite a ways away from the school and were just merging onto the highway, when a white van, that was already on the highway, honked and I looked over and it was the daughter we had met the night before.
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Well, she actually figured out that something was up, but Chris, her
fiance, showed up at the school this morning. Marie had all ready been
planning on staying with Chris’ family this weekend, so Chris drove his
mom home to Iowa, because she had been visiting in Greenville.
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I have been meaning to post this, but just kept forgetting. I saw this
sign on the wall as decoration in a restaurant we ate at back when we
were near Chicago. My grandpa used to work for Stroehmann’s Bread, but
living down south I don’t often see the brand, and this also looked like an
older sign.
Last Sunday, Jon, Karlyn, Marie, and I went over to the pastor’s house
for supper. While we were there the phone rang, and after he talked for
a little bit he told us that one of the girls that was at the service
when she went home with her parents, who are members, started asking
questions about the drama and then got saved that night.
Also, we were at a school that had not had a team in a very long time,
and the students had some misconceptions about what the University was
like. They even said that it wasn’t anything they knew, but was just
what they had heard that made them think it was really strict and an
unenjoyable experience. So we talked with them for quite awhile about
the school during lunch, before the drama. During the drama you could
tell that they were very interested and laughed at the funny parts.
Afterward they seemed much more interested in the school and we talked
for quite awhile with several of them. It was neat to see the change.
While we were at Carl Sandburg’s birthplace a few weeks ago, I read some interesting information about the stockyards in Chicago during the early 1900s.
In a single year this one market has handled 2,728,134 live cattle, 8,698,478 hogs, 3,540,643 sheep, 136,370 calves and 91,756 horses, altogether amounting in value to $271,217,000. It is the world’s greatest center for meat supplies. Nearly two billion pounds of dressed beef are shipped from Chicago every year, parts of the product finding their way to the farthest corners of the world.