Backyard Screech Owl

I was woken up this morning to my dad telling me to come take a picture of an Owl. The Owl was sleeping in the rafter of our back porch deck. I was probably standing about 10ft away with the door open, when I took this photo, with our dogs running around barking. He just sat there unfazed by us for the rest of the day.

Valentines Day Skype Date

Last year someone formulate a contest to win a date with Owen Walsh and myself. After the deadline for filling out the questionnaire, Owen and I would read through the applications (not knowing the names of applicants), we chose our two favorites to take on the most crazy date they would ever experience. However since then Owen has gotten married, and I am still single.

For fun I asked my date from last year to go on a skype date with me this year along with Owen's date from last year, but my good friend Kyle would take her instead. We all downloaded the new Skype 5.0 (which is required for 6-way video chats), then went to our accounts and started our free 7-day trial for Group Video calls. Sadly after the 7-days is over, I will have to pay if I want to skype with more then one person.

Kyle and I dressed up for the occasion. We wore white shirts, black ties, red pants, and red bandanas. Kyle also had his du-rag and suspenders on. I had a trucker hat, and my long blonde hair wig on. It was fun just catching up with everyone. The 'date' wasn't as crazy as last year, but it was still a lot of fun!

The Bridge - Skate Church

Photo by Robert West      Deezle - ??? Grab

Last Monday I went to "The Bridge" (7200 Angling Rd., Kalamazoo, MI) with the main purpose of getting some free skating while indoors. This winter I have reached the point of not being able to (very well) on flat ground and struggling big time with my 360 flips. Despite the difficulty it was a fun time.

 I was there with about 5 other dudes skating. (normally have 10-15). The kids there are very friendly and fun to skate with, though they don't have very many ramps. (Kicker, couple low rails, and a mini-quarter thing). However it was fun having a nice smooth surface to skate on. I was told that in the summer they have more stuff to use for outdoors and just don't really have the room inside.

Robert West helps run the skate jam every week from 4-6:30. He is an amazing photographer. Check out his photos at The West Photography.

Allegan's Best Known Secret

Photo of Ronnie and the mini

Photo: by Jesse Hatfield. Edit by me

Ronnie let me in on a session at a mini ramp that a guy built in the back of his hardware store. It is a about a 5ft mini ramp with pretty mellow transition, with a 1ft extension. The Business was passed down to the son, who happened to skate.                                               I had a lot of close makes to some tricks that would have made me pretty happy. But sadly never made any of them. (Photo: Dale Nolan Jr - fs flip attempt)

Jesse Hatfield - Rock to Fakie

Jesse Hatfield, Ronnie Ewing and a couple dudes come out to skate with us. Ronnie is running a skate ministry on the west side of Michigan, mostly Allegan area, called Testify.

My own Mini-Website

Word of Life has posted up my own little missionary website section on their main website. The website shares a little bit about my ministry and my testimony. Check it out here.

Prayer Letter

This is the last prayer letter before I leave for Taiwan. I will keep my blog updated on the upcoming adventures as much as I can. (click on the image to enlarge it.)

Italo Romano: Amputee Skateboarder

This guy doesn't have any legs and probably can skate better then most people that I know. In the beginning of the video he skates a lot of ramps, but don't stop watching it there. By the end of the video he is tarring up the streets, jumping down large stair sets and grinding rails. It truly is amazing.

Blog Promoters

I am not really sure why but I notice some traffic to my blog from websites that I have never really heard of, so I clicked on the link to check it out.

Apparently on movie-ozone.com, which is a movie review site, I am a "Fellow Blogger" I do not know how I acquired this status or even if I can recall ever doing a movie review on my blog (possibly once or twice). And if I did do any movie reviews it was probably only on christian movie/skate video.

Then on pingywebedition.somee.com, which is a website to promote your web on google I think (not really sure), it is "suggested" that you might want to visit my blog as you wait. I couldn't figure out what you would exactly be waiting for to happen. 

I do not know what connection I have with whoever puts these sites together and I am pretty sure I know everyone who is an official follower of my blog. However I can't argue, if they would like to promote my blog for whatever reason it interest them, I won't argue. I am thankful for the extra viewers sent over to check out what I'm about.

Rosetta Stone

I just received Rosetta Stone to help me further learn Chinese (Mandarin). I actually didn't even know I was getting it until Word of Life provided it for me this past weekend. I think it is a great tool if you put the time into using it and also practicing what you learn from it to people who speak the language to correct your mistakes.

The main idea in how RosettaStone works is that when we are learning a language as a child we associate words with the things we see. As you learn words with Rosetta Stones they are accompanied with an image. There is also an microphone you speak into that it tries to tell you if you are saying a word correctly or not (not 100% accurate).

If you have the time and really want to learn a language, I would suggest this program. However I have heard that the best way to learn a language is to live among people who speak it, with limited use of English.

Weekend at Kyle's

I went to New York a few days early to spend some time with Kyle Paradis (at his house). He is also part of the same missionary internship program as I am. He will be going to South Africa with John Cottier.

We couldn't find anywhere close/cheap enough by to rent snowshoes from, so we made our own for our adventures.

We had to cross a river to go where ever our imagination was taking us.

Kyle's dog, Emma, joined us. She brought her ball too. She enjoyed dropping her ball down into the river several times.

Problem was we had to jump down to cross the river the first time. On the way back it was too far and tall to jump up elevation. We used this slippery tree to climb up then drop down on the other side.