A Culinary Equivalent to Mount Everest

I don't have many blog readers. Which is completely fine because I don't really post that much. But I wish I would have been blogging throughout this whole process. So first, let me describe the process. Last Saturday Georgia played Auburn. The game was in Athens and under the lights. It was our first true night game since Clemson 2002. By now we all know that Auburn won on the scoreboard, but they did not beat us. Georgia completely beat themselves. Well, it wasn't even the mistakes by the players that so much beat us. The players did what was asked of them. It is what was asked of them that was soooooo frustrating. Let me decipher...it was coaching... again.

Prior to all of that excitement under the lights in Sanford stadium there was a GREAT tailgate at the coliseum. It was most of the usual suspects. But we had plenty of time to enjoy all aspects of the day. Now I know that the tailgate should never become more important than the game. If that ever happens I will hang my hat up. The focus is always what happens between the hedges.

But this day was a special tailgate. With the help of a small village I was able to conquer my culinary Everest. So without any further adieu let me introduce the Turducken. Another friend of mine had a nice preview of the turducken event. It seemed as if the turducken was everywhere last weekend. It was on Fox News, AIM.com and other news outlets. It was even a feature in the November issue of National Geographic.

So I now present to you the turducken that will go down in history. After three days of preparation and 14 pages of instructions... I did it!!

It all started with a deboned chicken. I wish I could have had more pictures of the deboning process. Maybe I can get some at Thanksgiving.

A deboned duck

Have you ever seen a deboned turkey?

Chicken stuffed with andouille dressing

Stuffed Duck

This is a chicken in a duck. And a duck in a turkey. Surrounded by cornbread stuffing and andouille stuffing.

I present to you the TURDUCKEN!!!

After a friend rescued me, we were able to tie this bird up to allow it to actually fit in the smoker.

This is what a turducken looks like after 15 hours on the smoker. And yes it reached a safe 170 degrees at a mere 11 hours of smoking.

It was like cutting through warm butter

Look at those beautiful layers

The Carving of the Tri-Poultry

NOBTS Updates

If you are wondering how the recovery process is going on campus...I have a link that would interest you. Please visit this site for weekly updates about the campus and see how the rebuilding and cleaning process is going.

NOBTS Restoration

Burdens of past limit New Orleans’ future

Finally!!! A real article about what's going on in New Orleans. This is the reason why the city will never be rebuilt to the way we knew it Pre-Katrina.
Please read the whole article. It makes more sense now knowing that Nagin was elected with no prior politcal experience.

Burdens of past limit New Orleans’ future

Satellite Views of the city

The events that we continue to watch on TV are absolutely absurd. I can't believe this is happening in AMERICA. CNN has a good interactive satellite view of the city. I still haven't been able to formulate my thoughts or emotions on this yet. It is still just too raw... and I have only been indirectly affected by it.

Helping the Big Easy and the Gulf Coast

All of us want to help, but we must be wise and discerning in how we do it. Unfortunately there will be alot of scams that will bleed alot of money off of people who don't know the proper place to donate. A good place to start for humanitarian need is the Red Cross




Another well know organization that will serve many meals is the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Organization. They just need to get in there to be able to serve.

Update - Seminary 'damage unknown'; moves offices to Ga. - (BP)

The big update is coming on Friday. Pray for the leaders of our seminary who are meeting tomorrow to decide where and how to lead the seminary for possibly even the next year. Most of us have been waiting anxiously for any update. Today we learned that they are trying to locate all faculty and their families. Knowing where one of the levees broke and where the seminary was located, I knew that there would be damage. The biggest problem is that even if the situation around the seminary stabilizes the situation in the city continues to spiral out of control. We must pray for the city as it tries to survive in the most desperate of human conditions.

NOBTS president says 'damage unknown'; moves offices to Ga. - (BP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Chuck Kelley wants to know the condition of his campus.

But one day after a levee broke and flooded most of the city, Kelley is still trying to get word as to the extent of damage at the Southern Baptist seminary. The campus was evacuated over the weekend, just before Hurricane Katrina hit. Kelley spoke with Baptist Press Wednesday from a hotel room in Birmingham, Ala.

"We do not know ... the extent of the flooding that may have happened after the levee broke. We just have no idea," Kelley told BP. "We are grateful that our seminary is located on one of the higher parts of New Orleans. Our campus is mostly above sea level - unlike much of the city."

Prior to the levee breaking, Kelley said the damage left by Katrina was "significant, but not catastrophic by any means." For example, as of late Monday, campus buildings had roof damage, the seminary chapel had been heavily damaged, an older campus apartment building was in 3 feet of water and numerous trees had been lost, having been weakened by termites over the years.

But then the levee broke. Water rose in the city Tuesday and much of Wednesday morning. Officials said Wednesday afternoon that water was no longer rising, although they had yet to fix the levee. One official said it would take a "minimum of 30 days" to drain the city. After that, work would begin to clear debris, which he said would take much longer.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday she wants the city to be evacuated. It could be weeks or months before residents of much of New Orleans are able to return. It is estimated that 80 percent of the city is flooded.

The seminary has set up temporary offices at its North Georgia Extension Center in Decatur, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. Kelley and seminary officials are scheduled to meet Thursday "to assess where we are and where we're going." Asked if the extension center could possibly be the site for fall classes, Kelley said, "We meet tomorrow to talk about that." Kelley did say that the seminary will have a "major" announcement on Friday.

"We have not seen each other as an administration team since early Sunday morning," he said.

Kelley said that as far as he knows, all students and faculty members are alive and safe. A "small skeleton crew" of approximately 18 people that remained on campus during the storm was to be evacuated Wednesday by the Coast Guard, Kelley said.

"All of our people, to the best of our knowledge, are safe," he said.

Kelley's mother and father, New Orleans residents, are safe and in Fort Worth, Texas, with their daughter, Dorothy Patterson, Kelley said.

Southern Baptists, Kelley said, need to "pray that the conditions in the city will stabilize."

"We cannot start even planning our process of cleaning up and whatever rebuilding we need to do until the situation stabilizes," he said. "We need to pray that God will show them a way to stop that flooding and get the water level stabilized."

Check the NOBTS Website for updates

In remote Kenya, AIDS impacts daily life

This MSNBC article

Theological Worldviews

I scored as a Reformed Evangelical. I am a Reformed Evangelical. I take the Bible very seriously because it is God's Word. I most likely hold to TULIP and I am sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die. Reformed Evangelical 79% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 79% Fundamentalist 68% Neo orthodox 64% Classical Liberal 54% Emergent/Postmodern 50% Charismatic/Pentecostal 29% Modern Liberal 14% Roman Catholic 0% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

The Doldrums of Southern Baptists

Leading up the the SBC meetings it will be interesting to see how we can make the headlines this year. This article is a great read though.

Southern Baptists in ‘doldrums,’ leader says ahead of meeting - U.S. News - MSNBC.com

By Alex Johnson

Reporter

MSNBC

Updated: 7:57 a.m. ET June 17, 2005

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s biggest Protestant denomination and the largest gathering of evangelical Christians in the world, is in the “doldrums” and faces a challenge to determine whether it is on the right path, its leader said Thursday.

The convention’s president, the Rev. Bobby Welch of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., also said that a resolution decrying immorality in American public schools was likely to be debated at next week’s annual gathering in Nashville, Tenn., but that it would be wrong for Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public classrooms.

In an interview Thursday, Welch predicted high turnout and enthusiasm in Nashville next week, which he said would signal that Southern Baptists were on the way to reconnecting with the “needs of the world around us.”

“If our convention will extend itself out toward the people — wherever they are — and emphasize the main thing, which is the spiritual good of them and their families and the good of the people around them, then the convention will rally to itself for the greater good,” he said.

But Welch said that was not a given. He noted that the annual number of baptisms in the convention had been largely unchanged for decades — a worrisome sign because baptism, he said, was “the first giant step in discipleship, a relationship with the Lord and Christ.”

“If this convention does not have a significant uplift, then it has every reason to pause and ask itself, ‘Do we have deeper problems than we realize?’” said Welch, who has made a renewal of evangelistic outreach the cornerstone of his administration. He was elected last year partly on a pledge to seek 1 million new baptisms, even though the convention has never baptized even half that many people in a year.

“We must break out of these doldrums,” he said.

Don’t abandon public schools, Baptists urged
Welch said no one was at fault for the church’s stagnant growth, which has stubbornly held for the quarter-century since fundamentalist-leaning leaders began taking over the denomination in 1979.

“We are not suffering today from bad people doing bad things,” he said. “We are suffering because of good people doing good things at the exclusion of the main thing ... getting outside of the walls of the church and reconnecting in New Testament Jesus terms with the people of the world and meeting them at the point of their greatest need. That’s the greatest cry.”

Welch said the need to reach out to people was why messengers at next week’s convention should not adopt any resolution that called on Southern Baptist families to pull their children from the public schools.

A resolution that specifically called for a mass withdrawal from public school classrooms failed last year when it was not accepted by the convention’s resolutions committee. Welch said that the committee was considering two similar resolutions Thursday and that at least one was likely to make it to the floor next week, although it probably would not explicitly call for an organized withdrawal.

Counting more than 16.3 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention could have a significant impact on school enrollment were it to organize an effective boycott, especially in already struggling rural schools in the South and the Midwest, where its congregations are concentrated. That, Welch said, would be counterproductive.

“The convention will be united on the fact that our school system is in terrible disrepair and in a critical and urgent need for help,” he said. “But what we are trying to come to grips with is how do we address that. And I do not believe that most Southern Baptists believe that just a wholesale, universal call for a withdrawing of students from public schools is the best answer.”

Beyond the reality that many families did not have the resources to send their children to private schools, Welch said, Southern Baptists are called to be “change agents in a world and a society that many times is totally ungodly.”

“Well, if that’s true, how far can you keep backing up from the fight and still effect change?” he asked.

The convention begins this weekend at the Gaylord Center in downtown Nashville and runs through Wednesday. President Bush is expected to address the convention by live video Tuesday night.

Our Beloved Mutt

In Memory of Tish - Tish spent a wonderful 16.5 years with our family. While at times finnicky she provided us with nothing but love and joy. As she got older she didn't want to play as much, but we still loved her just the same. She's been through alot and it all began with her being the runt of her litter. She was a Maltese/Pekingese mix that we got from someone in the Pennysaver. As much as we all loved Tish and granted her her every wish we could not protect her from the cancer, the seizures, nor the stroke that put an end to her quality of life. Putting a family pet to sleep is a hard thing to do, but in some cases there is no other option. We'll miss our little Tish, but we hope she is in doggie heaven with four legs running around and playing like she is a puppy.


Tish

What's your thinking style?

Your Dominant Thinking Style:

Modifying Super logical and rational, you consider every fact available to you. You don't make rash decisions and are rarely moved by emotion. You prefer what's known and proven - to the new and untested. You tend to ground those around you and add stability.

Your Secondary Thinking Style:

Visioning You are very insightful and tend to make decisions based on your insights. You focus on how things should be - even if you haven't worked out the details. An idealist, thinking of the future helps you guide your path. You tend to give others long-term direction and momentum.

What's Your Thinking Style?

Evangelicals rethink their public face

This ties into the previous post about the state of evangelism in the SBC. I have conflicting feelings when it comes to this topic. When I have some more time to write I will expound.

Evangelicals rethink their public face - U.S. News - MSNBC.com: "“The Southern Baptist Convention is less evangelistic today than it was in the years preceding the conservative resurgence,” writes Rainer, who found that the denomination’s number of annual baptisms has remained virtually unchanged since the 1950s. “We must conclude that the evangelistic growth of the denomination is stagnant, and that the onset of the conservative resurgence has done nothing to improve this trend.”"

What is REALLY happening to the Southern Baptist Convention?

I just happened upon the Associated Baptist Press site and read this intriguing article about the health of the Southern Baptist Convention. Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary says that "all is not well" within the SBC. Even though the Convention has experienced a conservative resurgence over the past 25 years, there are statistics that indicate the SBC is evangelistically anemic.
Baptisms have plateaued and membership is stagnant. The most baptisms are occuring at only a small percentage of SBC churches. So if there was this great conservative reformation of the SBC, why is it that we remain weak in the areas that we should be so strong in. Southern Baptists are experiencing the effects of a generation that was raised in program driven churches. This generation was never discipled and now they are the leaders of our churches and denomination. Our churches are evangelistically anemic because they are not equiped to reach out beyond the walls of their church. We must continue to teach God's heart for his people and that the great commission is an imperative command to make disciples. We have no choice in the matter. Frankly, if we are leading lives that are not involved in Great Commission work then we are living in disobedience.
Read the article for yourself...

Danny Akin warns of 'grave weakness' behind SBC's slumping evangelism
Date:	05/17/2005
WAKE FOREST, N.C. (ABP) -- "All is not well" among Southern Baptists, according to seminary president Danny Akin, who cited slumping evangelism statistics as evidence of "grave weakness" in the denomination. The Southern Baptist Convention has "experienced a conservative resurgence, a return to our biblical roots," but not to "a full restoration," Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, told a group of conservatives in North Carolina. "There is still work to be done. There is still ground to be regained." For the SBC and North Carolina Baptists, he said, "we need to be honest; all is not well. There are many things yet to be done, there are many areas of grave weakness, there are many areas of disobedience to the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ." Akin was one of two keynote speakers May 6 for the annual meeting of Conservative Carolina Baptists, who met on the Wake Forest campus of Southeastern, one of six Southern Baptist seminaries, which were at the heart of a 25-year political and theological turnaround in the SBC. Akin cited a recent journal article in which seminary professor Thom Rainer said, "An honest evaluation of the data leads us to but one conclusion: The conservative resurgence has not resulted in a more evangelistic denomination." Rainer, dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth, cited statistics to demonstrate the denomination is less evangelistic now than it was before the conservative reformation began in 1979. Baptism totals in the SBC have remained about the same while the number of church members has increased dramatically, Rainer noted in the seminary's Journal of Theology. The SBC has reported declines in baptisms for four straight years. In 1950 Southern Baptists on average recorded one baptism for every 19 church members, Rainer wrote. By 2003 the ratio had more than doubled, to 43-to-1, suggesting Southern Baptist church members are less effective at evangelism. Moreover, a relative few Southern Baptist churches account for most of the baptisms, Rainer wrote, while the majority of SBC churches are "evangelistically anemic," baptizing fewer than 12 people a year. However, Rainer added, the statistics would be even worse without the conservative movement. He surveyed a group of churches aligned with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and found their baptism ratio was 92-to-1. Akin cited other research by Rainer that estimated half of the members of SBC churches are "unregenerate." Churches should police "these big, fat, sassy" church membership rolls, Akin said, to prevent unsaved people from serving in positions of influence in the church. In light of the downward evangelism trends, Akin urged North Carolina Baptists to become "rabid dogs for evangelism" and defend "the exclusivity of the gospel," which contends that salvation comes only through Jesus. He also defended Southeastern Seminary's commitment to biblical inerrancy, noting faculty members are required to affirm three doctrinal statements that affirm that belief. "If they want to believe something else, fine, they can go teach somewhere else as well," he said. "We have been accused of being bibliolaters," Akin said, but wrongly. "We love the Bible and honor the Bible, but we worship only the Lord Jesus Christ." "It grieves me that even in this state there are divinity schools that take great pride in saying, 'We have no confession of faith,'" Akin added, but without naming the schools. North Carolina is home to at least three other Baptist-supported divinity schools -- at Campbell University, Gardner-Webb University and Wake Forest University. None of the schools lists a statement of faith on its Web site. Requirements of faculty were not immediately available. "I would challenge [North Carolina] Baptists to only support organizations that are passionate about getting the gospel to every single person," Akin said. He said the budget plans of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, which allow support for a number of moderate Baptist organizations, is "far too complex," he said. "Furthermore, we're not sending enough money to our national convention. We are not!" "If we give more to reach the world, [laypeople] will give more to reach the state," he said. "It is a foolish strategy to think we need to hoard it and keep it here."

To Post or Not to Post

This is a test to see what I can do to easily add pictures to my blog. I don't know if this is easier or if i should just learn more html. I downloaded Picasa and its companion software titled "Hello". I really like Picasa, it is one of the better picture managers that I have used in quite a long time. I'm not sure how I feel about the Hello software yet. I guess the biggest benefit is that you don't have to host the pictures on your own webspace. By going through "Hello", all you do is basically instant message the picture and it it posted on your blog. Now that is very helpful. You really do learn something new everyday, if you take the time to explore.
If anyone has any suggestions for other software, please let me know.

Posted by Tiffany

108 days

This is possibly the slowest time of the year. The waiting is killing me, but the build up and anticipation is all part of the excitement. What are your predictions for the 2005 Georgia Bulldogs?

Offseason News

Finally, some good news for the Dawgs... or is it? Last Friday, May 16, 2005, Georgia landed its' sixth verbal commitment for the 2006 recruiting class. Yes, you read the date right. That is our sixth commitment nine months before signing day. This time the Dawgs land a quarterback from the lonestar state, Matthew Stafford. I must state that I am not a recruitnik. I don't really follow recruiting that much until about a week before signing day. I have friends who are avid recruiting war followers and I just depend on them for updates. To me the best thing about signing day, and now the early verbal commitments, is the fact that it gives us a legitimate reason to talk about college football when the season is soooo far away. The reason I question this commitment as good news or not is because of the log jam that is being created at that position. We know D.J. is "the man" for the 2005 season, barring injury. However, 2006 will bring a stiff competition for the starting job with three potential quarterbacks vying for the spot. Blake Barnes will be a sophomore, Joe Cox wil be a redshirt freshman, and Stafford will either compete as a true freshman or be redshirted. I guess we'll just have to wait to see who will be the heir apparent to the winningest quarterback in NCAA history.

South Africa

Has anyone been to South Africa? If so where did you go? What drew you there? And did it captivate you mind and imagination as it did to me? I visited Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa in February of 2001. Looking back on what was perhaps the most amazing vacation of my life I often realize the things that I didn't get to see or do because I was too worried about finding good American food or awestruck by the three story mall in Johannesburg. In Cape Town we were diligent in seeking out the most obvious tourist destinations including Table Mountain, Cape Point, and the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. We did take a Sunday drive along Chapman's Peak, which apparently is pretty dangerous according to that link. However, our experience revolved around our first tastes of a first world country in about 14 months and it that regard it was well worth it. But as I mentioned before something captivated me while I was in South Africa. Maybe I realize the things we missed such as the wine country or the travesty of not actually going to Robben Island to see where Mandela struggled against aparteid or that we drove past Kirstenbosch and Stellenbosch almost everyday and failed to stop. I have since read numerous books about South Africa and it only continues to raise my curiosity and desire to return the Natals of South Africa.

History Lessons

So tonight I am going to brave the ice and sleet to go see Hotel Rwanda.
I must admit that at the age of 17 when this was occuring I had no idea what it meant or even where Rwanda was. Little did I know in a mere five years I would have the opportunity to live in that area and actually cross the border into Rwanda. I've heard many tales of adventure and compassion that took root in the volcanoes north of Rwanda in Zaire. But tonight I look forward to watching a movie about the human spirit and the incredible things it can endure in the face of tradegy. Paul Rusesabagina was a man who was capable to live for a cause greater than himself. How many of us are capable to look beyond our circumstances and impact the world? I'll be back with my review next week, but here's what others are saying....Roger Ebert's review and The New York Times.

This is a test...

And this is only a test. I am completely new to the world of blogging and I'm not even sure why I started one. I am unsure of how this blog will turn out or if anyone will actually read what I write. But at best I figured I do have an opinion on most everything, so I might as well write about it.