Archive for August, 2009

During Adelyn’s suffering with torticollis earlier this week, I prayed with her and asked the Lord to bring relief and healing to her neck. While talking to Carolyn on the phone during one of her atrocious spasms today, I heard Adelyn scrying (scream-crying) in the background, “Why is God doing this to me???!!!!”

It broke my heart.

The immensity of what I’d done by praying with her and for her struck me as I hung up the phone. In a moment of extreme suffering and pain, Adelyn was learning a hard lesson. God does not always relieve our suffering at the moment we want Him to. Sometimes the relief does not come at all.

I was also learning a hard lesson. When you pray hard and fervently with someone for their suffering, you are making them aware of your own faith and desires in the matter. When God does not answer quickly… What does that mean?

What it meant for Adelyn was that God had left her to suffer. Her 5th grade brain (and my 41 year-old gray matter) have a very difficult time processing that. Some would nod their heads and say that is why they doubt God’s goodness or even His existence.

Our reasoning goes something like this… The innocent suffer atrociously. The God of the Bible is supposed to be all-powerful and all-loving. If He permits such suffering and evil, He cannot be all-powerful, or He is not all-loving. Or as some conclude, He is… not.

On Thursday morning, as Adelyn began to have a better day, Blacksburg learned of a double homicide involving two Virginia Tech students. One campus… 35 deaths in the past two years. 32 of those occurred in one day that is branded in Hokie memory forever – April 16, 2007l 16, 2007
English: World English Bible - WEB


WP-Bible plugin. On a national level, Americans speak of 9/11. As a Hokie nation, we’ve heard 4/16 spoken of in reverent terms. It altered the corporate consciousness of a campus… and a community.

Again, it begs the question of God… why?

I attended a campus worship service hosted by Cru on Thursday night with almost 1000 students. Many were dramatically affected by the deaths. Others were numb or disconnected. Yet the large gathering ended the evening in heart-felt worship.

One of the songs they sang was “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord.” It’s a rather profound chorus:

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Blessed be Your Name

All these reflections have been bouncing in my brain since Adelyn’s agonizing cry Wednesday.

As a father, I did for Adelyn on Wednesday what I did for her on Tuesday. I prayed. It was the same thing I did last night in a room packed full of confused collegians.

I read Psalm 56.3 this morning and cling to it as a life preserver:

“When I am afraid, I will trust in You.”

I just will.

My best advice? Don’t give up looking for answers, even if they are hidden at present. Those who continue seeking with an honest heart will find. Your discovery may not be “the” answer you started looking for; rather, you may uncover greater treasure in your quest – wisdom.

For Adelyn, she was eating Ramen Noodles Friday night with a sore neck. There were no more agonizing screams, but their memory and her experience will continue to teach my family some hard lessons.

Tuesday morning seemed to start off normally at the Nobles – that is, as normal as can be expected for a family who has recently moved to a new town with kids in new schools. Sam was already at school (his starts at 8:00 while Adelyn’s starts at 9:00). Adelyn was up and helping put up the dishes when she screamed in pain.

So began our experience with torticollis, or wry neck, which devolved again today into a fit of contorted agony for our nine year-old.

After her initial scream yesterday, Adelyn had to keep her head placed against her right shoulder for any relief. Even then, she had intermittent bursts of extreme pain which left her crying hysterically. I was at the church office, with a morning full of meetings ahead of me when Carolyn called, upset.

After relating that she’d not been able to find a doctor who could see Adelyn today, we decided to take her to the ER of the Montgomery Country Hospital. It was a nightmarish ride for them, with Adelyn unable to find any relief in any position.

After a loooong day yesterday which included a referral visit to a chiropractor, Adelyn was able to finally fall asleep after prescription muscle relaxers did their trick. Unfortunately, the pain began anew this morning.

This evening, she’s resting – but only after a tortured afternoon which required two more visits to the chiropractor. He was truly amazing. We walked in with a suffering little girl with muscle spasms that almost left her incoherent with pain and walked out after more than an hour of treatment and wonderful care with a little girl still sore and tender but able to get about without spasms reducing her to screaming.

We had to cancel our first small group that was to meet tonight because we had no idea where we’d be at this point. I asked for prayer for her today via Facebook and Twitter, and I’m grateful for the electronic intercession. There’s so much I’ve learned from all this (and still learning). Stay tuned…

In the meantime… wry neck is no laughing matter – in spite of numerous attempts to make it so in the last 24 hours.

I saw this on a fellow Twitterer’s blog and thought it would make for an easy blog entry on Monday…

visited 20 states (40%)
Create your own visited map of The United States.

visited 8 countries (3.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World.

A few weeks ago we got an invitation to a neighborhood block party. We were pretty jazzed up about the opportunity to meet neighbors and share our Arkansas wisdom with all interested parties. Carolyn made a delicious strawberry-ish dessert she calls “dump cake.” It bothers me to call it that, so I opt for the strawberry-ish dessert moniker.

At 5:08 this evening, we trudged up the street to where they had set up a tent and blocked off the traffic. What we discovered in the next couple of hours transported me back to recollections of Happy Days – albeit with an international flair.

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting, watching the kids play, and pigging out on chicken tenders and the like. We have neighbors from Korea, Sri Lanka, Japan, Poland, and China (those are just some that we met). It was awesome to see the kids all playing together; it was like a multi-cultural park.

Of course, most conversations got around to a “What do you do?” or “What brings you here?” question. When I responded that I was a pastor, I typically get deer-in-the-headlights looks. I’m going to have make up something better… maybe I can say I’m a cultural interpreter… or a metaphysical guide.

It’s football time…

I could say I’m a fantasy football guru – cause it’s that time of year again! Sam and I went to watch the Hokies practice today with one of his new friends from middle school. It was a lot of fun, and the stadium was packed on one side.

• RT @northstarfamily We joined other churches to give furniture to 193 people from 16 nations, with China (46%) and India (41%) being largest #
• Just french-pressed some Mill Mountain Coffee, opened scripture, with cool night air blowing through from window… a little sermon review #
• T-minus 30 for worship at Northstar Church today. Theme: a Celebration of Faith. #
• Doing the Starbucks thang and wondering how many of my tweeples have been in or will be in a coffee house today? #
• Touring kids' schools for open house. #
• I upgraded to #HootSuite 2.0 because tweer pressure http://hootsuite.com/upgrade #
• It was vewy foggy on the scooter dwive in. I tawt I taw a puddy tat. #
• Some poor guy got pulled over in front of Carol Lee's donuts. I see bribery opportunity. #
• Meditating on the word "great" and realizing I use it flippantly. "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised…" Psalm 48.1 #
• "If churches wait too long to die to themselves, then they will ensure that they will die by themselves." – Erwin McManus #
• Overheard @codydavenport say at lunch, "I seriously believe there's a Bigfoot." #
• RT @Zackpianko: Heard this today: "Remember. Windows always crack, apples always grow." #
• Headed to meet @mrsharp79 for coffee at Bux. #
• Aaargh. An entire cloud of gnats invaded the house after we left doors open this afternoon. #
• Hanging out at Mill Mountain Coffee this a.m. with my Bible, journal, and dreams. Also praying for my kids. #
• Just spent 5 wasted minutes deleting about 20 spam followers I got hit with in less than 5 minutes – different profile names but same person #
• Paraphrase: Man is only smarter than animals when he seeks wisdom. (Proverbs 49.20) Look it up and tell me if you get that. #
• Fidn to host a small group leaders meeting for @northstarfamily. #
• RT @David__Francis: if people read the NT, they too could be "completely astounded" (Mark 6:51Mark 6:51
  English: World English Bible - WEB
  51 He got into the boat with them; and the wind ceased, and they were very amazed among themselves, and marveled;
  
  WP-Bible plugin) & "extremely astonished" (7:37) at Jesus. #
• RT @jwood4Poland: First post at http://www.jeremywoodall.com on leaving today for Poland!! #
• RT @NRVLiving: Fix it, AT&T. Either throw the switch on 3g, or fix your network (Blacksburg, VA) #
• RT @Ouachita: THREE-PEAT! Ranked No. 1 by U.S. News for 3rd yr: http://bit.ly/npbVj #
• Whoa. Horrendous line in post office on University. Hope they still have posts. #
• A lazy evening! Family all home; eating at Texas Roadhouse, then Speed UNO? in Christiansburg, VA http://loopt.us/DDaYTg.t #
• RT @northstarfamily: Welcome back students! Spread the word-we'd love to have you be our guests this Sunday – 10 a.m. Bburg Middle School. #
• Weedeating. Check. Now off to find a toothpick. If weather holds off, may go watch Hokies practice. #

I’m updating my blog feed to be http://feeds.feedburner.com/journeyguy. If you are subscribed in a feed reader to http://feeds.feedburner.com/NotesFromTheTrail, you will need to update the feed to the new location. I think it should do it for you automagically, but check it out, just in case!

When Rex emailed and suggested that we join him and the Cooks for a night in Floyd, Virginia for bluegrass music and Mexican food, I thought of all kinds of sarcastic electronic retorts. Rather than resist the cultural juggernaut that was now rolling toward me, I went with it. Carolyn was excited. I guess I could work up some enthusiasm as well.

The evening began with our rendez-vous with Corey, a new Tech student who loves bluegrass and was brave enough to come with us. As we drove to Christiansburg to pick up Rex, we realized that we had forgotten to tell him that we were picking up Corey. Upon our arrival, we discovered that Rex stumbled onto a Craigslist parking lot sales transaction in the making at Food Lion when he mistakenly assumed the guy standing alone outside his car was Corey.

From that point, it was smooth sailing (or van riding) to Floyd. I encourage you to click on the link for Floyd to get an idea of what we were “fixing to” experience. Pure-D bluegrass culture. We drove into Floyd with senior adults lining both sides of the street adn pockets of musicians gathered along the sidewalks playing fiddles, banjos, steel guitars and cats. If it squawked, they were playing it.

We had a fantastic dinner at the local Mexican food restaurant before meandering our way across town to the country store. I felt like we stepped onto the stage of Hee Haw. Words cannot express it. Check out the video.

A night in Floyd with bluegrass from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

What was even more jaw-dropping was the fact that not only did Rex seem to fit in with the gyrating senior adults, but that he fit in so well. He and Erin were masters of the dance floor. They soon had all of us (except Carolyn) on the dance floor before the night was over. Yes. I moved awkwardly to bluegrass music. But I moved.

Long and short of it all… you MUST get to Floyd. It is a cultural experience you’ll not soon forget. If you’re lucky enough to be there on a night that Leo is there, make sure you tell him that Rex sent you.

My mom sent me these in an email, and considering my new location, I thought I’d post them. It might help folks get to know me a little better…

Here are some ways to know if you’re a true Arkansan …if…

1. You can properly pronounce Ouachita.

2. You think people who complain about the heat in their states are  sissies.

3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look  for a funnel.

4. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by

the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.

5. Stores don’t have bags, they have sacks.

6. You’ve seen people wear bib overalls at funerals.

7. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.

8. You measure distance in minutes.

9. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean.

10. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.

11. You know cow pies are not made of beef.

12. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date.

13. You have known someone who has a belt buckle bigger than your fist.

14. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, beer, and bait all in the same store.

15. You know that a Mercedes Benz isn’t a status symbol here – A Red Ford, F-250, Crew Cab, with Dual Wheels and Four Wheel Drive is.

16. You know everything goes better with ‘Ranch’.

17. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.

18. If you know who Slick Willy is and how he achieved his name.

19. If you have ever had this conversation: “You wanna Coke?” “Yeah.” ”What kind?” “Dr Pepper.”

20. You know that “Whooooo Pig! Sooie!” is Calling the Hogs!

21. You know where Fannie Fox Freeway is and how it was so named.

22. If you know what “Black Ice” is. (patches of ice on highway)

23. You know how to get to Toad Suck, and Petit Jean Mtn.

24. Why the state flag is diamond shaped.

25. If you’ve ever listened to Bob Robbins or Craig (Lips) O’Neill…

26. Ever been up the Pig trail and floated down the Buffalo .

27. Your summers are measured in consecutive days that the temperature exceeds 100 degrees.

28. If you know the horse track is in Hot Springs and the dog track is in  West Memphis.

29. If you ever bought earthquake insurance because you were once worried about the New Madrid Fault.

30. Deer hunting is considered an excused absence in your High Schools..

And Finally:

31. You are 100% Arkie if you actually get more than half of these jokes and are “FIXIN” to send them to your friends.

I first started blogging back in September of 2005. It’s hard to believe that to date, Notes from the Trail has 1273 posts and 4980 comments! It’s been an amazing adventure into relational creativity. Oh, the places we’ve gone! I’ve so enjoyed the discipline and challenge of regular writing. While some of my favorite blogs that I follow have disabled comments, I have chosen to keep them. Mainly because I love the feedback and occasional ego strokes.

However, over the past four years, one thing has changed. I rarely get linked anymore. From early on, I wrote about the necessity of linking for your blog’s health and networkability:

• Increase your blog traffic
• The importance of linking

In the past year, I’ve noticed a drastic decline in the amount of blog linking. Perhaps it’s because many of the local bloggers that I used to read and run with have ceased blogging. Perhaps it’s because I follow many blogs in Bloglines and Google Reader and therefore rarely leave comments on those blogs. I just don’t know.

On the other hand, my blog readership has slowly, but steadily increased over the past four years. Of course, when you look at the blogging statistics, it’s mind-blogging boggling (stats as of January 2009):

133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

55% – percentage of the blogosphere that drinks more than 2 cups of coffee per day (source)

81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere

59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

HT: TheFutureBuzz; Source

So here’s what I’d like you to do if you’ve stumbled by Notes from the Trail today…

• Please link this article on your own blog or tweet about it.

Also, I’d love your thoughts on the death of linkage. Is it just too much trouble to outlink these days? Has plagiarism increased, and thus attribution of sources is dying? Has the blog boom busted? Something else?

Who would have thought my attitude toward AT&T (which was admittedly declining rapidly) could change in a day? Yesterday, I blogged about our less-than-ideal experience with their service here in Blacksburg. It’s been pretty frustrating to be in a rapidly growing urban sector of southwest Virginia and realize we had better cell service in rural south Arkansas.

Since Apple signed the exclusivity agreement with AT&T back in June 2007, many have compared the phone company to the Empire in Star Wars. One of my favorite images has been the rendering someone did of the AT&T logo as the Death Star.

However, as I wrote yesterday, it takes great communication to alleviate the angst that customers feel when they are left out of the loop of issues that affect them. Carolyn and I received that yesterday. Let me tell you what happened.

We had an errand date. Among other things, I got a haircut (actually I got them all cut), returned some things to Lowe’s and then bought some stuff for Adelyn’s closet at Home Depot (cheaper there, or so I thought), and finally, we made a stop at the local AT&T Store in Christiansburg.

We pulled up out front, and I said, “OK, get your angry face on.”

We both scowled at each other and stepped out of the car, loaded for the angry-customer-routine at AT&T. Then we broke down into laughing at each other’s expressions and stepped into the store. We were met by Scott, and his humor, identification with our problem (his phone had also been down over the weekend), and warm, friendly attitude soothed our ruffled feathers in a microsecond. Not only was he helpful but he was likable. Kudos to AT&T Christiansburg for hiring him. The other employees in the store were also warm and sincere. We were impressed.

They assured us that the service was sketchy due to the soon-to-be announced network upgrade to 3G. They apologized profusely, which they didn’t have to since it really wasn’t their responsibility. Scott then helped us switch our cell numbers to local numbers. Imagine our delight and surprise to learn that JEFF (5333), CARO, SAMN, and ADDY were all available! Scott and the others were pretty entertained by our Arkansas enthusiasm. After learning I was a pastor, Scott suggested that I get 998.LORD so if people needed Jesus, they could call me.

While the Scripture does say, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” (Romans 10.13) I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Felt a little sacrilegious.

We left the store happy customers.

But wait, there’s more…

Upon returning home, I logged into the AT&T site to check my online account and make sure that all our upgrade dates had not been reset as well as ensure that our carryover minutes were still in place. They were both gone. New upgrade date was two years out. Grrrr.

So I called AT&T customer service… Here’s my second great experience in one day. Are you sitting down? The girl I spoke to was extremely friendly from the beginning. I related to her about our recent move and what we’d done in the store. She checked the records and then assured us that it would take up to 24 hours for the records to be updated in the system. She then scheduled a phone appointment with me for Wednesday to make sure it had been taken care of!

On top of that, she asked why we’d moved. I related that I had been called to be the pastor of Northstar Church here in town, and she happily congratulated me. When she asked if there was anything else she could do, I replied, “Fix our reception issues.” Upon learning that for our 3 weeks in Blacksburg we’d had very poor service, she said, “Hold on.” Upon returning, she said that it appears that they’re preparing to turn on 3G in Blacksburg, and the date is scheduled for… August 14! This Friday!

She laughed as I cheered. I related to her about my blog entry yesterday and said I wished AT&T would communicate better with us so we’d understand what was going on. She agreed and after I asked if there was any possibility of them reducing our fees for the month of July, she graciously gave us a $50 credit toward our bill. “You guys have been great customers for a long time now. With two iPhones on your account, we want to honor and keep you happy. Is this credit sufficient?” she said.

I enthusiastically agreed.

Soooooo….. although my griping about AT&T over the past weeks has been pervertedly fun, I’m ending it now. Thanks to Scott and girl-whose-name-I-can’t-remember. It only takes one or two folks like that to put a whole new spin on the AT&T world.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or have seen my updates on Facebook, you have probably felt my pain in recent weeks as I’ve discovered AT&T’s poor Edge service in Blacksburg. When we moved to a larger city (with more than 25,000 college students), we presumed that our iPhones would not miss a beat. How wrong we were.

For the past three weeks, we’ve had intermittent Edge service – all while continuing to pay the same fees. Yesterday it wasn’t just Edge (data/internet) that was down, but our phones all had “No Service” on them for most of the day. We finally got bars back sometime after 11:30r 11:30
English: World English Bible - WEB
30 For as you in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience,

WP-Bible plugin p.m. Eastern.

One thing that has occurred to me during all this time is the simple importance of communication. AT&T is a company that sells communication, but it does an extremely poor job of it. Rumor has it that they are upgrading their service here in preparation for a fall 3G service. However, I think they would earn customer appreciation and loyalty if they would learn to do what they sell: communicate.

I would suggest a simple text message to customers in the Blacksburg area. Their Twitter account, ATTNews, would also be a good place to share updates and outages. As it is, we’ve heard nothing, and in searches on the internet could not find a single place where they post news and information about location issues.

Sigh.

This is a great lesson for all of us in positions to impact our organizations. The importance of proactive communication cannot be overstated. Telling folks ahead of time – or in an unexpected situation – what is going on will reduce overall frustration. If we had known that work was being done, or that they were aware of the issues, we would have felt a lot better.

As it stands, it’s easy to understand why AT&T is earning the ire of millions of customers. I regret that for them, because they were visionary enough to see that the Apple iPhone could be a HUGE revolution in the communication industry. Yet, they seem to have embraced it more for what it brings them financially than allowing its technology and others to reshape the future of the industry. The companies that make things possible for their customers (in addition to making money) will earn the loyalty and blessing of tech geeks like myself.

More bars in more places? That’s true in Blacksburg, but only because it’s not a dry county.

A recent Conan show featured Jerry Seinfeld. Here is the bit about the Blackberry and iPhone. Funny stuff.

Brisinger

What a love/hate relationship I have when I near the end of a fantastic, epic book. As I finished the next-to-last chapter of Brisingr, it dawned on me like a flash that there was no way Christopher Paolini would be able to finish this tale in one more chapter.

I stole a look at the conclusion to see a fourth book is forthcoming. A wonderful stew of excitement and dismay began to brew. There’s more!
Young Paolini has shocked the literary world yet again. Having begun his Eragon story as a teenager, with this third book, he has ascended the ranks of epic fantasy tales with the like of Lewis and Tolkien.

If you’re in the mood for a good story of elves, dwarves, dragons… courage, friendship and battle… look no further than this series. It does not disappoint!

I just moved from a town in which the college campus there didn’t play as huge a roll in the town as it could or should have. It wasn’t the fault of the campus at all. Many times, it felt like the campus was ignored by local residents. The town itself didn’t offer the college students much in the way of entertainment or hang out spots, enabling a few enterprising businesses to work around the dry country status by securing a liquor license for their restaurant. Other businesses that served the student population seemed to be the cell phone stores, movie theater and fast food joints.

We’ve moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, which according to the 2000 census, had 39,573 people in it. More than 20,000 of those were students attending Virginia Tech. Both Blacksburg and VT have grown since then. You cannot ignore the campus here. We have yet to experience football season, but locals assure me that on those home game weekends, you better know the back roads if you want to get to the store. VT is a massive presence here, rich in heritage and tradition.

I love the presence of the campus, but what I love even more is that there are vibrant campus ministries here, just as there were back home. I had the privilege of visiting with a student Monday who is a leader in Cru (Campus Crusade). He shared with me the leadership training process and how every student involved is equipped and expected to share their faith in an authentic, relational way.

In addition, there is the Baptist Collegiate Ministry. It’s near and dear to my heart – not just because I’m great friends with its director, but because I’m also a former BCM director. Its students too are enthusiastic and deeply devoted to making the hope of life in Christ known to students, faculty and staff at Tech.

I wanted to encourage you to drop by their websites and check ‘em out. I expect to meet the other leaders of the dozens of campus ministries at VT in the weeks to come, but I wanted to highlight these two and ask you to begin praying for them as they prepare for a vitally busy few weeks of relationship-building, service and ministry.