Our 60 minutes of fame...

First of all, sorry it's taken us so long to post anything regarding last week! We are currently limited in what we can post until after the show airs- tentatively March 4th. We will post the definite air date and time as soon as TLC lets us know. I want to say a TREMENDOUS thank you to all the volunteers who helped us get the house ready for filming in such a short amount of time. We are eternally greatful and hope you like the results!!

As nice as it was to take a breather this past weekend, there are still "miles to go before we sleep"- or sleep in the house anyway! Anyone looking to have some "fun" one weekend is MORE than welcome to come join the project. We are hoping to work on some electrical this weekend and possibly finish it up the following weekend. The heating and air system should be complete this week and just waiting on electrical and plumbing. Speaking of plumbing...if anyone knows how to keep our plumber out of the casino and on the job, we're taking suggestions!! :) Rumor has it he will be working on the house again this Thursday. Hopefully, we'll make significant progress on that front so we can convince Entex to give us a new gas meter. Once all the mechanical systems are in place, it will be a drywall party as we finish up the remainder of the interior. Batch and I are hopeful that we will be living there in short order, so please continue to pray to that end.

If the great outdoors are more your speed then working on inside projects, we will be starting on the exterior of the home soon. Plans are currently being developed, so stay tuned...

The rejoicing tithe...

... more great wisdom and insight from Drinking with Calvin and Luther.

An irrefutable argument for alcoholic beverages in the Old Testament is revealed by the Hebrew word shekar, which is used some 22 times and literally means "inebriating drink."...

...The shekar was so pleasing to the Lord that he commanded it as a drink offering to himself saying, "And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to poured unto the Lord for a drink offering" (Numbers 28:7)....

...Deuteronomy 14:26 ...is the classical drinking text for both Calvinists and Lutherans. We may reverently call it the "Moses Stout Text." It reads:

And you shall now bestow that money for whatsoever your soul lusts after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever your soul desires: and you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.

What Romans 8 and 9 is to Arminianism (pulverizing the idol of free will), so is Deuteronomy 14 to prohibitionism. As we see in the Moses Stout Text, the "rejoicing tithe" may be spent for "wine, or strong drink [shekar], or for whatsoever your soul desires...." The people of God are not only permitted to drink shekar, but are to drink it "before the presence of the Lord," and "in the fear of the Lord" (14:23). Also, the Hebrew verb here for "lust" ('avah in Hebrew and epithumeo in Greek) is the same verb found in the Decalogue, where God commands us not to covet (Deuteronomy 5:21). Only here an amazing thing is said: God states that it is lawful to "lust" after wine, or strong drink, so long as these things are not the cellared property of your neighbor. Thus, the Moses Stout Text commends strong alcoholic beverages in five ways: (1) we may drink wine and Moses Stout; (2) we may even lust after Moses Stout; (3) we must always drink wine and Moses Stout in the fear and presence of the Lord; (4) we must rejoice when we drink wine and Moses Stout; (5) our households may drink wine and Moses Stout with us.

The one translation of the Moses Stout Text that bestows a probable nonalcoholic sense is the New King James Version, with its "similar drink" rendering. The translation is so bold that it is bald; that is, the whiner bias of the translator is plainly exposed. Elsewhere, the NKJV renders shekar "intoxicating drink" (Isaiah 5:11), but here in Deuteronomy 14, where the meaning is not negative but overwhelmingly positive, the word is given special treatmenet so that intoxicating drink is not readily associated with good things. The Moses Stout Text, then, is diluted and becomes a symbol not only of translation dishonesty, but of the watered-down message of much of evangelical Christendom.

Drinking with Calvin and Luther, Chapter 7- Scripture & Spirits; pp. 143-145

My favorite line: "The Moses Stout Text, then, is diluted and becomes a symbol not only of translation dishonesty, but of the watered-down message of much of evangelical Christendom."

Intriguing that the command is for wine or strong drink and that in many churches in the observance of the Lord's supper, we have replaced God's wise command for a strong beverage with our culture's wisdom/preference for weak Welch's (wine is not even an option). It is also interesting the He commanded this observance daily and in many protestant churches, you're looked at suspiciously if you want to partake in the Lord's supper more often than once a quarter. Then there's the whole commendation to lust for the strong drink and rejoice when we drink it.

Hardcore. Very interesting. Comment away.

Demolition Continues

Well, we (we being us watching some contractors) demolished the walls. Here are the before and after pics. You can see the jacks supporting the load previously borne by the walls. We'll come back in with some combination of beams and columns to provide the necessary support.

<--Before / After-->

We (same as above) also demo'd the yellow bathroom on the North side of the house. You can see the skeleton of what was a shower and I'm standing roughly where the wall was previously. We're gonna make the bathroom a little bigger and update it.

The ceilings have been mostly ripped out, the mold treatment occurs tomorrow and the framing/furring should start on Tuesday.

Sights of the holidays...

Christmas is always my favorite holiday of the year, and this year was no exception. The Leavengoods were most gracious to us and we enjoyed taking part in their family traditions.

As some of the Leavengood family enjoys Christmas morning, you can see a small puppy on Lois' lap...that's her Christmas present from Doug-- a new Westie appropriately named "Mistletoe"- aka Missy to most of the family, but Batch and I prefer "Toey" (well, she does have a habit of biting your toes...) Oh, and did I mention...the day after Doug bought Missy, another Westie breeder called and in order to keep Missy a surprise, Doug agreed to let Lois buy a puppy from the 2nd breeder...by the end of January, there will be 2 puppies ruling the roost at the Leavengoods...and one grumpy old dog (Luke) running for the hills!



And here's one holiday event we hope does NOT become part of the family traditions... Even Mugridge, Laura and Bobby's dog (on the bed), is surprised by this scene!
Scott, sorry buddy, but I couldn't resist posting this one...

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a super New Year!

How we spent our Christmas vacation...

As Batch mentioned in his previous post, we began work our on the flooded home last week. First Presbyterian in Biloxi had over 147 volunteers spend the week between Christmas and New Year's helping families such as us continue the clean up and rebuilding effort. We were extremely blessed by the helping hands of volunteers from Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia as well as our local adopted family. There are no words to adequately describe the gratitude Batch and I feel for these individuals and teams. What follows are pictures of the house taken after the teams left...

Although most people might say it looks worse now than before we started, in the renovation process we've learned that it always looks worse before it looks better. That impressive pile is the hardwork of approximately 25-30 volunteers over a 4 day period. Pretty impressive!!


The walls labeled "demo" will be removed to open up the kitchen, dining and living rooms. It will be a great entertaining space once it's complete!


Batch stands in front of what will soon be french doors leading from the living room to the backyard. Our plans are to one day have a deck out there for more entertaining space.


Hopefully, these pictures show y'all at least some of our vision for the place. Are you ready to come help us make it happen? If so, please check back soon. We hope to have a project plan posted by the end of the week!!

Two mortgages, no homes

We closed yesterday on another home on the coast. It is a fixer upper (it had about 5 feet of water in Katrina) and will require a complete renovation. So now we have one lot, one gutted house, two mortgages and no home (I'm not complaining... I only share this to be funny; it's been the running joke around the Leavengood family, the kind folks whom we've been staying with). It is all good though. We're excited about the renovations and are confident that, Lord willing, it will turn out to be a very good investment.

I got to work on it today; a father and his two sons from Virginia joined me, along with Dr. Doug Leavengood. We pretty much gutted the workshop out back. Why, you might ask, are we bothering with the workshop, when the whole house needs work? Well, we plan to use it as a construction office/storeroom during the renovation. It needed to be gutted and it still needs new doors and windows. Anyhow, we should be able to finish cleaning it up tomorrow and start installing the doors/windows tomorrow or Monday.

I plan to take the camera tomorrow and will post some pics soon. I also plan to post a hi-level project overview (i.e. tasks that my faithful readers can sign up for).

By the way, we think/hope we are very, very well insured on this property. We have a fire policy, a wind policy, a flood policy and a liability policy. Basically anything State Farm was selling, I was buying.

Oh, and if you're looking for an outstanding banker, look up John Shappley at The First Bank in Hattiesburg. He took great care of us.

B

Road weary

My current vocation requires rather extensive travel; as our clients are all over the country, I typically leave home every Monday morning and return on Thursday night. I'm home now for the rest of the year and had a moment to reflect on how much I traveled this year.



Some quick stats, since 12/22/04:
Hotel nights
Marriott- 147+ nights, at the following hotels.
-Columbus Renaissance (best Hotel customer service ever, anywhere)
-Columbus Airport Courtyard
-Houston Marriott Westchase
-Casa Magna Marriott Cancun Resort
-Residence Inn Marriott Westchase
-JW Marriott New Orleans
-New York Marriott Marquis Times Square

Magnolia Hotel Houston- 1 night
Le Meridien Cancun Hotel- 2 nights
Total: 150+ nights

Flight Segments
Continental/Northwest
- 158 flights (plus a few extra that didn't get counted when I got rerouted on other airlines)
-89,081 actual miles (plus the extra flights mentioned above)

Points Earned
-American Express: ~48,758+
-Continental OnePass: ~95,000+
-Marriott Rewards: ~213,000+

Time away from wife, home, church and community
150/365= ~41% of total nights away
209/365= ~57% of total days away
~60 % of weeknights slept away
~80% of weekdays spent away

I could come up with more statistics of my lament, but I'll spare you. One huge upside of all this travel is that my job and subsequent income has been pretty much unaffected by Katrina, so we're still pulling in money to defray the costs. We're thankful for that.

B

Lagniappe Church

I mentioned on here a while back that Jean Larroux will be planting a church in Bay St. Louis. I seem to get alot of hits from people looking for him and/or the church plant.

So, if you're looking for him or just interested in his plans, check out his website:
http://www.lagniappechurch.com/

And now the not so good news...

According to this article, the money looks like it might be tied to rebuilding.

Grant recipients also must have had other homeowners' insurance. And they would have to agree to rebuild to meet new codes and to buy flood insurance on the rebuilt structures.

Holly and I are right in the middle of trying to purchase another home that flooded to fix up and live in. Rebuilding on our property had fallen down our list of alternatives for lots of reasons, not the least of which is the time necessary to build from the ground up... 150,000 is nothing to sneeze at... if this turns out to be true it may alter our plans.

B

Good news, I think...

The Federal relief legislation has passed in principle... which is really good news. Below are a few excerpts from the SunHerald article.

Senate and House negotiators officially signed off on $29 billion in spending for hurricane relief, including a bailout of uninsured South Mississippi flood victims...

...Pending its expected passage into law, Cochran's plan includes $11.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants to Mississippi and Louisiana, which the state has flexibility in spending. Mississippi plans to use the bulk of its share - expected to be about $5 billion - on grants to 35,000 devastated homeowners who didn't have flood insurance because federal guidelines said they didn't need it.

"The most likely scenario is grants of a maximum $150,000 each, with, of course, eligibility requirements," said Buddy Bynum, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour. "This would be for owner-occupied dwellings, not apartments or hotels. Subtracted from the amount would be any FEMA or insurance payments the homeowners had received."

Now, being a guy who has a pretty low opinion of government, especially at the Federal level and who loves Mississippi but often marvels at the decisions my state government makes, I am still slightly skeptical of how much this will end up helping people like us. I guess you could say I'm cautiously optimistic.

My concern stems from:

1. At the Federal level, the legislation hasn't yet passed and is attached to the defense budget which has some very partisan amendments included in it (ANWR drilling for example). Our Senators/Representatives expect to see it passed into law soon... it'll probably pass, but I'm not counting those chickens yet.
   
   
2. At the State level, I'm waiting to see what the 'elegibility requirements' are. I'm sure these are as outlined in the article as "owner-occupied dwellings, not apartments or hotels" and my skepticism is for nought, but given the propensity of the government thus far to almost exclusively aid those who are unemployed or who had no insurance at all, I am again cautiously optimistic.
   

On top of all that, my preference is that the insurance companies would just pay their claims. I'm in the "less is more" camp when it comes to government and am bothered by the likelihood that Holly and I will be on the dole. On the other hand, it will be nice to get a lot of my tax dollars back and frankly, I think we'll need the money.

Additional good news is that I think this is likely what our insurer has been waiting on to give us their decision. My guess is that they'll come back with a settlement offer soon that is pretty near our policy amount minus the 150,000 grant from the State. When you combine the two, that would be very good and put us in a much better financial position.

Please please continue to pray that the insurance company would pay their obligations, pray that I would live out Peter's admonition to the church to submit to the government:

1 Peter 2: 13-17- ¹³Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, ¹⁴or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. ¹⁵For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. ¹⁶Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. ¹⁷Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.

and please pray that the government would be wise in its administration in general and especially in this Katrina relief.

Thanks,

Batch

Truth in Dilbert

Courtesy of my dad.

Thanks Pops.

Wisdom and media bias

James 1: 5- If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

First of all, I am sorry for the lack of updates lately. There is alot to tell, but honestly there are so many decisions to be made and so many unknowns that factor into those decisions and the consequences of those decisions and unknowns so great that we are becoming overwhelmed. So, in the spirit of James, please pray that God would give us much wisdom; we are asking Him for wisdom and asking you to ask Him for wisdom for us and are confident that He will provide.

So, until I gather my thoughts for a more detailed personal update, there's this:

But it becomes more and more obvious that to national media, New Orleans is THE story - to the extent that if the Mississippi Coast is mentioned at all it is often in an add-on paragraph that mentions "and the Gulf Coast" or "and Mississippi and Alabama."

The television trucks and satellite dishes that were seen here in the early days have all but disappeared.

This is a very compelling article in today's SunHerald that discussed the media focus on New Orleans and the implications there are for the Gulf Coast. Give it a read and tell me if you've noticed the bias that the author describes.

While We Were Out…

In the spirit of the popular TLC TV show, the Leavengoods, Dueitts, and Virginia pulled a fast one on us and re-did Laura’s old bedroom into our personal retreat while we were in Columbus, OH a couple of weekends ago! The make-over included repainting the room, purchasing a new comforter (very similar to the one we had on our bed prior to the storm), shower curtain and matching towels and organizing the closet. We were very excited and extremely thankful for the thoughtfulness involved in this surprise. It’s also very comforting to have a space that is all our own that we can call “home.”

When I got home from work on Monday, everyone was here waiting to see my reaction to the surprise. There was a sign on our “old” room saying the shelter had been closed and the occupants had been moved to 1-A Leavengood Road. Here’s the sign on the door to our “new” room.







Michelle and Virginia decided to test our sense of humor and put LOTS of Ole Miss junk in the new room. Notice, the welcome sign is an Ole Miss whiteboard. There was a large gift basket filled with note cards, pens, pencils, etc on the bed as well as pens and pencils hidden throughout the room and closet. I managed to keep the entire room a surprise from Batch. When he got home on Thursday afternoon, he found the perfect place for all of the Ole Miss items…




Here's the finished product...
A couple of details I feel I must point out- the MSU diplomas on the wall courtesy of the Mahnes (see earlier post) and the piece de resistance, the poster size picture of Laura who I must say looks just like her brother, Daniel in that picture! (We love you Laura!)

A blue moon

First a fortnight and now... well, I guess it hasn't been quite that long, but it has been a while. What follows is a brief update of life in the Batchelder household family since my last post.

Drinking with Calvin and Luther
A friend and fellow congregant at FPC removed the remaining book from my wishlist (see books sidebar on the right). Thomas Davis gave me a copy of Drinking with Calvin and Luther by Jim West and thus far it has been everything I expected and more. It, as the title implies, is a superb account of the thoughts of Luther and Calvin on the propriety of good drink, not only for necessity but for pleasure. Some particular quotes of note (I am only in chapter three):

"Whenever the devil harasses you thus, seek the company of other men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Somtimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, aye, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: "Do not drink," answer him: "I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to." One must always do what Satan forbids. What other cause do you think that I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely and making merry so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me."
Martin Luther

"We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or to be satisfied with food... or to be delighted with music, or to drink wine"
John Calvin

These two fathers of the reformation also had very strong thoughts about the use of wine in the sacrament of the Lord's supper. Luther proclaimed in one of his table talk sessions, that "If a person can't tolerate wine, omit it [the sacrament] altogether in order than no innovation may be made or introduced." Calvin likewise shared a similar belief. In learning the catechism, his students were asked, "But why is the body of our Lord figured by bread, and his blood by wine?" To which the appropriate response was that, "by wine the hearts of men are gladdened, their strength recruited, and the whole man strengthened, so by the blood of our Lord the same benefits are received by our souls." Very interesting stuff. I highly recommend the book. If anyone is interested in borrowing my copy, I'd be glad to share (once I'm finished of course).

Insurance Update
No real news. There are rumors swirling, but nobody I know has anything in writing yet. It does appear though that the insurance company has changed their approach at least three times. The first directive was to deny all claims based on the water not wind argument. The second directive was to send out engineers to 'assess' what portion of the damage was water or wind. Now apparently there has been a third directive due to increased pressure from Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale to pay some percentage of claims whereever possible (i.e. if there's any indication of wind damage, the companies are being firmly encouraged to pay something). Maybe the CL revealing the contents of his campaign coffers has helped him see that his future as the MSIC is in question.

Other cool stuff
I think Holly has some things she wants to post, so I won't steal her thunder. Be on the lookout for something from her this week.

Thanksgiving week activities at FPC