Nathan Diehl

This morning we had ham sandwich for breakfast. I also had some canalope, orange juice and coffee. Coffee is always plentiful here, and for that I am very happy.
I spent the morning workin on a couple of laptop computers. One of the computers I replaced the hard disk drive, CD/DVD drive and upgraded the ram. It took some time to get it back upgraded with service packs and ready to go, but that one should be much better at this point.
The other computer I upgraded ram and then defragged, but it still has some issues I haven’t looked in depth at this point. The modem does not work, and the CD/DVD drive just doesn’t read any disc.

Today for lunch, we ate about 2:30, and by that time I was pretty hungry! We had the traditional Dominican meal, rice, beans and chicken. I am really digging the food here, it is all very tasty. For dessert I had a very tasty piece of brownie. This was no ordinary brownie, mind you.
After lunch we did some final prep for C to teach at the Bible Institute this evening.
I accompanied C and Dr Allyn to the Bible Institute tonight, while Keith and Darlene went to the new office building and did some work there. The Bible Institute proved to be very beneficial and the students asked a lot of really good questions.
There was talk of some taking a short-term missions trip to the Province in Indonesia.

We all arrived back home about 10 pm and had a small meal with tuna, cresent roles, chips and pineapple. The pineapple here is delicious and is much better than what I’m used to back in the states.
At dinner Eileen entertained us with some hilarious stories about her battles with rats and also the story of when she accidentially baked a very old dog. I’m still chuckeling about that one even as I type this.

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Sunday morning we had cornflakes and a banana for breakfast. Coffee is plentiful and good here.
We went to church at Christo para toda de nationales, which translated is Christ for all the nations. It was a wonderful church and the people were very friendly. In the children’s program, I led the kids in a Spanish verse, Marcos 16:15, and also led them in a Spanish song, with the help of a CD!
After church we had lunch at the home of one of the church members who has a takeout restaurant. It was really great rice, beans and beef.
In the afternoon I took a two hour nap. I didn’t realize I was that tired!
In the evening, we had supper in the city at an empanadas stand, and we ate on the side of the street. It was a really neat environment to experience.

In our evening devotion, C talked to us about suffering. We had some good discussion about suffering.

I went to sleep about 11 pm, but not before I finished up another chapter in Treasure Island.

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As I type this, it’s 3:49 a.m. on Saturday morning. In just under an hour, I’ll depart from New Hope and head to the airport.
Today we’ll fly from Fort Wayne to Dallas, Dallas to Miami, and then Miami to Puerto Plata, RD.

Especially keep me in your prayers for my health. I’ve been battling a sore throat and stuffy nose, which I am pretty sure is allergies, so hopefully these symptoms go *POOF* when we land in the Dominican.

Not sure what kind of Internet connectivity and availability we’ll find there. I’ll post updates on our trip as I’m able.

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On February 15 14, I’ll depart for a 9-day excursion to the Dominican Republic, where my team of four (C, Keith, Darlene and myself) will work to envision the local church leaders about missions.
We will talk to the children in the church about our unreached peoples group (a distinct group of people who have no churches among them), and excite them in song and spirit about the children who are living around the world from them.

Later in the week, we will be at a pastors conference for a group of Dominican churches. We have heard there are at least three churches very interested in our missionary efforts to the unreached peoples group.
Interesting side note: One of our current missionaries working among our people group is a Dominican!

Through the week, I am also going to use my computer expertise to fix a Toshiba laptop computer (parts are already ordered for it), and also brainstorm about their website. We also think we may be doing some finish construction work on a training center, but we’re unsure exactly what we’ll be doing there. All we know is we’re there to serve and do whatever is asked of us!

I’m going to miss my wife tons and tons and tons while I’m gone for these 8 days, but it’s all worth it to see our unreached peoples group find the knowledge of Jesus as their savior!

I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to update while we’re there, but I’ll be twittering all I can and also updating the blog if Internet allows.
my twitter

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Hey, this is a VERY limited time thing.
Seems this Alex Albrecht from DiggNation leaked a very massive 40% discount code off anything at UtopianCoffee.com.

Code: ALEX40

This code could be deleted very soon. Use it soon to get 40% off the best coffee in the flipping world!

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Last Friday morning, my Grandpa Diehl passed away in his sleep.

This morning I was thinking about Grandpa, and was remembering a time in the mid 1980’s when Grandpa and I were on a boat and were fishing in Angola. I enjoyed every single moment of it but I didn’t know much about fishing, and Grandpa knew a whole lot. We went out on a row boat, and Grandpa helped me fish and gave me a few pointers.

But one of my most vivid memories connected to Grandpa is when we got ready to head back home, he opened up the trunk of his red car, got into the cooler and pulled out a Pepsi. This was back in the mid 80’s before the widespread use of cans, so this Pepsi was one of those returnable glass bottles. Grandpa opened the bottle and handed it to me.

I was stunned.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with a bottle of Pepsi–Mom never let us drink out of the bottle (still doesn’t want us drinking out of a can at the dinner table!)–so I stood there stunned. I watched as Grandpa pulled out another Pepsi, opened it and took a drink, and then I felt okay–I wasn’t going to get yelled at for drinking out of the bottle!

On the drive home, I remember seeing an 8-track player for the first time in my life. I think my parent’s vehicles up to that point never had anything but maybe an AM/FM radio, so this idea of putting in a cartridge to play music in a car was very foreign to me. I thought it was really cool and high-tech!
I know we listened to country music, but can’t remember who the artist was. It wasn’t someone I listened to much, but someone I had heard of.

I will miss Grandpa.

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Late yesterday afternoon my new iMac arrived, and I’ve been slowly working on the transition from PC to Mac. I’m still waiting on some new updated software to arrive before I can completely switch over to the Mac. Ordered last week, my software is just shipping today, which is somewhat frustrating because I really expected it to arrive by today.

Here’s a before and after shot of my desk. What do you think?

Before iMac

After iMac

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my dad had a very slow-growing prostate cancer, which was in the very early stages.

Yesterday, one of the best doctors in the world, 35 year old Dr. Weiss (who is also one of the few doctors who is both a urologist and an oncologist), removed my dad’s prostate through a robotics technique that uses only five small incisions instead of a very large abdominal incision, which is much, much less intrusive (they don’t rip apart all your muscles in order to get to the prostate).

The surgery went really well, and all is the best-case scenario.
Last night, Dad was doing laps around his unit at the hospital. The first time they had him up and about, they encouraged him to do one lap. When he finished one, he wanted to do a second lap. Once the second was done, he did a third lap!
He is set to be released from the hospital sometime early this morning.

Just a reminder, there are well more than 1,000 people who call New Hope home, so instead of calling them at home (they have turned their answering machine off), please visit my dad’s blog at RalphDiehl.com for the latest info on how he’s doing.

Thanks for your continued prayer.

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In six months, this is what my face should look like:

If for some reason I don’t look like Rollie, it’s not my fault.

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Earlier I posed the question
What is one thing that takes a long time to build but can be destroyed in no time?

Good answers, everyone! They all apply, and they all take so long to build and can so easily and quickly be destroyed.
My answer for what one thing takes a long to build but can be destroyed in no time is: Trust.

Too many times have I had my trust in someone destroyed in just an instant, by something small, seemingly uneventful thing. Each time someone breaks my trust, the cap how much I’m able to trust them is lowered. One guy has even broken trust so much, I have absolutely zero trust in him, and think he may be lying 100% of the time. Talk about lack of trust–and this can never be rebuilt at this point!

Don’t break trust people, don’t break trust.

(Congratulations to Marvin for being the first to echo my One Thing!)

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Last week, I came up with something really smart. At least, I think it was smart. I don’t know where I got it from, I can’t think of anyone who’s said it before, but I would assume it did not originate with me.

Talking about vision, what vision is and how to cast vision, I realized that talking about vision past-tense isn’t vision-casting, it’s a history lesson.
And history is boring (to most people).

But talking about the future, what are we going to accomplish, now there is something people can rally around and get excited about. We all know we don’t have the future 100% figured out, but if you don’t have a goal, I can guarantee you’ll never arrive where you aren’t heading.

Vision-casting isn’t about the past, it’s about the future.

My friends, you can’t cast vision often enough. Talk about the future of your marriage, your future house, the future _________. Future, future, future.

And no, you cannot talk about the future too much.

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