Nathan Diehl

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

Popularity: 6%

6 Comments »

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!

Popularity: 6%

Tags: coffee

1 Comment »

I love my new iMac I’ve had as my work computer for about a month now. It, coupled with an upgrade to Adobe CS4, has really helped me increase my productivity.

I love its large screen.
I love its dock.
I love its common-sense intuitiveness instead of the Microsoft-way.
I love its speed.
I love its form.
I love its function.
I love the way it makes me feel when I look at it.
I love its simplicity.
I love its intricacies.
I love its flipping cool productivity tools.

But there is one thing I don’t like: Spaces doesn’t behave nicely with BIG 3rd Party software developers. And by BIG, I mean, Microsoft and Adobe. Neither Microsoft Office nor Adobe CS4 stay in their assigned spaces. When they go out of their spaces, it’s hard to get them back, too!

Adobe blames Apple. Apples blames Adobe.
Apple blames Microsoft. Microsoft blames Apple.

Long story short, no one claims responsibility to fix this crazy issue means I’ll likely not have a fix until either Snow Leopard (10.7), Microsoft Office 2014, or Adobe CS7.
Methinks Apple should (and will) fix this annoyance with the release of Snow Leopard in 2009. Better than 2014!

Popularity: 4%

Tags: mac

4 Comments »

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 fishing in Angola. 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.

Popularity: 2%

Tags: family

1 Comment »

This past weekend, Emily and I spent two days in Indianapolis enjoying the city and the malls. We did the vast majority of our purchases at Target, but spent some time at four area malls.
We went to the Keystone Fashion Mall, which has many high-end stores you can’t find in Fort Wayne, including Crate and Barrel, Restoration Hardware and The Apple Store. (And for the record, we like to look but very rarely actually purchase anything from a high-end store).
This was my first time to actually enter a brick-and-mortar Apple Store. I have walked by it before, but always thought Apple computers were for non-normal people. But I have since actually tried one, and know the full benefit of a well-built computer and operating system. This time, The Apple Store would not be overlooked!
As I approached the entrance, I saw my old pal Russ from my freshman year of college at Taylor University. We spent a few minutes chatting and catching up, and it was nice to finally see the guy again.

But here is what I want to communicate about the actual experience. No one ever prodded us to purchase something. I never felt any pressure to buy anything (my work computer and home computer are both mac, so I don’t need anything Apple, except maybe an iPhone). The Apple Store was just a really neat, safe place to be. I would go back and chill there any day.
As we were looking around and I was admiring the construction of the new Macbook and Macbook Pro models, a salesman came up and talked to us for about two minutes. But the conversation went something like this:
‘Is there anything I can help you guys with today?’
‘No, we’re just looking today.’
‘Well, cool. Look around all you want. My name is George. By the way, what are you guy’s names?‘
‘Nathan and Emily.’
‘Emily! Sweet, that’s my fiance’s name. You gotta watch out for Emily’s! (pause) Naa, I’m just joking.’
(we laugh)
He continues, ‘My Emily always gets mad at me when I say that, but she’s not here right now, so that’s okay.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, hey, you guys have a great day and let me know if there is anything we can help you with today.’
‘Thanks.’

That was unlike any salesman I’ve ever encountered ever before. That was craziness. George made me feel that I belonged there. Made me feel comfortable.

Then I got to thinking, what if the church was friendly like this, instead of all cliquey? Wouldn’t the church look completely different?

What do you think? Could the church learn anything from Apple? If so, what?
(And is my dad’s recent blog post related to this at all?)

Popularity: 4%

Tags: Apple Store, mac, the church

2 Comments »

I know, I haven’t been posting much lately. Instead, I’m made the switch from blogging to micro-blogging, i.e., twittering.
At twitter, I post multiple, brief updates every day as to how I’m doing or what’s going on at the moment. I encourage you to join twitter and start following me, and I’ll keep an eye out, and be sure to start following your tweets as well.

But on to the lesson from politics: No one wants to make the difficult decisions. It’s much easier to just pretend like everything’s okay and nothing’s wrong so that you don’t have to make a difficult decision.
The problem is, things are wrong, and unless you make a difficult decision today, you have a MUCH, MUCH more difficult decision years down the road when you’re literally forced into taking drastic, drastic measures.
The lesson is fight for the small incremental changes today, and hopefully you’ll get there…

I’m still learning this politics thing.

Popularity: 2%

Tags: learning, politics, Town Council

No Comments »

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

Popularity: 3%

Tags: mac

5 Comments »

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.

Popularity: 3%

2 Comments »

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.

Popularity: 3%

3 Comments »

This weekend’s poll question is about water intake. The question asks, how much water should you drink every day?

 Loading ...

Popularity: 3%

Tags: healthy

2 Comments »

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!)

Popularity: 2%

No Comments »