Eskimo's Icy Wisdoms

Nehemiah Chapter 12

Good Morning my friends, I pray you have had a blessed week thus far and will pray it continues.
Chapter twelve of Nehemiah begins by listing out the priests who were in Jerusalem at the time; see how short that list is? Seven verses. Seven, that’s not a lot of priests, yet the chapter, continues by listing out more Levites. That’s right, fourteen more verses of guys who helped the priests. And they got their names put into the Bible, these guys had to rate.

Verses 22-26 remarks on the chief of the Levites, which is important because any organization needs to have clear leadership. Obviously Nehemiah thought so too if he took the time to have Hashabiah, Sherebiah and Jeshua the son of Kadmiel listed.

Starting at verse 27, we have the dedication of the wall. Why is this important?

Prayer is one of the most important things we mortals have. It is our direct line to talking to God. It’s the time we set aside, we sacrifice not doing something else in order to praise, worship, when, complain, ask, seek and knock with God. (Matthew 7:7)

So why Prayer? Why was prayer so important for the city?

Because prayer also protects. Ask any Godly parent who prays over their children at night. They pray for protection on their children, in my family anyway we pray for a hedge of protection around the house, around each family member… (Job 1:10) Now think on a national scale, if you got all the Israelites to pray for the walls, for protection from enemies, for each other and for God to move through them. The prayer was also to dedicate the walls to God. (Proverbs 3:6)

Now don’t think the prayer was all solemn and boring like many you may hear in church. This was a joyful thing. They sent out word all around to the countryside to get all the Levites and singers to come to Jerusalem and they had enough people for two full choirs! (See Nehemiah 12:31) Both Choirs marched around the city until they met in the middle where the sacrifices, ones that hadn’t been done for years, were started anew.
My point today is prayer. It makes things happen, it protects, it builds up, it praises, it worships, it keeps our focus on God where it should be.

Just think, without prayer, Nehemiah may not have been able to come to Jerusalem in the first place.
Remember Nehemiah 2:4

How many things in your life could be changed if you simply take a moment to pray about them first? How often we humans forget that prayer is an action and doesn’t happen automatically. You have to spend the time to pray.

I pray these words strike true to their purpose this week. I know they pierced my heart in a spot where I need to work on my prayers.

God bless you this week,
Until next time,

Eskimo

Well, Week 2 has come upon us and we ended up bowling down on lanes 1 & 2

Same line up as before. (We rarely change it)

I used my secondary rapid fire (I call it Mike’s Rapid fire) It has a different layout than my Rapid Fire pearl, a much stronger back end, normally I could use it really well, but tonight it was too strong for the lanes.

The lanes were a little drier than last week. Everything was hooking more, although I think it had more to do with ambient temperature and a lower humidity level.   Factors like this do make a difference in how you play the lanes.

The center also got new screen installed, big flat panel monitors… They were huge! In fact, if I was looking at them before walking up on the approach, they hurt my eyes. Still, its an improvement. I think the next big step will be for the center to upgrade the whole scoring system. The one they have in place is like 30 years old. Its automatic, but out dated.

Anyway,back to the bowling.

Here is our games

Game 1

DJ – 166

Scherry – 152

Anthony – 247

Mike – 196

Total Scratch = 761

Total with Handicap = 776

We lost our point by 64 pins. The other team bowled really well.

Game 2

DJ – 160

Scherry – 188

Anthony – 191

Mike – 279

My game would have been higher except I left a 7-10 split. That’s a big game killer.

Scratch total = 818

Total with Handicap = 833

We won this point by 30 pins. The other team still bowled really well.

Game 3

DJ -206

Scherry – 150

Anthony 205

Mike – 167

Scratch total = 728

Handicap total = 743

We lost this game too. By a lot.

So this week was a bit disappointing, we only won 1 point, I expect we will be around 12-14 place next week.

We are just going to have to work harder! It’s not over yet, we still have a lot of season left.

Well, the season is winding down for me. Only one more week left actually.

Last Tuesday in my Handicap Trios league at Glacier lanes started the two week roll off for the top four teams. Sadly my team didn’t make that, however we are still fighting for that fifth spot!

Game one was horrible for me. I rolled a 151. I don’t know if my mind wasn’t in the game or what was wrong with me, I left two splits and a wash out and just couldn’t string any strikes. Looks really bad for a guy with a 215 average in the league…

I was rolling my rapid fire pearl and at the end of the first game I was just shaking my head. On Tuesday’s I only ever bring two balls with me, my XXXL spare ball and one other reactive ball.

Well after the first game I knew I needed to change something. So I moved my feet ten boards to the right, my mark ten boards and I also changed my thumb slug out, going from my larger white one to my smaller yellow one.

The difference in ball reaction and striking power was immediate. I rolled a 241 game. My team mates were giving me such a bad time…

Then came the third game. I threw the ball in the pocket on lanes 16 and left a ten pin. Sparing it I didn’t even change my target for the next set of shots. Strike, strike, strike. I couldn’t even look at the score board. Then came the ninth frame and my eighth strike in a row. It all came down to the tenth frame…

My first shot in the tenth happened on lane 15. It was a little light (I was a bit nervous) and the ten was still standing, then the six pin bounced up and tapped it just hard enough to cause it to fall over. Boom! Nine in a row!

My next shot went a little high and the nine pin was bouncing around the back of the deck until another pin crashed off the sidewall to swing across and knock it to the ground. Ten in a row!

My last shot, was textbook perfect. All ten pins flew back to land in the pit.

11 strikes in a row for a 290 game and a 682 series.

I get a plaque for it.

Singles and Doubles:

Well we were at Midna lanes for Singles and Doubles. To be honest I wasn’t expecting much looking at the outside. It was rather unkept. Peeling paint, potholes in the driveway… And upon entering, the unkept appearance of the outside was reflected on the inside.

While the inside was dirty, it was very dingy. You would think that hosting the State tournament a few extra dollars could go into making the place look more presentable.

Anyway…

We were put down on lanes 1&2 (right in front of the mini arcade area for the kids to play on, pinball, racing games, etc)

Practice started and I was still scratching my head after the ten minutes of warm up as to where to shoot on the lanes. It was after that I found out we were using the USBC White oil pattern, one I hadn’t seen before.

It also didn’t help that after our lead off bowler threw his first shot, the lane broke down in the back and we had to wait for twenty minutes for it to be repaired. All that warm up went for naught as muscles cooled off again and we were left just sitting around.

Finally they got it fixed and we continued bowling. Not that anyone on our pair did all that well.

My singles series didn’t net me anything for the tournament. 157, 172, 192… Not that great. Especially with a 217 average. No handicap to make up for having a bad set.

Doubles was next and we simply swapped with our neighbor in the settee area on lanes 3 and 4.

I shot a lot better on this pair, I managed to overcome the errors I made in the first set regarding how to appraoch the new oil pattern and made the corrections neccesary.

Shot 234, 192, 224. Much better. The bummer thing is my doubles partner fell apart. So we are not getting anythign back for that tournament.

Still, I was very unhappy that day with not only my bowling, but the poor standards to which the people hosting the state tournament held themselves.

After bowling we were all ready to get a bite to eat and then crash at the hotel. We went to a place called “the Dutch Kitchen” hidden in downtown Yakima. It wasn’t much to look at on the outside, more like a hole in the wall place, and when we stepped inside it wasn’t all that great to look at either…

However the service was great. Our server Lisa treated us all like we were long lost cousins or something, she was very cordial, joking with everyone at the table and at the same time kept herself professional.

They had a great special for dinner too. a 14oz Prime rib with potatoes and a veggie for $10.50. Oh man was it good. There was virtually no talking from the table while we ate. That was one of the redeeming places in Yakima.

Day 3

Team event

So we rolled up into Nob Hill lanes. It was in a better area of town and had a restaurant and casino attached to it, so we expected to look better. And it did. Inside was better lit, cleaner, new paint on the walls. The machines were in better shape. What you would expect if a place is going to host the state tournament.

Our team consisted of Ronnie, Sean, Robert and myself.

We shot 2,740 total and that put us in the top 20 as of right now. There are still three more weekends to go. I hope our score sits high enough…

The drive home was uneventful, it was nice being able to do 70MPH the whole way. Once we got to Seattle it slowed to 60 and I felt like I was suddenly plodding along. Its a good thing I did though, the people who passed me all got pulled over.

It was nice to get away to go bowling, but at the same time, its always nice to come home again.

So yeah, that was my trip in a short nutshell.

On the 13th of March 2010, on her 27th birthday, Laurel, her husband and her father were struck by a car while waiting to cross the road. Laurel who was six months pregnant did not survive the accident, and after a very brief time on this earth, her sweet baby Chloe went to be with her mom. Laurels father, Ralph remains in hospital being treated for his injuries.

The initial News report can be found here

The Facebook page honoring their memories can be found here.

Her Obituary can be found here.

Laurel was my aunt. She was only 2 years older than me so we spent a lot of time together growing up.  She was more like a big sister at times than my aunt. Its hard to think I will not see her smiling face again, or her good natured laugh.

The world is less without her in it and God is greater for having her with Him.

Currently there is a criminal investigation ongoing against the man who caused the initial accident that led to my Aunt and her unborn babies death. If you want to leave a message on any of the above links, please do so. Thank you.