Category: Personal News

First the baby update: Dana is doing well. My mom (who is cur­rent­ly vis­it­ing) has dressed her in an out­fit that I appar­ent­ly used to wear, and that’s rather charm­ing. Any­way, there are new pho­tos online.

Now for the per­son­al news: Mon­day evening at 6:30pm I’m going to be ordained as an Assem­blies of God min­is­ter.

In case you’re curi­ous about the admin­is­tra­tive back­sto­ry, this means that I’ve now maxed out my min­is­te­r­i­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. I’ve been a licensed min­is­ter for a num­ber of years, and I’m now being upgrad­ed to full ordi­na­tion. It’s like going from a mas­ter’s to a Ph.D., except that I did­n’t have to write and defend hun­dreds of pages of aca­d­e­m­ic dri­v­el.

Instead, I mere­ly had to defeat three nin­jas in armed com­bat. Pret­ty stan­dard stuff for a col­lege min­is­ter, I have to say.

Ordi­na­tion does­n’t real­ly change any­thing for me as far as my min­is­te­r­i­al func­tions (the Assem­blies of God has been erod­ing the dis­tinc­tions between licens­ing and ordi­na­tion) or legal stand­ing (I could offi­ci­ate at wed­dings, for exam­ple, before this), but it is pret­ty cool.

Get­ting ordained reflects a sort of com­mit­ment to the move­ment. It’s not the same thing as going from being engaged to being mar­ried, but that’s not a hor­ri­ble anal­o­gy. Con­tin­u­ing the metaphor, it’s a bit unfor­tu­nate from a com­mit­ment per­spec­tive that the Assem­blies of God can be a bit of a tart…

Seri­ous­ly, it’s a great move­ment (with some admit­ted­ly deep flaws) and I’m proud to be receiv­ing my ordi­na­tion from them.

I stum­bled across this ear­li­er today while get­ting a satel­lite pho­to of my apart­ment. It’s a demo­graph­ic sum­ma­ry of my zip code. You can do one for yours as well. Inter­est­ing stuff.

First: Paula’s in charge of upload­ing pic­tures now, so if there’s a delay in new pho­tos be sure to send her an email to keep her on track. 🙂

Sec­ond: We’re very for­tu­nate: Dana was born over Spring Break, so I was able to com­plete­ly devote myself to help­ing Paula that week. After that, we had guest speak­ers sched­uled for the first two weeks of the Spring Quar­ter, so I haven’t had to obsess about mes­sage prepa­ra­tion. Most peo­ple don’t real­ize this, but prepar­ing ser­mons takes a LOT of time. I’d say I spend 15–20 hours a week pol­ish­ing up my mes­sage for Chi Alpha, and I should prob­a­bly spend more. Any­way, the bot­tom line is that I’ve real­ly been avail­able to help Paula out and still keep on top of all my min­istry respon­si­bil­i­ties.

We’re very blessed to have Dana–she sleeps a lot and does­n’t cry too much. Some­how I wind up get­ting the sleep that I need. Woohoo!

On a com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed note, this com­ic made me laugh out loud. I rarely read Get Fuzzy, but on a lark I swung by their web­site today. I’m glad I did.

I got out my web­cam today and shot a few sec­onds of Dana wig­gling, and put togeth­er a short video: Dana — Boo­gie Queen (WMV file, 1 MB). Yes, it’s cheesy. I’m her dad­dy and I’m allowed to do that! As I’m sure I’ll have to explain to her when she’s 16 and finds this while doing a van­i­ty search…

One of our Chi Alpha stu­dents, Andrew Wright, said this in an email about Dana: I went to Oxford today. I’m still speech­less; nev­er been more impressed in all my life. Send Dana there, but only if her beau­ty fades. It’s an awe­some school full of ugly women and I’d hate to see all the men fight­ing over your daugh­ter.

That just made me laugh.

It reminds me of a joke I’ve heard about MIT. The male/female ratio is pret­ty tilt­ed there, so if you’re a gal “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

Con­tem­plat­ing my new­born daugh­ter today, I had an epiphany: you know life is good when you have peo­ple com­pet­ing for the priv­i­lege of wip­ing your bot­tom…

UPDATE: while up late with Dana, I decid­ed to put this insight into haiku form

• chair the free down­load

.

Ver­sion A:
Con­cern­ing new­borns
I reflect: Life is good when
peo­ple wipe your butt

Ver­sion B:
Con­cern­ing new­borns:
they lie scream­ing as ser­vants
vie to wipe their butts

Just a quick update–we got Dana home today in the midafter­noon.

Thanks for the TON of emails–for once I had more legit­i­mate mes­sages than spam! It feels good to get 90 or so con­grat­u­la­to­ry mis­sives.

Now that Dana’s home we’ll be sure to dress her up in some cute out­fits and post pic­tures online. I’ll try and do a short lit­tle web­cam movie, too.

For the baby-uni­ti­at­ed (i.e., all the col­le­gians I know), I’ll be very tardy in respond­ing to emails, phone calls, and smoke sig­nals. I’ll post short lit­tle updates here as oft as I can, but expect them to be few and far between. If they’re more fre­quent, con­sid­er that lagniappe.

Our first child, Dana Marie Davis, arrived March 25, 2004 at 4:03pm PST. She was 6 lbs 7 oz, and 18″ long. Ten fin­gers, ten toes, the whole bit.

Deliv­ery was actu­al­ly very easy for Paula. From the time she start­ed push­ing until the time of deliv­ery took less than an hour. To top it off, Paula felt rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle pain through­out. We’re still count­ing our bless­ings and thank­ing every­one who prayed in that direc­tion!

See pho­tos of Dana in our gallery.

That’s the essen­tial outline–if you want the blow-by-blow, read more.

I actu­al­ly wrote most of the fol­low­ing at the hos­pi­tal (yes, I brought my lap­top with me–it amused the nurs­es, I think), so please for­give the verb tens­es.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “D‑Day (Deliv­ery Day)”

In case you’re curi­ous, we have preg­nan­cy pho­tos from begin­ning to end.

Keep­ing our fin­gers crossed for tomor­row! In just about two hours Paula will call the hos­pi­tal to con­firm that she’s to head in, and then they’ll being work­ing their med­ical arts upon her.

Paula goes in to the hos­pi­tal tonight, and baby should appear some­time tomor­row after­noon (around 5pm is what the doc­tor esti­mat­ed).

Woohoo!

By the way, a few days ago I men­tioned that an alum­na from our Chi Alpha group at Stan­ford is a final­ist in the Miss Sin­ga­pore Uni­verse com­pe­ti­tion. Nathaniel Rice (one of our cur­rent stu­dents) found a blog that men­tions Ade­line’s involve­ment twice (on March 12 in a spir­i­tu­al sort of con­text and once on March 21 in a fun friend kind of con­text).

an excerpt from the Fri­day March 12 entry: One of the girls, Ade­line, left the deep­est impres­sion in my heart… [skipped some stuff] i respect her and look up to her.. she got this spark in her eyes when she was shar­ing her expe­ri­ence.. as if she was liv­ing life with such pas­sions~! I told her i was feel­ing pret­ty ner­vous, and she said..“remember i said beau­ty is a qui­et and gen­tle spir­it?” I said “yeah” as her group’s top­ic was about what beau­ty means to them(everyone had to intro them­selves with name and age, and a few words about their top­ic in front of the judges). Then she smiled and said to me, “You have that beau­ty i was talk­ing about — a qui­et and gen­tle spir­it.”. I was pret­ty touched, i smiled and said Thank you and hugged her, and i was close to tears.. it’s just amaz­ing! She was­n’t like most of the oth­er con­tes­tants who could be pret­ty self­ish at times, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal, or bitchy. She is so sin­cere.. and true.. and so pos­i­tive.. and she is just a few years old­er than me and already liv­ing life the way she wants! She just touched my heart in a way.. =)

I’d like for Chi Alpha to take cred­it for Ade­line, but she was already pret­ty mature before we even met her…