1. Had a great week at the beach with the outlaws. Couldn’t have asked for better weather! This was of course the first vacation with the 8 month olds…and I can not believe how much children change things. Gone were the late nights playing games (everyone was too tired and God forbid a noise be made after the babies are asleep). Life for a new parent apparently revolves around when the baby will sleep, poop, and eat. And it is cause for great concern if any of those things happen too often, not often enough, or stray from normal quantities.

2. Have I ever mentioned that I love to read? It’s a running joke among the outlaws that I am some sort of speed reader because I routinely finish three or four books on vacation. Well, I only finished two this time: David Sedaris’s latest “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” which was great of course, though not as funny as some of his previous works. The second was “The Sea of Monsters” by Rick Riordan. It’s the second in a series of “young readers” books revolving around the half-blood son of the God Poseidon, Percy Jackson. Harry Potter fans won’t be able to help drawing comparisons and will no doubt enjoy the series. I finished the first book in that series a few weeks ago.  I finished a fourth book just before we left–it had been in my pile of “beach reads” but I just couldn’t put it down. “The Thireenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield. An awesome book…easily the best I’ve read in a while.

3. Maybe the coolest thing at the beach was seeing a water spout form over the ocean. The outlaws hired a photographer to come out to the beach house and take some new family portraits, and as we were setting up on the beach, we  saw it forming just off the coast. Just a little mist at first, but eventually turned into a full-fledged water-borne tornado! It lasted for a few minutes, then disappeared as quietly as it started.

4. Ever notice how the shit ALWAYS hits the fan just before you schedule some time off? And no matter how much planning you do beforehand, the shit keeps hitting that fan while you’re gone?? I swear, work is deader than Michael Jackson right now, but I’ve done nothing but put out fires all morning. And I can be free of deadlines, meetings, and have a completely blank calendar, but if I plan a day off my schedule will fill up immediately beforehand so that I am rushing til the last possible second to get everything done. Maybe I should just take more days off and work will get busy again.

Lately, I’m beginning to think that at least here in Australia, we are becoming a culture of panic. What brings me to that conclusion though?

Last night, there was an earthquake somewhere off our nearest neighbouring country New Zealand. Suddenly, the whole of the east coast of Australia was put on tsunami alert!

Ironic since there has not been any recorded tsunami hitting Australia’s east coast in memory (or at least since white invasion back in 1788). It is ironic since the Pacific is one huge ocean and whilst I don’t fully understand the dynamics of a tsunami – think it would take the biggest earthquake in history to stir it enough for tsunamis on the eastern edge. It is ironic since prior to the December 2004 tsunami in Thailand, most Australians would never have heard the word or understood it. At least the Thai locals knew what the receding waters meant, they had experienced these things before. So why the panic here?

Upon changing my facebook status (yes, I’m a facebook addict), to reflect my laughter at the panic, someone commented on things changing – like Australia not experiencing an earthquake until the Newcastle quake of December 1989. Perhaps that’s true, but just because we don’t see the fault lines and they may be dormant a long time, doesn’t mean they aren’t there and ready to move from time to time.

Sure, we see a lot of newer and rarer weather phenomenons in the past few years and they get increasingly common. Like water spouts. For some reason they fascinate me. I remember watching the news in 2006 and seeing the report below:

Which personally I found amazing at the time, both because of the phenomenon itself and because it touched land where I used to play as a child. It also dredged up a memory from the 90’s for me. An elder was visiting the indigenous unit at the university I was studying at. While he spoke of a lot of things that made sense, he was also prone to believing in christianity (which to me is sad, since we had our own gods and spirits – why should we have to take on the white authoritarian god as well?). One thing he did mention, was water spouts, though at the time we had never heard of them. Told us that when two appeared off the heads of Port Jackson, Jesus would be returning. Should I panic? Maybe Jesus is bringing Harry Potter, Gandalf, Edward Cullen and TinkyWinky with him.

Then we have panic over the pandemics – like Swine Flu. Somehow that was made out to be an earth-blighting apocalyptic disease that would drastically reduce the population of the world. Some in the media still try and perpetuate the hype. But since it’s inception and spread in Australia, it hasn’t been as drastic or severe as all that.

At least we no longer seem to panicking about terrorism. The evil megalomaniac triad of George W Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard have all been swept from the seats of power, and people are starting to say Osama who?

The heart of Waterspouts of Glory is to present the anointed Word as spiritual food for those who long for spiritual satisfaction. It is a map that will guide those who have a singular burning desire to go further in the presence of the Lord.

Our Lord is a seeking God who desires quality times of intimate fellowship with us. If He finds within us even the slightest aspiration to truly know Him, He will demonstrate a singular interest in us.

This personal attention, which we receive from the Lord, is comparable to a waterspout, which is formed by a wind pattern that whips rain into a funnel of water, and then directs it toward a singular point of destination. While the rain showers upon all, a waterspout aims a deluge upon one, thus, “all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.”

Waterspouts of Glory is available at Amazon for $12.14. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Face to Face With God
• When Heaven Invades Earth
• Expecting Miracles: True Stories of God’s Supernatural Power and How You Can Experience It
• The Supernatural Ways of Royalty: Discovering Your Rights and Privileges of Being a Son or Daughter of God
• Glory Invasion

Waterspouts were the excitement by my house in South Haven today. Brad Bengston took these pictures and sent them to Grand Rapids Press today.

There were more than two water spouts in Lake Michigan.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Nathan Jeruzal mentioned in the Grand Rapids Press that they are not as dangerous as
tornadoes because they weren’t moving very fast and can only really maintain themselves as long as they’re over water.

Jeruzal said the water spouts formed because a surge of cold, low-lying air from Canada moved over Lake Michigan, which has water temperatures in the lower 70s right now. When the warm water mixes with the cold air, it’s not uncommon for water spouts to occur, he said.
“There are fairly typical in the late summer and fall for the Great Lakes,” Jeruzal said.

Forgot to mention that Eileen and I spotted a couple water spouts off the coast over the weekend. They appeared to be about 4-5 miles off Lido Key. The spouts were very well formed could easily be made out from a distance. We did not snap the picture seen above, but this will give you a pretty good idea what the spouts look like. The above image was captured off the lower Florida Keys.

We also saw a baby shark while swimming in the Gulf recently. Travis and I were out in the water and there was a leathery young man with tribal tattoos all over his upper torso who was fishing in the shallow surf. We watched with keen interest as he reeled in the young shark, which was a little over a foot long. Travis remarked that it was pretty spooky that a shark of any kind (big or small) was swimming so close to us. The fisherman quickly replied that “sharks are just as afraid of us as we are of them.” That made us feel a little bit better — but not so much.

Water Spout

Location: Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio

Date: Unknown

Photographer: Dean Schley

I need to set this up before I get into the meat of the subject. Nine years ago, we bought several books to deal with the ‘So Called’ “Y2K Crisis. Of course, as the years have passed, we have given them to Charities, except for one. “The Y2K Personal Survival Guide” By MICHAEL S. HYATT Author of the NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller “The Millennium Bug”.

What about my involvement in this movement? You probably think I am, or at least was some kind of nut case to get all wrapped up in this. … Well … I know ‘for a fact’ that had there not been an alarm sounded, in fact almost to late, we would have been shut down for a while, had it happen. The reason that we did not crash is that many smart people went to work building work around programs and Corporations and Business Owners, who depended on computers were throwing money at the problem that allowed us to scrape by. You can say, “Yea … Sure!” if you want to, nevertheless, if you had studied the problem any you would know that it was real. I just checked my faithful Quicken program and it only goes to December 31^st of 2027, that being as far as they could extend it at the time. By The Way, it still works good and no need to change until I need Quick Books.

Now what has that to do with “Wealth of Books? Keeping an eye on The Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com/) for the headlines, as I am writing this and over 50 lives taken by tornados making a swath thru the South Eastern States, while writing this. We live in California and have ‘Dust Devils’ and ‘Water Spouts’ very few and far between that cause a little commotion, yet never to that degree we are seeing back there. On the other side of the coin there are people that are scared to death of ‘earthquakes’. As far as I am concerned, a nice jolt now n then keeps us on our toes and (To me.) a whole lot better than taking a ride to Oz. Besides, should California drop off into the ocean, what need would I have for anything then?

Now the value of this book by Hyatt and others allowed us to prepare our home for disaster of most any kind, especially for a devastating earthquake. e.g. Six fifty-five gallon barrels of water, (Specially treated to store.) extra food, blankets, different size batteries for the different flashlights, crank up muti-band radio, etc. Of course, in this day and age every grand father needs to have batteries for every time the grand kids come over. What ever happened to ‘Wind Up Toys’?

I will move on with the subject, Book Wealth. Allow me to write about the collection of ‘Cook Books’ my wife has. Think of the value there, when there is a need to prepare a special dish and even a theme meal of some kind. As many as she has, she pretty well knows which one to go to for her need.

With the different ‘Operating Systems we have for the computers … (not for a while now), yet I still have an old DOS book with the old codes, Just in case I have a need to whip up a bat file. Some of you are smiling now, yet that is ok with me because I have a wealth of resources for any contingency.

To cut to the chase, regardless of any needs one would have, there is a book with value beyond anything you could think of. I know I covered areas that are not pertinent to anything you might need; nevertheless, you should have a good idea of what I mean about the ‘Practical’ Wealth of Books!

Until next time, Be blessed, DP © 2008

Here’s another photo of the storm that sprouted water spouts, as it roared on shore in Manistee.

Water spouts over Lake Michigan were seen nearby right about the same time I took this photo. We ran up a flight of 80 stairs into our friends’ beach house on a 100′ bluff overlooking the lake. The storm hit right after we got inside. This is the second time I’ve seen a storm like this in the Manistee beach area.