Mark 6:4-6
4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home."5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.

The other day while reading Mark as part of a 21 day reading plan that Newspring Church is doing at the moment, I noticed something that I have not noticed before.  I have known a long time about how Jesus was not taken serious by those from his home town because of them knowing him as a child and it being hard from them to accept that this boy they have known for years could be the Christ.  It was not until reading it through this time that I noticed what verse 5 said. It says that Jesus could not do any miracles there in his home town.
 

It does not say that he would not do miracles,which would be a choice on his part, but it says he could not do miracles there.  This implies that it was not his decision to perform no miracles but that he was hindered from it.  This brings to mind two completely separate lines of thought for me. The first question that comes to my mind is "How could Jesus, who is God, not do something?" In thinking about this further I would have to conclude that it was something that came from his willing choice to "empty himself" of his divine power. He was sent by the Father to earth to be human, and part of that entails not having supernatural powers. What powers he did demonstrate on earth were the result of his intimate relationship with the Father that miracles be done so that the people would believe.
 

The second line of thought that occurs to me is that this is the very reason that people of the "Western World" do not think that miracles happen in this day in time. The reason that miracles of "biblical magnitude" don't happen is that we don't believe they will happen. Our very doubt in miracles stops them from occurring. When Peter jumped out of the boat and began to walk across the water toward Jesus, the only reason he began to sink was that he doubted and became afraid instead of trusting in God to continue on. But this does not stop with astounding miracles, but holds true for any blessings from God and other things we ask for in prayer. It says in James 1:6, "But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." As a child of God I know that I must trust in him with all that I am, so that I will not doubt what he has promised me. I know that with full faith anything is possible.
 

This very Sunday at small group, Carol told us of missionary friends of theirs who have witnessed miracles that we would consider unbelievable, but because the people in foreign countries have nothing else to lose and all they have left is belief that God will heal them, miracles have taken place in the placing of hands and prayer to God. Carol also read to us of how their friend with cancer was given a night to live…the doctors did not even know if he would make it home, and now through the loving, faithful prayer of loved ones, he is feeling remarkably good and the cancer markers have decreased to half of what they were expected to be. In a week or so he has gone from the brink of death to now being given an 80% chance that he will fully recover. That is a miracle from God and a testimony that when people have faith, God will answer abundantly. But that our disbelief and doubt hinders the blessings that God wants so desperately to pour out on us.

Well, we got the house! And even though it went so fast, it felt like forever. We had so many things to print, sign, scan, email, and reprint, resign, re-email. Even down to the last few days the underwriters for our FHA loan were extremely nit-picky. Even though I'd already given them everything about our lives, they wanted a screenshot of our bank account showing where I deposited the money from selling stock shares for down payment, because apparently the receipt of counter deposit from the bank teller was not good enough. Also, apparently if you're married woman, you can't give permission for tax transcripts that were from a year before you were married unless you sign it with your maiden name…that just seems pointless to me and a waste of time printing out another copy and having April sign it with her maiden name.

Anyways, despite the monotony of signing all sorts of documents and getting the correct things to the mortgage originator it seemed we were on the home stretch….then the appraisal came in.  Though we were at an agreed sale price of $204,000, already 11,000 less than what the sellers previously bought it for, the appraisal came in way down at $194,000. This was kind of a shock and we really felt that the appraiser did not do the greatest job with it because he used two concrete slab cookie cutter homes as comps to this house which was a custom build.

Nevertheless, there was nothing we could do about it, the appraiser went back and remeasured the house and what not a second time and held firm at his original value of $194,000. Well this seemed like a good and bad thing. It was nerve wracking for April because of the uncertainty of whether the sellers would want to continue working with us or want to back out and try their luck again. But we knew also that it could end up working in our favor, reducing the cost of the house for us even further into the range we really wanted to pay to begin with. So we asked the sellers to accept it at the appraisal cost of $194,000 but that we would reduce the amount of closing costs that we were asking them to pay by $2,000. 

Well, fortunately for us, they knew they were in a bad market for selling their home, but they did not really have a choice since they were relocating because of a job. They accepted the final offer of $194,000 with $2,500 in closing costs. We were definitely excited to hear this. We closed on the house on Friday, February 25th and spent a week hurriedly packing up our town house and slowly moving loads to the new house each night.

The following weekend we had movers grab all the big furniture and left over boxes. With both set of parents coming up to help out, we knocked it out super quick…and it seemed by the end of the first day that we'd already been here a week! Now we have been here almost 4 weeks and we have been loving it. Look for some pictures and our thoughts about the house so far in an upcoming post!

Related articles

• Buying our First House! – Part I (thisorrthat.com)

• Buying our First House! – Part II (thisorrthat.com)

• Buying our First House! – Part III (thisorrthat.com)

As I talked about in a previous post, I recently watched a screening of the movie Forks Over Knives, a documentary on the studies done on the negative effects of animal protein and dairy on our bodies and how it can in fact trigger cancer growth and other diseases. It spoke on the importance of eating a plant-based diet to stop and even reverse such diseases that are everywhere in America. For a while now, my mom has also been trying to teach our family about how to eat in this way, telling us about all of the stuff she has learned form Dr. Joel Fuhrman in his books, Eat To Live and Eat For Health, which also strongly focus on vegetarian lifestyles and show the scientific evidence and personal success stories to support such claims.

So all last week I've been trying my best to stick to a plant-based diet. For breakfast I have been having plain Special K with Silk soy milk. For lunch I've tried to make a salad with chopped almonds and dried cranberries and take it to work with an apple or clementines and some veggie straws with red pepper hummus (which interestingly and appropriately enough comes from the arabic word for 'chickpeas'). A few times when I was too rushed in the morning to prepare lunch, I went to subway and got a veggie delight sub or salad.

While I did really awesome last week, this week has not been as great. I set myself up too do poorly because of not getting up with enough time to prepare lunch, not wanting to clean dishes and so I ran out of the tupperware that I like to use for taking salads to work, and just being tempted to go out for supper because it is much faster than trying to come up with a plan for making something at home after a long day of work.

My goal is try again and hopefully get a little better at it, develop a plan with some recipes to try instead of just winging it like I have been. On the one hand I get depressed thinking about lunch now, I don't really look forward to eating leaves for lunch, but I have noticed that afterwards I do feel a lot better. I do feel full afterwards but it seems like it does go away a lot faster, I get hungry sooner. I will continue to write about my progress, struggles, and hopefully successes here.

I might try some of these recipes from the first link below. They are some "Vegan Dishes" from Weight Watchers, though I think they kind of stretch the definition of vegan since a few of these have some cheese in them, but the way I see it, they are probably a lot healthier than I have previously been eating, so it's still a heathful direction for me. Besides just eating healthier I'd like to lose about 100 pounds, that'd be great!
 

Other good reads

• Meatless Monday: 10 Healthy Vegetarian Recipes From Weight Watchers (blisstree.com)
• Helpful tips from Dr. Fuhrman (renees6weekjournal.wordpress.com)

The final agreement was $204,000 with the sellers paying $4,500 in closing costs. Now this $204,000 was definitely our stretching point. We had really been hoping to get it at $200,000 or under, but at the same time we knew this was a long way for them to drop it, considering they were already listing it for 2,000 under what they paid for it in 2008. Throughout the process I studiously crammed my brain with knowledge from Home Buying for Dummies book as well as tons of resources on the internet to make sure I knew what we were doing. I also tweaked our written monthly budget to account for owning a house and other expenses that came along with this decision.

We are definitely going to have to be pretty strict about where all of our money goes and try to stick as close to the budget plan as possible, but I have made sure to “spend” portions of our income into church tithe, building up our emergency fund (which is building up pretty decently), and putting money into savings for retirement via our 401k’s and my Sharebuilder IRA.

So, we had the home inspected and overall everything looked to be in great condition for its 16 years. There was a leak under the master shower that seems to maybe only happen if the shower head is angle just a certain way against the wall. The relocation company, Cartus, that we are dealing with has approved pretty much all of the repairs we asked for, even the small things….so that turned out really well for us. The only thing we are sorta bummed about is that the roof & heating/cooling are original (16 years old), so while the sellers are paying for the first year of home warranty, I’m thinking I’ll perhaps want to just budget to keep that renewed and think of it as insurance for issues that might arise.

So at this point we have done tons of signing and initialing all over the place for contract agreements, seller disclosures, request for repair, etc. Now we are just waiting around…the appraisal for mortgage should be done soon, our closing meeting will be at 4pm on February 25th. We really need to start packing up! We have lots of boxes stacked up but nothing has been put in them yet.

Keep you posted of any updates!

Related articles

• Buying our First House! – Part I (thisorrthat.com)
• Buying our First House! – Part II (thisorrthat.com)

The movie Forks Over Knives “examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.”

It followed the journeys and research studies of two renowned nutritional scientists, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who on two totally separate paths began to come to the same conclusion that the mainstream idea in America that we need animal mean for protein is a complete mistake and that it is indeed the reason that cancers and other diseases run rampant amongst our society.

Now, I personally absolutely love eating meat! However, the movie definitely helped open my mind to the fact that it really isn’t healthy for us. It included a vast variety of research that the doctors did, such as experiments with rats in which 1 group was fed a diet that had 20% casein (a milk protein used to represent a ) and the 2nd group fed a diet of only 5% casein. After 12 weeks, the first group showed significant growth in early cancer clusters, while the 2nd group showed no signs of cancer at all.

What was even cooler was that a test was then done in which the amount of animal protein was changed every 3 weeks from 5% to 20%, back and forth. The findings were amazing….not only did the increased animal protein trigger cancer growth, but decreasing it actually reversed cancer. In other words, the American diet of tons of animal meat and processed foods triggers cancer growth, but changing our diet to one based on plants can reverse such diseases…essentially curing people of their ailments and removing the need of medications and strongly reducing the risk of needing expensive medical procedures just to save our lives.

Personally I hate the idea of giving up meat, but I know for certain that I am not in good health. I am obese, have high blood pressure, and just have aches and pains. I’ve decided to try being pretty hardcore for 6 weeks to see if I can break some of the horrible eating habits that I have and try to change my mindset from “living to eat” to “eating to live”.

Related articles

• Joel Fuhrman, M.D.: Heart Health: How You Can Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (huffingtonpost.com)
• The China Study Revisited: New Analysis of Raw Data Doesn’t Support Vegetarian Ideology (sciencebasedmedicine.org)

We went to several other houses that day, some were nice, but just a little too old and so did not have hardly any closet space…and we need storage space! One house we saw was a home that was on short sale….and it was HUGE! Almost felt like TOO much house, and it would’ve ended up being too much money for renovations of all the old-timey wood and appliances, not to mention having to deal with the bank and not knowing a timeline with short sales.

As we went home that night April already had her heart set on Adams Farm Road, and while I tried to be the skeptic and practical one from the very beginning, I really loved it too!

The house is 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths with a small bonus room above the garage, which could be considered another bedroom. It has a half 2nd story, with a vaulted ceiling great room.  It has a dining room, kitchen w/ breakfast nook, and a pantry/laundry room. But probably one of our favorite things about it is the awesome screened in porch that is build out of the sturdy composite decking that needs no maintenance, though the rest of the deck is regular wood.

The screened in porch has recessed ceiling with lights around the edges and a ceiling fan in the middle. The backyard is spacious and fenced in, with two garden planters in the back along with a huge christmas tree.

Needless to say we definitely fell in love with it. It was listed for $213,000 which was definitely a little above our budget.

We wanted to stick to as close to $200,000 or lower if possible. We knew we could probably get them to come down off of their asking price in this market and throwing in the fact that they were listing it for 2,000 less than they bought it in 2008…so they were already accepting the fact that they were losing money on it.

More to come in Part III……

Well, I guess we could say it happened “in April”…the wife, not the month. Once she got started looking around online she just had it in her mind that it needed to be done, as well as hearing from a friend’s realtor that their personal opinion would be that April would be a great time to buy, but that that time period would be flooded even more so with buyers, and that now would be a perfect time to purchase a house.

Well after looking at tons of homes online via ggaronline.com April began to scout out a few possibilities with Realtor Michelle Kilcoyne (Southern Home Real Estate) but kind of came up empty handed with some houses that were well pictured online but fell quite short in person.

More to follow….

My goal is to use to write about things that I enjoy and/or am involved in.  I hope to start eating more healthily and writing about that struggle as I do it. I will be posting progress reports on how much weight I’ve lost and what I’ve been eating. I wanted to start good today, but I blew it by waking up at the last minute and getting a bad muffin from Dunkin Donuts. For lunch I had a Subway sub…but got the foot long instead of the 6-inch. Definitely need to get on the ball with making breakfast and lunch instead of going out all the time. This will not only help me eat better but will save a lot of money!

I will also be  including my adventures and progress in working on the genealogy of my family and also April’s family. Most recently I received a message from someone asking about a discrepancy with a certain Thomas Orr’s death date being before the birth date of his daughter Laura Jane Orr….I looked at my tree on Ancestry.com and sure enough this discrepancy had slipped by me. This week a plan to look through my Granddad’s files to see if I can gain any further insight into this matter. Knowing my granddad, he would either have the correct information or a note about the mistake.

I will also be using this blog to talk about current progress and happenings in personal finance, such as the ongoing process of April and I purchasing our first house which has been quite exciting so far.

Could even talk about current programming development projects I am working on at work or on the side….just never know what the next post might be about. Could be anything! I hope that April will join in with some of her own thoughts and ideas, such as documenting some of the craft projects that she plans to work on.

And mom, if you end up deciding that you would like to keep blogging after the 6 weeks are up, I’d love to migrate your blog to ThisOrrThat.com so you can have a more succinct and generally named home for it….could be ThisOrrThat.com/EatingForHealth…..or http://healthyliving.thisorrthat.com. Think about it!

Til next post!

Andrew Orr