So, come on over to amhehome.org/wordpress and visit our new blog!
All our current blogging will be going on at the new site. But this site will remain as an archive of our past history. Scroll down for the blog archives (categorized by date on the right side of this page).
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The Reason the Pilgrims Came
"Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia..."
-- Mayflower Compact, 11 November 1620.
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
The Holiday Season
Right now, we are in the time of year known as the
“High Holidays” season, in which the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of
Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles all occur (as described in
Leviticus
23:23-36). Each of these feasts is full of “object
lessons” and prophetic “foreshadowing.” To learn more about these
feasts, you might want to get a hold of some of the excellent resources
available on the topic such as
God’s
Appointed Times, or take a look at the chapter in
Enjoying Your Children
on the feasts. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur have already come and
gone. Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, is still ahead, starting
Friday night! Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday)!
Rosh Hashana
The season opened on Friday evening,
September 22, with the Feast of Trumpets—in Hebrew, Yom Teruah.
"Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation." Leviticus 23:24.
We had a service at our house, blowing the shofar and reviewing the
significance of this holiday. Of course, it wouldn't be complete
without the traditional foods of sweet and sour cabbage soup, challah
bread, and apples dipped in honey!
Although the Bible refers to this feast only as the Feast of Trumpets,
it is better known as Rosh Hashana, “the head of the year,” because this
is also considered the Jewish new year. Paradoxically, it occurs in the
seventh month of the year! How can this be a “new year”? The
extrabiblical tradition holds that Rosh Hashana was the time of creation
and thus the first month. Then, from Biblical history, we find
that God instituted a new first month at the time of the exodus (Exodus
12:12), thus transforming Rosh Hashana from the start
of the seventh month to the start of the first month.
An interesting tradition called "tashlich" became connected with Rosh Hashana. A Jewish family will go to a river or other body of water and throw pebbles or stones into the water, as a reminder of how God casts our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19).
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, is considered
the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. For believers, it’s a great time
to think about what our “great high priest” has done for us.
We gave a presentation with a simple model of the temple and some props,
including the Ark, to help explain all the events which occurred on this
special day in temple times.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Baroque Festival Orchestra
On Friday, the Baroque Festival Orchestra (of
which Joel is concertmaster) played a special concert for the seniors
ministry of College Church, Wheaton. It was a very enjoyable concert,
featuring Vivaldi's Four Seasons with explanatory comments by
conductor Drostan Hall.
Drostan Hall (conductor, and Joel's private violin
teacher), Chris Ferrer (principal cellist), and Joel Weinberger
(concertmaster).
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Creation magazine
As many of you noticed, the Australian
publications, Creation magazine and TJ (technical journal)
are no longer distributed by
Answers in
Genesis-USA, and have been replaced by Answers
Magazine, which is geared for an American readership. Since I’ve
been writing for the Australian publications and have been asked about
this, I thought I’d do a post to explain that both of the Australian
publications are still being produced, and there is a way to continue
receiving them.
AiG-Australia
and
AiG-USA
have become separate organizations for administrative purposes, and AiG
Australia is now renamed
Creation Ministries International (CMI).
CMI continues to produce Creation and TJ for an
international audience, but in order to subscribe here in the US, you
have to subscribe directly to the Australia office. You can do this
online at
www.creation.info or
www.CreationOnTheWeb.com (two different
addresses for the same website). You will notice that TJ has been
renamed Journal of Creation. I love the work AiG USA is doing on
Answers
Magazine, but
Creation and the
Journal are both different and
contain many other valuable articles by Jonathan Sarfati, Carl Wieland,
Tas Walker, and other familiar Australian names. I would encourage you
to subscribe to all of these valuable publications.
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Labor Day
We had an enjoyable time yesterday at the Labor
Day picnic at the
Institute in Basic Life Principles.
Music was performed by Daniel Ziesemer, Mr. Garvin, and Joel Weinberger.
Bill Gothard posed a difficult “labor day” question to everyone: In a
study conducted some 40 years ago, what was the number one factor found
to contribute to creating a good work ethic? After several minutes of
fruitless guessing, he gave the answer: children’s story books. The
study, conducted internationally over the course of several years, found
that if children are exposed to books where honest hard work is
emphasized (and presented positively), they will have a good work ethic
in later years. On the other hand, where children just get “Dick and
Jane” books where the story centers around play all the time, when they
grow up, they tend to want to play all the time. This study is a good
Labor Day lesson: if you want your children to be good workers, "feed"
them the right books to read.
For some ideas of good books for children, you might want to check out the chapter on books and media in our book, Enjoying Your Children.
August 30, 2006
New Email
As of today, our email address has changed! We’re
sorry if we missed any emails from you as a result of the change. Please
re-send them to contactamhe [at] amhehome [dot] org. We recently
received several thousand spam emails at our old address, so if you had
emailed us then, we lost the email, and would appreciate it if you could
resend the email. We apologize for
the inconvenience!
August 30, 2006
What Have We Been Doing?
Well, it’s been another month since my
last post. Blogs in general seem given to hyperbole, so in a small
effort to buck the trend, I will not opine about whether this is the
slowest blog on the internet (it isn’t).
Rather, I’ll try to give a little more of what I wrote in my July 30 post: “assorted short postings to fill you in on some of the many happenings from the past two months.”
A Week of Music
The last week of July was a very busy
week of music. Starting off the week on Sunday, Joel was concertmaster
in a chamber orchestra providing special music (from Vivaldi’s Four
Seasons) at College Church, Wheaton.
Above: the rehearsal.
Immediately following was the
Sforzando String Camp at Marquette
Manor Baptist Church.
Above: Schubert's Unfinished Symphony being
performed at the final concert on Friday.
The organizers (Ries Barlow and Joe Mueller) did a tremendous job organizing a high quality, God-honoring event for string players. Above: The advanced orchestra in a rehearsal with choir.
Dr. David Brown (left) conducted the advanced orchestra and taught conducting and music theory. He's also an excellent trombonist.
There was chamber music as well. With only one week to learn the music
and perform it for a concert, Joel was with a great group of guys, doing
the first movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet, op. 18, no. 1.
Daniel Ziesemer performed Souvenir d’Amerique with the orchestra, which
was a general favorite. Souvenier is a delightful (and very difficult)
arrangement of Yankee Doodle written by the nineteenth century French
virtuoso, Henry Vieuxtemps (1820-1881).
Besides attending the concerts, I took the week of the string camp to
catch up on some writing projects that I had pending. Law school has a
way of consuming more time than you thought you had to get consumed, but
I had just taken final exams the week before, so writing on a topic
other than law was a very enjoyable change of pace.
Oak Brook College of Law
I spent a week in Oklahoma City for an
Oak
Brook College of Law conference. We had a very full week of
reviewing our first year studies, and preparing to take the First Year
Law Students Exam in California in October. We also had a bit of free
time with excellent times of fellowship with classmates, upperclassmen,
and faculty. (Note: I was taking the pictures, so no, I'm not
in any of the pictures below.)
“New Month”
Last Thursday was the start of the new
Hebrew month of Elul. We had a “pot blessing” gathering here for the
event (“pot blessing” is meant as a Biblical alternative to “pot luck.”)
We were “blessed” with a variety of excellent foods, including an
abundant harvest from our pear tree!
Above, the girls take part in the harvest.
A game of Scrabble - whoever made
"audition" is doing well!
July 30, 2006
Back to Blogosphere (again)
It's been over a month since my last blog, and
since it seems that I never have time to write something substantial for
the blog, a few assorted postings will have to suffice to fill you in some
of the many
happenings from the past two months.
ICHE
The Illinois Christian Home Educators
conference was May 18-20.
There were excellent speakers, as usual, including Dr. Jeff Myers (above on the right, answering questions after giving a presentation).
Great to visit with friends at the conference!
The vendors hall was as usual an excellent resource - here we are with friends from the Vision Forum, one of the best resources around for visionary books, tapes, and videos.
"Behind the Scenes with the Weinbergers"
Yes, that's a little too dramatic. But we did have our own contribution to the convention. In a last minute development, our friend Henry Reyenga asked Joel to play the violin at the convention, which he was happy to do.
On the Saturday before the convention, we first drove 1.5 hours to pick up Joel's violin from a repair shop, so that he could practice on his own instrument instead of the loaner he had been using for a week. Then we went to a piano and organ recital 45 minutes west of there, in which several of our friends were playing.
(Above, Daniel Ziesemer at the organ, with his father turning his pages.)
Then we went to our aunt and uncle's house 45 minutes north. We were grateful for our pianist friends who were available to help out with the accompaniment parts. That evening we got in contact with our good friend Dennis Hankinson, a pianist, and he agreed to play the accompaniment, and our friend Conrad Triebold would play for the other two pieces.. We then met Dennis halfway between his house and our aunt and uncle's house - another 45 minutes north!
At the convention, the pieces came off excellently before a crowd of over 2000.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
Defending Marriage in Massachusetts, Part 2
Thanks to those who prayed for the Massachusetts case. See the fruits here, and be encouraged.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
May 3, 2006
Defending Marriage in Massachusetts
Tomorrow morning one of my Oak Brook College
professors, Jordan Lorence, will be arguing in defense of marriage
before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. You can read a brief
summary of what’s at stake
here. Please pray for Professor Lorence
to have the words to say before this court, which is not known for
favoring the Biblical definition of marriage. A live webcast of
his arguments will be available at
www.suffolk.edu/sjc,
starting at approximately 9 a.m. eastern time.
| Posted by Lael Weinberger |
Ping-Pong with a Bird on Your Shoulder
Have you ever tried to play ping-pong with a bird on your shoulder? Or
better still, round-the-world ping-pong?
For those of you who have never experienced round-the-world-ping-pong,
it’s harder to understand, but in round-the-world ping-pong you have a
number of people hopefully larger than 4 to start with. Person A and
person B are at opposite ends of the table with the two paddles. Person
A serves, puts down the paddle, and person B returns the ball, while
person C picks up A’s paddle and returns B’s ball, while person D picks
up B’s paddle and returns C’s ball…anyway, you end up with a lot of
people moving around the table in a circle (it can be clockwise or
counterclockwise). Players get eliminated after “three strikes.” So as
there get to be fewer and fewer people going around the table, those who
are still going ‘round have to go faster and faster…until finally only
two are left. The final two players aren’t forced to run around the
table at speeds fit for the expressway; instead, they hit the ball, put
down their paddle, spin around, and hit it again. The one to get dizzy
first misses, and loses!
If that isn’t confusing enough (well, maybe part of the confusion is due
to my explanation of it), then add a parakeet to the mix. Just as you
are frantically trying to locate the paddle, and the ball is already
coming at you, the bird flies right at your face and lands on your
shoulder. Distracting? All I can say is, you try it!
We actually did try this a couple of weeks ago. Our
sometimes-mischievous parakeet Blueberry surprised us and our friends
last week by joining us for round-the-world ping-pong. And it was
certainly interesting!
(Note: we were careful with Blueberry, and no parakeets were put in
danger in the writing of this blog!)
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
Back to Blogosphere
We had some internet problems over the past week, so that is our
explanation for why we have not posted for a while!
Posted by Lael Weinberger
April 17, 2006
Resurrection Day
Sunday we had a very nice Resurrection Day/Firstfruits celebration. I will post a few pictures we took. (In case you didn't know we now have a digital camera :-)
We had a very jolly group of attendees.
We started out with the hymn Christ the Lord is Risen Today which I arranged for our two friends on recorders and me on piano.
My father (David Weinberger) gave a very good and insightful message on Firstfruits and how it ties in with the Resurrection.
He also talked about how we have to "clamp down on sin" in our lives. As you can see he used an object lesson.
We closed the service with a few more songs.
It sure was nice to have our friend Conrad Triebold play the piano for some of the songs. It really added!
Here are some of the little girls after the "pot Blessing" meal we had after the service. Our pet parakeet Blueberry is having fun with them, but are they having fun with him? (I think Anja likes the popcorn.)
Blueberry got around. (So did Anja and the popcorn :-)
Us boys played a "quicker" version of the game Risk. We still didn't have time to finish it!
Posted by Joel Weinberger |
April 13, 2006
Passover
Yesterday evening started the great
festival of Passover. We had 32 people in our house for our seder last
night. As always, the evening was a wonderful time of remembering the
Exodus account, and its foreshadowing of the work of the Messiah.
Our modest sized living room converted into a dining hall.
We re-enacted the first Passover by painting "lamb's blood" (actually grape juice) on the doorposts of our house.
Are you having fun, Annie?
Everyone got a chance.
Mr. Anonymous on the right is intentionally making things hard on the photographer.
David Weinberger (Daddy to me!) leading the Passover.
Washing hands during the seder.
Passover music is always a lot of fun. This year, it was even more so, since Joel had made some arrangements of the traditional songs, and we were joined by our friend Conrad on the piano. (That's me on the far right playing the clarinet.)
After the service and the meal, we had time for more music...
Since Jesus washed the feet of the disciples at the last supper we have made it a tradition to wash each others feet after the seder. During this time we have some of the children play some music.
Sean prepares to play The Trees of the Field in a rather uncomfortable position since the guitar he was borrowing didn't have a strap.
This brother and sister played a piece that he (the brother) had arranged.
As you can see the players had a wide variety in ages!
Joel played the Prelude in C sharp minor by Rachmaninoff.
Our good friend Conrad played Wedding day at Troldhaugen by Grieg.
And for a nice overall look at the geography of the people at Passover here are two pictures of some of the ladies and some of the men.
Many thanks go to the Sherrys (pictured below) who definitely helped make this Passover a success by spending all of Tuesday and Wednesday helping us with the food, table settings and cleaning!
Posted by Lael Weinberger & Joel Weinberger |
April 12, 2006
Peoria Homeschool Convention
The
Association of
Peoria Area Christian Home Educators goes by the
acronym “APACHE,” so I was tempted to title this post something like
“Apache Rendezvous.” As usual, it was an excellent conference,
addressing much more than just teaching the “three R’s” at home.
(Incidentally, whoever coined the phrase “three R’s” probably had a
spelling problem: of the three words “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic,”
only reading is spelled correctly. A score of 33 1/3 percent
correct wouldn’t pass on most tests!)
Carl Kerby
of
Answers in
Genesis gave a rousing call to homeschool with the big
picture in mind: training up a generation equipped to reclaim the
culture with a Biblical worldview.
The Mally family (authors of
Making
Brothers and Sisters Best Friends) gave a variety
of workshops. Here, Sarah and her father Harold present a skit during
their talk on courtship called “Knights,
Maidens, and Dragons.” You can get DVDs of many of
their presentations
here.
The gentleman in the middle is Dr. Brian Ray, a man who has for over 20
years conducted national and international studies of home education,
and has served as an expert witness before legislatures and courts on
homeschooling issues. He is also passionate to encourage homeschoolers
to keep the vision of homeschooling – for parents to fulfill their
God-given responsibility to raise up their children in the “nurture and
admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians
6:4). You can find out more about his research
here.
(Left to right) Stephen, Sarah, and Grace Mally played their harps
before the keynote addresses by Brian Ray and Carl Kerby.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
April 5, 2006
Racism vs. the Bible – Before Darwin
The excellent
book
One Blood
has provided a powerful demonstration that the Bible is diametrically
opposed to racism. One Blood also shows that, historically,
evolutionary theory has actually been used frequently to justify racism.
With this background, as I studied history, I found it very interesting to see that even before Darwin, racist philosophers have tried a variety of means to get around Genesis. You can read my recent article giving an overview of the history here.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
March 19, 2006
Purim Here
See the
archives.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
Liberty Day
See the
archives.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
March 15, 2006
Homeschool Conference Season
In our newsletter, we discussed the benefits of attending homeschool
conferences, and attending them not just to find a new curriculum, but
much more important, to get the vision for multigenerational
faithfulness. (If you are interested in getting our newsletter, send us
an email
with your address and let us know!)
We have compiled a list of some of the homeschool conferences in many
states by date. You will no doubt notice that some states have several
conferences, and other states are not listed here. The conferences
listed here are listed either because they are the largest conferences
in the region, or in the cases of some smaller conferences, because we
know some of the speakers to be excellent! Hopefully, you can attend a
conference and be encouraged! For those of you in Illinois, we hope we
will see you in
Peoria or
DeKalb!
For the list of conferences, see our archives.
Posted by Lael Weinberger |
A R C H I V E