What have I been up to lately? Well.... that's a darn good question, I'd say; I have to wrack my brain to come up with much of an answer. Well, first and foremost, classes have at last begun, and I've survived the first week. Thursday in particular wore on me. The problem, for the most part, is the intense boredom that comes from understimulation in my classes; simply listening to a lecture doesn't cut it to keep my attention. I wish it did, but it doesn't. In times past, the way I've dealt with that is multitasking with my laptop - perhaps doing some writing or reading on my computer so that I'm visually and mentally stimulated that way while being aurally stimulated through the lecture. When I do that, I can pay attention to both better than I could to either alone. But few professors understand that, and most seem to have quite strict specifications in the syllabi against using computers for anything not directly related to the course material during class time. Which, in my case - and perhaps also for others of my generation - is ironically an actual detriment to my ability to pay attention in class and to enjoy it. Alas. As for specific classes, so far the biggest particular challenge has been Elementary Greek II. Up until this past week, it'd been ages since I'd studied or thought about New Testament Greek, so over the course of this past Monday I spent hours (punctuated by rest breaks whenever my mind melted into a pool of painfully throbbing goo) cramming much of everything I learned in my prior semester of the language back into my head. With reasonable success, I suppose, but I should still do some more study tomorrow.
At any rate, now that I've got a better experiential handle on my schedule, I can tell that I'll be able to make it to chapel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but seldom on Thursdays. Unless I can shift into going to bed very abnormally early on Wednesday nights, and can get excellent sleep (which, frankly, never happens at night here), I'll be needing both a pre-lunch and post-lunch nap on Thursdays. So, no chapel on Thursdays; to put it in terms of one of the class books I was reading this past week, sleep is the more vital form of "self-care" in this situation. But chapel this past Tuesday and Wednesday was really phenomenal. I can't begin to express how much I've really missed the worship experience here, to say nothing of Dr. Tennent's outstanding sermons. I just wish they'd update the iTunes feed already, because I'd really love a chance to share it with some people.
In other news, I've finished reading both Tony Headley's Reframing Your Ministry: Balancing Professional Responsibilities and Personal Needs and Terryl Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. With regard to the latter, I stand more firmly than ever behind the preliminary assessment I offered in last week's post. I've also read more of Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness, up to and including Chapter 13, and have completed listening to the most recent companion episodes from the Viewpoint on Mormonism podcast. To be perfectly honest, reading Kimball's book at time makes me actually angry. Not just at the blatant abuse of scripture without regard for context in certain cases (as especially in his discussion of "confession" in Romans 10:10), but because of the seriously slanted view on works and Christ's atonement that I have to struggle not to label an outright blasphemy. I don't like using language with that sort of inflammatory potential, but it's the honest visceral reaction I have when I read him continually talking about us practically perfecting ourselves with our own effort (virtually never does he seem to mention grace, save as lip service in a cursory afterthought), or how Christ's atonement was essentially too feeble to save us simply through faith, or about how God basically doesn't believe our repentance until we've proven it over an extended period of time in this life. Maybe I'm being uncharitable - it's happened before - but it's honestly the impression he makes on me.
Anyway, I can't say I've made any advances in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity; just haven't had time to try to catch up with my notes on that one. On other fronts, as per my assignments, I've read the first two chapters of Ken Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey; the first, second, third, and seventh chapters of Dennis Hollinger's Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World; and I've begun reading the first five of John Wesley's 52 standard sermons (I think I've made it through the first, and possibly the second).
Also, sometime during the past week I listened to a couple recent episodes of the Mormon Stories podcast in which they discussed the past couple decades of demographic shifts within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and today I listened to an old (2007) episode of the EconTalk podcast involving an interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on the economics and logic of political survival for leaders in democratic and autocratic systems of government. It was fascinating, and I've added Bueno de Mesquita's 2004 book The Logic of Political Survival to my Amazon wishlist. It was a great interview, and it's certainly gotten me more interested in Bueno de Mesquita's work.
In other news, I had a great opportunity to volunteer with a local church's meals-for-the-needy ministry on Saturday, along with a few other people from the seminary. Because there were so many volunteers, my initial task was to set salt and pepper shakers, bowls of butter packets, and baskets of bread on the tables; and then, during most of the meal time, I picked a table and sat there with the people to talk with them, make them feel welcome, etc. I had a hard time understanding most of them, but I did have a great conversation with a local man who said he's been on Social Security since he turned eighteen. Afterwards, I helped wipe down the tables and set up the chairs for a worship service later that afternoon or evening, and then took a few trips to take some trash out to the dumpster at the far end of the parking lot. All in all, I'm glad I had the chance to serve, and I'm excited to see what I can do with Global Community Development tomorrow.
Oh, something else I've done over the past few weeks has been some more genealogical research - mostly just gathering a few spare sources and whatnot. I think it was a couple weeks ago in late January that I procured the passenger lists for the voyages that a few of my paternal ancestors took when coming to America - ships from Bremen to some of the major American ports. I know I also found my ancestor Henry Jacob Rauch in a handwritten naturalization index (and, for that matter, seem to have found the transcript of his will, dated 1783), found a marriage record for my great-great-great-grandfather's brother Henry D. Stick, some assorted original records for my great-grandfather's brother James Franklin Root (birth record, death certificate, veteran burial record), some excellent records (a detailed passport application, plus German records pertaining to departure from Hamburg, Germany) for one of my more noteworthy recent paternal ancestors.... but most thrilling to me have been a few key finds. First, in keeping with some genealogical remarks I posted a while back, I've found a handwritten record in a church book pertaining to the 6 September 1879 marriage of my great-great-great-grandparents Joseph Stick and Catherine Nagle. This find was utterly thrilling - and also a bit revealing, since their son Adam (my great-great-grandfather) was born in December 1879, and both parents were teenagers at the time. Incidentally, it also mentions the pastor as one "M. Fernsler" or "M. Feinsler", so I did a bit of digging and learned that this was Rev. Moses Fernsler, born 25 February 1830 and orphaned at a young age, who studied at the Missionary Institute of Susquehanna University from 1860 to 1863 to become a Lutheran minister, took the Fisherville charge until 1866, then to Berrysburg until 1878, and finally spent twenty-one years as a Lutheran pastor in Schaefferstown before retiring in Lebanon; it was within a year of being elected pastor of the Schaefferstown congregation that he married my great-great-great-great-grandparents. As for a second find, I located a handwritten baptismal record for Joseph Stick's maternal grandfather Michael Henry Dissinger. At least, I think this is it. I marked it down as it originally, but I can't really read it all that well (not even well enough to be certain whether it's German or Latin, yeesh), nor do I recall which entry on the pages is him. As for a very exciting third find, I found the marriage record for my great-great-great-great-grandparents, Philip Mowrey and Amanda Vernon of Philadelphia. Not only did this give me the date (25 July 1844), but it also gave me another new tidbit of information: Amanda's middle name (Malvina). But perhaps most precious of all to me (though admittedly these set a high bar) were two burial-related records for another great-great-great-great-grandfather, German immigrant Valentine Raihl. The first such record was a nice find but not earth-shattering or anything, since I'd seen a hardcopy of the same catalogue while doing research at the local historical society last summer. But the second record was a typescript from some church in the area - I'm not sure why they had this - and it included the following:
Today my focus has been on my paternal ancestors (and relatives) who lived in Kansas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kansas had a lot of decennial status censuses, and boy are they ever helpful! For example, here's a description of what I've culled out of the 1915 census with respect to my great-grandfather Adam:
At any rate, now that I've got a better experiential handle on my schedule, I can tell that I'll be able to make it to chapel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but seldom on Thursdays. Unless I can shift into going to bed very abnormally early on Wednesday nights, and can get excellent sleep (which, frankly, never happens at night here), I'll be needing both a pre-lunch and post-lunch nap on Thursdays. So, no chapel on Thursdays; to put it in terms of one of the class books I was reading this past week, sleep is the more vital form of "self-care" in this situation. But chapel this past Tuesday and Wednesday was really phenomenal. I can't begin to express how much I've really missed the worship experience here, to say nothing of Dr. Tennent's outstanding sermons. I just wish they'd update the iTunes feed already, because I'd really love a chance to share it with some people.
In other news, I've finished reading both Tony Headley's Reframing Your Ministry: Balancing Professional Responsibilities and Personal Needs and Terryl Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. With regard to the latter, I stand more firmly than ever behind the preliminary assessment I offered in last week's post. I've also read more of Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness, up to and including Chapter 13, and have completed listening to the most recent companion episodes from the Viewpoint on Mormonism podcast. To be perfectly honest, reading Kimball's book at time makes me actually angry. Not just at the blatant abuse of scripture without regard for context in certain cases (as especially in his discussion of "confession" in Romans 10:10), but because of the seriously slanted view on works and Christ's atonement that I have to struggle not to label an outright blasphemy. I don't like using language with that sort of inflammatory potential, but it's the honest visceral reaction I have when I read him continually talking about us practically perfecting ourselves with our own effort (virtually never does he seem to mention grace, save as lip service in a cursory afterthought), or how Christ's atonement was essentially too feeble to save us simply through faith, or about how God basically doesn't believe our repentance until we've proven it over an extended period of time in this life. Maybe I'm being uncharitable - it's happened before - but it's honestly the impression he makes on me.
Anyway, I can't say I've made any advances in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity; just haven't had time to try to catch up with my notes on that one. On other fronts, as per my assignments, I've read the first two chapters of Ken Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey; the first, second, third, and seventh chapters of Dennis Hollinger's Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World; and I've begun reading the first five of John Wesley's 52 standard sermons (I think I've made it through the first, and possibly the second).
Also, sometime during the past week I listened to a couple recent episodes of the Mormon Stories podcast in which they discussed the past couple decades of demographic shifts within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and today I listened to an old (2007) episode of the EconTalk podcast involving an interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on the economics and logic of political survival for leaders in democratic and autocratic systems of government. It was fascinating, and I've added Bueno de Mesquita's 2004 book The Logic of Political Survival to my Amazon wishlist. It was a great interview, and it's certainly gotten me more interested in Bueno de Mesquita's work.
In other news, I had a great opportunity to volunteer with a local church's meals-for-the-needy ministry on Saturday, along with a few other people from the seminary. Because there were so many volunteers, my initial task was to set salt and pepper shakers, bowls of butter packets, and baskets of bread on the tables; and then, during most of the meal time, I picked a table and sat there with the people to talk with them, make them feel welcome, etc. I had a hard time understanding most of them, but I did have a great conversation with a local man who said he's been on Social Security since he turned eighteen. Afterwards, I helped wipe down the tables and set up the chairs for a worship service later that afternoon or evening, and then took a few trips to take some trash out to the dumpster at the far end of the parking lot. All in all, I'm glad I had the chance to serve, and I'm excited to see what I can do with Global Community Development tomorrow.
Oh, something else I've done over the past few weeks has been some more genealogical research - mostly just gathering a few spare sources and whatnot. I think it was a couple weeks ago in late January that I procured the passenger lists for the voyages that a few of my paternal ancestors took when coming to America - ships from Bremen to some of the major American ports. I know I also found my ancestor Henry Jacob Rauch in a handwritten naturalization index (and, for that matter, seem to have found the transcript of his will, dated 1783), found a marriage record for my great-great-great-grandfather's brother Henry D. Stick, some assorted original records for my great-grandfather's brother James Franklin Root (birth record, death certificate, veteran burial record), some excellent records (a detailed passport application, plus German records pertaining to departure from Hamburg, Germany) for one of my more noteworthy recent paternal ancestors.... but most thrilling to me have been a few key finds. First, in keeping with some genealogical remarks I posted a while back, I've found a handwritten record in a church book pertaining to the 6 September 1879 marriage of my great-great-great-grandparents Joseph Stick and Catherine Nagle. This find was utterly thrilling - and also a bit revealing, since their son Adam (my great-great-grandfather) was born in December 1879, and both parents were teenagers at the time. Incidentally, it also mentions the pastor as one "M. Fernsler" or "M. Feinsler", so I did a bit of digging and learned that this was Rev. Moses Fernsler, born 25 February 1830 and orphaned at a young age, who studied at the Missionary Institute of Susquehanna University from 1860 to 1863 to become a Lutheran minister, took the Fisherville charge until 1866, then to Berrysburg until 1878, and finally spent twenty-one years as a Lutheran pastor in Schaefferstown before retiring in Lebanon; it was within a year of being elected pastor of the Schaefferstown congregation that he married my great-great-great-great-grandparents. As for a second find, I located a handwritten baptismal record for Joseph Stick's maternal grandfather Michael Henry Dissinger. At least, I think this is it. I marked it down as it originally, but I can't really read it all that well (not even well enough to be certain whether it's German or Latin, yeesh), nor do I recall which entry on the pages is him. As for a very exciting third find, I found the marriage record for my great-great-great-great-grandparents, Philip Mowrey and Amanda Vernon of Philadelphia. Not only did this give me the date (25 July 1844), but it also gave me another new tidbit of information: Amanda's middle name (Malvina). But perhaps most precious of all to me (though admittedly these set a high bar) were two burial-related records for another great-great-great-great-grandfather, German immigrant Valentine Raihl. The first such record was a nice find but not earth-shattering or anything, since I'd seen a hardcopy of the same catalogue while doing research at the local historical society last summer. But the second record was a typescript from some church in the area - I'm not sure why they had this - and it included the following:
Valentine Raihl, born August 6, 1806, died August 20, 1888 in Hinkletown, buried August 22, 1888 in Bergstrasse. Aged 82 years, 14 days. Death caused by gangrene and old age. Sickly for some time. Text: Psa. 119:123.That may not seem like a lot, but it gave me an exact date of burial, a cause of death, and even the biblical verse preached at his funeral! That verse reads, "Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness." I can't even speculate on what sort of message the minister might have brought out of that, but I hope someday to learn. Beyond that, I've also found a number of records pertaining to my probable great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Henry Mumma (1757-1851), who apparently served in the War of 1812.
Today my focus has been on my paternal ancestors (and relatives) who lived in Kansas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kansas had a lot of decennial status censuses, and boy are they ever helpful! For example, here's a description of what I've culled out of the 1915 census with respect to my great-grandfather Adam:
In fall of 1914, he sowed 200 acres of winter wheat, 25 acres of corn, and 20 acres of oats. In spring of 1915, he sowed half an acre of Irish potatoes, 20 acres of sorghum for forage or grain, and ten acres of kafir for combined forage and grain. As of 1 March 1915, he had on hand fifty bushels of corn and a hundred bushels of wheat. He had ninety acres of uncultivated land under fence for meadow or pasture. Over the preceding year, his family had made 150 pounds of butter, and sold $125 worth of milk and/or cream to cheese factories, creameries, condensaries, and/or skim stations. His farm had one cream separator. Over the preceding year, his family sold $350 worth of poultry and eggs, and sold or slaughtered $285 worth of animals. As of 1 March 1915, they had on hand fourteen horses, four milk cows, fourteen other cattle, and eighteen swine. During the preceding year, none of their animals died from disease. They also had one dog. They derived their water from both a stream and a 30-foot-deep well, and used a windmill for power to lift water. Overall, their farm covered 320 acres, all 320 acres of which was under fence.That is a lot of additional data that really helps to statistically flesh out what life might have been like for them. I've been slowly making my way through other state censuses for the three towns I know are most relevant for this branch of my family. I've even discovered that in one case, my great-great-great-grandfather was the assessor for the census! So the entire thing comes down to me in his handwriting, which is stupendous. I can just imagine him walking from farm to farm, gathering the data to write down.... What a wonderful mental image. In the meantime, I've been working on using various resources to pinpoint in Google Earth the various villages in Russia that their ancestors lived in before coming to the United States. It hasn't been easy, but I think that with one exception (of dubious and/or irrelevant veracity anyway, I suppose), I've finally nailed them down. I'd love to go visit someday.
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