Entering Retirement

Ok, so I should just face the reality that my blog has run its course and needs to be retired. I started the blog with two main purposes in mind. First, I wanted to have an outlet to record my thoughts and increase my writing skills while in school. Second, I thought it would be a good way to keep family and friends informed about what was going on in my and my families life.

I'm finished with school, and while I still need writing practice the reality is that I am just not going to write in this blog consistently. I do have other outlets for writing now, so the blog is just not necessary anymore.

I am also not convinced that the people I wanted to keep informed about my family are actually reading the blog. I'm sure that is because I just haven't updated it enough and they lost interest.

In reality, the final nail in the proverbial coffin is that social networking site Facebook. Facebook is a much more efficient way to keep in touch with friends and family.

So, goodbye blog readers. Find me on Facebook if you want to keep in touch. www.facebook.com/kenporter

Here is a new flyer design for a prison ministry

We went camping the other day...

As camping goes, we had a few problems.



Now, we've been camping before and I actually enjoy camping very much although our entire family has not been able to go for quite some time. Serena and I have started a tradition of sorts. For the last several years, Robin, Crysta and Kayla have gone away for two weeks of CEF's Christian Youth in Action training prefacing a summer of missions work. Last year Serena and I went camping during the time the other girls were away and we continued that new tradition this year.

So we loaded the van, bought the groceries, got the fishing permit and worms, ran some last minute errands and headed out of town. Our destination was Stockton State Park, about an hour drive north. We arrived and found a desirable camp space among the mostly empty campground. We registered and paid the fees, were warned of impending storms and then began to set up camp. The first thing to do was to put up the E-Z Up canopy we purchased a year and a half ago. We purchased this primarily for use during summer Bible clubs but planned to use it for family functions as well.

The canopy fell apart as Serena and I tried putting it up. About six of the metal struts were broken in the middle where they passed through hinge pins. I couldn't believe what was happening. The canopy I paid two hundred dollars for not too long ago had been destroyed. The last time it was used was at our church's Fall Festival. Some well meaning but uninformed individuals had attempted to put it away without the proper knowledge and just broke it to pieces. They may not have known they broke it when they put it in the carry bag and I know it was unintentional, nonetheless; there goes two hundred dollars.

The rest of camp set-up went well. I used a small tarp, originally intended as a table covering, and sundry ropes and bungee cords to fashion a suitable canopy over our table. This performed well to keep rain and tree debris off our heads. We enjoyed a nice evening around camp making plans to go swimming the next day. I was tired because I had worked the previous evening and had been awake for around 24 hours by this time so we decided to go to bed when the sun went down at 9:00.

The storms came. It started raining and thundering and lightening. We slept off and on for about five hours occasionally waking to the audiovisual stimulation provided by the storm cells passing through. Around 2am I was awakened to a loud thunderclap. I lay there pondering the elements of the storm: It was raining, hard. The thunder was loud and rolling, the kind you could hear for 10 or 20 seconds. The lightning was occasional but spectacular as viewed through the thin blue nylon tent fabric. I was laying there amazed that there seemed to be no appreciable wind. About that time, Serena rolled over and cuddled up to me. The next thing I knew the wind had collapsed half our tent. This caused the rainfly to come loose and let rainwater filter in through the tent netting. We lay there, getting wet, contemplating our next move. I had decided we would probably need to abandon our tent but was in no hurry because it was raining, hard, and while we were getting wet inside the tent, there was not nearly as much rain inside the tent as outside.

After several minutes of soggy reflection, I realized that our situation would not be improving on its own. So the decision to abandon our tent was made and we sprang into action. We grabbed flashlights and headed out into the pond that was our campsite to the safety of the Villager. We were drenched from head to toe and both had to use the bathroom. I drove to the bath house and, after taking care of business and drying off a much as possible, and decided we would enjoy a drive into town since we were stuck in the van anyway. So we spent the next hour exploring the town of Stockton. We ended up back at the campground and dozed for the next few hours sitting in the reclining front van seats.

That morning was spent cleaning up from the storm. Our tent was not damaged in any way. The flexible shock-corded poles were just collapsed by the wind. It was a simple matter of pushing the inside of the tent up and the poles snapped back into position. I secured the rainfly better and added some tie-downs to help keep the tent from collapsing again. It didn't work. That evening while sitting around the fire another storm front came through and collapsed the tent again. We were not in it this time and things did not get as wet because of the improved rainfly. It did give me an opportunity to learn that the tent was just not stable in high winds. I secured the tent poles to some trees to prevent another collapse. I am getting ahead of myself though.

After the storm clean-up we headed back into town to find a Laundromat to dry all our clothes that got wet. We stopped to take some photos on the way back into the park and just about the time we arrived at our camp site the van started acting up. It turned out that the crankshaft pulley (or harmonic balancer) just busted. This meant that there were no accessory belts to drive the, uh, accessories, including the alternator and water pump. So that afternoon was spent making arrangements to have the van towed home the following day. Thank God for friends that were able to make arrangements to come get me saving me over half what a commercial tow truck would have cost.

The only really sad part of all this was that Serena and I did not get to go swimming. The beach area was several miles away and I was not about to walk there. This saddened Serena, but she soon got over it and made the best of it. She still had a great time and is ready to go back already.

Here is our prayer card...

Missions Conference Banner

I had the pleasure of designing the banner for South Side's missions conference. It is very basic and very clean looking. I hope you like it. The original banner is 16 feet long by 3 feet tall.

I liked it so much I used the same graphic and similar design for our prayer cards. I'll post our prayer card soon.

We are Missionaries!

Sometimes you can just tell without a doubt that God is at work and has His hand in your life. I am constantly humbled by the fact that the almighty God wants to use me. While I fail Him on a daily basis He still loves me and is working to make me more like His Son in a never ending time of gently forming me like clay in the Masters hands.

But that's not what I intend to write about today.

We have gone through the application and lengthy interview process with Child Evangelism Fellowship and have been invited to work with them as full time Missionaries. This obviously excites us and is exactly the path we feel God has for us at this time. Robin and I are looking forward to our time working to evangelize, disciple and bring children into the local church.

We are CEF missionaries and are on deputation now. Well, more like deputation light. I am still in school and will graduate this May. The two weeks following graduation we will be at CEF's worldwide headquarters in Warrenton, Missouri for their Missionary Candidate School. We will be trained in effective deputation methods in order to maximize our efforts to raise our ministry expenses.

In the meantime though, we will be working to get a head start on that deputation process. We will be in a missions conference at our sending church here in Springfield February 25-March 1. We have also been invited to present our ministry at Pastor Joe Brothers church in Georgia in March. These events have greatly encouraged us and we are looking for more opportunities to share our ministry with God's people.

If you would like to hear more about our ministry and how you may become a prayer and/or financial partner please get in touch with me and we would be happy to share what God is doing in our lives.

Thank you for reading.

A Change in Direction

For those of you who have not heard, Robin and I have made a change in direction for our ministry. We both came to the conclusion that God would have us serve as missionaries with Child Evangelism Fellowship.

This is a radical change from our initial pursuit as church planting missionaries with the Baptist Bible Fellowship. We will be working in the USA reaching children for Christ. A major part of our ministry will be promoting the ministries of CEF and starting After School Good News Clubs. We will be training adult leaders to operate and teach in these clubs.

There are many reasons for this change but the most important being the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is a God thing, as testified of by the godly people in our lives who we counseled with concerning this decision. Robin and I are totally at peace with this and are convinced this is what God wants with our lives at this point.

Actually, we have not been accepted by CEF yet. We made application with them two weeks ago and had people send in reference forms. Tuesday morning we had our first phone interview. Everything went well and we expect another more lengthy interview in a couple weeks.

I hope you share in our excitement about this avenue of ministry and will pray with us that God will have His way and will be honored in this pursuit.

More info. to follow soon.

One of my latest designs

Here's a design for a poster and invitation card for our local CEF. Robin and I are on the board of the local CEF chapter and we convinced them to let me design materials for this years banquet. I'm not sure if they regret that decision now.

What do you think?

Wow, what happened?

Yesterday I was informed that this coming week was mid-terms at school. My head must have been in the sand. I only have an actual mid-term in one class, so it's not gonna be much of a different study week then usual.

It's just that, I had no idea we were half way through the semester already.

The final year

I started classes last Friday and we had off for Labor Day. Since I am only attending classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday's, today is my second day of classes. I am actually only attending four classes on a regular weekly basis. I also have one Distance Ed class and one Module class. Here is my lineup for this semester:

Physical Science
Apologetics
Personal and Business Finance
Romans
Eschatology (my DE class)
Theology and Secular Counseling (my modular class)

Yes, that's six classes and they are all 3 hours each. That's a total of 18 hours for the mathematically challenged among my readers. This is what I must do to graduate this year.

Well, my fair blog readers, I'm gonna post a few pictures in a new post them get back to work. With 18 hours of in class work I have many hours of homework to do.

Pray for me and my family, please. I greatly appreciate it.

Some Logo Designs

Here are the logos that appear in the flier below but in their correct colors. The colors are similar because the 180 Degrees is a ministry of South Side and we just decided to use the same colors. I still don't know why the flier will not upload properly. The only thing I can think of is it may be too large of a file to maintain its integrity.

While under my rock this summer...

I designed this flier for a new ministry of our church, I also designed the logo for the ministry and the logo for the church as seen at the bottom of this flier.

For some reason I don't understand, I can't seem to upload the flier correctly. The colors are all messed up. What you see as dark or royal blue should be a deep red or maroon color and the light blue-green should be a gold color with the big question mark a lighter shade of the gold color. Oh well. You get the idea of my design anyway. This is all my original work with the exception of the Chained Hands image.

What I've been doing under my rock...

I've poked my head out a few times to photograph the sunrise outside my window at work and have started a series of photographs called The Light Outside My Window.

Here are a few images all taken from the same vantage point outside my office at work.