Bow down... There's a pastor in the room...

Recently someone got married in my extended family. I'm not too aware on the detail of said marriage, and when I say extended, I mean really extended. What was so significant about the event was that the individual who performed the ordinance happened to be a sibling of either the bride or groom, and he had only recently joined an internet church and became a pastor in order to perform the ceremony. I think that's clever. If you are going to do it in that type of setting, and you want to have the ceremony performed by someone significant to you, then sure, have your brother do it.
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My mom told me about this, and as my sister is getting married soon also, she suggested that I do the same, and conduct the wedding myself. Of course she was kidding... I remeber two BYU students who, perplexed by the strict religious rules on how to organize an event in Provo, decided to join an internet church as pastors in order to make their party a religiously-promoted activity. They were both expelled by the honor code. So I guess joining another church is bad, even if you aren't taking it seriously.
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But, I'm not taking it serious, I'm just curious. I'm searching through the internet right now just to know what it takes to be an "cyber" pastor. So far it's been rather interesting. The first church I found was the "Internet Church of Christ", with a less than appealing web site featuring midi music (something that I haven't heard in years). The next is Cyber-Church.com, which respectfully considers itself as merely "your church away from home", but it's google description is, "One of the first online ministries dating to the early days of the Internet." I nearly keeled over laughing. So many non-cyber christian sects argue over who was organized first, as that is the pure determinant of truth. For example, on my mission I ran into some Coptic Christians in Vienna, who claimed that their right to absolute truth lay in the fact that they were organized by the apostle Mark, long before Peter started up* the Roman Catholic church. But then the Greek Orthodox church argues that John started their church also before Peter as well, so I really don't know what to believe. Basically, the older you are, the more right you are, i suppose. I guess this type of reasoning has spilled over to the cyber world as well. I guess they must be the "only true internet church".
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*=questionable
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But I will say this... I think it is good that there are such organizations, no matter how many. Eventhough I strongly believe tha longevity shouldn't be a determinant of truth, they still promote a faith in Christ which is very important.
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But here are some other churches, that you should consider when making that big "which online church shall I join?" decision:
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"The First Online Church of Bob" (as if there is a second?) Google description: An online ministry dedicated to Slack and the liberation of your mind from the control of the Conspiracy.
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"St. Pixels" (oh good, Father Pixels made it as a saint!) G.D.: Welcome to St Pixels, the online church in 3D where you can meet others, talk about serious and not-so-serious stuff, discuss what you do and don't believe, ...
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"Duke Street Church Online" G.D.: Richmond. Service details and weekly activities for all ages, including homelessness and international student ministries, a church football team, ... (they must have miss-typed that one)
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"Universal Ministries" G.D.: Become ordained online for free. You can now perform weddings.
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BINGO!

Finally, I'm an adult... I have my own Costco card.

Solely out of a sense of obligation, I ought to recap the last final days of my great European adventure. And here it is. I spent the rest of the time in Vienna, seeing sights, and then I went hiking in Kitzbühel, Austria. The night before I flew home I found myself in Munich, where I took some fun night shots of the town and watched the Champions League Final. I hate AC Milan, by the way. Fitingly, the last place I found myself before coming home was Odeon's Platz in Munich, which happens to be my favorite part of Munich, which city happens to be my favorite in Europe, and which also happens to be full of lots of sentiment, as it was the locaton of my first street-preach, nearly five years previously. Yes, it made a nice bookend for my whole trip.
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But, I'm home now and ready to get on with the rest of my life. In other words, I got my own Costco card and I'm finally an adult. Life isn't quite the busy and stressful time that I expected it to be-- I'm living at home and I spend much of my time with some of my best friends... the Anchors of ESPN's Sportscenter. I have packets to do, but they're not too strenuous, and I've been looking for a job, but I'm incredibly picky about what job I want, and I haven't been successful in finding one. Sad... Utah has an unemployment rate of 3-4%, and I can't find what I want. Economists usually attribute that percentage group as the people in between jobs anyway, so I must be the only non-employed indiviual with absolutely no job prospects in the State of Utah. Okay, that's a exaggeration, but it's still sad.

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But don't you think for one moment that I haven't kept myself busy. I'm sometimes the best at finding something useless to keep myself efficient. Wait, "efficient" is another exaggeration. We'll just stick with "busy". It's called Google Earth, and for all of you geeks/stalkers who use this often, you'll really like this.

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During my trip I took over 2100 photos. Of those, I picked my favorite 333, then added in all of my other favorite photos of either myself or of things I've taken. It came to a total of over 500 pics. Then, using the Google Earth software and the Panoramio web site, I created an "overlay" that shows all the actual photos at the places where they were taken. So, here's how it works. Do it if you have no time on your hands, and if you have an unusual interest in my vacation. But I assure everyone that it wouldn't be a complete waste of your time.

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Download Google Earth if you haven't already. Once you've got it running and you've aquainted yourself with the controls enough, download the overlay. Downloading is quick, it sometimes takes a while for the pictures to load, though. But no matter. Once you have the overlay down and enabled (it usualy is enabled automatically), you'll then be able to see a small thumbnail over the spots where the photo was taken.

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For example. Once you have the program and the overlay running, type in "Piazza San Pietro Vatican", and this is what you'll see:
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See the thumbnails, if you click on them then you'll get a larger, full resolution photo. I thought this would be an easier way to show all of my pictures to those who requested it, but as it turns out, this was incredibly time consuming as I had to type in the exact coordinates of each photo i the system. But if I'm the only one who gets any value out of it, so be it...

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Just a reminder, the thumbnails sometimes take a few seconds to load up. Oh, and as a suggestion on where to look, check out Munich, Nice, Peillon (France), Milan, Venice, Ljubljana, Split, Dubrovnik, Florence, Rome, Bad Gastein, Zell am See (Austria), Vienna, Kitzbuehel (Austria). Anywhere else you look will be of photos from other trips to Europe, photos taken at home, and my mission. Knock yourself out... It is simply fantastic. I promise.