My First Day at Northrop Grumman

Every sad, final day at work is hopefully followed shortly by a happy, first day at a new job. I started my new job at Northrop Grumman yesterday. The company is great, the people are fantastic, and the work is stimulating. So far, so good. I'll be teaching people how to use the Consolidated Air Mobility Planning System (CAMPS) which allows for automated mission planning, tasking, and scheduling of Air Mobility Command missions. It should be a fun switch, although I do miss my old co-workers.

Northrop Grumman is such a diverse company it boggles you mind. They are the only manufcturer of Aircraft Carriers for the US Navy, they manufacture aircraft (my best friend has worked on the B-2 for nearly 13 years), submarines, and they provide a hugh consulting and contracting service to the Department of Defense. I am working within the Mission Systems sector (which used to be named Information Technology).

My Last Day at TRI-COR

Sadly, today is my last day at TRI-COR as a government consultant for Air Mobility Command. I will be moving to Northrop Grumman on Monday to begin a new job as a Consolidated Air Mobility Mission Planning System (CAMPS) trainer for Air Mobility Command. The office I worked in was a great place to work, but it was time to move on. I really hated to resign my position, but it was just one of those things that I needed to do. The new job I will be going to should be a fun one with a little travel, learning to design some new web-based computer courses and computer based training courses (CBTs), and spending time helping people become familiar with a great computer system.

I have only worked for TRI-COR and AMC/A38 for a year now and have no regrets.

FBCOF College and Career/McKendree BCM Update

Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

It is starting to warm up and feel like summer vacation. Praise the Lord for seeing us through another school year. This week is a very important one at FBCOF and the McKendree BCM. We are welcoming our new members from the Youth Department. The graduating high school seniors will be with us starting on Sunday morning. Let's go out of our way to make them feel welcome. We have lots of things for us all to be involved in at the FBCOF College and Career Department and the McKendree Baptist Collegiate Ministry.

Here's what we have planned for the near future:

Sunday May 23

Sunday Morning Bible Study at 9:45 and 11:00 in the FBC O'Fallon Youth Lounge. This week we will be studying Titus Chapter 2 in which Paul writes about consistent behavior. We will talk about the guiding principles behind consistent behavior. Please read Titus Chapter 2 ahead of time and come ready to discuss how it applies to each of our lives. Also, please come hungry and thirsty because I will be bringing something to nibble on during class!

Sunday Night Alive! We will be having a welcome celebration for the graduating High School Seniors. We are planning a campfire in the meadow with Hotdogs, Chips, Soda, and S'mores to welcome our new family members and the Summer. God has some great plans for us in the coming months. Please mark this down on your calendar and plan on attending.

Saturday June 12

BCM Spring Cleanup at The Gate from 9:00 until 4:00. If you are not familiar with The Gate, it is located at 225 N Monroe, Lebanon. Here is a map to the building. The Gate is not only the home to the McKendree Baptist Collegiate Ministry, but it is also a great place for the College and Career Department to hang out and hold events. Everything that we do at The Gate includes an open invitation for anyone to attend. You don't have to be in college, or a student at McKendree, or even in the College and Career Department at FBCOF; All are welcome! We have wrapped up the school year ministry program at The Gate, and will be starting to minister at breakneck speed again the first week of the school year. In the meanwhile, we have some paint to scrape off the windows, some wallpaper to take down, some areas to paint, some landscaping to do, and a few other things. If we can get enough people to show up we can knock it all out in one day. I'll even provide lunch and something to drink. We can use each and every one of your help. Steve Kim, who is a visitor to our church has already secured 25 young airmen from Scott Air Force Base to help us out, so we may just tear down the whole building and start over! Just kidding. It should be a great time to work together and accomplish some lasting work.

We have a couple of websites I want to mention to you all.

First is our church's website located here. There is a college and career weblog link on the front page, but it doesn't work any longer, so...

Second is the new FBCOF College and Career website located here. It should contain a copy of this E-Mail and some places for you to comment and chat. Please visit and let us know you were there.

Last is The Gate's Website located here. It is very similar to the College and Career website, only the information is for The Gate. If you are interested in what we do out there it contains quite a bit of information for you and has a great links section (places we recommend).

God bless you all and hope to see you Sunday.

Rick Marshall

FBC O'Fallon College and Career/McKendree BCM Update

Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

I think almost everyone is done with school for the year! Yahooooooo! Congrats! But now what? We have lots of things for you be involved in at the FBCOF College and Career Department. (You knew this would end up being a plug for the department, didn't you?)

Next week, Sunday May 23, we will be welcoming a new group of graduating High School Seniors into our College and Career community at FBCOF. It is always so wonderful to see the relief on the graduating High School Seniors faces as they realize their time in High School is over. But, that smile begins to turn to reality as they understand later in the summer that it is time to head off to college or start looking for work. Welcome to the real world! Anyhow, we have a great opportunity to welcome them into our world next Sunday evening. We'll be having a special Sunday Night Alive! that night to help them feel more at home with us. It is always so incredible to see who the Lord brings our way. The Lord knows exactly what He wants to accomplish in and with our group and it is so special to see it all come together.

Please keep June 12 open on your calendar for a BCM cleanup day in Lebanon. We have quite a bit of work left to finish there and that looks like the first good opportunity to get us all together and spend some time there recovering from a busy semester.

Here's what we have planned for the near future:

Sunday May 16

Sunday Morning Bible Study at 9:45 and 11:00 in the FBC O'Fallon Youth Lounge. This week we will be studying Titus Chapter 1. The book of Titus is very similar to the book of 1 Timothy, but there are some big differences. Please come ready to discuss Paul's letter to Titus.

Sunday May 23

Sunday Night Alive! We will be having a welcome celebration for the graduating High School Seniors. We are planning a campfire in the meadow with hotdogs, chips, soda, and s'mores to welcome the Seniors and the Summer. God has some great plans for us in the coming months. Please mark this down on your calendar and plan on attending.

Saturday June 12

BCM Spring Cleanup at The Gate from 9:00 until 4:00. The Gate is located at 225 N Monroe, Lebanon. Here is a map to the building. The Gate is not only the home to the McKendree Baptist Collegiate Ministry, but it is also a great place for the College and Career Department to hang out and hold events. Everything that we do at The Gate includes an open invitation for anyone to attend. You don't have to be in college, or a student at McKendree. All are welcome. We had an awesome Spring Semester worshipping and serving the Lord in the BCM building. There is still some work to be done that we didn't get finished before we started the semester. We have some paint to scrape off the windows, some wallpaper to take down, some areas to paint, some landsca! ping to do, and a few other things. If we can get enough people to show up we can knock it all out in one day. I'll even provide lunch and something to drink. We can use each and every one of your help.

God bless you all and hope to see you Sunday.

Rick

Blogger Tools Update

Jordon Cooper wrote a great article for The Ooze.com on blogging tools. Here's a link to it. What are these online journals called weblogs or blogs, how can I get one, how much do they cost, what services do they offer me, why should I get one? Jordon answers all these questions in this article. Just to let you know, I have never paid for the use of a website, blog, or fotopage. There are lots of free services out there for you to use, so money isn't an issue. Sometimes you have to pay to get premium services, but a basic website can be built without too much effort or any cost to you. This website on Blogger is free and is a pretty easy program to use. Check it out.

The Iraqi Terrorists Made A Big Mistake

I think the Iraqi terrorists made a big tactical mistake yesterday in releasing the videotape of Nick Berg being executed. Until yesterday afternoon public opinion was slowly moving their way. The recent pictures of Iraqi POW abuse was showing that the Americans were not delivering the type of freedom the world expected. We were committing acts of indecency with the Iraqi POWs that made me sick to watch. As a retired Air Force officer it made me sick to think that I fought for a country that let this happen. That is over now. The terrorist beheading Nick Berg yesterday forever changed that. George Bush owes the terrorist that committed this act a big "thank you." If the Iraqi terrorosts would have showed humane treatment of prisoners while we continued to reveal the abuse of our prisoners I believe public opinion would continue to move their direction and against our war effort. Now they have one up'd us and showed that we aren't the most brutal and demeaning people in the Persian Gulf; they are. As much as I detest the American abuse of Iraqi POWs, and I fully believe we will fix the problem and hold the people who either committed these acts or let them be committed accountable, the brutality from yesterday is the exact reason why I support the war in Iraq. Islamic fundamentalists must be removed from the country in order for the people to be considered free. I believe this incident will bring many consequences, one of them will be the refocusing of the public spotlight from the target of the American abuses to that of pushing on with the war. The terroritsts just up'd the ante and got the American military and George Bush off the hotseat.

A New Update for Blogger

Just when I thought it would be good to move over to Squarespace.com for a weblog-based webpage Blogger comes up with a new update with some cool templates like this one and built in commenting. I guess I'll try both Squarespace.com and the new Blogger Update for a while to see which I like better.

Take A Look At My New Site

I'm working on a new site at squarespace.com. It isn't finished yet, but you can find it here. I developed a ministry website at squarespace for The Gate and kind of like the ability to have a free webpage with a little more to offer than just the blog I have here. It gives me an opportunity to have a few more pages and better content. I also like the fact that an integrated comments capability is built into the webpage. You don't have to use a secondary service to get comments. Try it out, you might like it.

Go Cardinals!

I have to stop going to Cardinals games. I think the Cardinals are about 0 for 15 at games I attend. I have been to 2 games this year and the Cardinals have been embarrassed both times. The first game they made the Milwaukee Brewers look like the 1927 Yankees. They were so bad that their back up catcher came in and pitched the last 2 innings. He was the only pitcher to have a 1-2-3 inning. Yesterday the Cubs did it to the Cards. In the 9 years we have lived in St Louis I have been to about 15 games and I don't ever remember the Cardinals winning. I think pretty soon they will catch on and start paying me to stay away. I will have to go to Cardinals management and start pitching to them the value of an anti-season ticket fee.