Day 2--Sharing Faith!

I got up around 6:45 today to give myself plenty of time to shower, eat, and have plenty of quiet time. There is some common food for the summer students, and with so much time I had a very chill, relaxing morning. After this we returned to the meeting room, where we received a crash course on the power of the Holy Spirit (old, but crucial) and using the KGP (Knowing God Personally) evangelism tools. I was kind of troubled during this part; using the booklets seems kind of preachy and impersonal to me, like you're just running through a checklist of things to say. I was unsure about this and pretty nervous in general; I've never been good at sharing my faith partly due to lack of experience.

We ate a tasty Chinese lunch and had another session on sharing our faith. This was very relevant because we were going to do just that on the Lake Michigan beach that afternoon, followed by a barbecue. We loaded stuff up and drove through the city to the beach. On the way I was struck by how the quality/rundown-ness of the neighborhoods changed, and by how many high-rise buildings there were; in Minneapolis they were mostly concentrated downtown, but here they were everywhere.

We parked near a park by the beach, and after setting some stuff up for the picnic we paired up and went out to the beach. I got paired with Dave the staffer, which was reassuring; I told him about my problems with evangelism and we figured that we could try to complement each other nicely. The beach was packed due to the promise of a Blue Angels show, and there was no shortage of people ot talk to.

The first ones we talked to were a father and son hoping to see the show. Immediately something really cool happened; they noticed my shirt from my job as a math TA, which features a Sierpinski triangle on it. Apparently both of them were fairly mathy, which gave us an instant point on which to connect and talk. Dave did most of the talking in itially, with me adding thoughts in whenever I could. He didn't proceed robotically through the KGP like I'd feared; he initially just started a fairly conversation; my shirt made it easy. We tried to be upfront and introduced ourself as partners with Campus Crusade. We asked them if they wanted to so a quick survey about spiritual views, which was much more open-ended and discussion-based, which I enjoyed. Then we got into other questions and asked if we could go through the KGP.

The father-son duo was from a Lutheran background, and were pretty open to what we had to say. Some tragedy came when the Blue Angels were cancelled due to excessive cloud cover; they had traveled for an hour and waited for five hours all for nothing. We tried to sympathize as best we could. After this conversation ended fairly well, we had much less of a choice of people as everyone was leaving. We headed over to the actual beach, where we met a guy with a dog tied to his bike. We had a pretty long conversation with him, often getting into the issue of sin and how it affects urban blight and the inner city. Dave, with a history of inner-city service, did most of the talking this time. This guy was from a Catholic background and was again pretty open to what we had to say, though we weren't sure how much he was living out his faith.

Then came my turn to start the conversation. I went up to two guys a few years younger than me, which helped us connect pretty well. Going through the survey it became clear that they had some very interesting things on their minds, and I ended up listening to one of them most of the time. They expressed disinterest in being "preached to" and were kind of nervous that we would whip out some hidden agenda, so we were afraid to give them the KGP until the very end as a take-home. Still, it was a fascinating, fairly meandering conversatio that had to be cut short due to returning for debriefing and dinner. Before I couldn't wait for sharing time to be over; now I wished we could prolong it to continue such an excellent, deep conversation!

On the way back I told Dave a quote he enjoyed quite a bit: that my view of evangelism had gone from "terrifying" to "intimidating". We'll apparently be doing this almost weekly, and I'm not nearly as nervous for next time. Still, we didn't have any dramatic on-the-spot conversions, emphasizing how we need to trust God to do the real work of drawing people to Him when we've done all we can.

After returning to the park we talked about our experiences, which was pretty cool (I shared the story of my shirt starting a conversation), and then dug into dinner. Afterwards we hung out, got to know each other better, played games, and helped pack the picnic up. My techie experience came in slightly handy packing up the canopy we'd put up, and I discovered another summer projector had done set work; we swapped theater stories as techies do. After that we drove back to the ministry center and settled in for the night; nights here are fairly quiet with no central place to hang out and an 11:00 PM curfew. Today was a great day of seeing God break down the barriers to sharing faith that I had, and it's only the second day of project! Stay tuned for more awesome.

Composed ~8:30 PM, Saturday, June 12th

Hello from Milwaukee!

I've made it to a summer mission in Milwaukee! It's been a pretty long day and I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed by all the stuff introduced to us today; it's really forcing me to trust in God to sustain and satisfy me, which is great!

After saying goodbye to my house and finishing packing this morning, I drove to south Minneapolis, from which I carpooled to Milwaukee with another summer projcector. Highlights of this included the GPS system we used to navigate, which spoke with a British accent and freaked out whenever we pulled off I-94 to get food or gas. It would say "Recalculating..." in its robotic British tones whenever we deviated from its dictated course. The car's air conditioning didn't work so well, which was fine in the morning when it was cloudy and wet, but got pretty nasty later.

In any event, we made it to Milwaukee around 2:30 PM. Traffic was surprisingly good, until we were nearly there in Milwaukees inner city area. We found the correct entrance of the building--a huge ministry center complex that I still couldn't begin to navigate--and were greeted by the friendly staff and students, as well as the staffers' kids, who were playing on a Wii set up in the chapel. It was very inviting, and having the kids around is delightful!

After checking in and getting unloaded, I was led up to my room, a pretty standard dorm room with one major exception--no ethernet jack. There were some in the floor lounge, but I was told they were nonfunctional. Horror of horrors--no internet!

Without much to do in my room after unpacking, I went back downstairs and hung out with the staff, kids, and new arrivals. My attempts to try Wii canoeing were derailed by a scratched disc. I quickly got to know my roommate, Aaron, and two of my other floormates Jacob and Jack. We were all from different states and different backgrounds, but the passion for God that had brought us to Milwaukee was pretty solid common ground, and I look forward to getting to know these brothers in Christ better! I'm also connected with one of the staff, who besides this shares with me a first name and a generally nerdy disposition, which is exciting.

At 5:15, we headed through the labyrinthine passageways of the ministry center to the cafeteria, where after waiting for all the kids to be seated and fed we got an excellent barbecue dinner from a local restaurant. Then followed some "get to know you" time and games.

Then we went througn more hallways to what was apparently a Christian boy scout meeting room for our first meeting. We had plenty of worship, singing from printed lyrics accompanied by one of the interns on guitar. Afterwards came a talk on the theme of the project--"No greater love", as in John 15:13, and some ground rules.

But I was distressed by how distracted I was during worship by worries and selfish objections--will I be able to get online to connect with friends and family, will my living conditions work out, and simple unrest with the worship style--it was less "exciting" and more repetitive than I'm used to at Hope. Hope (not the church) came when I viewed these as problems to lay before God, my own inability to be fully satisfied in Him. Is constant internet access really necessary for me to serve God wholeheartedly? Similarly, if I cease to enjoy worship because of the style, what does this say about my motivation for worshipping, which should be finding joy in glorifying God?

So, today I learned again that God really needs to be all I need; I shouldn't need anything else to serve and enjoy Him wholeheartedly. Obviously the internet situation worked out somewhat if you're reading this, but pray that God would teach this lesson to my soul, as well as that we would all love the Milwaukee inner city with the same love that led Jesus to die for us.

If you want to send me mail, my address for summer project is:

David Pitchford
2224 W. Kilbourn Ave.
Milwaukee, WI, 53233

Composed ~9 PM, Friday, June 11th

On John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin in Believers", Part 4

Time for my last post on John Owen's treatise on killing sin. I leave for Milwaukee bright and early tomorrow morning--it's hard to believe! I'm excited to do something with my summer, particularly glorify God by serving the needy, and nervous at the same time--this is going to be on intense mission trip. But God had brought me this far, and if He helped Paul become the greatest missionary ever He can certainly help me for eight weeks. Anyway, continuing with particular directions on mortifying sin:

• Once you have a "clear and abiding sense" of the guilt, danger, and evil of sin, load your conscience with it. "Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith." (Galatians 3:23-24) The purpose of the law isn't for us to obey it and earn our salvation; if it were, we could be justified by the law, as Paul says in verse 21. Instead its purpose is to show us how sinful we are, how short we fall of God's standards, to lead us to justifying faith in Christ. Accordingly, Owen recommends using the law to load your conscience with the guilt and conviction of sin.
• "Constantly long and breathe after deliverance from the power of sin"--if you did the last two steps right, this one should be easy! Basically we need to pray that God would change our hearts from longing for satisfaction in sin to longing for satisfaction in freedom from sin and knowing Him.
• Know your innate weaknesses to sin. Obviously not everyone is equally susceptible to every sin; your background, personality, experiences, and nature can predispose you to committing certain sins and make you less likely to be tempted by others. Know yourself!
• Know when and where you are vulnerable to certain sins. For example, my willpower tends to decline late at night as my brain gets tired, so I try to get to bed at a reasonable hour and have a time of prayer before I do so. Know your enemy!
• Fight your sin with the Spirit! Don't let it gain an inch of ground in your heart; the instant it begins to rise up, fight it! This means never compromising with sin, letting it have part of your heart. At the risk of running afoul of Godwin's Law, this is comparable to Chamberlain's strategy of appeasement in 1938. It's doomed to failure.
• Don't try to appeal to your own righteousness or "goodness" as an excuse for sin. Instead, Owen says to "use and exercise yourself to such meditations as may serve to fill you at all times with self-abasement and thoughts of your own vileness". Ouch! The examples he gives are considering how great God is and how far your sin separates you from Him, and how awesome and great God is, greater than any human. It may not be fun to think about yourself as a bug compared to the majesty of God, but it's important to get perspective on how serious our sin is and how much greater He is.
• "Do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks it, but harken to what God says to your soul". If God is trying to convict you of a sin by stirring up your soul and conscience, don't be complacent and try to preserve your peaceful, sinful life--listen to Him! If the sin He's convicting you of is one that destroys your peace of mind, don't let regaining that peace be your number one reason for killing it--God is the "God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3) and will give peace to His children as He wills. Trying to "speaks peace" to ourselves when God is trying to stir us up against some sin is like Jonah sleeping on a sinking ship in the middle of a storm; it won't help. The analogy my pastor used to sum up this point, and indeed to sum up the whole sermon series, was the Whack-a-Mole! game. Don't get complacent; every time sin pops up, whack it!

In the final chapter, Owen gets to the good stuff: the actual means of mortification. There is no magic trick for making sin disappear; the actual process of mortification shouldn't be too surprising. Owen says to "set faith at work on Christ for the killing of your sin." What does this look like? He gives several examples:

• Fill your soul with faith in God's provision to sustain you through temptation and mortify your sin. When Paul is struggling with what I take to be a temptation of some kind, God tells him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9) God has promised that if we trust and obey Him, He is able and willing to destroy our sin.
• Then, by faith come to expect relief from Christ. It's by this faith that He heals us, and is encourages us to, as Owen puts it, "attend diligently to all the ways and means whereby Christ is wont [likely] to communicate Himself to the soul, and so takes in the real assistance of all graces and ordinances whatsoever." Be diligent and abide in Christ through prayer and the Bible to keep open the channels by which He can work in you. Owen has the example of a beggar: "The beggar that expects an alms lies at his door or in his way from whom he does expect it."
• The death and resurrection of Christ are key. The reason Christ came was to "destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8) and "purify for himself a people who are his very own, eager to to what is good." (Titus 2:14) Central in our faith should be the significance of the cross. When we accept Christ and identify with His death, we die to sin (Romans 6:2); it may still have some sway over us, but the cross destroyed its power and authority over our souls.

Owen's last point is that the whole work of mortification is "effected, carried on, and accomplished by the power of the Spirit." The Spirit is the one who convicts us of sin (John 16:8), gives us strength to "stand firm in Christ" (2 Corinthians 1:21), baptizes us into the body of Christ and brings the cross to bear against sin (1 Corinthians 12:13), and produces the good fruit of faith that are fatal to sin (Galatians 5:22-25). In all the stages of mortification, being filled with the Spirit is the key to it all.

I hope this extremely brief summary of John Owen captures at least some of his faith and wisdom. I felt like a theologian writing this--only most theologians don't just paraphrase other theologians, I suppose. Once again, I can't recommend reading the book and/or listening to my church's sermons on it to get the whole story. Stay tuned for updates from Milwaukee!

On John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin in Believers", Part 3

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Another day (I'll be in Milwaukee in 48 hours!), another post on John Owen. This week I'll summarize his writings on some general and specific directions for the mortification of sin; basically things to keep in mind to prepare yourself for the great work itself. Owen offers two general directions for the mortification of sin:

• One must be a believer to mortify any sin. This one is pretty easy; as Romans 8:13 says, it's "by the Spirit" that we mortify sin. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to believers (Acts 1:8), and it can be concluded from the contrapositive of Romans 8:9 that whoever has accepted Christ has the Spirit. So only a believer who has accepted Christ, and therefore has the Spirit in them, can go about the Spirit-enabled work of mortification. If someone hasn't accepted Christ, it's foolish, legalistic, and ultimately futile to try to get them to mortify sin.
• The other general direction for mortification is "sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience". Basically it means that if a believer is disobeying or ignoring God in some glaring way, he or she probably won't have much success at mortifying sin. Owen specifically targets those who (as I, and likely many others, have) set out to mortify a sin simply because it distresses them or disturbs their peace of mind, while ignoring other, less perplexing sins and essentials in one's relationship with God like prayer. If preserving our own peace of mind is our reason for mortifying sin, if we only come to God because we need help dealing with this one thing, what will become of our relationship with Him if that sin were mortified? As Owen puts it, "God says, 'Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost.'" This idea that God might leave us to struggle with sins to keep us coming to Him floored me when I first heard it. God is glorified even through our struggles and temptations when we trust in Him to deliver us through them (1 Corinthians 10:13). If our sufferings bring us closer to God, then let us rejoice in our sufferings!

Owen then gives nine more specific directions to mortification of sin, the first two of which I'll go through tonight.

• Know the symptoms of serious sin that requires extra prayer and mortification. These are inveterateness (basically the sin being entrenched in your heart and behavior without fear of mortification, so that you're used to it); attempts to justify the sin or look over it and convince yourself that you're still "mostly" a good person; simply dismissing the sin as forgiven by Jesus without attempting to stop; frequently giving in to the sin or temptation; opposing the sin only because of punishment or negative repercussions of it; and the ineffectuality of God's convicting it in you. What these look like is that intellectually, you might know that some particular sin is wrong, but you just don't care, or convince yourself that everything is OK and Jesus forgave it all while continuing to do it even if God convicts you about it. When I listened through my church's sermon on this point for the third time, I reliazed that my tendency to blow off time with God in favor of cheap distractions (computer, music, games, etc.) fit most of these symptoms--a sobering realization indeed. If a sin you struggle with fits any of them, it's time to buy John Owen's book--I mean get serious with mortifying that sin. Which may or may not involve buying the book.
• But wait, it gets more convicting: "get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind and conscience of the guilt, danger, and evil of your sin". One symptom of dangerous sin, as already stated, is the tendency to see it as "not a big deal" or "not a serious problem". Before mortification can begin, it's important to get rid of that misconception. God doesn't see your sin as no big deal--it breaks His heart! For a look at what it looks like when we realize just how bad our sin really is, see Psalms 38 and 51. Owen also points out possible dangers of continuing in sin: it might harden your heart and make you resistant to God; punishment or physical repercussions and the poss of one's peace (as I stated above, these shouldn't be the only reasons for mortifying sin, but they are still reasons); and the danger of not being saved. Calvinists and Arminians disagree over whether salvation can actually be lost, but they agree that  a believer who turns away from God and sins freely until death is not saved; either he lost his salvation, or he never was saved. Scary! Finally, as to the evils of sin, Owen mentions that sin "grieves the Spirit of God" (Ephesians 4:30) and decreases a believer's usefulness in kingdom work in the  here and now.

Well, that was quite a bit of typing. Again, I encourage you to listen to Hope Community Church's sermons on the book and/or read it, online or from a store. (Note: I had trouble finding it in physical stores and ordered my copy from Northwestern Bookstore) Feel free to comment with thoughts or questions. Pray for the Spirit today and God will fill you as He promised! (Ephesians 5:18)

On John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin in Believers", Part 2

And now there are only three days left until I leave for Milwaukee. Time to continue writing on John Owen; hopefully I'll finish before I set out. Tonight, what mortification of sin is (and is not).

Mortification is NOT:

• The utter destruction of and freedom from sin. Even Paul, one of the most saintly and influential Christians ever, claimed not to have been "made perfect" yet in Philippians 3:12. Contrary to what some heretical sects have claimed, no one except Jesus can be completely free of sin. No amount of mortification can get rid of it altogether; that's reserved for when we see God face to face.
• The dissimulation of sin. This is another one of Owen's archaic words; basically it means covering up sin by acting righteous. Owen points out that someone who simply stops practicing a sin without being changed on the inside has added hypocrisy to his sins, and "is now on a safer path to hell than he was before." Ouch!
• The "improvement of a quiet and sedate nature"; trying to avoid sin by changing one's disposition to a quiet and sedate one to avoid "sinful passions" and the like. If it were, I'd be in good shape indeed!
• The diversion of a sin from one action to another. As Owen puts it "a man may be sensible of a lust, set himself against the eruptions of it, take care that it shall not break forth as it has done, but in the meantime suffer the same corrupted habit to vent itself some other way". If you focus on stopping one specific sinful behavior without looking to the inner cause, the sin will likely just start expressing itself in a different way. I made this mistake while trying to fight sin the wrong way and can attest to the fact that sin is smarter than we are! Don't think you can kill it with discipline and behavior modification; at best, you'll only be trading one sin for another.
• Occasional conquests over sin. For example, only fighting a sin because and when it causes you discomfort or distress, and then once it's temporarily settled down returning to a state of complacency and thinking everything is A-OK.

So these are how not to try and fight sin. If you've been making any of these mistakes, read on! Owen describes the mortification of sin positively as three things:

• The habitual weakening of sin; reducing its ability to tempt us, draw us aside, and disrupt our spiritual life.
• Constant fighting and contending against sin. Just just when it's at its worst; constant. Basically mortification is a war against sin that we fight for as long as we're on the earth; there are no truces and we should make a habit of learning the tactics and strategies of the enemy and doing as much damage to it as we can.
• Frequent success. If we're doing mortification right, it really works!

Again, I recommend listening to my church's free online sermons (in my previous post) and/or reading the book. I forgot to mention that the book is available for free online. It's not the same as reading it on paper, but it's free!

On John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin in Believers", Part 1

Well, I guess I promised some posts on what I've been studying in the weeks leading up to my summer mission project in Milwaukee. Considering I leave in four days, I should probably get on that.


One of the main things I've been doing in the way of Christian study is going through a sermon series my college church did two years ago. They have all their sermons from the last four or so years online here. This series was on a classic work by the Puritan theologian John Owen, The Mortification of Sin in Believers. If you're looking to deepen your relationship with God by getting rid of the crap that sin puts in the way, I highly recommend getting this book and/or listening through my church's solid sermon series on it (almost halfway down the page). if you don't have the time/money, I'm going to write about it here.


The whole book is based on Romans 8:13: "But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." The first chapter is devoted to unpacking this verse in all its detail: the conditionality of the statement ('If'), the persons given this duty ('You'/believers), the means by which it is carried out ('by the Spirit'), the duty itself ('put to death the misdeeds of the body'), and the promise ('you shall live'). What a promise indeed! Tell me more!


This "putting to death the misdeeds of the body" is the aforementioned mortification of sin. More on defining it later. In the next three chapters Owen goes into three reasons for mortifying sin: as my church puts it, you must, you can, and you get to! Chapter two goes over Biblical commands for mortification (Colossians 3:5) on top of the connection with mortifying sin and living. (Pretty important to do) Additionally, he argues, Christians need to mortify their sin or it will multiply in them and drag them down and away from their relationship with God. The sermon series it titled after a line in the book, "Be killing sin or it will be killing you".


Luckily, since we must kill sin, we've been given power over it by the Holy Spirit, which weakens sin and produces goodness in us to counteract it. This is what makes mortification of sin possible; Owen describes other, futile means people to try use against sin like empty religion and rituals; outward actions that try to change out inner nature, as opposed to the Spirit changing us from the inside out. This is a crucial distinction that many get wrong then and now. (I get the feeling that Owen dislikes Catholics, as he uses their practices from that day as examples of how not to kill sin)


Then in chapter four, he offers the converse to chapter two: just as not mortifying sin results in spiritual death, mortifying sin indirectly results in "the life, vigor, and comfort of our spiritual life". He makes clear that without mortification of sin, we won't find any of there things, but it's not the only condition to having them; it's an "only if" relation. But that shouldn't discourage us from fighting sin, which ruins one's spiritual life by "weakening and darkening" the soul in its ability to live for God.


This is all good stuff, but it gets better. Next time: what mortification actually is! (And is not)

I'm On A Boat!

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to work on theater in just about the coolest location imaginable: on a boat! The U of MN runs a showboat docked at Harriet Island in St. Paul that is gearing up for a run of shows this summer. I cannot stress enough that it's a THEATER ON A BOAT.

Okay, it's more of a barge than a boat. Apparently the old showboat would actually cruise up and down the river during shows, but it burned down in a welding accident in 2000, and the new one is permanently docked. Inside is an impressive, if slightly small, theater by any standards,

(Note: it was many times messier and filled with tech junk when I was working on it) Luckily, all the lights had already been hung (they use the biggest ladder I've ever seen, named Big Bertha, to hang the lights visible in the picture) last week, so my work consisted largely of connecting everything. Despite five enormous cables running from the dock to the ship, there weren't nearly enough dimmers, and there was much electrical work to be done twofering (or three-fering) lights into circuits so everything could have power. I also ran smaller DMX signal cable to carry instructions to intelligent instruments.

Plugging stuff in sounds easy enough, and normally it would be, but apparently the fly system of the showboat isn't as sophisticated as the one in Rarig (theater building), so the bars everything hung on couldn't be lowered. Meaning I got to access everything in one of these.

The Genie aerial work platform is basically a portable elevator that lets you reach heights of up to 14 meters (which is terrifying). Luckily in the small showboat theater I only had to go up 4 or so meters, which isn't too bad. For stability, the Genie has four outriggers for stability. Every time I wanted to go up, I had to tighten all the outriggers to the ground, then climb into the basket to ascend. To move the Genie, all four outriggers had to be loosened so it could roll around. Multiply this by having to make dozens of ascents to work on various points on a bar and it can take all morning.

When I was up in the air, I would be plugging in lights and running the cables along the bar to where they were supposed to go. For the first semester of my techiehood, I learned to keep cables from sagging by coiling them around the bar. Just when this habit was ingrained, we got a new tech director who, like all the other ones I've had since, advocated tying the cables to bars. Switching over has been hard, especially since tying makes adding or removing individual cables much more time-consuming. Even worse is the unspeakable horror of trying to plug something in, only to need just a few more inches of cable. If the theater would get one-foot, or even six-inch extension cables, I would use them all.

Just when I thought I was done, the power splitter that was supposed to be powering a dimmer box and the strobe cannon (which is even more awesome than it sounds) was revealed to be nonoperational. After taking the whole thing apart, I concluded it needed a new plug, which would have to be brought from Rarig center.

But first, it was lunchtime. We piled into one of the lighting interns' amazing puke-green van and headed into downtown St. Paul, where after giving an impromptu tour of the city he brought us to a an amazing hot dog place. I was the only one not to have a dog of some kind. After lunch, we returned to the boat, while the lighting director went to Rarig to get more stuff. Meanwhile, we went to the booth to patch in the lights we'd connected. Up there, I discovered the showboat had an old friend of mine: the timeless Colortran Innovator, bane of MA techies everywhere.

 

Being highly experienced with the board, I offered to work on it, but instead read off light assignments as the intern on the board explained in detail why the numbering system the designer used was ridiculous. The channel numbers she'd assigned lights to were ridiculously spread out--the numbers for maybe 50 or so lights went up to the mid 300s, and the old board almost didn't have enough channels to accommodate everything.

After this, we had nothing else to do until the lighting director returned with more stuff, so of course we began playing Text Twist on his computer. Word games have never appealed to me much, so I explored the boat. The front entry area was quite nice, with high ceilings, elegant furnishings, and a grand staircase to the second level, which had a dining area and two(!?) bars.

Eventually the lighting director returned and told us to take a break after we'd been wasting time for at least half an hour. That got laughs out of all of us. After carrying some stuff in, I got to work replacing the plug. This went fairly smoothly; the old one was already not the original, having been installed only for a bad connection to melt and fuse the whole thing into a mess. I had to cut the whole thing off, strip the wires, and install the new, nicer plug farther upcord. After installing the whole thing, with a total of eight screws, I discovered I'd left part of the old plug on the cord. My first instinct, of course, was to break it off by smashing it with a wrench.

Unfortunately, I was later told that it was made of impact-proof plastic (a fast to which I can attest), so I just left it on as a special feature and put the splitter back onto the bar. After that we kind of ran out of work and all I remember of the rest of the day is stumping my fellow techies at 20 questions (with 'time') and being presented with some paperwork for getting paid for the day, which I'm still wondering if I did correctly. Like every day of tech, it was an adventure, and I'm sad that I'll be in Milwaukee for the debut. But it apparently has a ridiculously long run, from June 18th to August 28th, which should be time enough for anyone to see it. Get on the boat!