The North Carolina Tar Heels have won the national championship. Go heels!
Okay, let’s keep it moving. Life goes on; there are more important things to be concerned with. But again, go heels!
So, you’re probably wondering how and why you ended up at this website. You were probably trying to go to blog.trailblazinministries.com and got redirected here, to LaRosaJohnson.com. Well, that’s exactly what I wanted to happen.
For a long while now, I had been contemplating the idea of purchasing this domain name, but never did it. There was really no reason behind it, I just didn’t do it. For the longest time, my blog had been housed at UrbanWordz.com, but I let that domain go well over a year ago, after I decided to consolidate my website, blog & photos under a single domain, TrailblazinMinistries.com. That was working very well because it made my blog & thoughts a visible part of the ministry website, and it gave people an opportunity to view pictures of my family and so on. I was enjoying that, but I decided that it was time for a change, hence the change.
Seeing how I’m with Dreamhost, and have been for a few years now, they allow me to register/renew a domain every year. I owned a domain for testing that I wasn’t using anymore, so I decided to go ahead and register this domain. With that, I decided to separate the blog & family photos from the ministry website, and keep them as two separate entities. That’s not to say that my life isn’t ministry, but having a blog apart from the main site gives me the freedom & flexibility to toy around with designs, and other things. Along with the change in domains, I’ve also decided to drop Movable Type and switch to WordPress, since all I plan on doing is simple blogging over here. Plus, given the fact that a lot of the apps I use are written in PHP, it only made sense to use a platform that was compatible (as opposed to CGI/Perl).
That’s about it. Enjoy the new location & look. It’s still under construction, as I learn my way around WordPress, so look for things to change here & there. Also, be on the lookout for a change on the Trailblazin Ministries side of things in the coming weeks. God bless!
What happened to Urbanwordz.com?! I bet that’s what you’re wondering as you look at this site right now, but don’t fret. I basically decided that it was time for UrbanWordz to close its doors and finally merge with Trailblazin Ministries so as to bring my two sites together. You see, a lot of what I talk about on my blog pertains to ministry and faith based issues, so why not make it a part of that site so that the content can be shared and have a more prominent position.
So, what I did was redo the template and make it a subdomain of Trailblazinministries.com. It now has the same template as TM, aside from changing the sidebar to have blog information, as you can clearly see on the right. I also moved the photo gallery over to be a subdomain and use the same template. That’s it! That’s all I did.
With that done, it is my plan to hopefully blog more as I share my life, thoughts and wisdom (if you can call it that). It’s also ironic that this resurrection of sorts comes on Resurrection Sunday. Christ is definitely King and reigns from on high. I’ll leave you with that; God bless!
This title seemed appropriate when deciding to write this tonight; I have a good friend whom I have known for years, and since the last time I’ve seen them, they have gone through quite a bit that has really tried their faith. This friend has gone from being in college to being homeless for a time, to more recently engaging in a homosexual relationship which they are now trying to see their way out of.
Through all of this, I have prayed for this friend day & night. They have been through so much that they really don’t know what to believe or who to believe except for God. They have been burned by the church and have yet to find a new church home because of all the confusion. I offered to help them find a local church that teaches the bible, but they said they weren’t ready for that just yet. I then offered to disciple them personally, but gave every excuse in the book to not do it.
I’ll admit that I’m discouraged because it seems like there is nothing I can do except for pray. They profess Christ but are unwilling to take the steps to get back in fellowship with Him, even with the help of a friend. Knowing that they know better I can’t help but to get angry and upset at them, but I do my best to be patient and let love shine through.
Hopefully they will want to get it together before it’s too late. I’d hate for them to possibly not truly know Christ even though I’ve shared the Law and the gospel with them. I guess all I can do in the meantime is keep praying for them day & night and be there when they’re ready to turn back to the Father…
Well the time had finally come for my family to move to Texas and boy was it an interesting one for us all! It started off wild and ended just as crazy. Like any story, let’s start from the beginning…
The plan for the move was to pack up Friday (with a professional moving company) and then hit the road early Saturday morning on our way to the lone star state. That wasn’t exactly what happened though, which was just the start of the adventure. For starters, the movers showed up an hour late after giving us a window of 8-10am; they pulled up at 11am with a rented truck from Enterprise. After signing a grip of paperwork and deciding to let them still do the job, even though we felt uneasy about them. They told us that it would only take 5-6 hours, but that turned into 11 or 12 hours, with them not driving off until 1am Saturday. Oh yeah, all of our stuff didn’t even fit on the truck, so a few things had to be left behind at the house, including some clothes of ours. Luckily we were able to put the clothes in the trunk of Robin’s car, which was being delivered to us in Texas.
Now remember, it was our goal to leave early Saturday morning, but we were to dog tired to get on the road and drive. We ended up postponing the trip until Sunday for the same time so that we could fully rest for the long road ahead (literally). We spent the day cleaning the excess mess they left behind, finding a place for our left behind stuff, and just spending a final day with my parents.
Early Sunday morning (5am) we got on the road. Before that I felt terribly nauseous and sick, but I knew it was just my nerves and that it would leave after driving for a while. After getting out of Jacksonville I started feeling better and was good to go, especially with the kids sound asleep. The morning drive was good until Ryan had an accident after crossing the South Carolina border. After that little incident we kept cruising until we were ready to stop and eat breakfast. Once we were full we got back on the road and kept a routine of only stopping for gas and/or a lunch break. We got to our destination for the night in Birmingham, Alabama (actually Homewood). We had a very nice hotel room there that my cousin got us a GREAT discount on, since he works for Marriott down in Atlanta ($189 room for only $39).
After a semi-restful night, I felt sick again before getting back on the road; once I started driving I was okay again. From Birmingham, it was our goal to get to Austin by nightfall. We left early enough to beat the morning traffic, which ended up saving lots of time; listening to Tom Joyner, we found out that the roads were backed up pretty good. Even though I woke up feeling tired, I felt great on the road; especially in the morning, I only wanted to stop for gas and keep going. It was inspiring to finally cross and see the Mississippi River, entering the midwest officially, what a wondrous sight to see. We got to Dallas around 5pm and hit the Monday evening traffic, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We made it to our hotel in Round Rock, which was even bigger (and cheaper @ only $35). I had driven the whole way and brought my family safely to our new hometown.
The real fun began the next morning when it came time to get down to business. #1 We had to get money orders to pay for the house (security deposit and first month’s rent) and the movers. That alone caused the rest of our day to be insane. Due to bank ATM rules, we couldn’t get money orders for more than $400 (per day) and that was NOT an option. So we opened our account with Bank of America hoping to wire money from our old bank. That didn’t work either because it would take 24-72 hours to transfer. Luckily, our credit union back home has shared banking with other unions, so we were able to get the money for the house. By this time it was 1:30pm and ready for the movers to show up. We had to then find a local Western Union to get money for the movers, since we had the same issue getting money from our Detroit bank. Anyway, the movers showed up around 2:45pm and didn’t start bringing in our stuff until about 4:30pm (because of the money issue). They didn’t even finish until after 10pm and without assembling our bed correctly.
All in all, we were very tired and just glad to be home. *In my Ty Pennington voice* “Welcome home Johnson family; welcome home.” Even though we were pissed off with the movers, we were glad to have our stuff and to be able to sleep in our own beds. That’s it, that’s the story of our move to Austin. Would I make the trip again? NO!!! Not even for the job, but I feel blessed to be here.
This is another test of my phone using Phone SharpMT. Let’s hope this works.
As you can see, I’ve finally gotten the new design of UrbanWordz up and running. It’s not 100% done, as I still have many minor changes to make here & there, but I thought that it was complete enough to allow the world to see it, instead of looking at my naked site. In terms of the color scheme, I went away from the orange & browns from my previous design in order to go back to my favorite color, which is blue. I am a lot more comfortable designing with that color (at least for my own sites), and I was able to gain quite a bit of inspiration from Jennifer @ Lifeinreturn.com in regard to the simplicity of its layout. I also got a bit of inspiration from Jesse @ PlasticMind.com in terms of styling the date & things like that.
Now, before I did any of that, I started in Photoshop designing a new banner for the site. I really didn’t have any particular direction I wanted to go with it, so I just started toying around with some photos I had on the computer and that’s what I ended up with when I was done. In my eyes, it wasn’t anything particularly fancy, but I liked it (and so did Robin). After finishing that, I then went in and coded the whole site, which didn’t take too long. I basically spliced together some old HTML code I had used before with some new code to make it fit my needs. This is what I ended up with at around 11 PM last night.
Like I said, I really didn’t have much in mind when putting the banner together, but now that the site is done, I can see a lot of symbolism and significance in it, which I will now share with you. Of course, there is the primary picture of me on the right, but I will deal with that part later. The background imagery is somewhat faded as if it were more of a dream state or a reflection of my thoughts and what I enjoy. In the very middle, you will see the Scriptures, which represents my desire to keep God (Jesus Christ) as the center and focus of my entire life. It is my ultimate desire to please Him and keep Him first in all that I do. Then on the left, there is my family, which is probably the most cherished thing I have in this life, next to Jesus Christ. Without them, I wouldn’t be the man that I am today and they continue to push me closer to God so that I can lead and guide them on the path to righteousness. Then, behind the picture of me is a faded image of a turntable, which represents my love for music, more specifically holy hip-hop & Christian rap. All three of those things are my primary passions in life, and what I spend the majority of my time thinking about, so the banner depicts that.
There’s a lot more symbolism in the picture of me, at least in the way I picture it. First and foremost, you cannot see my face because it is not about me, LaRosa Johnson, but it is about the One who lives inside of me, which is Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. So, I want my life to be more about Him and less about me and who I am; in other words, my life and who I am is to be a reflection of Christ. Next, you’ll notice the 1-1-Six hat that I’m rockin’ in the picture, which is to let people know that I am unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God to salvation to all those who believe. That’s what I’m all about, and that’s what Trailblazin Ministries is about as well. It’s my desire to see the Great Commission fulfilled as Jesus Christ laid it before us in Matthew 28:19-20. This is again reiterated in my Jesus piece (my necklace) and the Christian t-shirt I’m wearing (RockNation). Furthermore, my wedding ring signifies that I am both a married man (to my lovely wife Robin), as well as betrothed to Christ (as a member of His bride, the church) anticipating our marriage at His return. Finally, there is my watch, which embodies the fact that we need to be aware of the times; not so much in the fact that we are in the End Times or anything, but simply knowing that our time here is short and time is one of those things that we can never recover once it has been lost. Time is precious and we need to treat it as such.
So, that’s what the banner is all about, and that’s what I’m all about. It’s pretty refreshing to look at that, to be honest; it invigorates me and gives me a renewed vision and focus for this new year. I want to continue to be more like Christ and grow closer to Him by being what I symbolize in the banner above. I just pray that I am a reflection of Him in all that I do. I designed this site with a purpose, albeit unintentionally, just as God designed me with purpose. I must do His will.
As a disclaimer, I’m still working on the new site (or maybe I’m not and I’m just lying to you)… whatever… maybe I’ll work on something next week
Anyway, yesterday we got our Christmas bonus and I just thought I’d share with you what I purchased with my money. *Drum roll* I bought a MacArthur Study Bible (NKJV)!!! *Cheers & clapping resound* Being serious again, I decided to pick this up because I have heard a lot of people on Holy Culture Radio (HCR.fm) talk about how good it is, as well as on Way of the Master Radio and so on. Knowing that I’m really go in a different direction with my theology, and knowing that John MacArthur is a sound biblical teacher, I figured I’d give it a chance. So, I went and purchased the last copy of the updated & revised version that Books-A-Million had. It was opened, but lucky for me, it was still in perfect condition. Needless to say, I’m very anxious to get this home and start reading some of his notes as I study Scripture. It is my prayer that I can help use this new tool to help motivate me to get into the Word more (although I know it won’t, it’s a matter of me willing myself to do it).
Then, with my own funds, I also picked up an ESV translation of the Bible; I have an electronic version, but I still like the feeling of having a hard copy to hold & read away from a computer or PDA screen. I also bought my son a new Bible for Christmas, so I’m looking forward to being able to share the Scriptures with him in this manner, especially since it’s a full Bible and not just Bible stories.
God is good, I must say that. There are so many other things that I could have spent this money on, but I’m encouraged to know that I spent it on something worthwhile; and in the midst of doing so, two people have blessed me with some of the items that I had thought about buying with my Christmas bonus. God is good, true indeed.
I’m sick of the current design of UrbanWordz… so to help inspire me to come up with something new, I’m taking off the CSS styling for my site and going completely naked. Enjoy the nakedness until I come back with something snazzy & much improved.
Oh yeah, I’m back on MovableType too if you hadn’t already noticed.
Just wanted to drop a quick note to those that care… I’m in the process of redesigning the Jesus4Life Ministries website (again). I feel that this design will be a lot more condusive to what I want to be able to do and it’ll allow me to expand indefinitely in the future. Keep us in prayer though. I’ll drop a line when the new design is unveiled (no shades of blue). Also, I hope to have some big things coming down the J4L pipeline real soon, so definitely keep a knee down for us. Aight? Word! ‘Til next update, I’m out! Turtle Power! (see previous entry).
P.S. -> Uploaded some pictures of Ryan & Leila to the photo gallery. Click the picture of Leila on the sidebar to see the rest of the pictures.
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