Dear God:

My name is Christopher Ray Brewer. I am twenty-three years of age, and I recently moved to Republic, Missouri. I have been a believer of yours since I was a kid, and I have only recently become a more devoted follower.

First off, please allow me to tell you that the Ozarks is beautiful country. I love those hills on Highway 13 toward Bolivar, you did a really nice job with those. And the sunsets here at night are gorgeous. I’ll bet Jesus, Paul and Moses are all sitting on their wraparound porches on Gold Street in Heaven sipping lemonade while watching the Midwest sunset.

I do have an area of concern I would like to mention. Ever since I have moved down here, or more specifically, beginning in January of this year, 1,975 years after your Son ascended into heaven and still hasn’t come back to the earth yet — the weather patterns around here have been a bit disturbing.

You may recall when your Royal Telephone switchboard was swamped with people from Missouri and points beyond, kindly asking that you spare their houses from tornadic destruction on January 8 and 9. Only a month later, those same people asked that you please direct branches to fall away from their places of residence and employment during a massive ice storm. And only two weeks ago, you received many requests from residents in low-lying areas that you please supernaturally protect their property from flooding during some massive rainstorms.

Now today, I am writing you because the local weather stations, who try many times unsuccessfully to predict what you are going to do with the clouds and wind direction, are today reporting that you are planning to strike multiple areas of Missouri with tornadoes once again. This has many of your believers, including myself, perplexed and once again requesting assistance from your sovereign almighty omnipotent power.

Lord, I know I haven’t been the best at following your commands. In fact yesterday I didn’t even make it to church. I am very sorry for that and I promise to make it up to you. But for the sake of myself and everyone else who calls your name in desperate and not so desperate times, please spare us the wrath of these horrific storms.

I also understand you are supposed to throw 2-3 inches of rain our way. Could you please make sure that doesn’t affect us as well?

You are absolutely the best, and thank you for everything you have done for me. Even though I don’t understand why you do what you do sometimes, you’re in control and ultimately I resign myself to that. I just wanted to make a simple request for all my fellow Ozarkers who have been hit hard by the weather over this winter/spring period, and we would all appreciate if you could send a little relief on a day in which we are expected to struggle with the elements once again.

Can’t wait to meet you some day. I look forward to it.

Your devoted follower,
Chris Brewer

Never thought I’d say Cris Birch would get married before me, but today it became a reality. Cris is one of my and Jason’s best friends from back home in Washington state, and today was his and Rachael’s (formerly Baysinger) wedding day. They married at 5 PM Pacific time tonight at New Horizons Church in Washougal, WA.

I had the privilege of sharing my congratulations over the phone to Cris earlier today while he was prepping for the wedding. He shared how happy he was that he was able to, as hard as it was, wait for the wedding night to share their love in the way that the good Lord designed for married couples to. To me that spoke volumes that one of my good friends honored the one he loves enough to wait and respect her in that way. I hope I can be able to do the same for my future wife.

As a testimony to how mature Cris is for his age, he’s 20…and Rachael is one week older than me. (I was born July 20, 1984.) He has definitely gone through many trials in his young lifetime, and it is great to have grown up alongside him and see how far he has come. His faith has only become stronger and God has greatly rewarded his faithfulness by providing him a great companion.

It is wonderful to see a young couple who has their priorities in order — God first, then each other. For putting God first, I am confident they both will be blessed in their marriage far more than they could ever imagine.

Congrats Cris and Rachael, and all the best to you guys on today and throughout your life together!!!

From FOX News:

ATLANTA — A federal judge has sided with a Georgia man whose satirical Web site likens Wal-Mart to the Holocaust.

U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. in Atlanta rejected Wal-Mart’s claims that Charles Smith’s Web site and satirical products violated the company’s trademark. In an 87-page order, Batten said Smith’s products qualified as protected noncommercial speech because his goal was to criticize Wal-Mart, not to make a profit from his products.

The 50-year-old computer store owner from Conyers, Ga., said he was “elated” by the ruling in the two-year-old case.

“It’s great,” he said. “I’m relieved. Whenever you go into litigation against such a big company, you never know the outcome.”

He set up his Walocaust Web site, and later a Wal-Qaeda Web site, because he says Wal-Mart is “taking over the world.”

Wal-Qaeda. That’s awesome. Shame on you, Wal-Mart, for bullying some guy who created a site that really doesn’t even come close to infringing on copyright and actually posted a link to you.

Salon.com put it best:

Hey Wal-Mart, do you understand the legal definition of “trademark infringement”? For Smith to be violating your mark, consumers would need to be confused by the similarity of his logo to yours. Do you think that’s possible — that someone seeing a Walocaust or Wal-Qaeda logo might reasonably conclude that it’s an official Wal-Mart production? If so, you must have either a very low opinion of your customers, or of your brand. Not a good sign.

All in all, congrats to Mr. Smith for prevailing over Goliath in this case.

Now on a more personal level, I am dumbstruck by the number of Wal-Marts I see here in the Springfield, Missouri area. The city has 150,000 people and five Wal-Marts spread around the city, as seen on the Google Map below. (For comparison’s sake the surrounding 30-mile radius incorporates about 400,000 people and has 15 Wal-Marts.)

Here is a comparison that will leave your jaw dropped to the floor. Portland, Oregon, the major city that I lived near (to be more precise, I lived in a suburb of Portland called Hillsboro), boasts just under 500,000 people. (Hillsboro and Beaverton are included in the 30-mile radius that incorporates 2 million people, for comparison’s sake.)

Now look at THIS map.

Stunning, isn’t it? A metro area of 2 million people with seven Wal-Marts, and a large town with a metro area of 400,000 with fifteen. The outlying towns of Springfield — Nixa, Republic, Ozark, Monett, etc. all have populations of about 10,000 and all have their own SUPERCENTER. That blows my mind. A town of comparable size in the Northwest would be lucky to have a Fred Meyer.

I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s the geography, maybe it’s the economics but the disparity of Wal-Marts per capita between Portland and here is kinda shocking, to me at least.

I’ve decided to delay the bi-weekly podcast until tomorrow (normally it goes up every other Wednesday at noon Central time).

Instead of having a guest this week, I feel led to share a few minutes of something the Lord did for me, a testimony of sorts…and an encouraging story of how I was brought out of a bad place spiritually that was affecting me mentally.

Didn’t want to type it because I usually proofread and change some stuff I type before I publish it. I’ll record it all vocally instead, and I’ll record it straight to the website with no editing…so you get my unscripted thoughts and feelings. Hopefully it will be a blessing to all who hear it.

So tune in tomorrow, noon CST, for Transmission 4 of Here’s What’s Brewin’, with guest Chris Brewer.

As Emily Rittman, another local blogger and KSPR reporter, so aptly named her blog, TV people are indeed people too, and I’ll show you a good example of that in just a second.

Let’s set the background here:

Stephanie Stricklen is a reporter and anchor for KGW, the NBC affiliate in my old stomping grounds of Portland, Oregon. She’s one of the better anchors on NewsChannel 8 in my humble opinion, and it’s kinda odd that I first remember her as the reporter who had interviewed me at Rainier High School after a gun scare in 2000.

Who can forget those floods we had here in Missouri last week? They were simply devastating for scores of people. Homes lost, property damaged, but that all doesn’t compare to the lives that were lost. In a video link I am about to provide, Steph is reading the script from a VOSOT of the flooding during a 4:30 AM newscast, and then it cuts to a heart-wrenching soundbite of an Ohio firefighter who tried to rescue his wife then lost her.

Then…well, I’ll let you see what happens next.

With the video still rolling, and Steph being the only anchor in the building at the time (she described the whole thing in her KGW blog), you just hear about 10 seconds of dead silence while she tries to compose herself.

The way she maintained her composure and professionalism was a testimony to how well she does her job. But the emotional moment in and of itself was a perfect testimony to the fact that the news does affect the people who report it just the same, if not more, than it does the people who watch it.

(And for those of us photog/editor types, that’s exactly why we put at least 25 seconds of pad video at the end of the story.)