The World According To Chris Brewer

Today is a tough day for the community of Rainier and for everyone who had hoped there would be a positive outcome to the search for Gabe Triplett.

The Daily News has reported tonight that the body found in Goble Falls this weekend is indeed that of Gabe. Authorities were able to make a positive identification based on dental records.

From TDN’s website:

The body recovered Saturday from Goble Creek has been positively identified through dental records as Gabriel Triplett, Lt. Gerry Simmons of the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday.

Triplett, 23, of Rainier was reported as a missing person Feb. 28.

The Oregon medical examiner found no sign of trauma in an autopsy performed Monday, Simmons said. A complete report from the medical examiner will be available in about three weeks.

It is terribly sad to hear that the search for Gabe has ended in such a fashion, but let’s be thankful for those who gave of their time and money to search for him — the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and the numerous volunteers, many of whom were my high school classmates and great people.

Please be in prayer for the Triplett family as they now have to endure the second death in their family in four years. This has to be terribly hard on them and my every prayer is with them right now.

Thank you to those of you who have commented, written in and relayed that you were praying and thinking of the Tripletts during such a time as this. Although I didn’t know Gabe well, we had talked and communicated on many occasions in high school and I remember him as a great guy. May he rest in peace and may the Lord bless his family tonight.

UPDATE 4/16 - Leslie Slape from the Daily News has linked to the 2004 Standout Grads story about Gabe, and also the original story about the 2003 car crash he was involved in.

The following is a comment on my previous Gabe Triplett post, by The Daily News (Longview, Washington’s newspaper) Leslie Slape:

A man’s body was found April 12 in Goble Creek near the falls. The Oregon Medical Examiner hopes to make an identification by Tuesday using dental records. The sheriff’s office said it is a white man possibly in his 20s to 30s.

Thank you for the update, Leslie…I had contemplated putting this on my blog so people could continue to be abreast of what is happening and to pray about it. Kudos to you and the TDN staff for the informative reporting on Gabe’s disappearance.

The full Daily News story online is here, for those of you interested in reading it.

Let us all be reminded to not jump to conclusions about anything until a positive identification is made on the body. Instead, let’s lift Gabe and the Triplett family up in prayer, and give thanks to and for those who have been involved in the search for Gabe thus far. That is the best thing we as the public can do while we sit, wait and hope for a positive outcome to this situation.

Rainier is a very tight-knit community and this is a story that has touched many, if not all of us with close ties to that small town in Northwest Oregon. I know from a personal standpoint, my heart is heavy for the Triplett family and all they have had to go through over the past few years. My prayers and thoughts have been with them since Gabe’s disappearance and will be for quite some time.

My calendar just got a bit more full.

Next week, I’ll be flying from Springfield to Las Vegas next Monday at 8PM to visit with my dad for a bit and pick up my new car. I’ll be driving back a 1997 Acura 3.2TL, and it will effectively replace my 1996 Chrysler Cirrus that has fallen on hard times.

Only problem is, I absolutely hate flying, even though I’ve done it more times than I can count. Worst flight was from Norfolk to Baltimore, then Baltimore to Ramstein, then Ramstein to Qatar, then Qatar to Baghdad. Ugh. Thirteen hours in the air over the course of three days full of delays. That solidified my hate for airplanes. B.A. Baracus has my pity.

Anyway, back to reality…here is a photo of the new vehicle, which I thoroughly and emphatically thank God for.

On top of that, I received a letter today from JRA welcoming me into the choir and asking me to be ready to sing April 27. My Tuesday nights will be occupied from here on out, and I’ll more than likely be singing in the 10:00 and 11:30 services at church. Sounds like great fun…Rich is in the choir too and he’s a tenor above me. I asked him to kick me in the nether regions so I could join his section and not have to sit by people I don’t know yet.

The choir should be a lot of fun, we’ll be performing patriotic songs at I Love America 2008 and also travel to sing the National anthem at a St. Louis Cardinals game. (Gotta try to snag some autographs there too.)

Speaking of baseball, I am also trying to order tickets for the Royals-Mariners weekend series July 11-13 up in KC. I’d love to go up and see the M’s play…the cost of tickets for KC is absurdly low compared to what it was in Seattle. I guess KC fans are real gluttons for punishment.

That’s all for now, but Cocoa says hello:

Uh…this speaks for itself.

I would like to extend a request here on my blog that we all be in prayer for Pastor Gary Langley, from Windward Worship Center in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Pastor Gary is the moderator of a Christian forum I visit entitled Jude 2 and I have had an opportunity to know him well.

Here is his prayer request verbatim, as posted on Jude 2 Wednesday afternoon:

I spent the morning with a Cardiologist reviewing my recent test results. This Friday at ten a.m. I am scheduled for an Angiogram and very likely the insertion of a stent (or stents) to improve blood flow to an area of my heart. The Cardiologist is pretty sure I will need one stent, and feels normal function can be restored… He said I should feel like a new man a day or two after the procedure.

I am nervous about any invasive medical produre, but excited that I may have my energy and endurance restored! I hope things can be fixed with as few stents as possible, since my insurance/HMO covers them @ 50% and they cost $4,000 each!

Prayer covering Friday will be greatly appreciated.

Let’s all hold Pastor Gary in our prayers during the procedure and recovery.

(This editorial is in response to the COGOP Finance Committee’s report to the upcoming General Assembly, which will be meeting in Nashville, TN in Summer 2008).

Shame on you, Finance Committee of the Church of God of Prophecy.

Your latest report to the upcoming General Assembly has many ministers, members and lay members up in arms about your new proposals, and rightfully so.

It is not practical to ask of your churches to send ten percent of their total tithes to International Offices, AFTER the individual members of those churches has given their tithes to their local and state leadership. In doing this you shortchange the local pastors of what is rightfully theirs. Unless the International Offices is a church in and of itself, and unless IO has a direct hand in the day-to-day matters of the local church, it is un-Biblical to ask tithes and rob individual churches of money that should be supporting the pastor.

If anything, the pastor should tithe back to the local congregation, since that’s where his income is coming from. The Word says to tithe to those over you in the Lord. Accountability to everyone in the church is necessary, so tithing to the local church would also address the problems you have stated in your report of your belief that some pastors are not tithing faithfully.

The financial strain on smaller, more rural congregations is profound, and by the revised financial guidelines your committee has proposed, the strain would be nearly impossible to overcome. I cannot support the current document proposed as a Biblical guideline for cheerful, responsible giving.

It is impossible to build a physical building from the top down — laws of physics and simple science dictate so. So why try to build a spiritual institution the same way? Why is there so little focus on local churches coming from International Headquarters? I’m not saying HQ has to get involved with every single church, but for your own organization’s sake, please cede more control over administrative and financial decisions to your local church bodies and state/regional leadership.

Also, I am concerned that you paint with too broad a brush when speaking of ministers not paying their tithes. Since when has it been Biblical for people to answer to man instead of God for not paying tithes faithfully? In my humble opinion, your approach is too harsh and you risk alienating those who are paying tithes and giving offerings cheerfully.

The COGOP Financial Committee is not the Internal Revenue Service. Demanding tithes from ministers and churches with an iron fist, is about as logical as asking a penguin to fly.

All in all, my personal belief is that the COGOP as an organization is in need of a massive overhaul. There are serious flaws in the structure of the finances, polity, and overall structure of the church. If we wish for the COGOP to be relevant to ministry today and tomorrow, we need to stop adapting yesterday’s style to everything and move forward in grace and spiritual liberty.

Although I am not a current member of COGOP, my prayers and well wishes are with the organization and its members, and I wish to see the church grow like never before.

But for that to be done, there have to be some changes. Major changes.

Sorry, so sorry, so so sorry for not updating over the past couple days. There are a few things that are new in my life.

The new developments in my life consist of the following:

- I joined the James River Assembly choir. I have been classified as a second tenor. They needed tenors and I’ve been going to the choir practices for the past couple weeks with Rich Schultz. Boy does my voice ever hurt afterward. It’s been GREAT to meet the folks there and get to know some of the people. I look forward to what’s to come.

- Speaking of music, I am currently composing my second piece for an upcoming EP or album I plan to share with the general public by the end of the year. I don’t know what it will be called yet, but it will be kinda like a soft rap to a heavily sampled section of Grace Jones’ “Don’t Cry, It’s Only The Rhythm.” I absolutely adore Fairlight CMI synthesizers and this track drips with it (and David Gilmour’s guitar work too, I might add). It’s 1985 all over again.

- I’m still apartment hunting. I don’t know when I’ll move out but it won’t be anytime in April.

- We’re expecting nasty weather tomorrow. Oh Joy!

I came across this excellent read on friend Lee Hoover’s website this morning. I think he puts the issue of Christians and voting in a context better than I’ve ever heard before.

I received an invitation on my Facebook page the other day that said, “Come help the Republicans win the battle against the Democrats!” This made me chuckle a little bit. Is it really a battle? Is there a war going on between the Republicans and Democrats? I’ve never been into politics much, but this year, this time around, I am. And what I’ve found it is that I, as a Christian, am automatically made to feel as if I should support the Republican Party. Well, I don’t agree. I mean, why? Was Jesus a Republican?

Read the rest here. It’s awesome.

Man…the way the last two major sporting event championships have gone — the Super Bowl and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship — have me eagerly anticipating the NBA Finals and baseball World Series. We’ve had an absolutely unbelievable year in terms of historic championship games, and it’s only April.

Remember David Tyree’s catch in the Super Bowl? Well, now Mario Chalmers of the University of Kansas has equaled Tyree in terms of championship heroism. Chalmers drained a 3-pointer with two seconds left in regulation to tie the game, as his Jayhawks went on to stun the University of Memphis in overtime for this year’s college basketball championship. It was one of the most exciting games I’ve ever watched, along with this year’s Super Bowl.

Of course they shouldn’t have even been in a position to tie. Memphis choked big time, missing four of five free throws in the final two minutes. Unbelievable. One more made FT would have given them the game without a need for OT.

We’re in for a great rest of 2008 in sports.

I had a wonderful phone conversation with Melissa Atchley last night, er, early this morning. Great friend of mine from my days in Virginia, and it was great to be able to keep her company while she was driving home from her alma mater James Madison University. We reminisced about the great times we had with friends at the former Lakeside Church, and where our lives are now and what the heck we’re going to do with them from here forward.

It was good to be able to catch up. IMing is good but phone conversations are better every once in awhile. I’m not a big phone talker but sometimes it’s good to talk on the phone.

Let me know if you made it home safely Mel!