THIS BLOG IS VOID!!!

I will never again post anything on this blog. It is to much trouble. If you want to stay in touch with me and see photos and videos from my life, i suggest you get a facebook acount and add me as a freind. Good day.

The Bee Brothers Ep. 1

Here is the first episode of "The Bee Brothers". It is a talk show about random topics. It is VERY stupid, but I think it is relatively funny. I hope you enjoy it, because this isn't the last episode. It is only the beginning.

A 50 Foot Drop

Well most of you alredy know about my accident. Well this is going to be the story how i remember.

There I was at the McQuades house after Sunday night church. Well I was a little bored so I decided to climb this huge pine treel. (It turned out to be a 50 foot tall pine tree). Well I stuggled to the top, and i finaly mad it. my head was actually over the top branch. This is when the tree started swaying from side to side ( I did not do this intintionaly!). Well on one of the sway I felt and heard a loud, "SNAP"! Yes, the branch had broken and i was on my way to the ground. Actualy, after the first few feet of falling i think i got knocked out because i don't remember the fall or the rough landing. I later found out that I had been knocked out for 30 seconds to a minute. Well the rest was simple. I was carried on a blanket away from the woods and toward the house. From then on is saw nothing but the sky and scielings. When i got to the hospital, I was given a cat-scan and found out the my lungs had been bruised pretty bad. They sent me directly to ICU, where I spent the night. The next day my lungs were well enough that i could be moved to a regular ward. I got much better and was reased the next day. So, in all, I spent 42 hours in the hospital. To top it all off, I missed the first and second day of school.

Here are some pictures that i stole from Curan's blog.

When we got to Kiev we noticed that there were no traffic rules.



There were, however, realy good cars. (like this Bently)



When we arrived at the camp everyone was really glad to see us.







We met a lot of really nice people







But there are always the wierd ones too.















When it was finally time to go we were all very sad.





But needless to say, we all slept well on the train.





And at last we made it home to our family.



(Matt got bored one day while we were gone and decided to play around with his hair)

Cleaner version of Canon by Funtwo

This is my favorite video on youtube! Enjoy!

Toddler jumping

A Cool Crash From January (It isn't fake)

The Works

Hello everyone. Yes, I'm still alive, even though I haven't posted since December. Right now I will basically be telling you what has been going on recently.

Books: I am still reading tons of books; mainly fiction, but a sometimes read history books, but not very often. I recently have read Eragon, and Eldest, which are very strange, but exiting, books about Dragons and magic and the like. I read Tom Sawyer for the third time. And I also read the last Harry potter book. The Harry Potter books aren't the best series but after reading six of the books I can't help but want to read the last one, which is coming out in July. This ends the book section.

Injuries: Fortunately there has been only one injury lately. Unfortunately I am the victim of this injury. While playing soccer with the Germans and with Matthew, I ran up to the ball and tried to head the ball away. Well Matthew, who was on the other team came running up and also went for the header. Mathew who had more momentum sent me flying backward and I landed on my wrist. At first I thought it was broken so we went to the chiropractor who also thought it was broken and sent me to get an X-ray. As it turned out, my wrist wasn't broken but there was some damage to the soft tissue. We took the X-ray back to Doctor Eric, the chiropractor and what he saw was that my wrist has been out of joint for a while. When I say a while I don't mean a month I mean 7 years. Because seven years ago, when I was eight, I tried doing a back flip on the swings and broke my wrist. Well the stupid doctors didn't even notice that my wrist was out of joint! So for seven years I have lived with a wrist that has had to operate while it was messed up. Doctor Eric then yanked it back in place and my wrist is in recovery mode. Needles to say, this makes playing baseball, for a couple of weeks, out of the question. Thankfully no one else has been hurt.

Piano: My piano continues as normal except my wrist prevents me from practicing for a while. My teacher is an amazing pianist and a very encouraging teacher. She also is very demanding in my practicing and will let me know if she didn't like the results. Not in a mean way of course but firmly.

Sports: As you probably already know, our baseball season has started. All three of us are on a high school age level, and we also hope to make the all-star team later on. This year’s regional tournament will be held in Italy and hour or two outside of Rome. We are very exited about this and hope to go tour Rome after the tournament. Matthew is also playing JV Soccer for the Ramstein high school. His season will end soon.

For now this will have to do post will have to do. My mom is kind of stressed right now and she need help cleaning the house. Chuse.

This is my recently finished thesis paper.

Beyond What We See
A Christian View of Fantasy
By: Derek J. Belschner


Try this experiment. Walk into a typical Christian bookstore and ask the clerk, “Where is your fantasy section?”

More than likely, she’ll stare at you with a baffled look and say, “Oh I’m sorry this is a Christian book store. We don’t carry books full of lies. Here, why don’t you read a nice G.A Henty book? You’ll find they are full of historical facts.”

This paper will endeavor to prove that this view of fantasy is unbiblical. Although many Christians denigrate fantasy, Christians should be the primary promoters of good fantasy. In this paper, we will first consider evil and its appropriate inclusion in stories. Secondly, we will reflect on how fantasy is often metaphor, and how God uses metaphor. In conclusion we will consider our previous arguments.

First of all, fantasy scares many Christians because the stories contain evil characters such as wizards, trolls, orcs, dragons, witches, hags, and dark spirits. These people also cite biblical references such as Deut.18:14, “The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, The Lord your God has not permitted you to do so.”(Also see: Lev. 19:26, 2 Kings 17:17 and 2 Chron. 33:6). Do these Scriptures mean that Christians shouldn’t read anything with magic involved?

Evil is to a story as a foundation is to a building. Can a story be successful without a villain? What would be super about a Superman without Lex Luther? All Superman would have to do is help old ladies across the street.

Evil surrounds us and comes against us everyday. So, why should we exclude evil from our books? Christians should accept evil in our books as a tool to expose our own faults. We see examples of this in Narnia. Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader knows nothing of dragons because he had read all the wrong types of books. If he had read about dragons he would have been prepared and wouldn’t have been so foolish as to sleep in the dead dragon’s lair. Christians today need to be prepared to face the evil enemy. Christians can not conquer the enemy without knowing what weapons they have, what tactics they use, and what ground they fight on. Fantasy can teach Christians these details on how and what to fight.

Likewise consider a story with a vampire that pranced around flowery meadows chasing butterflies. Would this story seem at all strange? It should. For all stories have principles of right and wrong. A story about a good vampire that enjoys bright, beautiful meadows violates our beliefs that vampires belong in haunted houses while little girls should be out chasing the butterflies.

Secondly, many Christians fear the invisible, intangible, and immeasurable. Magic scares them most of all because magic overturns what people today view as real and true. And, as we all know, no one enjoys being wrong. These people fear the unknown and will do anything to be allowed to stay in their little imaginary idea of reality.

When someone thinks of fantasy the word magic will probably pop into their heads. Although the Bible prohibits sorcery, that doesn’t mean that magic shouldn’t be in our stories. Magic can actually picture God’s power and the supernatural. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf has power and performs magic, as we call it. But it is just a painting of how Christ has powers that are unexplainable and supernatural. Magic is a glimpse of the reality of the other world, the world hidden from our eyes.

Fantasy usually contains thing that are unexplainable and immeasurable. Christians should not fear such things. Fantasy is actually more real than reality as we know it, and it also teaches us to use and to think in metaphor. Christians need to realize that God communicates with us, almost always, in metaphor. The Bible is full of metaphor. In the New Testament Jesus taught in parables, which are stories. These stories frequently use metaphor to communicate to the people in a way that they could understand. In the Old Testament God promised that the head of the serpent would be crushed. This, however, didn’t mean God was going to literally crush the head of a snake. It was a metaphor meaning that He would deliver His people from the oppression of the Evil One, or Satan.

Some people today claim that metaphor disguises the meaning of important messages. Like a fog, they might say. But wait? What did they just do? They used a metaphor to communicate that metaphors put a screen over ideas or messages.

Christians need to correctly discern what is good, true, and beautiful in literature. Plain, bare facts are actually less true than the full picture of the world. If used in the right way, magic can also be good. Fantasy should not merely be a story but should also be used to teach us to think in metaphor, which is God’s way of communication.

The question of what stories we should read has been debated for many centuries. But maybe we have been asking all the wrong questions. Consider the use of a historical book that merely fills our head with trivial facts. Any four-year-old can learn facts. Hopefully in the future we will embrace fantasy as an asset to the Christian community.


12-21-06

THESIS PAPER COMING SOON! SHOULD FANTASY BE CONSIDERED A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE?

(While you are waiting, here are some pictures I found on the web.)

WE WIN!!

Football is finally over. But instead of walking away in shame because we lost every game, we end the season in glory. Our team had 8 wins and 0 losses. Which means that we won the trophy and three bottles of sparkling cider, which we promptly sprayed everywhere. I was the first one however to think of drinking it.

Over all this year has been a good year for the Belschner.

The Little Sisters

Here are some recent pictures of my little sisters. Enjoy.

Football Pictures

here are some pictures of my recent footballgame