Defiance Review

Defiance is a true story that takes place in Russia during the Holocaust. Daniel Craig plays Tuvia Beilsky, a Russian Jew in the middle of the holocaust at first trying to save his brothers. After a while they run into more and more survivors and soon form a whole town in the forest that they are hiding in. It has a very good meaning to it for Jews and Christians alike, I wont spoil what it is but it is very interesting. It's amazing to see how the Jews were treated during the holocaust and how some of them would fight rather that die, this is truly worth seeing or renting.

Once again I will do the math: Action plus A True Story multiplied by Daniel Craig minus $12.50 Equals... a certainly good deal. I really could not find anything about this movie to complain about, it was just all around good.

Defiance Trailer

Multenomah Falls Hike

Last Sunday a few members of the Aloha Church of God Youth Group went hiking up Multenomah falls. It was cold and raining but it was one of the most fun hikes I have ever been on. On the way there we had the windows off of Garth's Jeep which made it freezing cold and wet with air rushing in. Who proposed such a thing? I did! We voted, and the vote was in favor of no windows on the way. of course after experiencing it everyone but me wanted the windows off on the way back. Multenomah Falls is very beautiful, a pinnacle of creation and a breathtaking sight! The hike was a little hard on the way but harder on the body on the way down, going uphill takes your breath away and going downhill puts pressure on your bones. It was about a mile each way so it was a pretty fair hike (many people would call it a walk but I wouldn't.) it was a very fun experience and if you haven't hiked up it then you should, and if you don't live in Oregon you should probably move to Oregon and hike up it.

Oregon Food Bank

Last Saturday a few members of the Aloha Church of God Youth Group volunteered at the Oregon Food Bank. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be, something about working is very calming. We scooped out two pounds of oatmeal from an eighteen hundred pound bag and then tied it and put it in a box. For the first thirty minuets of our two hour shift I helped Garth and a man named Darell (I think this is the correct spelling) with making boxes. I was then recruited into scooping because the team was one short, I used two cups to scoop rather than one to make it a bit faster and soon after a few other people did as well. On the top middle it shows how many people we fed how many meals were served and how many pounds were served, we served 311 people each!



The best three things about working there were A, the good feeling B, the hairnets and C, the fun. I would definitely recommend volunteering there whenever you can, the fun more than pays for the work, you could pay twenty dollars on a trip to the movies for two hours of entertainment or you could help others and get even more fun. That was certainly a good Saturday!

From a Name to a Number

Today I met a holocaust survivor at school named Alter Wiener. He has a book called From a Name to a Number, (Amazon link below) which tells his life story. He talks about all the horrors that go on in a concentration camp and about how he was transferred from camp to camp. He talked about running with his mother and two brothers from they're town to try and escape the Germans and then finding out that where they were fleeing to was already occupied by Germans. he and his mother and brothers returned to they're town and found they re own father half decomposed in a ditch and then his brother was carried off into a concentration camp, soon after that he was as well. He stayed in that camp for a little over 2 months and then he was transferred to another camp to build a highway. After that he was transferred again to another work camp near a work site for German women, he talked about how one woman risked he own life thirty different times just to give him a sandwich. her workplace had signs up all around saying things like "If you look one of the prisoners in the eye you will be executed" yet she gave him food.

After being relocated to another camp to build warehouses for the Nazis Russians liberated the camps and allowed the Jews three days to hunt Germans for revenge, Alter Wiener was too young to go hunting and the Russians had no food for the prisoners, many of them died but he survived and returned to Poland to find his family. Sadly after all he went through he found out his entire immediate family was dead (around 140 people) and all of his friends. However he didn't know if his brother was dead or not because he never heard about him until recently, a man approached him at a holocaust survivors of Oregon meeting and he said he worked for his father and at a work camp he had to throw Alter Wiener's brother into a furnace to dispose of the body, so after that he knew the fate of his family.

Now he is eighty two years old and he has a wife and children. Warner Pacific College gave him an honorary degree for speaking there and all the things he had to go through both physically and emotionally. He has now given his testimony at over four hundred and seventy places and his main points are that racism and sexism don't make any since and that no matter what group of people someone is in they still have good in they're hearts.


This is the Amazon link for his book:
http://www.amazon.com/Name-Number-Holocaust-Survivors-Autobiography/dp/1425997406

Taken Review

"I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want. If your looking for ransom I can tell you that I don't have money. But what I do have is a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that will be the end of it, I will not hunt you. but if you don't I will look for you, I will find you. And I will kill you,"

Taken is truly an amazing movie. Starring Liam Neeson who obviously plays some sort of assassin or soldier type. The "Bad Guys" in this movie made one very big mistake, they kidnapped Liam Neeson's Daughter. I won't spoil anything in the movie that isn't already spoiled in the trailer.

I would give taken a 4 and a half star rating, it was extremely good but still it wasn't extremely original, how many movies are about assassins now adays? but everything but that in the movie is incredible, and without that it wouldn't be the same as it is today. Just think, Action plus Movie multiplied by Liam Neeson minus 12.50 for a ticket and drink at movies on tv is way worth it considering a movie with Liam Neeson in it is worth its weight in gold, 12.50 for that is like paying a dollar for a palace in Egypt.

Taken Trailer

Drumming

Drumming has always been a favorite hobby of mine, even for the time that I couldn't drum due to not having a drumset at my house. That was 4 and a half months ago, we lived in a smaller home so I chose to have the house have more room rather than set up my drumset. Because of this I gathered up some books and other old things I could find and would drum on them in my room. As a result of that I can play now almost as good as when I last played.

Now that I have started playing again I have been working on five songs. I can now play "Draw Me Close" (one of the songs we sing in church services) and "Ill Do My Best" (whitch is a song we sing in youth.) The songs im working on to learn right now are "You Found Me" by The Fray, "Here I am to Worship" and "Freedom." Hopefully soon I will start playing in the worship band on sundays and the youth worship band on wednesdays.