Last week, I was telling my father-in-law about some of the seminary courses I've been enjoying on mp3. He wanted to know how that worked and if he could get an mp3 player and do the same thing. We got online and looked some up and realized there were some great deals on mp3 players that used SD cards. With a setup like that, you can upgrade your own mp3 player when you need more memory.

We decided to go with the SanDisk Sansa 1GB Shaker, a kid's model but the sturdiness and simplicity made it a great choice for him to use at work (he's a steel worker). And we ordered him an extra 2GB card for loading an audio Bible.

The mp3 player came earlier this week, and the 2GB card came yesterday... twice. Yes, when I got home from work yesterday, there were two identical packages, each containing one 2GB card and the same packing slip. Hmm...

So, I checked our order to make sure I had not accidentally ordered two. I had not. So, I contacted Buy.com costumer service to let them know about the mistake. They issued an RMA in a few minutes.

Then I opened one of the cards and so I could start installing the Bible to it. It locked up my desktop when I put it into my SD reader. I popped it out, rebooted. Same thing. I popped it out, rebooted, tried a USB SD reader. Locked up my mouse and keyboard. I had to reboot.

Now, I've had some trouble lately with my memory card readers and USB on my desktop, so I tried my laptop. Same trouble.

I thought perhaps that it needed formatting, so I tried using my wife's camera to format it. It turned the camera off and wouldn't let me turn it back on again until I had pulled the card out.

So I opened the other card. This one worked perfectly. Way to go, Providence! My relatives are only here for the remainder of this week. So having Buy.com "accidentally" send two SD cards so that one of them would work and my father-in-law could still have it to take home with him was wonderful!

I downloaded the Bible for my father-in-law and we listened to a bit of it to make sure he would like it. I was really impressed with the quality, especially since it was free. I thought I might reload Ephesians and start working on that again. But then I had a better idea and I hope this might help you.

My son and I are studying the Bible together, using the Suffer Little Children curriculum. I remembered hearing someone, perhaps it was Piper, encourage pastors to memorize their text each week. Now, I'm not preparing a text to preach, but I am preparing to teach my son. I don't know that I'll have it memorized, but I decided I could focus on the chapter we are going to study each day. So, I unloaded all the audio from my car mp3 player and just put Genesis 12 so it would repeat. And I listened to that over-and-over on the drive to work this morning. I definitely feel more familiar with the text, and I'll be hearing it again on my drive home this afternoon.

I look forward to seeing how this will improve my teaching and my own faith.