Burgers’ Thanksgiving 2024

For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His faithfulness is to all generations. —Psalm 100:5

John

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. —James 4:6b
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you. —James 4:10

  • Well begun is half done! This idiom motivated me to just get started and write my section of this year’s Thanksgiving letter. I have found that attaining motivation helps me be more diligent in my studies. Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, a woman of great character, once said, Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and diligence. What is my point in all of this? I’m not a wise man, but I would like to share with you some of the things I have been motivated to do this year.
  • Over my 4-week Christmas break, I decided to take on the task of designing a gerbil feeder from scratch in Fusion 360. Those of you who read last year’s Thanksgiving letter might recall that I already made a gerbil feeder. Here is a recap:
The gerbil feeder I built last year would get jammed when it tried to dispense donuts (gerbil food in the shape of a donut). And due to its length, the gerbils could chew on it. 
This time I designed the feeder with more room to store food and made it wider, rather than longer. I then 3D-printed the model in a few parts and assembled them. After a few weeks of programming, I was ready to test the feeder. The tests went quite smoothly. To see the rest of the story, read the next bullet point.
    Motivation: learning, creating, and tinkering to get things just right
  • Last spring I joined Wisdom Builders high school musical drama. I was Hathach, a messenger of the Queen, in Esther. We performed the musical at the Paramount Theatre Center and Ballroom in Anderson, Indiana. We stayed in an Airbnb in Anderson, because the beautiful theater is over an hour from our house, and the practices went until nine or ten at night. Since all of our family except Ben were out of town, I decided it was a good time to test the feeder. It worked perfectly, only dispensing food when the gerbils were awake, and only a few times a day. One night Ben was playing with the gerbils, and Billy found the gerbil feeder and saw all the food in it. While Ben was at Kroger, Billy sat in his cage imagining the banquet of food he had seen minutes earlier. He wasted no time and began chewing through the very thick cardboard (probably with the aid of his brother) until he could squeeze through the gap and find the banquet. To Ben’s surprise it looked like the gerbils were more interested in the wires than the food. Sadly, the gerbil feeder no longer worked with the chewed-up wires. I was able to fix it, but I have not tested the feeder since.
  • In August 2023, my friend Soren invited me to join his startup high school VEX V5 robotics team. I was very happy to join as the programmer. Basically, he builds an amazing robot, and I program it to perform autonomous routines that gain us lots of additional points at competitions. I have enjoyed being mentored by my dad as I try to learn how to control the robot using trajectory generators and a pseudo-derivative feedback (PDF) motor controller. For the engineers reading this, PDF is pretty much a stabler, easier-to-tune PID loop. Our team, Valor, competed at Heritage Christian School and won the skills competition. Click here to watch a recording of the 45 second autonomous routine that I programmed for the skills challenge. I have learned to be motivated by the idea of a reliable program. Some of the other teams had faster autonomous routines, but they weren’t reliable and thus were less valuable than a slower, more consistent routine.
    Motivation: learning to be a better problem solver and team member and the satisfaction that comes from watching the robot perform pre-programmed tasks
  • I enjoyed teaching the Gospel to children this summer with Verla and a few other teens from our area. Verla and I have been teaching with CEF for the past three years. This year I had the special opportunity to help with a Good News Club that was at a nearby elementary school. It is very encouraging to watch some of the children start to understand the importance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I will be teaching the Bible lesson at the upcoming Christmas party. Please pray for these children.
    Motivation: the fulfillment that comes from giving children true hope
  • Cross Country is my favorite sport! Last year I mentioned my frustrations of being just 5 seconds slower than the Wisdom Builders middle school 3 km record and 9 seconds (I should have written 23 seconds as my personal record from last year was on a short course) slower than the Wisdom Builders high school 5 km record, both held by Jason Elmore. At this year’s final meet I was determined to run faster than I have ever before and beat the time that Jason set when he was in 11th grade. I had a few good things that would help me: the weather was very nice, the level of competition was higher than normal, and I wasn’t injured. The gun fired, and everyone sprinted off like a startled herd of gazelles. I decided it wasn’t worth it to fatigue my body by running super quickly at the beginning, so I attempted to hold a more reasonable pace. I used my GPS watch to see if I was on target for the first mile. After passing the mile marker, I knew it was a mental battle. All I had to do was to maintain my pace and I would pass many runners. It turned out that I was in an experienced pack of runners who didn’t slow down but sped up during the third kilometer (1.2–1.8 miles). Since the course was my home course, I knew not to push too much when running up the hills but to try to coast as long as possible when running down the hills. This strategy helped prevent my muscles from fatiguing. By the last kilometer, many of the runners in the pack were speeding up and passing me. I placed 21st with a time of 17:35, beating Jason Elmore’s time of 17:41!
    Motivation: beat Jason Elmore’s record, be more fit/healthy, thinking/praying during runs
  • Visiting Yosemite National Park with my family was perhaps the most amazing experience of my life. It was like visiting a different planet.
At the Glacier Point, there is an overlook where a 180° view of the park is possible. The view was so incredible that it overwhelmed me. Ben and I then ate our lunches in the shade of the nearby forest, where the trees kept us from being overwhelmed by the incredible views. After we finished our lunches, we threw around a small Nerf football that whistled for about 30 min.
My favorite part of the trip was bouldering with Ben on the large rocks at Upper Yosemite and Bridalveil Falls. We spent a good portion of the last day bouldering at both falls a second time.
Previous page