Month: January 2007

Spanish improving?

Yesterday I was talking to the mother of one of the young ladies who comes to our church. The mother was telling me a story about a French Dr. who is living in this area doing research. She had met him through a lecture that he was giving down town.

I asked her if he spoke Spanish or worked through a translator.

“Oh, he speaks Spanish, very well” she replied.

I then was digging for a compliment and set her up with one of my favorite comments. “Oh, so he speaks as well as I do?”

She very seriously looked at me and said, “Oh, no, he speaks good Spanish. Not like yours.”

Talk about deflating a fellow.

Rats in India

I remember a few years ago talking about this same problem. People in India are starving because the rats are eating all of the rice before it can be harvested. If I remember correctly the problem before had to do with the rats eating the rice out of the warehouses.

But, since rats are deified in the Hindu religion, you cannot kill them. The rats are allowed to live and prosper while people are dying of starvation. I imagine the economy in this region is also affected greatly.

This was brought to my mind because of a story I heard on Mission Network News this morning. Here is an excerpt:

Mizoram and Manipur sees to be the hardest hit states. The Chief Minister of Mizoram is a Christian and ordered that all rats be killed. However in neighboring Manipur, the chief minister is a Hindu. “Killing rats is psychologically difficult for many Hindus since rats are actually deified in the Hindu religion. The elephant god of prosperity if [sic] often portrayed as riding upon a giant rat.”

Pudaite says Manipur’s rice harvest has been especially hit hard this year. “They thought they were going to have a wonderful harvest this year. And then, the farmers went to their rice fields to harvest and over night the rats had devoured all of their harvest.”

My God tells me to not make any images or worship anything besides Him (Exodus 20:3-5). He also says that man was made to have dominion over the plant and animal kingdom (Genesis 1:27-30).

When you step outside of the laws that God has lain down for us, you have a world that falls out of proportion. You have people worshiping rats and allowing the rats to eat the food intended to keep human families alive. You have more value placed in the life of a rodent than on the life of a starving child.

Fortunately, the God I worship is merciful enough to allow those who worship Him help those who do not. There will be lives saved through this crisis because Christians from around the world are willing to make sacrifices on behalf of unbelievers whom they have never met.

Bibles for the World is distributing rice in the region in Jesus name, but Pudaite says they also did something else. “We provided the Bible in their language, for every family that did not have the Bible in their home. It’s a tremendous opportunity to share the love of Christ.”

Funding is needed. Bibles for the World would like to distribute more than one-million Bibles this year. Coupled with that is the need for purchase rice. “Bibles for the World has established a special relief fund. All the donated money will be used to buy rice, which our co-workers in India will distribute to the people.”

What happened?

I was on a roll. I had posted to the blog every day this year. Then BOOM! No post yesterday. And I did not even realize it until this morning. *sigh*

Now to pick up the pieces and move on with life I guess.

The last few days have been a bit of a blur. Our son has been away on a trip to the US and we are trying to get stuff shipped to him so that he can be our mule and bring stuff back down to us. So I have been ordering different items like a motherboard, microphones, etc. He will be back next week. When he gets here, we will be glad to see him again…and get our stuff. 🙂 It is the same with everyone that comes down to visit. We have them bring in the loot that we either can’t get here, or is too expensive to buy here.

I found an old college friend by searching on the ‘net tonight. Why his name popped into my head, I don’t know. I wonder how long it will take for him to show up here. I posted a comment to his most recent blog posting. I figure he will be by to visit soon.

Tomorrow is my wife’s birthday. Typical of me, I can’t put my hands on what I want for her. I finally figured out a few items. One I had to order which may be here tomorrow. Another one, the place was closed when I went to pick it up this evening. Another gift is something simple, but the store only had one when I was there and it was beat up. So, she won’t have any gifts in her hands when she wakes up in the morning. But, hopefully, I will be able to get something to her by the end of the day.

I guess that is what I get for putting off my shopping to the last minute. But that is just the way I am.

Missionary Talks 12: James Peach

Well the fun in this episode came in the editing room (where more than 30 minutes of recording lie on the floor). The interview was fun as you can probably hear. But, trying to find something worthy of keeping was even more fun. I guess you can see that this episode is shorter than most of the others.

I tried to just let him talk, but that is what ended up on the editing room floor. It was funny to me to listen to it again with my wife today. Every time he would give an answer, I knew there was a 5 minute section that got cut out due to his rambling. It was very entertaining to hear it after I had done all the editing.

I have one more interview recorded with MKs. I recorded it last week. It has some odd noises in it that I am going to try to clean up, but we may just have to live with it. I suspect it will be a short one as well. It is with 2 sisters who also live here in town. The difference in them and the others I have spoken with is that they have lived their whole lives on the mission field. The younger one was born here.

Don’t forget to vote for Missionary Talks at Podcast Alley. If you are a registered digg.com user, you will be able to digg Missionary Talks in their new podcast directory.

Photo scavenger hunt

Ever done one of those? When I was a teen it meant looking for Polaroid cameras to take with you as immediate proof that you took the pictures. In the day in which we live now, digital cameras help with these kinds of activities.

We took our Deaf church down town tonight on the main square. We had two teams and each had a list of items that they needed to photograph. But, of course, they were not things like “a flower” or “a bird.” It was more in line with “Take a photo of the group with a soldier.”Six way telephone call

Some of the more interesting:
Ask a policeman to sign the paper. My team got the signature of the Commandant of the Governor’s Palace Guard. Another item that we asked him for was to be able to take a picture of one of our people wearing one of their helmets. He was very gracious with the signature. He even wrote out a nice little note to the group. But when asked about the helmet, it was obvious that we had over stepped our limits. We left the palace quickly.

Trade shoes with a total stranger. We were running out of time by the time we got to that one. We tried convincing one young man to help us out. He was not to be persuaded. The next fellow we approached seemed a bit more willing. We spent 5 minutes with him trying to convince him to do it. We finally did.

Kiss a horse. My team did not get this one, but the other team did.

There were several items on the list that my team accomplished, but the other team did not. However, the other team looked for high point items. When it was all tallied in the end, we won by 200 points, though we took many more pictures than the other team, they purposefully sought out the more difficult tasks.

After we took the pictures we returned to the church where I gave a short devotional while my wife was putting the pictures from the cameras onto the computer. We then projected the pictures onto the wall while eating pizza. It was a great activity.