On May 5th, we had our first ever Youth Emphasis Chapel at the seminary. We invited Nahum Leon, a friend of Tim and Annette Gulick to speak about the necessity of youth ministry to the students and faculty at the seminary. If you speak Spanish, here is the MP3 of his conference. Nahum also shared in my youth ministry class, and we had a great time with him. He is a student and graphic designer, working on his Masters in Education and also working with paralideres.org.
Hopefully, this will be the first of many “Youth Emphasis” events we will have at the seminary. I am hoping to have a Youth Emphasis Week sometime next year, probably in October.
If you need other formats for the audio file, click here.
“With propoganda, we can make heaven seem like hell and hell seem like heaven.” – unknown
Since I’m thinking about this, I thought I’d put it here. It’s amazing to me how if a country’s government wants to control its population, they control the access to media. If you want to control what a person thinks or is, you control what they have access to as far as information. If you can control everything a person reads, listens to, or watches, you will be able to control what they think. It’s an interesting phenomena that is still happening in our world today.
The next time you go to research something, think about the wonderful privilege it is to have access to the internet or other media outlets. What if you could only hear one side of the story? What if there was no second opinion? It would be a lot more difficult. I never really thought that much about freedom of the press before today, but now I understand why we fight for that freedom.
We got good news yesterday about our housing situation. Right now, we live in a house owned by the International Mission Board. We are renting it from them at a great price. Our “contract” with them is up in August, but we just renewed until August 2007. This will be the longest we have ever lived in one place.
We figured it out that we have lived in 5 different places in the 2 and a half years we have lived in Mexico. Before moving to Mexico, we lived in 5 places in 5 years. So, it’s good to have some “stability,” even if it’s only for a little while.
This is another “What I’ve learned from my relationship with Nathan” post (see the first one here). We bought a mirror for the car so that I can see Nathan sitting in his carseat. It’s one of those suction cup type mirrors with a long extension arm that swivels so you can adjust the mirror.
Well, the other day, we were going out to the car, and I was carrying Nathan. I decided to bring the mirror with us and install it for our trip to the store. I thought it would be funny to put the suction cup part of the mirror on my forehead and extend the mirror. Nathan thought it was hilarious, too. We had a good laugh until it was time to take the mirror off my head. The suction cup is very strong, and I could feel the blood rushing to my forehead as I tried to pull it off. It left a very big hickey, so I had to walk around last week explaining to people what had happened.
I started thinking about how that situation (and many others) reminds me of God. My relationship with Nathan is one in which I will do just about anything to make him smile. I want to see the joy on his face when I make a funny sound or smile at him. I want to see him light up when I walk into a room. I can’t help but think that these thoughts of mine are the same thoughts of God when He thinks about us. His affection for us is one that causes Him to do a lot of things. He has given us so many things to make us smile. He has done so many things for us so that we will find joy in Him. He wants us to smile when we think of Him. That is the relationship of the Father with his children. That is what I learned from the giant hickey on my forehead.
I just got a call from my boss telling me that the trip to Austria has been postponed this year due to illness in the family. We didn’t cancel it, but it has been postponed until further notice. So, the money we have in the account will be saved in a special account and will be used in the future for the summit. Please be praying for Randy and his wife as they go through a difficult time in the coming months.
