Monthly evening for senior citizens

Wednesday our church hosted its monthly special evening for senior citizens. This month we decided to have a cookout and set everything up outside so we could enjoy the warm summer evening. We served grilled hot dogs, sandwiches, salad, and iced tea.

Global Mission Mondays: India

Today at our church's weekly prayer meeting we will be praying for the country of India.

India is the world's the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. It is the world's most culturally, linguistically, and genetically diverse geographical entity after the African continent with more than 2,500 people groups.

Four major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated in India.

India has one of the largest economies in the world, the third-largest standing army in the world, and one of the world's most diverse and modern healthcare systems. However, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, disease, and malnutrition continue to be major problems for the people of India. It is estimated that about 900,000 Indians die each year from drinking contaminated water and breathing in polluted air.

More than 80% of the population is Hindu, and while only 13.4% are Muslim it still third-highest Muslim population in the world. About 2.3% of the population are Christian, 1.9% are Sikhs, and .8% a Buddhist.

5 ways to know you are a Christian

via TheResurgence

1. You Love Jesus
2. You Hate Sin
3. You Love God’s Word
4. You Love Truth
5. You Love Believers

read the full article for the reasons for each point.

Under serious consideration

Too much emphasis on eternal life and not enough on God.

I've been reading again through C.S. Lewis' book Reflections on the Psalms. In the chapter on death in the psalms Lewis makes an interesting case for why desiring heaven should be secondary to desiring God.

Here is the section that I thought was interesting:

"Is is possible for men to be too much concerned with their eternal destiny? In one sense, paradoxical though it sounds, I should reply, Yes.
For the truth seems to me to be that happiness or misery beyond death, simply in themselves, are not even religious subjects at all. A man who believes in them will of course be prudent to seek the one and avoid the other. But that seems to have no more to do with religion than looking after one’s health or saving money for one’s old age. The only difference here is that the stakes are so very much higher. And this means that, granted a real and steady conviction, the hopes and anxieties aroused are overwhelming. But they are not on that account the more religious. They are hopes for oneself, anxieties for oneself. God is not in the centre. He is still important only for the sake of something else. Indeed such a belief can exist without a belief in God at all. Buddhist are much concerned with what will happen to them after death, but are not, in any true sense, Theists.
It is surely, therefore, very possible that when God began to reveal Himself to men, to show them that He and nothing else is their true goal and the satisfaction of their needs, and that He has a claim upon them simply by being what He is, quite apart from anything He can bestow or deny, it may have been absolutely necessary that this revelation should not begin with any hint of future Beatitude or Perdition. These are not the right point to begin at. An effective belief in them, coming too soon, may even render almost impossible the development of (so to call it) the appetite for God; personal hopes and fears, too obviously exciting, have got in first. Later, when, after centuries of spiritual training, men have learned to desire and adore God, to pant after Him ‘as pants the hart’, it is another matter. For then those who love God will desire not only to enjoy Him but ‘to enjoy Him forever’, and will fear to lose Him. And it is by that door that a truly religious hope of Heaven and fear of Hell can enter; as corollaries to a faith already centred upon God, not as things of any independent or intrinsic weight. It is even arguable that the moment “Heaven” ceases to mean union with God and “Hell” to mean separation from Him, the belief in either is a mischievous superstition; for then we have, on the one hand, a merely "compensatory" belief (a "sequel" to life's sad story, in which everything will "come all right") and, on the other, a nightmare which drives men into asylums or makes them persecutors."

As I read, and re-read this section I thought about how this idea relates to preaching the gospel. A gospel message that merely offers hope in another life because this one is hard, or merely offers salvation from hell sells the person short because it misses the glory, joy, and the real draw of heaven. God is the focus of the gospel and the end goal of the gospel. If we don't communicate that then we have given people a selfish reason to repent of sin and divorced the gospel from its goal: reunion with our maker.

More projects

This week I made a couple of storage drawers to go under our bed. We'd been talking about making them for years and we found some rollers at a hardware store so this week I decided to give them a try. So here is a little DIY blog.

I used scrap plywood tongue and groove that was left over from our mudroom remodel.
I made the faceplate out of the tongue and grove that I ripped to size on my table saw and then glued together. I cut the plywood according to the size of the scraps I had so one drawer was narrow and long and the other shorter and deeper. I finally figured out how to properly use a router (I didn't take pictures of the practice drawer) to make the dividers fit nice and snug.
I sanded the plywood smooth and then stained the face with leftover stain from our mudroom ceiling. I did about 4 coats because it was drying really fast in the hot sun and our bed is a very dark brown. Then Liese helped me paint two coats of lacquer on them to for a nice smooth finish.
I gave the lacquer a good 24 hours outside to fully cure and then installed the hardware. They fit nice and snug under the bed now we've finally manged to use the 15cm (6 inch) space beneath our bed for storage.

Global Mission Mondays: Nepal

I'm a day late today because we had a power outage yesterday (due to a freak wind storm that lasted about 3 minutes and managed to knock some trees down) before the prayer meeting. We prayed for the country of Nepal.

Nepal has a population of about 29 million, about half of whom live below the international poverty line of US $1.25 a day.

Hinduism is practiced by a larger majority of people in Nepal than in any other nation; until 2006 it was the only Hindu state in the world. Buddhism, though a minority faith in the country, is linked historically with Nepal as the birthplace of the Buddha. Differences between Hindus and Buddhists have been minimal in Nepal due to the cultural and historical intermingling of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Morever traditionally Buddhism and Hinduism were never two distinct religions in western sense of world. In Nepal, the faiths share common temples and worship common deities.

There are 10 major languages that are spoken in Nepal though Nepali is the official national language. There are around 350 people groups in Nepal and only a few have the bible or portions of the bible in their language.

About 0.5% of the population is Christian. Believers face rejection from society upon conversion as they are considered to then be lower caste. The Joshua Project writes that baptism is illegal and punishment by up 6 years in prison, however I couldn't verify that fact.

[information from wikipedia and the joshua project]

Mudroom remodel project

We've pretty much finished our mudroom so I figured I'd post some photos of the remodel process.

This is the way things looked when we moved in. We cut down the pear tree that you can almost see in the upper left corner.

The next step was taking out the old door so that our friends didn't have to turn sideways to come in. We also took out the old single pane windows.

New energy efficient windows, solid metal door, and brick work.

On the inside we scraped off all the old "plaster" (mud and straw mixture with an overcoat of lime wash) and redid the electric.
Then we installed 5cm thick sheets of styrofoam to for insulation.

The styrofoam needed a special coat of cement-glue because plaster doesn't stick to it.

After plastering we installed tongue and groove boards on the ceiling which we stained a dark brown color and lacquered.
Then we put in crown moulding and painted everything. A new light fixture and...viola! All finished.

Weekend Update

This weekend Liese and I were asked to join a band to play country music at a "City Day" festival in the nearby town of Rzhyshchiv. One of the missionaries in that town has set up a sister-city program with his hometown in Texas and Rzhyshchiv and so the city asked him if he could play a couple songs during the usual concert(s). He called and asked Liese (partly because she's the only person he knows who could possibly sing country songs right and partly because she is the only person any of us know who can sing country songs at all) to be the lead singer. Then somehow I ended up playing bass. Then somehow Billy Ray Cyrus ended up in our set list. We got together on Friday night to practice "You are My Sunshine," Achy Breaky Heart" and "Amazing Grace." We ended up not being all that bad and I felt a little better about playing a Billy Ray song.

(that's Jon, a New Zealander who sang lead on Achy Breaky Heart with a Kiwi accent. It was awesome)

Saturday I had worship band practice and then we headed out to Rzhyshchiv as a huge rain storm passed by dropping about a quarter inch of rain. The festival was outside and so we worried about it getting canceled due to rain. But as it started raining again as soon as the festival started and everyone just carried on I guess we shouldn't have worried. It rained nearly the whole concert and nearly soaked all our band equipment. We ended up being the only band there that played live music (instead of karaoke style) and so we had to set up and take down our equipment right before and right after our set. It brought new meaning to the line "you unplug and you run, you run off stage!" I don't know if anyone actually took any pictures of us playing but they said we were really loud which I guess is good. Liese pretty much rocked Amazing Grace, probably the best rendition this side of Ukraine has ever heard. Check out Bruce Crowe's blog about the event for some more pictures.

On Sunday we celebrated the 10 year anniversary of our church being registered. It was a big day for me as I was playing guitar on the worship team, preaching, and heading up the BBQ after the service. The BBQ turned out great and I smelled like smoke for two days.


After the picnic lunch at church we all headed down to the local pond to for a baptism. Four people were baptized, two of them were part of the group that I've been meeting with to read through Don't Waste Your Life.

Global Mission Mondays: Bhutan

Bhutan used to be one of the most isolated countries in the world until the 1970's when it began to modernize its economy. Developments including direct international flights, the Internet, mobile phone networks, and cable television have increasingly modernized the urban areas of the country.

Bhutan had a king until a few years ago when the king gave up his powers and formed a democratic parliament. This was to modernize the country and increase it's "gross national happiness" (a term coined by the king in the 1970's to measure quality of life in Bhutan as part of economic reforms designed to modernize the country while maintaining a unique cultural identity). Bhutan is ranked as the 8th happiest country in the world.

Bhutan's economy is one of the world's smallest but it is growing. The economy is based on agriculture, forestry, tourism and the sale of hydroelectric power to India. Agriculture provides the main livelihood for more than 80 percent of the population.

A landscape that varies from hilly to ruggedly mountainous has made the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive. This, and a lack of access to the sea, has meant that Bhutan has not been able to benefit from significant trading of its produce. Bhutan does not have any railways.

The state religion is Vajrayana Buddhism, with 75% of the population being Buddhist, 24% Hindu. Proselytizing is forbidden even though it is technically legal.

There are 24 languages spoken in Bhutan with two main ethic groups; Western and Eastern which together comprise about 35 ethnic groups. The overall population is about 690,000.

The complete bible has not been translated into most of the languages spoken in Bhutan, although it is available in Tibetan and Nepal which are both spoken in some places. There are some portions of the bible and some new testaments available in the more widely spoken languages.

[information taken from wikipedia and the joshua project]

"Death and Taxes"

Wayne compiled a few statistics on his blog to kind of give an idea of what it is like to start a business in Ukraine. Here are a couple:

• Ease of Paying Taxes - Ukraine placed 181st out of 183 economies. An average a medium-size company must pay taxes an incredible 147 times per year.
  
  • This complexity drives a large portion of taxable income into the shadows: estimated around 50%
  • It also breeds an environment for paying bribes. In the Corruption Perception Index Ukraine is ranked 146th, tied with countries including Zimbabwe, Kenya, Russia & Ecuador.
• Dealing with Construction Permits. Ukraine continues to be outright last. (twice as many permits, taking 3 times longer and costing 25 times proportionally higher than in the average high income economy)

read the rest of the post here

Global Mission Mondays: Bangladesh

Bangladesh has a population of 162 million making it the 7th most populous nation in the world. Because of its relatively small size it is one of the most densely populated countries in the word with 1,126 people per square kilometer (the US only has 32, Ukraine has 77, and Russia has 8 people per square km)

The majority ethnic group of Bangladesh are the Bengali people, comprising 98% of the population. There are around 400 ethnic groups in Bangladesh, most of them very small tribes.

Bangladesh is a fairly poor country but the poverty rate has fallen by 20% since the early 1990s, Bangladesh's per capita income in 2008 was $520.

Bangladesh grows very significant quantities of rice, tea and mustard. Although two-thirds of Bangladeshis are farmers, more than three quarters of Bangladesh’s export earnings come from the garment industry which employs more than 3 million workers, 90% of whom are women. Bangladesh’s most significant obstacles to growth are poor governance and weak public institutions.

The government is a moderate Muslim democracy. Islam is the majority religion with 89.7% of the population being Muslim. A sizable minority adheres to Hinduism (9.2%) while Christians make up only 0.3% and are mostly Roman Catholics.

[information from wikipedia and joshuaproject.net]