Saturday, March 28, 2009

Inner City Art Studio

Our friends Nathan and Amy have a great ministry and art studio in our inner-city neighborhood...so cool is their story, in fact, that a local media outlet recently wrote about them. Check out this article for the story.

More of Nathan's art is available at www.nathanselikoff.com.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Gateway--Never Again

Christie and I spent a total of about two hours on the phone with Gateway tech support and customer service today. What we discovered is that once the computer is purchased, you are no longer a customer but rather a prisoner that is to be denied all requests. (Not to mention the fact that they detain you on the phone for obscene periods of time, put you on hold with no music (umm...maybe that's a good thing), and conveniently disconnect you when things are not looking good.)

By the way, Gateway has a policy that says (roughly translated), "If we sell you a lemon computer that fails to work out of the box, we will refuse to replace it and insist on wasting hours of your time in dealing with its issues."

Ugh.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

The Positive and Negative of Africa

I just read this article from the BBC. It's about two Nigerian sisters on a trek across Africa to raise awareness of the good things happenings on this great continent--instead of all the negative attention that is usually focused there.

They focus on good things--beautiful geography, hospitable people, sustainable sources of income, etc.--but in my mind, they miss the biggest positive of all: what Christ is doing in Africa. Not only are many people coming to Christ for the first time, but they are hearing the Great Commission's call on their lives and they are leaving their home cultures to serve as missionaries. This is certainly not to be overlooked when discussing the good things happening in Africa.

Just last week I had the privilege to participate in a conference call with three PhD students. They are studying in Nairobi, Kenya, but their homes are in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and another east African country. All three plan to return home following completion of their degree to serve in the Bible translation movement there. God called them, and they listened--now that is something to really rejoice over.