Merry Christmas

It was a long day today. Up at 4:30 and then hours spent at the hospital. I'm glad to say everything worked out, but it made for a long day. Christmas Eve service went well, but I think the best part of the day was sitting down this evening when I got home. Now, I think it's about time for bed. Since I'm not planning on writing tomorrow, I just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone that reads this a very Merry Christmas.

Book Review - Primal

Again I find myself in the position of having a book to review that I haven't finished. This time though, I think I have a pretty good excuse. I was in Kenya. When the original offer came out and I accepted it, the book was scheduled to arrive before I left on my trip. I thought the timing was going to be perfect. I would have ample time to read during the flights (I didn't know then that I would be sick). Also, for some odd reason I really wanted to read a book called Primal while I was sitting in Africa. Anyway, due to a slight publishing delay the book arrived two days after I left. My return home threw me right into the middle of my youth group's dinner theatre and the overall business of the Christmas season. Mark Batterson is my favorite author and he deserves a better blog entry, but what can I do. My only consolation is that I have some time off in the upcoming days and I'm looking forward to enjoying the book. So below you will find the publisher's info and then a brief word from me based on the little I've been able to read.

Publisher's Info
Be astonished again. We have a tendency to complicate Christianity. Jesus simplified it: Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we are to live out the essence of Christianity, we must commit to being great at this Great Commandment.

In Primal, Mark Batterson explores the four elements of Great Commandment Christianity: compassion, wonder, curiosity, and power. Along the way, he calls you to be a part of God’s reformation, starting in your own life.

As Mark writes, “Is there a place in your past where you met God and God met you? A place where your heart broke for the things that break the heart of God? Maybe it was a sermon that became more than a sermon. Maybe it was a mission trip or retreat. Maybe it was a vow you made at an altar. In that moment, God birthed something supernatural in your spirit. You knew you’d never be the same again. My prayer is that this book would take you back to that burning bush—and reignite a primal faith.”

Primal will help you live in light of what matters most and discover what it means to love God. It will help you become great at the Great Commandment.

Author Bio
The author of Wild Goose Chase and In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Mark Batterson serves as lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C. One church with nine services in five locations, NCC is focused on reaching emerging generations and meets in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the D.C. area. Mark has two Masters degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. He and his wife, Lora, live on Capitol Hill with their three children.

My Thoughts
I personally enjoy Mark's writing style and within the first few pages he has already challenged my thinking. Quoting former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark discusses the idea of there being simplicity on the near side of complexity and simplicity on the far side of complexity. Near side simplicity is is only mind deep and has never been tested in fires of adversity, doubt, trial, and pain. That's where the complexity comes in. Most of us have asked the question "why" a thousand times. Why do so many things happen to us as we follow Christ. Yet, there is that simplicity on the far side of complexity. It's a place where we have been tried and maybe don't even understand completely, but we know God is the truth and we continue to follow. We find ourselves at a place of simple faith. Not immature faith, but faith that focuses on the main things that God has called to do.

Already this idea has been challenging my thinking and to be fair, I must point out this comes from page 5. Five pages in and I'm already challenged. I'm looking forward to the rest of the book. I know that Mark and his publishers are promoting the book as the first book you read in 2010. It would be a good idea, but I encourage you to pick it up and end 2009 with it.

My favorite place to buy books is Amazon and you can find the book there. Or of you are inclined, you can find out more about it from the Waterbrook Multnomah web site.

And for the government I need to let you know that this was book was provided for review by WaterBrook Multnomah

Thank You Hackers

I woke up yesterday expecting to spend most of the day preparing for my youth group's dinner theater. Before I left the house, a friend called me to let me know that he had been talking with someone claiming to be me on my Facebook. They were asking for money because they claimed that I had gotten stuck in London. It sounded realistic since people knew I was flying back from Kenya a couple days ago. I jumped on to find out and sure enough I had no access to Facebook. That was bad enough, but I soon realized that they had jumped from Facebook and now had control of both my major Gmail accounts. That wasn't good. With that they would have had potential access to password resets from various financial institutions.

Let's just say I was a little nervous. It suddenly became a race to protect my family. I give Google credit. I was able to fill out a form online that required a lot of identifying information about various Google services that the certain Gmail account was connected with, but once I did I had a link that allowed me to regain access within about ten minutes. I jumped on and changed the password on both and went on to change other web site passwords to be safe. I came back and tried to access Gmail again and discovered that my password had been changed. Not only was my account hacked still, but they were actually working against me at the exact same time I was trying to fix things. Not a good feeling.

Thanks again to Google, I was able to regain access. I searched through all the account settings and found the problem. They had set my email to automatically forward to them. Plus, they were getting a text message if anything was changed. I went through and removed everything that they had set up. Then I changed the password again. Then, my wife noticed that Google listed at the bottom of the screen that I was not only logged in from my location, but I was also logged in at a second location. There was an option to terminate the other location. I did and then proceeded to recheck all the settings and change the password again. I did this for both accounts and then waited. I was fairly confident that I got it secured, but I had to wait.

While I waited, I went over to Facebook and reported that my account had been hacked. Within a few minutes my account had been disabled. Better disabled than letting them have access. I'm working to regain control but in the past Facebook has been very slow in my opinion.

So, now I'm checking my accounts constantly to make sure they're remain secure. I've changed a lot of passwords. I'm making them insanely long which is only possible thanks to 1Password. If you're on a Mac, I recommend that you use it. It allows you to create long passwords for websites. It remembers them for you and then fills them in when you visit that web site. Check it out at Agile Web Solutions.

Well that's about it. If you received a strange email from me ignore it. As of now I have control and I hope to maintain it.

Back in the Office

I've made it back from Kenya with minimal physical damage. Jet lag hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. I've been crashing into bed a little after 10 PM and waking up at 6 AM. So it would appear that jet lag is making me go to sleep and wake up at a good time. I'm planning on posting a few more thoughts about Kenya in the days ahead, but for now I have to force myself to get caught up in the office.

Warfare

Last night the focus of our service was the Holy Spirit. Cornell was preaching on how to live Spirit filled. That's what this generation of Kenyan and every nationality of believers need. The service was going fine until we got to the message. Within moments of Cornell starting to preach we had an incredible thunderstorm arrive. The rain was pounding harder than you could imagine. As an added bonus, the building we were in has a tin roof. The roar was deafening. Cornell kept preaching though.

At some point Rusty turned to me and asked if I had a flashlight. I dug one out of my bag and we set it on the table. Then I felt it. Rusty and I sit together in the middle of the room at the sound board and computer and I remember turning to him and saying, "I think I'm getting wet." It felt like the splatter of rain in the ground. Within a few moments we had our answer. We were sitting under the pinnacle of the roof and I guess it wasn't as sealed as it should be. Water started dripping on us. We grabbed a cloth tarp that we had been covering the sound table at night to cover our gear. It rained harder. It became clear that cloth wasn't going to protect us. Some of our Kenyan brothers ran over with some plastic and we covered it with that.

The noise was so loud that Cornell called everyone to pray against it. That's all we could do. Then, the power went off. We prayed harder as flashlights were whipped out. We had a generator and after 15 minutes or so of work they were able to get it running to at least get the sound system going again. The rain wasn't letting up and we prayed harder still. Eventually Cornell decided to keep going all the while rain was dripping down the entire middle aisle.

During this Emmanuel thought it best to move the entire sound table. We ripped up some tape that was anchoring cords and moved it to a drier spot. Remember, this is all happening with flashlights and some candles that one of the ladies had. I asked Rusty if he could get me power back to the projector. My thinking was twofold. If Cornell's presentation was onscreen the students could follow his message easier, especially the verses, because they could be reading while trying to listen. Second, projectors are extremely bright. It would go a long way to lighting up the front area.

Rusty and Jimmy were able to run an extension to get power back to the projector and it worked as I hoped it would. Cornell was able to finish preaching and the altar called ensued. As of this moment we know that someone accepted Christ and that at least one was baptized in the Holy Spirit. We will try to find out more today.

After service the students had their tea. It's a good thing that our camp cooks have done all of their work over fire in the kitchen. We showed some videos and then eventually began sending them off to bed. It was still raining this entire time. Not as hard, but still rain.

I asked Pastor Sam if rain like this was common and he told me that it wasn't. The word he used was that it was abnormal, especially since we are entering the dry season.

The power did come back on before we went to sleep so we have it for today. Our final service is this morning before we break camp. Praying that God does something powerful and that the enemy is defeated.

It's Funny What We Crave

I have been loving my time in Kenya, especially since I got over being sick from traveling. The people are wonderful and I'm learning to appreciate the food. It's similar to a lot of things that I normally eat while at the same time being different in a lot of ways. As we sit at the two week mark for being out of the States, I've realized that I'm craving a Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich. I've looked around but I have spotted any Chick-fil-a. The only American fast food restaurant that the missionary knows of in Kenya is a KFC in Nairobi. There's a part of me that would really love to go to it just to see how different it is.

Languages and Presentation

Besides the couple times I've spoken, my major role during this week at camp was to run the multimedia. This includes projecting the worship lyrics. In normal circumstances this can be challenging as the worship team may randomly jump back to parts of a song and you have to be able to keep up. However, this week has added a new challenge. While our team from the States leads worship in the evening, some of our Kenyan brothers and sisters lead worship in the morning. While some of the songs they do are in English, others are in Swahili. It is rather difficult to keep the lyrics correct when they are in another language.

Kumbaya

I asked someone if they knew kumbaya. They did and started singing it. I asked them what it meant. They gave the the exact same answer that people always give in the States. However, they made it clear that it wasn't a Swahili word. The search for the origins of Kumbaya continue.

Camp X Kenyan Style

I am right in the midst of the camp that we are putting on. It has been an interesting experience. For those that know what Big Prairie was, let me just say that we had no right to complain. We spent the hours before camp started cleaning our meeting room. We had to do this because a lot of birds consider our building a nice respite from the sun. While we meet they fly in and out and over our heads. When I made an inspection tour of the restroom and shower facilities, I was greeted by two very large rats. I originally thought they were more of the birds until the sauntered away and I saw their long tales. I know God created everything but why the rat?

I freely admit that things are different than what I'm use to, but in the long run it doesn't matter because God is here. We had good services last night and the sessions this morning went extremely well. I of course spoke during one of them. In spite of me things are going good. We have a few more days of camp and then we pack up for the trip home. Rusty and I both calculated that if all goes right it will take us approximately 30 hours from the time we leave Eldoret until we make it back to our homes. I'm looking forward to seeing my family, but not looking forward to the trip. Plus, I'm heading back to cold weather. Everyday here is probably in the low 80's with cool breezes. Nights are cool enough for a jacket. Anyway, my Kenya journey will end soon and regular life will begin again.

Shout outs from some of the people with me. Cornell says "What's up!" Jenna says hello. They must have thought that I was on Facebook.

Preaching in Kenya

Had the opportunity to preach in a Kenyan congregation this morning. Kept it slow so my accent wouldn't be too hard to understand. I think it went well. I was told it did. The coolest part that has nothing to do with preaching was after the service was over. I was talking to someone and a lady came up to me with a tray that contained a cup of chai tea and some sugar. I guess they brew big batches of it for after church. I walked around and talked with people while sipping on some pretty good tea. The whole trip has been an experience. Tomorrow we are completely focused on prepping for the camp and Tuesday it starts. It's going to be a long and tiring week, but hopefully a good one. I teach a session on Tuesday and I'm praying that goes well.

My New Calling in Radio

Thankfully I'm doing a lot better. The trip over really took it out of me but I think I'm about back to full speed. Now, for my interesting missions experience of the day.

Carrie, Cornell, and myself went to the local radio station and were on The Fish FM. It was local show for teens called T.I.T.O & Pizzah. They were playing Christian American rap and also Christian rap from here and even Uganda. Then, they were talking with us about the upcoming camp. It was over an hour of promoting the camp. During the time we were also giving away some free registrations to the camp. It was an experience. As we were leaving, we found out they wanted us to do promo spots for the radio station. Each one of us did multiple promos. So basically, if you visit Kenya in the upcoming years, you may hear one of us proudly declaring, "you're listening to 97.1 Fish FM."

Here in Kenya

I am writing this from a Kenyan wildlife refuge. This is part of the fun of our trip. Got to watch some rhinos. Pretty interesting.

Still fighting some sickness from the the travels. So far the trip has been unpleasant with small sparkles of enjoyment because of it. I hope that reverses before the end.

The most interesting thing I've noticed so far, besides the rhino squaring up to charge the other half of our team's vehicle, has been the guards. Everywhere you go you see guards. At the Nakumaat (basically a Walmart), guarding where we stayed last night, outside of restaurant's. I understand fully well that they are there to keep you safe, but the question that of course surfaces in your mind is why do we need guards everywhere?

In my life in America, there have only been a few times where I found myself in a place that I considered not safe. For the most part I completely take safety for granted.

That 's it for the moment. Please pray for me if you can so I can get over this sickness. I'll try to write more if I get access to Internet.