Village Care International
A group of folks from my home church in California is taking off tomorrow and headed for Uganda with an organization called Village Care International.
Staff member, Sally Lunetta writes:
“Among other things, they will be presenting our 3-day “Outcomes, Practices and Open Space” training to the Lugazi Community Primary School in Lugazi, Uganda. This school has over 300 orphans in their orphanage and over 1200 students in the school. The training is presented to help the community get mobilized and achieve the outcomes we want for all children: to be safe, healthy, living in a loving home, attending and doing well in school and behaving well in their community.”
Pray for them and their travels. Pray that they can accomplish what they set out to do and make sure to check out their site and see what they are all about.
Third Day Says Goodbye To Brad
I’m not sure if any of you have heard, but Third Day as a band and their guitarist Brad Avery have decided to part ways.
Third Days site reads:
Third Day and Brad Avery have made the very difficult decision to part ways.
We appreciate Brad’s many contributions to the band’s career to date, including his work on our forthcoming album, but the time has come for us to follow our separate paths.
He has been an important part of Third Day for the last 13 years as we’ve traveled the world together and performed over 1,000 concerts. We will miss him as a band member but he will always remain our brother and our friend. Brad is a wonderful person, gifted songwriter and talented musician. We trust that God has amazing plans for his future.
Brad is a great guy and an amazing guitar player. We we able to hang out quite a bit a few years ago when I was out with them. Hopefully this means that he will be doing some solo stuff in the future. Best of luck to both him and the band as they are going through this change.
Happy Leap Year… Err.. Day
Did You Know:
In the English speaking world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap years.
Any birthdays out there?
Two Wells Every Three Months
Remember the other day when I asked if we here as a “blogging community” would be willing to take on the feat of raising enough money every quarter to supply two wells through Blood Water Mission? Well, I was serious, and so were several of you. I was contacted by a friend of mine who is making some noise with several different shirts he is making. He told me that the next shirt that he is planning on making is a shirt simply stating “Jesus>Thirst”. Seems appropriate, don’t you think?
P.D. explained to me that he wants to get behind this little project here and we are working out the details on how to link the two. Right now P.D. has offered that if someone buys a “Jesus>Thirst” shirt and mentions Blood Water Mission he will donate all of the proceeds to the goal of Two Wells Every Three Months. Pretty generous, eh?
So here’s the deal. The shirts are on order, the “donate” button is conveniently placed over there on the right, and we are ready to go. I will keep you all updated on where we are at as far as our goal, and together we can start giving people something that we daily take for granted, clean water. This is something that I see as a “regular” thing, and am going to keep bugging you people about it. I’m thinking if we all do at least ten dollars a month we should be able to get pretty close to our goal. I’m not a business guy, I don’t know anything about non-profit stuff, this is just giving money to something I believe in. Once we have enough for the Two Wells, I will take the money out of the Paypal thing, and send them a check. I don’t really know how else to do it, so that’s where we are at. Eventually I will have a button that you guys can put on your blogs to spread the word to your readers.
Who’s with me?
Larry Norman 4/8/47 – 2/24/08
Larry David Norman was an American musician, singer, songwriter and producer. Norman’s recordings are noted for their Christian and social subject matter, and he is often described as the “father of Christian rock music”.
Norman has also been described as having had a significant influence on many artists, secular and religious. Norman had long been associated with what has been referred to as the Jesus People movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, although it has been reported that “he did not particularly identify himself with the youth–oriented ‘Jesus movement’ of the time”.
- Read More
I’m not going to pretend that I knew a lot about Larry Norman and supported his career from the beginning and named my kids after him and all that, because… well, I didn’t. I had heard of Larry numerous times and knew the basics about his life. How he was considered the “father of Christian rock” and that he was pretty outspoken and fell in the same lines as Bob Dylan, and those guys. Honestly the first time I heard of him was when DC Talk covered “I Wish We’d All Been Ready“. The song hit me pretty hard, as it would any influential teenager, and I even learned it on the guitar. Beyond that I don’t know much about Larry Norman’s work.
This past Sunday, Larry died in his home, from a long battle with an illness that I am unable to even find more details about. I heard about his passing a few times throughout the week and decided to do some reading. The more research I did the more I wanted to know about this guy and his music career. From being banned at several Christian Bookstores, speaking out against Christian consumerism, a constant struggle to make it financially, even with a title so grand as the “father of Christian rock”, and a continued message of love and acceptance.
No doubt this year Larry will be greatly recognized at the Dove Awards, and sell more records than he ever has. That’s how the industry works. A tribute album will be made, money will be made and his message will be spread further than it ever has. And that’s not a bad thing, just a little sad to me.
I may fall in line with several people that will “discover” his music after his death, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I just hope that we, as music consumers and lovers, recognize good content and share it with others before the artist dies and we are told to like it. I would encourage you to read about Larry and his life. Check out an album or two*. We owe it to him and his family. Especially those that are succeeding in the music industry. From what I’ve read, he stood in the front lines and everyone making a career in this industry owes him at least that.
*iTunes is only carrying one album, and it’s a remix album. The reviews are horrible and I think I will search out the original.
When Art And Business Collide
I’m trying to learn how to function in business. I’m trying to learn what “taxes” are, and what an “organized schedule” is. I’m trying to learn what “long term business plans” are, and how to make something succeed. And I’m trying to learn all of this and I feel like I have been using the wrong side of my brain.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about this blogging venture and which route to take. I’ve talked to a million people within the music industry and outside of it. I’ve played out the different scenarios in my head a thousand times. But the problem is that I’ve tried to continue to be creative throughout this learning process, and failed miserably. I have started to learn more about myself and how when I am forcing myself to do something logical, my creativity is garbage. **I wanted to say “rubbish” there but didn’t want to be made fun of** I don’t know how people manage to do both.
Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s people like me, but for some reason when business stuff comes into my life I really, really have to concentrate or I will be completely lost. It’s not that I can’t do the things that I need to do, it’s just that if I am not completely focussed on it my brain instantly tries to ignore it and spit it out. I’ve got several friends that have succeeded in business and several “arty” friends that have a hard time getting out of the house by themselves. There’s got a balance in there somewhere.
The last few weeks I have been trying to find it… which usually ends with me staring at the wall.
Which are you? How do you cope when you forced to be the other?
That’s Why They Call Them Genius’s
…Or is it “Genui?
So after sending my computer away for three to five days, had the logic board replaces, sat on the phone with Apple for what seemed like three to five days, to explain to them the problem again, to be told that I no longer had phone support, but that they would send me a new battery for my laptop to see if that was the problem. It wasn’t. Another long phone wait, and another long explanation of the problem an appointment with a genius was set up. A real live genius. One who officially has a title that could be put on a resume. Genius.
So, today at 10:45 am I was standing at the counter with my scalding hot laptop. I waited until my name was called. I opened my laptop and explained the problem to the genius, or genui. He listened intently, nodded occasionally, then opened my Utilities folder. From there he went to the Activity Monitor and selected “All Processes”. This showed a big list of things that my computer was apparently working on. The main one being a “printer job”.
“See that there.”, the genuis said, “Your computer is trying to figure out what it’s trying to print.”
“Okay”, I said.
“It’s trying to print something on a PC and can’t figure out how, and it’s using 99.4% of your computer to figure it out.”
“That’s a lot of my computer isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
The genuis clicked on the printer job, then clicked the “quit” button. Instantly the fan stopped and the temperature dropped from eighty-six degrees Celsius to fifty-two. Apparently for the last several weeks my computer was working really hard at trying to communicate with a PC. See there’s the problem. A PC. I walked away from the genius bar at 10:51 am. Six minutes. Six minutes!
At least I got a new logic board and battery out of the deal.
Complete Lack Of Creativity
Tonight we read a story at bed time about a bear family that I grew up with. I don’t know how many Berenstain Bear books I have read in my lifetime but one thing that always hits me is the complete lack of creativity on the part of the parents.
This particular story was about some nasty little girl named Queenie. She and several other friends with real names were picking on Sister. Yeah… Sister is her name. Come on Berenstain Bear parents, where’s the creativity in that? Sister?! Oh yeah and of course there is Brother too. Sister and Brother. I suppose it’s a good thing they didn’t have any more bear kids. What names would those kids end up with? Other Brother? Next Sister?
This wouldn’t be that odd if everyone else in the story didn’t have “regular” names. I put the word “regular” in quotes because I am not entirely sure that there are people names “Queenie” either but at least it’s not a descriptor… or maybe it is… and she has every right to be snooty…. I’m getting distracted. What if someone else has a brother or a sister? Can they not be called “sister” or “brother” at school?
I suppose you can’t totally blame the parents. I mean, imagine them going to school. Just think of what your friends would say if you were a third-grader named Papa Bear?
