Ain't Complicated

Sewing Hope

Through the Gospel for Asia Christmas Gift Catalog, ten women were given a desperately-needed second chance. These women came from a painful background — some had AIDS, some left the sex trade, and others were abused. Each received a sewing machine and hope for a new life.

Ten GFA-supported missionaries delivered the machines with a message of God’s love. The sewing machines provide these women with a source of income and the ability to sustain themselves, along with preventing a future drenched in despair. Learning to sew opens up job opportunities that weren’t previously attainable.

Aishwarya Baiji prayed faithfully with her husband that God would provide a sewing machine; she had long dreamed of being a seamstress. As a field worker, Aishwarya earned only half the wages that men were paid. After receiving a GFA-provided sewing machine, she and fellow believer Kanta Baiji planned to share this hope with others in their village.

Full article at Mission Network News.

You Are There

The Fairview Christmas Pageant — hmm, lemme think — I think we’ve gone the last three years. But I don’t think I’ll take the time off to go tonight.

Church pageant turns 20

When the curtain rose Wednesday night at the Fairview Mennonite Church in Albany, the annual Christmas program ushered in its 20th year of production.

“You Are There: Jesus Christ, His Birth” is the production that has been a seasonal staple in Albany since 1989.

“It’s come a long way,” said Leonard Gerig, who adapted the program from a script by Jim Grant. “We’ve undergone a few changes over the years but it is much the same as when we started.”

The church performs three shows each year involving about 120 people from the congregation.

[…]

“Our goal is to make the Christmas story come alive,” Gerig said. “This is our gift to the community.”

A very nice, very enjoyable, very well done gift — thanks, Leonard and crew!

Brian Moynihan, a Tip

First, a tip of the hat in congratulations to you for this:

Bank of America’s board late Wednesday named its 50-year-old consumer and small business banking chief, Brian Moynihan, as president and CEO.

Next, a tip about this problem:

Moynihan takes over at time when the bank faces continued loan losses in the billions of dollars. It lost more than $2.2 billion in the third quarter as bad debt kept rising as consumers still struggled to pay their bills. Bank of America, which has about 53 million consumer and small business customers, is considered particularly vulnerable to unemployment, which remains at double-digit levels.

I am one of your customers. But you have not suffered any loan losses from me.

By God’s grace, you won’t.

And you could help by lowering my interest rate. That’s my tip, Mr. Moynihan. Lower my interest rate, thus reducing the financial pressure on me, thus making it less likely that you’ll suffer any loan losses from me.

Seems mighty sensible to me.

So, to anyone at Bank of America reading this, please email the link to this blog post to Brian Moynihan.

Lower my interest rate, please, and do your bank (and me) a big favor.

Thanks anyway. 🙄

Source: Brian Moynihan to succeed Ken Lewis as BofA CEO

Spider on the Ceiling

Spider, I see you in my vertical

Peripheral

Moving in no apparent hurry

What you doin’ up there?

Where I can squash you

Easily

But I won’t

Cuz you’re staying outta my hair

And you might catch the squeeter

Who ain’t.

Besides, if you can get past

The queen and her maids

To weave in kings’ palaces

Why not in my castle?

“The spider skillfully grasps with its hands,
And it is in kings’ palaces.”
—Proverbs 30:28

Algeria: Despite Laws

Despite laws preventing conversion, Muslims are turning to Christ in what’s being called an amazing move of the Spirit in Northern Algeria.

In 2008, Algeria put into full effect a new anti-conversion law that prohibited efforts to convert Muslims to another religion and gave the government the right to regulate every aspect of Christian practice. This law was a direct attack against Christians since almost all Algerian Christians are converts from Islam. The new law could make nearly all Christian churches in the country illegal.

Despite this new law, 2009 has been an incredible year for evangelical church growth, says Pastor Youssef Jacob with Operation Mobilization. “We have churches that have grown 802%. Many converts have come from Islam with no Christian heritage, no Christian background, no resources whatsoever, no training. But they just believe in God and His Word.”

Jacob says the Kabylie people are the most responsive in the Kabylie region, which is home to more than 2,000 towns and villages. “In every village and every town there are Christians, and there are churches,” says Jacob. “In one town, actually there are more churches than mosques, which is a big miracle to happen in the Middle East.”

Source: Mission Network News

December 13

1571 — Hans Misel is martyred for his faith after refusing to recant his Anabaptist beliefs. According to Martyr’s Mirror, when the executioner brought him to the place where he was to be executed, he said to him, that if he would recant, he still had authority to let him go. But he refused, and would there seal his faith with his blood, and so far as he was concerned, he said, he might proceed. Thus he was beheaded and then burnt, and as they could not burn him quickly enough, they cut him into pieces and burned the pieces. When the executioner had struck off his head, so that the same lay on the ground, his body still remained erect, with the hands uplifted, as though he were praying, till the executioner pushed him over with his foot. It was also said that his head and hair could not be burned, but that it was found entire and undisfigured in the ashes, and was thus buried.

(Being an Anabaptist, that is of particular interest to me. Thanks to Google Alerts and Voice of the Martyrs for the info.)

In other news…

1545 — The first session of the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent opens. Responding to the spread of Protestantism and the drastic need for moral and administrative reforms within the Roman Catholic church, it met on and off for 18 years.

1949 — The Knesset votes to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

1972 — Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final moonwalk of Apollo 17. This was the last manned mission to the moon.

1981 — General Wojciech Jaruzelski declares martial law in Poland to prevent dismantling of the communist system by Solidarity.

2006 — The Baiji (aka Chinese River Dolphin) is announced as extinct.

Hear Them Bells?

Is that chiming you hear a call to worship?

Or is it all in your head?

Like this, for instance: Bells toll to halt climate change.

Toll the bells; halt climate change.

Great. 🙄

Wow, who would have thought it could be so simple. And think of all the carbon and footprints expended getting to, around, and from Copenhagen for that CCC (climate change conference).

…a worldwide bell-ringing event initiated by the World Council of Churches for Sunday, Dec. 13. Churches have been asked to sound their bells or other instruments 350 times to symbolize the 350 parts per million considered the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Churches without bells are invited to use handbells or other noisemakers instead. Some congregations are choosing to toll their bells 35 times instead of 350.

Our church has no bells. But if anyone shows up with handbells or cow bells or dumb bells, I’ll try to remember to let you know via Twitter.

And about those congregations opting to tithe the bell ringing, what’s with that? Maybe they’re slackers. Maybe they don’t want to be fanatical. Maybe they think some anti-climate-change conspiracy has infiltrated the movement and succeeded in setting “the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide” 1000% too high.

Mark’s Special Request to the Bell Ringers: Please consider the consequences of halting climate change! Are you sure that’s really what you want?

Anyway, I thought you should know what all the bell ringing is about. (But won’t all that excessive ringing drive the bats out of the bellfry?)

Oh, and sorry this is so late. I meant to post it yesterday.