77 Zealous Inches

I was getting kinda tired of checking this blog to see if anyone had hacked into it and left something interesting to read. Since no one else is stepping up to the plate, I said “enough’s enough – by golly I’ll update, by golly I will” (I’m kidding, I didn’t actually literally say that). So here’s a nice long newsy post with all kinds of newsy news which probably won’t be as interesting as you deserve. I wish I could be like Uncle Mike or Hobbyns back in the glory days and make even commonplace blogging subjects curiously interesting simply by virtue of a stellar command of the English language. While I’m wishing, I’d also like a pony.

Anywhoo, seeing as it’s now October which was a month past my projected leaving date to Nepal and seeing as the leaving part has not really happened yet – first update of the day is that I’ve recently been getting intimately accquainted with the spiritual principle of “God’s timing” and it appears that God was not in the timing of leaving in September. He’s indicated that the end of January is more along the lines of His will and so end of January it is. In the meantime, I get to psyche myself up for suffering frostbite for the cause of Christ since (I hear) February is the coldest month in Kathmandu. Hooray! I’m going to be a real live field person for the first time since I was two and I’m pretty excited – this blog will hopefully see more updates as I chronicle my experiences of transitioning from full time office work to full time outreach on the other side of the world.

Switching subjects here – I’d just like to point out how unspeakably awesome Activated Ministries is. I’ve worked here full time since I was 17 and part time long before that. I’m in the lucky position of being one of the first people to see the reports from all the dozens of projects that we sponsor around the world and the seminars that we pull off and sponsor as well right here and whenever I think about it – I give myself a big pat on the back (not really). Seriously, all of the amazing work that we’re a part of doesn’t get half as much publicity as it should and it deserves much more because everyone here works their butts off to make completely free tools available for all kinds of Family members and projects around the world.

To name a few, we’ve sponsored free materials to projects in Thailand, Cambodia, Taiwan, India, Mozambique, Japan, Sahara, Mexico, Nepal, Fiji, Indonesia, Guatemala, Ghana, Peru, and Chile. We also sponsor the translation of tools into Spanish and Portuguese and the printing of Activated mags into Hungarian, Croatian, Romanian and Russian. That’s not mentioning every major seminar that has taken place over the last couple of years in North America which have been hugely sponsored by Activated Ministries. We’ve sponsored tool credit to every teen who attended the three previous Wordstocks to help them raise their attendance fees. There’s also the free tool credit we’ve sponsored for every single PMA mentor in The Family. In conclusion, Activated Ministries is a non-profit rockstar.

Our website (the one that I’ve been linking to more times than is considered in good taste, I’m sure) has less than half of the reports that we’ve received from every continent (save Antarctica, but give us time). I’m on a push to get the rest of our projects posted now that the Educators Seminar (also sponsored by Activated Ministries) is over and life can get back to, um….normal. So visit the site every once in awhile and be wowed, and when you see anyone from Activated Ministries, give them a hug and tell them they’re completely awesome, because they are. And yo, if you have a great work or project that you need free tools for, write me at sponsorship@actmin.org and I promise you’ll get reviewed and you may just find yourself with a shipment of brand spanking new, completely free materials with which to go evangelize your part of the world.

Furtherlmorely switching subjects, today Chuck and I got to be part of a presentation/question & answer session at San Diego State University on The Family International. To break the ice with all the students, we read parts of this article (we’re #3) to everyone. Heh, heh. We didn’t read all of it, but I think it broke the ice pretty well. It was fun, I spoke on prophecy and did better in my first public speaking attempt than I thought I would, praise God and the spirit helpers. I also came to the realization that I would like to lecture for a living at some future point in my life. Just dress nice and talk about what you know, how simple is that?

Hey wow, this post turned out not so boring after all, for me at least. I know I had other stuff to blog about but I can’t think of it now and even if I could, since I got on the subject of Activated Ministries I don’t want to steal its thunder since it really deserved its very own post, what with it being so awesome and all. I’ll wrap up with two quotes that I found two years ago and have had sitting in drafts ever since. If in two years I haven’t found the appropriate post to stick them in I don’t think I ever will. So here they are in all their à la carte glory.

To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals. ~Don Schrader

There are three kinds of death in this world. There’s heart death, there’s brain death, and there’s being off the network. ~Guy Almes

P.S. When you go to the AM website – take a nice close look at the logo. It’s flash. Jer did it. I like it.

P.P.S. I linked to AM so many times because apparently it’s good for our rankings. Hopefully one of the brainy ones will read this and educate me if linking to it a bunch of times in the same post is a good thing or not because I don’t really remember.

P.P.P.S. If anyone feels like reminding Mr. Setfree of his agreement to guest star on my blog, I don’t mean to be pushy but if this interview goes unanswered again I don’t know if I’ll recover from the hearbreak.