wakebird » Africa

Perspective on Swine Flu

wakebird — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:26:28 +0000

I got this from Ryan Walton who blogs at On Beauty’s Road. Perspective is always a good thing.

Intense Email from Kenya

wakebird — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:50:00 +0000

PLEASE READ THIS EMAIL BELOW. IT IS VERY TRAGIC. PRAY FOR KENYA. THESE ARE THE TOWNS I WAS IN JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO. IT’S UNBELIEVABLE. PLEASE SUPPORT CHRIST’S HOPE IF YOU CAN.

Dear friends,

Firstly let me say at the onset that my family and I are safe so far. Its a trying time in the country and I have managed to get to e-mail this am. Kisumu town is littered with dead bodies mostly young people under 30 yrs of age. We have no traffic in or out of town and people have looted all the food stores.
Hospitals like ours have run out of food and medicines and Red Cross are trying their best to share whatever little they have with others.
Things are calmer this morning but the curfew is still on within most towns in the country. I counted 18 fresh bodies this morning on my way here to a mates house to send this e-mail. People are killing their neighbours if they are from a different tribe.
The government sadly has let its people down but we pray that the next few days will bring change. Many towns near me Kisumu, kakamega, eldoret, busia, kericho, aree mostly on fire. the infrastructure is which has taken decades to build is in smoke.
The people of Kenya have spoken through the ballot and we hope the international community will do something to make the head of state concede defeat and prevent Kenyans from killing one another.

Friends, its a bad start to 2008 in Kenya but one must never give up, the power of the people will eventually prevail. I am keeping my head low but staying safe. I am harbouring 5 families in my house who are the wrong tribe in town but are Kenyans who deserve better.
Will keep you updated and many thanks for those who called and/or texted me.

ps: Our local TV and radio have been banned from transmitting live broadcast and we are only relying on the the BBC world service.

WIshing all of you a happy 2008.

Hezron.

Letter to Darfur

wakebird — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:37:00 +0000

Dear Darfuri Refugee,

I need to tell you about something horrible happening here in the United States. You may not believe it but it is actually true. You see, here in America we have these giant stores that sell things like furniture, clothing, hammers and waffle irons. These stores get very busy during the month of December because lots of people buy presents for their friends and family to celebrate holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah. Over the past few years many of these stores have stopped issuing the usual “Merry Christmas” greeting to shoppers and on their mail order catalogs and instead say, “Happy Holidays”. I know, it is hard to imagine, isn’t it!?! Here we are trying to live out the true meaning of Christmas by spending lots of money on things people need really bad, and we can’t even get a little “Merry Christmas” from the check out girl.

Well, I knew you of all people would be able to relate with our difficult plight, since in your country of Sudan over the past few years over 200,000 of your people have been murdered through acts of genocide and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes like you and now live as refugees. I hope you will forward this email to your people so they will understand the atrocities happening here in the United States and will be encouraged that they are not the only people in the world who are suffering.

Merry Christmas!
Your Concerned American Friend
www.savedarfur.org

Calvary To Kenya Blog

wakebird — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:04:00 +0000

We have a blog for my trip to Kenya. There is actually a team already in Kenya that is part of our Calvary Church High School Ministry. I planned the trip that this team is on as well so I am very excited for them to be there. My team leaves this Sunday, August 12th and returns on August 26th. The blog is for both groups so there are a couple posts already.

Check it out at http://calvarytokenya.wordpress.com

Kenya Team Pictures

wakebird — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:40:00 +0000

Here is the Kenya Team minus about four people. We were in the youth room of Mount of Olives Lutheran Church which had all this cool graffiti art. That’s why we are flashing the gang signs.

Choose to Wait

wakebird — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:55:00 +0000

I just got back from an all-day training on how to teach Choose to Wait classes in Kenya this summer. That’s just a part of what we will be doing, but it should be an ideal way to help and to share Christ with people. The African people are showered with lies about sex and AIDS by their parents, older siblings, and even government leaders. Women are essentially “sold” by their parents to a man to be his wife and therefore the man acts as if he owns her rather than loving her as Christ loves the church. Government leaders have said that if you have sex with a virgin you will be cured of AIDS. People are not valued as being created in God’s image so they can be exploited completely.

We learned how to communicate God’s design for them and God’s value for them through Genesis 1-3. It is essentially abstinence training with teaching about God all wrapped into one. It was a bit long and so the high school students (and myself) got a bit bored after a while, but it was a good foundation to build our planning upon. We will be teaching this content at schools, orphanages, and youth jails.

Vacation gives me blog blues

wakebird — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:58:00 +0000

I don’t understand why, but every time I go on vacation I don’t feel like blogging when I get home. We have been pretty tired from the travel and I was at church from 7:30am-3:00pm today.
I will do some BRIEFS:
1.We had a good Kenya meeting today. I’m getting more excited about the trip.
2. Brent preached it today at church.
3. I’m speaking the next three Sundays in Elevation.
4. Tomorrow is Gracie’s birthday. I can’t believe she is four.
5. We got upgraded to first class again on the way home from Seattle. I like it there.
6. The Anaheim Ducks are awesome. It was fun watching hockey in Canada with people who actually care.
7. My Fantasy Baseball team has 5 players on the Disabled List. This is not what you want.
8. The church consultant comes this weekend. Should be interesting.
9. I still want a tattoo.
10. TV shows I love – Scrubs, 24, Heroes, Lost, CSI, The Soup, Man vs. Wild, Studio 60, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, Law & Order SVU, and two horrible ones that I actually like – American Idol and America’s Next Top Model. I don’t watch The Office yet. I will probably do the DVD thing with it. The first episode annoyed me almost as much as Rosie O’Donnel or Victor so I never watched it. But I need to give it another chance.

10 Briefs

wakebird — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:50:00 +0000

1. My first day at OC AIDS Services Foundation was good. I talked for a while with the head of volunteers and helped dispell some of his presuppositions about pastors. I helped make an email list for the AIDS Walk on May 12.
2. Matt Doan, High School Pastor at Calvary Church, started a blog. It’s called OrangeCountyPastor which shows Matt’s love for combining three words together (The High School group is called EveryDayLife) and his nerdiness. It’s a cool blog other than the lame quotes on top and the RSS feeds on the bottom.
3. I am valuing the concepts of Sabbath and sabbatical more and more. Especially after conversations with staff members struggling with burnout. We need to “feed our forgotten souls” as Paul Borthwick says.
4. I’m going to see the movie “300” tonight. I’m a combination of excited and apprehensive. I’ve heard it’s gnarly.
5. I’m going to buy a new surfboard. Mine is about 10 years old. When I realized that I wanted to turn myself into a dorky high school freshman and make fun of myself.
6. We have a Kenya meeting this Saturday. I’m looking forward to this trip but it’s a bit all consuming.
7. Trader Joe’s banana bread is excellent for breakfast – especially with Kona coffee.
8. Be careful what you say in staff meetings. It can backfire on you.
9. I recently got Logos Bible Software and I suck at it so I wanted to go to a training seminar and I saw this. WOW!! I need to go to this. It’s for ministry.
10. GO UCLA BRUINS TONIGHT!!

OC AIDS Services Foundation

wakebird — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:45:00 +0000

I wasn’t going to post about this for a while but Mike has forced my hand with this post about the OC AIDS Walk. Our church has been on a series that is casting vision to our people for being more involved in our community. These need to be consistent ministry relationships that are close to our community where we can eventually talk about Jesus. Mostly we want to live Matthew 5:16 of letting our light shine before people so they see our good deeds and praise our Father in Heaven.

I knew that I was going to Kenya this summer with our high school students and an organization called Christ’s Hope ministering to people who have AIDS or are affected by AIDS. So I thought, why help across the world, but not at home? Then I started searching online for a good AIDS organization in Orange County and I found OC AIDS Services Foundation. A week ago I went to a Volunteer Information/Orientation Meeting at their office in Costa Mesa. It seems like they are doing good work and I can get involved in some different ways – starting with helping in the office and the Food Pantry. Then working at the OC AIDS Walk on May 12. Later I could deliver meals to client’s homes or drive client’s to the doctor office or things like that.

I’m excited to break some barriers between evangelical pastors and the AIDS community. It should be challenging, but fun and rewarding in a Kingdom-sense.

I WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN ME ON THE AIDS WALK ON MAY 12.

Crazy Weekend

wakebird — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 01:55:00 +0000

So I left on Friday afternoon for our church’s Men’s Retreat. It was a Wild at Heart theme with a couple people from John Eldredge’s team coming to do the speaking – one of which is Bart Hansen who is a member/former elder of our church. It was pretty cool actually. I usually think the Men’s Retreat is incredibly boring. The whole million video clip method of teaching definitely keeps you engaged. The big thing I don’t understand is why we have to have so many meetings. More fun, less meetings. It’s like the clip from Jerry Maguire that we watched. Fewer clients, less money. I say, “More fun, less meetings.” Am I going to get fired like Jerry? Probably not. We did play Ultimate Frisbee in about 4 inches of snow on a huge football field. Very tiring, but muy fun.

Some of us drove home on Saturday night because we had church responsibilities. I actually preached both services on Sunday. I like doing the Celebration service. It’s about twice as big as our Elevation service, but that’s not why I like it. It’s has less energy and enthusiasm as our Elevation service, but that’s not why I like it. I like it because the people love talking about it after the service. I was talking to these three adorable older ladies after the service who just wanted to chat. It was funny and kinda fun. They loved that I teased our Sr Pastor in my sermon about being a germa-phobe.

Then we had Hume Lake sign-ups and had hundreds of people outside the gym. We had a big “cookout” as my southern friends would call it. We raised about $1,500 for the Kenya trip with the BBQ as us SoCal people call it. Awesome.

I left the house at about 6:30am and got home at 2:45pm and I was on my feet the whole time after being on the Men’s Retreat. Needless to say, I am exhausted. It’s good to be with my family.

P.S. We leave for Maui next Saturday. I CAN’T WAIT!!!