If Christianity's task on this earth is about communicating the truth about the nature of the universe that others might join us in worship and worshiping God more fully, then the freedom of information should flow without restrictions. The Christian world has often been recognized, in its past, as the ones who championed education.

Brandon Heath - Give Me Your Eyes from Brandon Heath on Vimeo.

I've been on both sides of the issue spoken of in this song recently. I wonder, can I feel unseen without being guilty of not seeing?

The full transcript of an interview of a well-educated son of an Islamic leader has been posted on FOXNews. My favorite quote from the transcript is this:

But now, people have media. If the father closes the door for his daughter not to leave the house, she's going to go behind her computer and travel the world. So people easily can get information, knowledge, searching (sic) engines, so it's very, very available for everybody to study about Islam, about other religions. Not from the Islam point of view, but from other points of view.

So for the next 25 years this is for sure going to make huge change in the Muslim and the Arab world.

The pieces of the video that aired are below for your watching pleasure, but take the time to read the full transcript. Fox cut a lot of good info.

Those of you who have been watching for the last three years know what has happened with our financial support. God has blessed in many ways. We're so blessed to know each of you and to have reconnected with each of you. We do not take lightly the support we have been given in money, time and prayers and believe God desires this ministry to be continually lifted up by your gifts. However, it is becoming apparent that we need to dig in for the long-term. Raising the financial support required for this ministry is proving to be a slow endeavor.

In light of this, I've begun a contracting business to make up for our lack of financial support. Perhaps you know of someone who may be interested in the sort of service. I'm looking at doing desktop/server support as well as strategic web development. Information about this new venture is up at JosiahRitchie.com.

I've moved this website to a new hosting provider. In the mean time I also moved to a new version of the software I use to run this site. Drupal version 6 is now my base and working well for the purpose.

Please look around. If you find any bugs, leave them as comments here or email me. Most of the bugs I've squashed so far have had to do with images missing on the page. There may be others that I haven't noticed yet. In fact, I'm sure some exist.

The three of us attended ICCM this last long weekend. Flying was eventful. Thanks goes to United Express for canceling our first flight and neglecting to get our luggage on the last flight. Just the same, we made it and met many new friends. It was my first time to speak face-to-face with some I'd know for awhile now.

As some of you know, my daughter dealt the final death blow to our last laptop through her regular playing with the cord. I was concerned this weekend that our daughter had done it again. We purchased the MacBook with the idea that the magnetic system would keep her from tripping over it and breaking things again. I didn't know how, but the evidence remained that she found a way to mess with the power on our new notebook. The MacBook Pro's battery wasn't charging. I checked around the web, made sure my battery wasn't recalled. The indicator light wouldn't "light" in green or amber and the icon said "Not Charging". This showed that the MacBook knew the power adapter was plugged in, but couldn't pull juice into the battery. It even ran for a short time with the battery pulled out so it was getting power from the power adapter.

Anyway, I finally found the problem. No one else on the Internet seemed to have the same problem. I have a 2 year old. It seems that some minor sticky crumb lodged itself into the top of the jack for the power plug. The magnetics held it in enough so that it was in place and doing something, but not enough to work properly. Removing this gunk has resulted in a proper charge for our trust MacBook Pro again.

I hope someone else finds this useful before they end up taking their own notebook to the store for warranty service like I was getting ready to do. :-)

It can be difficult to tell people what my typical day looks like. This video is meant to clarify this some for people. Admittedly, we crammed a lot into my day. The video captures some of the highlights of a few different days over the course of a week. Missionary visits, website work, fixing copiers and answering various missionary questions through the use of email, skype, bomgar and face to face pretty well sums up the majority of my tasks in a day.

Rachel did a great job photographing the stair sequences and some other things. We hope you enjoy it.

A Day in the Life of Josiah from Josiah Ritchie on Vimeo.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the discipline in website maintenance that handles how you look to search engines. It is important because it directly translates to where you show up in a search engine when a person searches for something your site offers.

We had a warm welcome by the Church of the Open Door Youth Group yesterday. I almost felt like I was at home as words like python, iMovie and Ubuntu were used. :-) The fashionable MacBook Pro also drew some attention. The FIM Idiom Skit went over quite well. Pastor Brett jumped trustingly into the role of an American Pastor in a foreign country. The translator (me) had to figure out what these strange phrases like "tickled pink" meant in order to translate them. We eventually determined that Brett had a rash all over his body.