If you haven't reserved a spot in heaven yet, no time is better than the present. Being the Christmas season, maybe you could give a reservation as a gift to loved ones. It is surprisingly affordable, especially when you order more than 5 because of the available group rates.

Seriously though, this website might be a fun and non-abrasive way to start conversations with your friends who aren't assured of their passage into heaven.

Marcia Montenegro of Christian Answers for the New Age wrote an article about The Golden Compass (the book, not the movie coming out soon) and the spiritual issues that it includes. If you haven't heard about the whole spiritual controversy around it, this article might be a good place to start.

I thought her concluding thoughts under the heading "Questions to Ponder" were an interesting thing to think about.

One of the things that really affirmed my feelings about FIM when we were first looking around to see if this is where God had us was Wall Watcher's Ministry Watch profile on them. FIM actively participates in openly sharing information about their financials with Ministry Watch and recently FIM was given the honor of being recognized as a "Shining Light", which is to say that they are considered an Exemplary Ministry and among the "Top 30" ministries in the opinion of the good folks at Wall Watchers.

FIM received a nice note of thanks from one of our missionaries. I wanted to pass on some of the things that were said to you guys. It is exciting to be working with an agency that makes unique things happen by filling the gaps of support. I won't share the whole message as some of it is personal, but there are some great chunks.

So I am extra thankful this year for all that God has done and especially I am thanking God for you and how you stood in the gap, believed in us and saw the bigger picture....

So I just wanted to write you guys a personal letter thanking you for your friendship, love and partnership in our lives. Words are not doing it for me but I hope you can hear my heart.

Thank you for being a part of the team that makes it possible for us to support missionaries. Your prayer, friendship and financial support are crucial.

Do the visitors in your church experience what Mr. Bean experienced?

We're getting ready for a fresh run at getting the news out about our ministry. This time we're focusing on churches, especially those in the Allentown area and trying to put our best foot forward. Rachel and I brainstormed about what the best way to do this would be. We settled on a one page Intro to our ministry accompanied by a CD that goes into greater depth. You can see what is on the CD, mostly, by following this link to our church packet.

If you'd like to be part of our "street team" and share this CD with others, you can feel free to download this ISO file. Your CD burning program should be able to use this file to make a CD. You'll probably also want to download the Intro Sheet and print out a copy to go along with the CD.

• The CD Image (ISO)
• The Intro Sheet (PDF)

I also have a CD label for Memorex CD labels. If you're interested in it holler or if you have any trouble using the ISO CD image, holler about that too. I'd be glad to help you out.

I was participating in one of the forums that has been drawing me in, the Ubuntu Forums, and came across the post on forum trolls. I breezed through it and was pleasantly surprised to see how balanced a view of this particular type of troll was presented. If you've spent any significant time online as a Christian and been involved in conversations of faith in forums, you have very likely run into these trolls. They are the reason I generally avoid group discussions on spiritual matters. I try to draw that into one-on-one conversation so the conversation can't get hijacked.

The Holy Misroller (HM). Holy Misrollers are those online forum participants who give Christians (or other religious adherents) a bad name. The HM believes himself or herself to be a Christian (etc.) and will generally tell anyone who'll listen about his or her faith in God and in Jesus. At the same time, however, the HM will display decidedly un-Christian behavior, frequently making an *** out of him- or herself. The HM is often characterized by a great deal of anger and hostility. The breed tends to lash out at anyone and anything not in keeping with its incorrectly narrow worldview. The saddest part about HMs is that they do not truly understand Christianity at all.

This sent me into research mode. Who is this Mathew guy who wrote this up? It turns out, besides being a forum admin, he is also a published author and cultural researcher living in Fes, Morocco. I came across a gem of a blog post on a remote moroccan village. His book looks interesting also. Called Humor and Moroccan Culture, it sounded like an interesting read that I might enjoy some day.

Anyway, this is a good example of the fun I have with Linux. The community is really fun to explore. I learn about and interact with people from all over the world who have linux in common.

5 Kinds of Christians is an article from ChristianityToday that ThinkChristian pointed me to. The 5 types of Christians that emerged were interesting. Of most interest to me was the group called "Private Christians".

From the guys that brought you the marvelous Bible Gateway, The Gospel.Com website has officially gone live.

You've all had one before, probably several. Today, I came back from vacation/family work day to find my work computer pretty well toasted. I think it must have been in the middle of a major upgrade I told it to do before I left. The only reason I can think that the computer would have shut down is an extended power outage. I have the computer on a UPS battery so it should have lasted through a short power outage.

Anyway, I've been struggling with it all day and have decided to backup my files and complete the upgrade by doing a full install instead. I'd really rather be doing something else, but here I am. Hopefully, I'll have a complete system by the time I leave today.

I also hit a snag in my top priority project, beside fundraising. I'd been pretty excited about using Moodle to build out a section of our new online approach to parts of our Candidate Orientation (due for a rename). Problem is that out current host doesn't support Moodle, so I'm having to think about adding on another host for this purpose or maybe a Moodle specific service to get us started. This has larger reaching impact than I'd hope this project to have in terms of infrastructure.

Maybe this is just God's way of reminding me to not only backup my files, but also backup and see the bigger picture of what I'm really doing.