The good guys over at Gospel.com let us know that it was missions emphasis week a little while ago and asked us to share materials with them on mission. The Gospel.com blog, despite being young, has a large audience and the chance to jump on this opportunity seemed yet another great way to get the word out about FIM. After all Missions is what we do, so I sent them over some materials. I received an email back immediately thanking me for sending it over. Today, the results came out on the blog. An article almost entirely dedicated to Fellowship International Mission, even including our logo entitled Fellowship International Mission: doing missions differently shared everything I sent them and then more. They clearly dug around the FIM website some to pull out some information.

Even better, it's my birthday. What a great birthday present! I'm really enjoying seeing how God is using me and the experience, talents and passions for the Internet here at FIM. Praise God!

At the Internet Ministry Conference last year, I heard about Evangelism Explosion's new internet property, What's My Story?. It is supposed to be a place to share testimonies. At IMC, they were talking about a release date of January 24th. I've been watching it today and haven't seen anything happening nor have I received an email to tell me anything. There is still time to meet this release date, but perhaps in Web2.0 Microsoft fashion, the deadline has become a floating position on the calendar rather than a hard and fast rule. :-) I'm still looking forward to what's going on over there... If it shows up, you'll hear more from me here. :-)

My mom recently sent me an email about what the world eats in pictures. I tracked it down to a Time Photo Gallery: What the World Eats which was inspired by the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

The pictures are at least as interesting as the other cultural comments as they are for the food commentary. Don't miss the cost of the food and what their favorite foods are. There is a lot packed into such a small package that you could probably take the better part of an hour just gaining a basic understanding of what there is to see.

Check it out

I don't usually get very technical on this blog. If you like technical, this is for you. If not, you may want to skip this one. I had a friend who wanted to create a simple and somewhat private, but not majorly secure file sharing solution.

I am getting ready for a 12 hour scrapbooking session this weekend. So I dug out all my stuff tonight to start the process of getting organized. It was long but fun, and I came up with a few ideas for pages along the way. It just struck me as odd that getting everything together could be this messy.

Today, I spent most of the time thinking through all the thoughts in my head, especially the projects I'd like to do related to FIM on the Internet. I wrote down my idea of what the website "vision" and "mission" should be and a how I see that coming together.

Jon Barnes, a friend and former classmate of mine produced a great piece of video on his final project for his Grad class called McLuhan Wear. It is about surviving technology and inspired by a guy who died in 1980, but said things like "With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is 'sent.'" and "Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade." Jon's video challenges so many areas that our culture needs to be challenged. It is healthy to constantly question our use of technology, and clearly we've failed as a culture so far.

Generation X and Y (or whatever they're called) need to be aware of these issues more than ever before. We need to understand the place of privacy in a digital world. We need to know what information anyone can already know about us easily, or even think they know about us. We need to know that "indiscretions of youth" that once may have passed unnoticed can haunt us later. The political candidates of 2040 will have new challenges of distinguishing themselves from what they said about issue N when they were 17 on MySpace.

Resolution for Surviving the Future from Jon Barnes on Vimeo.

Thinking of Elizabeth's current and future relationship with technology can be a bit overwhelming. What are toys teaching her? She has a VTech notebook that she's using while sitting beside me. It's pretty cute and she seems to be having fun emulating me. She has a TMX Cookie Monster that rolls around the floor laughing when you push a button. She has been so enamored with our phones that she has been given a few play phones. She also has lots of books, wooden blocks and other non-tech toys. Clearly each of these toys teach something.

How can I protect her from learning ideas like "Technology can be my friend" from an interactive/robotic cookie monster. Or later, "My value is based in the information I know", which I think is where our individual identity is shifting. That is opposed to value being in what we do. We balance and combine interactions with things with interactions with us and when the weather permits we spend time outside walking the beautiful parks of Allentown. We limit TV time in lieu of time with us. What other ways does one raise a child to grow up human rather than an accessory to consumerism and technology? What lessons have we learned from previous generations that grew up with radio and television? I'll refrain from answering my own question any further in hopes of some good responses from you.

Our General Director, Steve Wilt, has started blogging over here. He will be addressing topics of interest to missions with an angle toward the supporters and churches as well. His first entry, Turtle on a Fencepost, shares how missionaries are like turtles on a fencepost. It is an interesting way to view the need for each missionary to have a support team behind them, not only providing financial support, but also sharing from their experience, expertise and gifts.

Anyway, pop over and welcome him to the blogosphere.

The latest project Ben Stein is connected with has an interesting objective, to reveal the bias of evolutionary scientists against any science that believes in a creator of some sort. I'll let them tell you what they're about...

In a scientific world gone mad, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is the controversial documentary that will chronicle Ben Stein’s confrontation with the Neo-Darwinian machine, exposing widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination in his heroic quest to bring back freedom in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, with the help of the world’s top scientists, educators and thinkers.

Coming to theaters in early 2008, EXPELLED promises to be the most controversial film of the year (think Fahrenheit 9/11 and An Inconvenient Truth).

I'll let you be the judge, but I really enjoyed what the trailer had to say. This is bound to be really controversial, surrounded by not-so-intelligent emotionally-laden drivel, but I hope some really good intelligent debate will also manage to move to the surface. Only time will tell.

I've managed to be comfortable in the Maryland "winter" using a jacket that doesn't zip up. (The zipper broke, but otherwise it was fine and wasn't needed often.) Here in Allentown, it is getting windy and very cold. I'm starting to rethink that jacket. Anyway, given the freezing temperatures, I thought today's Revered Fun comic was particularly appropriate. I hope you like it also.