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Jim

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Posts by Jim :

Drug-related violence in Mexico

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Police, the military, and the drug organizations in Mexico continue to be in an all-out war, another reason to pray for Mexico.

As I mentioned back in January, the violence in Mexico prompted the CBC to include Mexico on its top 5 world hot-spots for conflict.  At the end of last year, Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent 7000 troops into the state of Michoacan, and in January he sent another 3000 into Tijuana.  It’s been estimated that there have been 800-1000 deaths from the violence this year alone.

This week two senior anti-drug officers were murdered (one in Mexico City and another in Tijuana).  Yesterday armed gunmen captured police right out of their cars and four officers were killed, three kidnapped.  They were freed after a gun battle.

In the northern state of Coahuila, the state’s chief anti-kidnapping investigator was himself kidnapped, and is still missing.

But the government has had its successes too, having detained hundreds of gunmen and having burned millions of dollars worth of illegal marijuana plants.  Recently police in Mexico City made what could be the biggest seizure of drug cash ever worldwide – US$207 million.

I don’t write this because we personally fear for our safety.  The major hot spots are far from where we live.  However, this is a major part of understanding where Mexico is at today, and why we continue to ask you to pray for the people of Mexico.  These are massive challenges very much on the hearts and minds of people here.

MP3 Gain [free software review]

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I have a whole lot of (legal) music on my computer.  For the most part, we left out CDs and cassettes (remember those?) and LPs (yikes!) back in Canada and just brought the music in MP3 format on our hard drive.

This means that we can technically play most of the music we’ve ever owned randomly (not that we do that exactly, but we do play large collections on "random").  That’s all very well and good, but as you well know recording quality varies, and some recordings are set at a much LOUDER volume than others.  So you can be listening to one song just fine, and the next might BLAST you out of your seat!

Software developers, who also occasionally listen to music, came up with volume normalization, which attempts to keep your music from drastically changing decibels from track to track.  But there are problems with this too.  For one thing, it can slow down the program you’re using.  You may also use more than one program, and each one must normalize the volume.  Finally, many programs have trouble understanding how the human ear hears the song, and so the results that come out of your speakers are far from perfect.

One of the most perfect solutions out there is a program called MP3Gain.  MP3Gain simply normalizes the volume of MP3 tracks, but it attempts to adjust how the track actually sounds to the human ear.  The results are far better.

MP3Gain

The other main advantage to MP3Gain is that it doesn’t degrade your files – you can change the volume as much as you like, and then put everything back the way it was, no problem.

You can also maintain the volume difference between songs in a single album, and yet lower the general volume of each album.

The only complaint I have is that the setup is a little confusing at first.  But there’s a help file, and once you figure it out it’s very quick to set up and very simple – you basically press a button to analyze your MP3s, and another button to normalize the volume.  All done!  Go listen to some music!

The program is free, of course, under the GNU General Public License.  It was developed by Glen Sawyer.  It’s available in a number of languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese and Uzbek.  If you listen to music via MP3 on a regular basis, this is a must have program.  Go to the MP3Gain download page and grab yourself a copy.  MP3Gain for Mac is available here.

Mother’s Day in Mexico

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Madre heart

Mother’s Day is big in Mexico.  Like countries such as El Salvador, Oman and Guatemala, it’s celebrated on the 10th of May.  (Canada is with the majority, celebrating on the second Sunday in May, but there are many other dates, most between March and May)

Madre cookies

On Día de la Madre, you’ll see long lines of people trying to buy expensive (for Mexico) flowers, packed restaurants, and even some people not bothering to come to work because they’re celebrating with Mom.  There are some special events on the day, and it’s a great time for community outreaches.  There was an event at the university, and Shari got a white rose at school (her favourite!).

Our church did some special things that Sunday after Día de la Madre.  The kids gave cookies-on-a-stick to all the Moms (very quickly, because the temptation was almost too great).

Also, in the middle of the service we all got up and picked out white and red roses.  Then we went out into the neighbourhood looking for Moms.  When we found a Mom, we gave them a rose (with a tag with a Scripture verse on it).  They seemed quite delighted (especially the lady that got a rose from Nathanael!).  I thought it was a good idea – simple, fun, colourful, beautiful, and somewhat random and spontaneous.

[addendum] Another perspective on our church outreach from Sunday morning can be found here.

Update from the Yinglings

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Thanks to those of you who stopped to pray for the Yingling family, after their son Josiah injured his knee (mentioned in this post) and thier other son Aron ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.

Scott and Ruth Yingling emailed earlier this week to give an update.  It sounds like they’ve really been able to see God work through the situation already.  Aron was released from the hospital on Tuesday.  It sounds like the pneumonia is more or less gone, and he just needed a few days for his body to recover.  Josiah is doing well, and Lord willing the stitches will be coming out next week.

As far as I know the Yinglings were able to head to the States on Friday for two weeks of ministry.  They were all really looking forward to it, saying they were ready for a "change of scenery".  No doubt, after all that time in hospitals and in bed!

So thanks for praying, and praise the Lord with us.  🙂

Paper towel holder. Finally.

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As you recall, when we moved here to Cuernavaca we didn’t end up renting the house with the paper towel holder.  Instead, we moved into this house – a great house for us in every way except… no paper towel holder at all.

No problem (you say).  Just go to the store and pick one up!

Our new paper towel holder

Well, we searched and we hunted, and couldn’t find such a thing.  No way, no how.  Amazon.com may have hundreds, but they won’t deliver to Mexico.

So today I’m back to announce that – yes – after almost 6 months of paper towel rolls that toppled over onto the wet, dirty counter, we finally found, and purchased, a fine paper towel holder.  There’s the proof.  

Now you’ll notice it isn’t a nice wall mounted model like the other one, but we actually have plenty of counter space, so that’s not a problem.  Besides, as I mentioned before, have you ever tried to install one of those things?  I have.  Not a pretty picture.

So praise the Lord for a great house … one now with a fine paper towel holder.

(we’ve been out of bananas for some time, so I’m pretty happy about those too)

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