Jim

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25 January 2007

Peacemaker Conference in Puebla

This afternoon, Lord willing, we’ll be heading to the city of Puebla for a conference on biblical peacemaking. The material comes from Peacemaker Ministries. The conference is part of an initiative to train all our mission’s workers to learn more skills for dealing with conflict.

Peacemaker Ministries was started by attorney Ken Sande, who grew frustrated with the lack of conflict resolution among believers. After all, once anyone reached his office they were not interested in reconciliation but just “winning”. I discovered Sande’s book “The Peacemaker” a number of years ago, and gained permission from the organization to use some of their material to train our teams at vti. It was an excellent way to help people understand the biblical basics.

Today they have material for children, churches, short term teams and more. But I would highly recommend that you add their main book to your library. So many people pray for peace on earth – God has given us many tools to bring peace to our own circles of life, if we would only listen. It’s hard to do sometimes, but if we don’t even know what God says about it, we’re not even out of the gate!

If I have the chance, I’ll try to write a little during/after the conference about what we’ve talked about.

22 January 2007

After 1 week of language school

Jim Audio Blogs 0

This audio blog was recorded on the way to my second week of language school. I just wanted to share a little about the school, and a few first impressions. The audio quality starts poor, but does somewhat improve when the traffic slows down. 🙂 It’s a long one, though – over 8 minutes. So get comfortable.

20 January 2007

¡Child claims he doesn’t need candy!

Jim Family, Just for fun, Mexico 5

The other night we went down the street to the local convenience store (OXXO) to get some milk. Nathanael and I went, so that we could have some man-talk time.

Nathanael, as is his custom, walked around the store touching everything that he could get away with touching and speculating on whether or not we needed those chips or that granola bar or this … oops! Don’t touch THAT!

I went to the counter to pay. Convenience store counters in your area are probably much like this one. Placed within easy grab on the front of the counter are chocolate bars, gum, and other types of candy. Nathanael was convinced he needed a package of candy, and so he took it out and told me all about it and placed in on the counter.

As is my custom, I let him know that indeed he did not need the candy. So I taught him how to say “no necesito” – I don’t need (this). So he started saying,”No necesito” while he took out the candy. And placed it on the counter.

No, he didn’t get the candy. (After all, he quite rightly insisted that he “didn’t need it”!)

That night we were eating a delicious turkey casserole. And deviled eggs. He didn’t want his egg, and he smushed it on the table. We told him that he needs to keep food he doesn’t want on his plate, not on the table. He didn’t get the point, telling us that he was done. Then he pushed the egg onto his plate, crying,”Â¡No necesito!”

I guess he understood more than I thought…

(This is a good thing, right?!)

18 January 2007

The Canada Revenue Agency

Jim Practical matters, Prayer and Praise 1

I recently got a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency. Those are the folks that oversee our paying of taxes and so forth. They told me that two of my previous tax returns are under review.

Oh, don’t worry – we didn’t do anything wrong. As a matter of fact, we’ve followed the rules to the letter, and I’ve even called them and discussed how exactly to calculate things, so I’m not concerned about that.

In fact, one of Shari’s returns was reviewed last year. We simply sent them the paperwork that they asked for, and they checked it over and told us it was all just fine.

But this time it’s different. Not because we did anything incorrectly on these returns. The problem is that some of our documents were destroyed by mistake during our move. So this means getting documents from at least three, maybe more, sources. And these sources are all three a few thousand kilometers apart. And our ability to send and receive original documents is somewhat difficult. AND Canada Revenue has put on us a rather strict time limit.

Some of the documents may also cost us a fair bit to replace.

So we would appreciate your prayers about this. It’s already such a busy time, and it’s a challenge to add on all this phoning and emailing and pouring over documents and making calculations. Meanwhile we’re trying to do other paperwork, and homework, and this that and the other thing.

I don’t usually post specific prayer requests here (maybe I should do more of that in the future), preferring to put requests on our prayer request page. But this is requires a little more explanation, so here I am. You could pray:

That we would be able to access and complete all the documents that the CRA needs.
That we would be able to do this in time.
That we would be able to do this at minimum cost.
That God would give understanding between the CRA and us so that the issue would be resolved quickly and properly.

Thanks for your prayers!

17 January 2007

Cottrills featured at CanadianChristianity.com

Jim Ministry glimpses, Missions 0

I mentioned to some of you that we were featured in Mission Fields magazine last year. They also post their articles on their website, and we finally made it there. So you can now read our little “postcard” online, with the title Cottrill family – in mexico.

Now this article is just in plain text – the magazine in the fall had our picture (which I guess they thought wasn’t beautiful enough to post) and a cool map and other graphics. So if you want the nice version, go find the magazine (which I still haven’t seen – would someone find me a copy?).

I also need to add the disclaimer that this was written toward the end of August 2006 – probably the busiest and most stressful couple of weeks in our lives. The only reason I had time to write this was because I asked Shari to drive one day during one of our many shuttle trips from Calgary to Cochrane. It was late, it was dark, and we were all exhausted and had our minds on other things. So please don’t expect brilliant inspiring prose!

For one thing, if you haven’t followed our news, the article makes it sound like our time of raising support and ministry in Canada “were some of the most difficult [months] we’ve ever faced”. That’s a clip from our summer newsletter, and it’s simply talking about the spring and summer of 2006.

There’s no doubt that we had many challenges between the time we left the staff of VTI and the time we left for Mexico. However, by and large I enjoyed that time of ministry in Canada. It was not a horrible burden, it was a good time of ministry, being able to serve people in Canada and share about the need in Mexico and teach God’s Word. Overall, it was a positive experience.

Around March, things did get a little crazy, let’s admit it. But even the spring and summer certainly weren’t all bad. But the end of August – wow.

Anyway, enough retrospection. Click the graphic above if you want to read the article for yourself. 😉

16 January 2007

Crisis hits Mexico’s poor

Jim Mexico, News and current issues 0

The opposition calls it a “national security issue”. It involves investigations Corn tortillas into price manipulations, international politics, American oil production, business monopolies, and Mexico’s struggling poor. What has caused the anger and power struggles so early in Mexican President CalderÃ³n’s term? It’s the battle over the tortilla.

This really is serious business, serious enough to make news around the world. Tortillas have been a staple in Mexico for a thousand years. But over a year, the price has increased by 14%, in some areas people are paying three times what they were a year ago. Would you be upset if your grocery bill doubled and your income stayed the same? I should say. Especially if you were already struggling to survive a year ago.

Increased worldwide demand has contributed to the rise in prices. Not only are people eating more corn (maize), it’s being used for other things as well. In a search for alternatives to oil, the United States is making more ethanol from corn. And are there people manipulating the prices for their own advantage? So political corruption, globalization, and everyone’s favourite – the USA – are all being blamed for the current crisis.

While the government debates how to get the prices down, the country suffers, and especially the poor. Read more about the tortilla price spike here.

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