Other missionary blogs

13 April 2007

Earthquake

Jim Computers and internet, Mexico, News and current issues, Other missionary blogs 2

Last night at about 12:42am our time there was an earthquake about 60km (35mi) NNW of Acapulco. It was felt as far as in Mexico City, and beyond, and it was felt in Cuernavaca as well.

There were no deaths and only a few broken windows, as far as I know. The power went out in places like Acapulco and parts of Mexico City, though our power didn’t go out (though it has been out more than usual today). The quake was a 6.0 on the Richter scale. There have apparently been a few minor aftershocks.

There was some panic in various areas – people who have lived through more serious quakes know enough to take it seriously. No injuries or anything, but some evacuations, and spontaneous gatherings in central squares.

I know it’s not exactly earth shaking news, but … er, I mean … well, you know what I mean. But I thought some of you might have heard about it in the news, so I wanted to give you the on-site report. 😉

Here’s the report on the earthquake from the National Post.

Our friends in Mexico City felt the quake and blogged about it here. Shari just got home and said her tutor felt it in the night too.

One more interesting note. This is yet another example of the current speed of news on the internet. People were finding out about the quake on Twitter instantly, and this blogger had a post up on his blog within 3 minutes (if I’m reading his comments right). Sorry, I guess I’m a slow blogger. 😉

26 March 2007

Just improvise.

Jim Just for fun, Ministry glimpses, Other missionary blogs, Video Blogs 6

I’ve done my share of improvising.

One day I took Hannah to Sunday School in Calgary, and there was no teacher. So I taught a Sunday School lesson, crafts and all. How did it go? Ask the kids. You remember the time I lost the song I was going to sing, and I did one I hadn’t practised.

Many years ago I was in Apatzingan, Mexico. I had only an hour to prepare a sermon. I sat down to get started, when someone came to tell me that we had misunderstood when the service was – it was now! Somehow the Lord got me through that one! At least that time it was in English (I was being translated).

Last week we were talking about some Christian history topics in conversation class. I brought in a timeline so that we could see some things in context. I was being asked about some numbers on my timeline, and I said they were just for a seminar I taught (2000 Years of Missions). "Oh, you should teach us!" Ha ha, sure. I don’t have nearly enough Spanish for such a thing. Maybe in a few years.

"No, really – you should teach us. What do you think?" "Sure, yeah, he should".

Yeah, hah hah… whatever you want.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? After all my joking affirmation, my teacher was making plans and asking what I needed and planning where we could do it. So this week, apparently, I have 8 hours of teaching time (2 hours each day- today, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). After I’d said sure, whatever you want so many times, I wasn’t sure how to refuse.

Now, of course, I won’t really be teaching. I’ll be standing there introducing topics and asking how to say this and that. I’m the one who knows the least Spanish in the class, and of course I’ll need words that aren’t in the dictionary – names, places, terminology.

It’s ok, not only have I improvised before, I’ve also embarrassed myself before. Often. Daily. I’m used to it. And now I can do it for 8 solid hours. They teach conversation in this school – why don’t they have a course on keeping your mouth shut?

This post was inspired by a post by Andrew Comings in which he shared this video of Danish musician and comedian Victor Borge. Talk about improvisation. Borge was a brilliant musician, and could think fast even at 80 years old. Of course, he already knew the language – of music…

25 March 2007

Dennis’ 101 things about Mexico City

Jim Mexico, Other missionary blogs, Practical matters 1

Mexico has been a part of our lives for many years, and so a lot of the time we don’t even notice the differences between life here and life in Canada. For example, I had forgotten just how rough the roads are here.

I was taking our van to the mechanic last week. Our friend Tim was directing me from the passenger seat, and we went on a freeway (highway – whatever you call those fast big roads). This road is very smooth – smoother than anything I’ve driven on for weeks. That’s why Tim noticed that every time I stepped on the brakes, the van shook like we were three feet from the epicentre of an earthquake. Where I normally drive, it always shakes like that.

The mechanic was too busy for me anyway, so this week I’ll take the van in not only for a tune up but also for the brakes. And the air conditioning, which hasn’t worked for some time.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy Dennis Poulette‘s list of 101 things about Mexico City. Most of them are true here too, although some are different. We’ve had what we consider to be pretty good customer service, for example. And the traffic circles/roundabouts/glorietas aren’t quite as bad here as they are in Mexico City (they have some big ones there – kind of like getting caught up in a tornado).

27 February 2007

Jim guest-blogs at Money Missions

Jim Missions, Other missionary blogs 0

“Money Missions” Now there’s a name for a blog that gets attention. It’s the blog of Ben & Aaron, missionaries up in Tijuana, Mexico. I was asked to do write a post on their blog for people who were planning to train a short term mission team. In the beginning the idea was to give some tips or specific training ideas, but I thought that it would be hard to be brief and it would be different for every different team. So I took one step back, and wrote about some of the assumptions that you need to have before you even start.

So swing on over, read what I wrote and leave your comments. Let me know if you agree or disagree or have something to add. And check out some of the other interesting discussions that are taking place over there. Here’s my post:

So youâ€™re the one spearheading that next mission trip. Nervous?

18 February 2007

Blogging friends

Jim Computers and internet, Mexico, Other missionary blogs 3

It’s been a while since I highlighted other bloggers. There’s probably a lot of people out there that I know who blog, but they don’t always tell me. So if you know us in the offline world, and you have a blog, leave a comment!

First of all, we have friends that we got to know at vti who blog. Stephanie Gartner (nee: Nesdoly), has been blogging for a while. Her newer blog has had a lot of shockingly cute pictures of her son, and other family stuff. For sure it’s Guaranteed Good Times.

Brand new to the blogging world is Alan. Shari was one of his team advisors in 2001/2002. It’s funny talking about the history of these people again, because I don’t necessarily associate them with a mission team any more. Anyway, we like Alan and he has a blog called Thought Holder.

There are other vti related bloggers, but some have not been blogging so much – I already mentioned Ken, for example, in an earlier post. There’s also Amy Nixon, who recently moved her blog here. Hopefully that link will work. Amy’s cool.

For family members (and a vti contact too – Amy Winger was on my team to Trinidad and Tobago), we’ve mentioned Shari’s sister Amy over at Under the African Rain before – check it out.

Also new to the blogging world is my friend Daryl. Daryl and I go waaaaaaay back to … well, sometime in the 80s. His question is, What’s a Blog? Personally, I think his post Three Certainties in Life should be required reading for all boys entering adolescence. 😉

If I start writing about friends who are missionaries, the list gets very long. Among those we know offline are Matthew and Rhonda Slaubaugh, who have also started a Blogger blog here: Slaubaughs in Madagascar. I’m very excited about that. I like blogs that have news feeds. Don’t miss the Fry family in Mexico at In the Shadow of Volcanos, and the Smith family (soon to return to Mexico) at The Smith Connection. You already know about our friends the Harers in Mexico at .:. The Harer’s live journal. We just recently met Jon in Mexico.

There are many more we keep in touch with, who we’ve never actually met in person. But this is getting long, and I’ve probably already forgotten some people. If I forgot you, leave a comment!

23 March 2005

Computer down

Jim Computers and internet, Other missionary blogs 0

I guess the last couple of weeks haven’t exactly been going my way. I won’t go into all the details, although I’ll tell you about one thing later once I find out the extent of the damage. Yesterday, however, was no exception to the trend. On Monday night our computer died. That’s a technical term meaning “something’s wrong and I don’t know what”. So on Tuesday I got up determined to seek out the problem and fix it.

It’s one of those things – it’s no problem to do without the computer for a while, but I probably should fix it sometime. So I guess it might as well be today. Sad to say, I also had a bad and weird headache yesterday. So in the end, I spent most of the day in bed, with a few lucid moments out of bed tinkering with the computer.

Alas! I could not find the problem with 100% certainty (although I had it narrowed down), so I did something I’ve never done. I took the computer in to be repaired. It’s a sad day.

While I was in bed yesterday, I was looking for things to get my mind off the pain while I was awake. I had the laptop (yes, it still works…it’s been glitchy lately, but we won’t talk about that!), so I did a little browsing to see if I could find some more missionaries to add to My Missionary Blogs [link no longer available – visit Missionary-Blogs.com]. I found a few other tidbits, so if you visit the page (and I now have a link on the left hand side of this page too) you’ll see new missionaries in various parts of the world blogging together in my little group. So hey, yesterday wasn’t a total loss! So check out a missionary blog today. 😀

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