Other missionary blogs

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. 😀

17 March 2005

Comment problem solved…I think

Jim Computers and internet, Other missionary blogs 0

I think the problem that we were having with the commenting on the blog is solved, so comment away! If you have any problems, try reloading the page and making a second attempt. If it still doesn’t work, feel free to contact me.

It has also been brought to my attention that you can add our blog headlines to MyMSN, as well as to MyYahoo!. With Yahoo!, you can use the button above. MSN has a button too, but as far as I know they haven’t shared with the general public how exactly to set it up! But no problem, if you use MyMSN just follow these easy instructions:
1) Click on Add content (left side of the page, upperish)
2) Copy our RSS feed (see button above) into the search box. You can simply copy the link above, or to make it easier I’ll print it right here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/findingdirection
3) Click the arrow. The program should pretty much do the rest, and you should see our blog title and the latest few entries. Nice job!

MSN has an overview of RSS and instructions almost as simple as mine on their RSS page. There’s a link there too where you can search for RSS readers if you don’t happen to use MyMSN or MyYahoo!. Personally, I use the pro version of Trillian.

If you’re interested in the latest migraine and headache information, you can also subscribe to the Headache and Migraine News Blog. Here’s the feed for that one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HeadacheAndMigraineNewsBlog

Actually, there are lots of great ones out there, now that you’re all into it. There’s a feed to my favourite missionary blogs – it’s http://feeds.feedburner.com/Missionary-Blogs

If you’re interested in any particular topic, just check out a blog search engine, such as BlogWise, and find the category you want.

If you have a website, you can even put somebody’s blog right on your webpage, just like I’ve done with our own on our main page. You can do it with our blog using this code:

There now. Wasn’t that far more information than you ever wanted? 🙄

12 March 2005

Why blog?

Jim Computers and internet, Missions, Other missionary blogs 0

I enjoyed reading one of the latest entries at Mission Safari entitled,”Why I blog”. Obviously we’ve put a lot of thought into the advantages of having a website and blog as missionaries. Recently I’ve talked to other missionaries about blogging, an I’ve encouraged them to think about it. There are some unique things that blogging can do, and I think that this entry at Mission Safari gives a great overview.

It’s been a lot easier to keep up with my favourite missionary blogs at My Missionary Blogs [link no longer available – visit Missionary-Blogs.com] page. One of the missionaries there liked my idea so much that he copied it (which is ok because I’ve copied him too)! If you haven’t visited this page, check it out. I’m hoping to add some more missionaries to the list soon.

We blog for many of the reasons you’ll read in the above post. Blogging gives us an easy way to share our lives with you, and because you can comment it can be a two-way conversation. It brings this website to life in a way that it never could be if we were simply trying to keep individual pages updated (we try to do that too, but not every week). I hope this blog allows you to be a part of our lives and ministry in a way that would not otherwise be possible.

If you’re a missionary yourself, be sure to contact us and we’ll give you some ideas to help you start a blog of your own!

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