Lost in Translation

Acabo de encontrar un sitio bueno con recursos centrados en el evangelio:

Traducciones de recursos

I have several goals for this home assignment year that have to do with organization. So far I've been doing well at improving. I thought that I'd mention two tools that I think are helpful:

1) You Need A Budget (YNAB): I bought the Excel version of this software about two months ago. So far it's been working wonders on our budgeting. The software is simple. Each month you allocate all of your money to different categories and then track your spending. To make the budget work you need to spend last month's income, so you need to have a buffer of one month's pay. This tactic makes living off of a variable income more manageable. I've never stuck to a budget very well before, but we're doing great so far. The only problem will be dealing with two currencies in Colombia... I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

2) Getting Things Done by David Allen: This book is great! It's teaching me how to organize my life into a coherent system so that I don't lose things and waste so much time. My problem before was that I had systems for some things but not for everything. This book teaches you to manage the "stuff" that comes into your life in one system.

I just received my new Kindle 2 reading device on Monday. I wanted to write a review of the Kindle with special attention given to this device as a huge blessing for overseas missionaries. Missionaries, although it's a little expensive ($359) this might be a good gift that you could suggest to a church (Thank you to the family that sent us a personal gift that covered more than half of the cost of ours!).

First impressions: I didn't get to look at the Kindle for a while because it was Monday and I was the professor in our homeschool. My wife began reading the book (of course on the Kindle) about how to run it. Not a bad idea seeing as I messed something up today because I didn't know how to connect/disconnect it from my computer. The device is slick looking, and not too heavy. The new screen technology is interesting. When you shut it down you see a light impression of the last image that was on the screen. When you put it into sleep mode, a full screen picture or painting of some famous author appears. Very stylish touch! I expected the screen to look a little whiter, but you get used to its light gray color after a little bit. As far as the physical aspect of reading is concerned, a book beats the Kindle. Unless it's an unwieldy tome, in which case the Kindle would win (I think of Grudem's theology as a possible Kindle winner).

Big blessings: Hey, let's be honest, the Kindle has some features that are better than a normal book. For example, I've found many books for free. Amazon has classics for free, and with the free Mobipocket eBook Creator you can convert many books in PDF to books that you can read on your Kindle. I just downloaded a bunch of John Piper's books (including one in Spanish) in PDF and converted them. They're now happily on my Kindle waiting to be read. This possibility to read PDFs is a huge benefit as a missionary. I had a number of PDFs on my desktop about church planting that someday I was going to read. But reading a PDF on my computer is about as fun as dealing with traffic in Bogotá (it's not). Now they're on my Kindle, waiting to be read.

Another blessing is the dictionary that comes with the Kindle. I was reading Robinson Crusoe (another freebie) to Lucas yesterday. I love that book! When I read it the first time in book form, I didn't understand a lot of words, but now I can expend roughly 2 seconds to place the cursor over the word and see the definition at the bottom of the page. I would like to see more language support for the Kindle (español por favor), but until then I'll have to use my dictionary in book form while reading books in Spanish on the Kindle.

Two other cool features:
It's very cool to be able to hear about a book you want, look it up, and have it in your hands in roughly 3 minutes. The Whispernet feature, which allows that, isn't available in other countries yet, so we missionaries will have to enjoy it while we're on furlough. On the field we'll have to rough it to such an incredible degree that we'll have to connect the Kindle to our computer to load the books on it (granted, on the Amazon River that may not work so well, but in Bogotá or Cali it'll be fine).

Do you like things for free? I do! As you may know, the best news about something free is the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ (look up Ephesians 2:8-9 on your Kindle). The Kindle also offers something for free--while in the U.S. you can read the first chapter of books for free in order to sample them. My pastor was talking about the book Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin. So I downloaded the first chapter for free. As Dr. Myron used to say, dating before marriage with books. Read the first chapter and buy the book if you like it. If you don't, say goodbye and get on with your life (without losing a penny).

The best benefit for overseas missionaries: For me the best benefit for missionaries is the cost savings on books. I believe that missionaries should stay connected to the rest of the world to some extent. Gone are the days when missionaries had to live in isolation from all theological and ministry discussions going on outside their country of service. For that reason I read Evangelical Missions Quarterly (a journal for missionaries) and like to order a book every so often. But the shipping prices were ruthless. To ship to Colombia we were paying about 50% of the total cost in shipping, and about six months ago the government started taxing any package from overseas (even gifts) so we were going to have to pay that. Say goodbye to shipping costs with the Kindle! Not to mention that most Kindle books are cheaper than the print versions. For example, Worship Matters costs $12.23 in print form and $7.99 on Kindle. That's a 34% savings if you like math. In my case I suspect that the Kindle will pay for itself in a year or two.

Bottom line: Churches, think about blessing your missionaries with a Kindle. Missionaries, weigh the cost and the benefits to see if a Kindle might help you live out the gospel better where you're at.

Okay, Scala is not the way to go for your presentation needs because it is a program from about 9 years ago. I called ABWE, and they recommended ProShow Gold ($69.95). Wow, what a great program! I was able to set up all of our presentation yesterday (granted I had all of the pictures in order, etc.) in several hours. You can add video, sound tracks, images, and cool transitions. The best thing is that you can export the presentation to various formats, including DVD. No more worrying if my computer will function properly because almost every church would have a way to show a DVD.

The word (great) is in parenthesis above because I don't claim to have all of the secrets, but here is the basic strategy I used for our presentation.

1) Start with your script. It's best to center the script around one basic idea. In our first presentation we used the idea of "A new perspective on Colombia." This time I used a comparison between the operation that rescued Ingrid Betancourt and Operation Cali, which will be the effort to rescue people from spiritual darkness in Cali. Read your script out loud several times and have another person read it to help you evaluate it.

2) Record your script. I used our church's sound system in Colombia to record it.

3) Pick your music. For our script I used about five different tracks to go along with the script. A site that I used was Audiosarx. Since a missionary presentation is an educational use of the music I was able to purchase two tracks for about $2 each. You can search based on mood and style. I also purchased another track or two from Amazon.

3) Edit your recorded script and mix the music. Thanks to my ministry partner José for the idea to download a 30-day trial version of Adobe Audio Adition. Excellent program! I was able to fix up a few errors in my recorded script and mix the tracks together to make the final version of the sound track.

4) Organize and edit your fotos and backgrounds for the presentation. I used Photoshop Elements 2.0 for this task. Elements (now available in a more advanced version) is cheap and great for this kind of thing. I bought a book before we got to the field on using the program and it was worth every penny. You can make some very professional looking slides. I used flickr.com to find many photos for the presentation. I use Advanced Search and search for photos that are licensed under a Creative Commons license, which can be used for non-profit stuff. Just be careful because sometimes photos show up that are not helpful spiritually, although that is rare if you're using search terms for a missionary presentation.

5) Put the photos into the presentation and sync to the sound track. I'm at this step right now. We use Scala's iPlay Studio (now a legacy product) as our presentation program. It can sync each image to a hundredth of a second. I think that it costs about $60 and you can google it's name to find it.

This process has definitely gotten easier since we did it six years ago. We didn't use any of the above websites, which make the process a lot easier.

(Note: The picture of Marcos has nothing to do with the post... it's just to make you smile.)

We've been back a little more than a week now. How do I feel about being in Iowa? Here are a few contrasts I've noticed:

1) Iowa is cold. I'd forgotten just how cold, but after four years in climates ranging from 55 degrees to 85 degrees, these Iowa winds and temps are making me miss Colombia.

2) Sticker shock on some things. Some things are a lot more expensive here. We're paying twice as much for our two bedroom apartment as we paid for a three bedroom house in Chía. Eating out here is expensive! But some things are cheaper here, like cereal and pork.

3) A lot of things are easier here. The Qwest guy came to hook up our phone and did it in about 1 minute without even entering our apartment building. In Chía we struggled for almost two months to get that line installed. Here we have a dishwasher, hot water in our sinks, Clorox cleaning wipes, etc. Driving is a cinch here. I could probably go to sleep at the wheel and be safer here than driving in Bogotá or Cali with three Colombian coffees to keep me alert. One blessing has been a good-sized pothole in our parking lot here. It reminds us of Colombia.

4) The language. Although English is my native tongue, I have to admit that I like Spanish better. Maybe because it's a challenge and I have to keep working at it. Several times I've been tempted to answer people in Spanish, especially over the phone or in the supermarket.

5) Our church. Wow, talk about organized here! It seems that every ministry has leaders; people seem to arrive on time... we would like to see that happen in Cali in our new church plant. Obviously it takes time, but I think that starting well will help.

All in all, it should be a good year in Iowa. It's a bit of culture shock, but we're missionaries and that's part of the fun.

We're back in the States now, and I'd like to write something about the contrasts I'm noticing after being out of the country for four years, but that'll have to wait. In the meantime (since I use this site to remember things) I found an online digital library from Colombia (in Spanish) that may be of help in the future.

Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango

As many of you know we homeschool are kids with Sonlight curriculum. I find the concept fascinating and ran across a new option for earning an accredited college degree with a homeschooling type model. Interesting idea!

CollegePlus

I preached my farewell sermon at La Gracia today on 1 Corinthians 13 and the gospel. We looked at 1 Cor 13 through the lense of the gospel, noting that the gospel equips us to love. For example, love is patient (a verb in Greek), and God has shown his patience with us (we looked at the parable in Mt 18 of the man who owed 10,000 talents and wouldn´t forgive the one who owed him 100 denarii... it uses the same verb as we see in 1 Cor 13).

As I pointed out this morning, 1 Cor 13 is beautiful but doesn´t tell us where we get the strength to put it into practice. But in the gospel (which Paul focuses on in chapter 1-2 and 15) we are freed to love.

I didn´t see what the attendence was, but it was the fullest the building has been in a long time. Pastor Daniel has a lot to learn, but I trust that God will bless him and the church.

A group from one of José´s supporting churches is here, and they´ve been an inspiration. On Sunday we went to Zipaquirá to do street evangelism and pass out flyers to the new Baptist church that´s starting there. We went to the main plaza in the city and the group started singing. José preached a short five-minute message and we started to talk to people about Christ, using the Evangecube. Wow, people were really open and several people made professions of faith in Christ.

We did something similar but even better yesterday here in Chía. The team brought their huge Evangecube (www.e3resources.org), and they starting making free balloon animals for kids and painting faces. While the kids got their gifts, José preached the gospel using the huge Evangecube various times (I did it once). We estimate that 300 people heard the gospel in about 2 hours as we gave out 200 balloons and about 1,000 tracts. The amazing thing was how many people were interested in learning more. In fact one of the teachers in Lucas and Eliana´s daycare was really interested. We going to have her over to our house next week to share more with her.

My biggest regret: Why didn´t we do thing sooner? I would guess that at least two new people will come to church on Sunday because of our outreach. If we had done this every week, how many would have come to Christ by now? But no, instead we got wrapped up in church problems and missed many blessings. Oh well, in Cali!