Early Valentine’s Poem for all

Here’s a little something for the upcoming Valentine’s Day celebrations:

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.
Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen.
He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart.
Face it, friend. He’s crazy about you.” -Unknown

Thanks Tee for this quote

Thinking Globally

From Yahoo.com –> Evangelicals urge action on global warming

Well, “Evangelicals” are finally speaking out against global warming. According to the article, a number of “evangelicals” have endorsed legislation that does something about global warming (I am using quotations around “evangelicals” as I am not quite sure what the media’s definition is for that term but I digress). I was taken back by this quote:

The Christian leaders said they were impelled by their faith to launch the campaign out of a growing realization that the threat of global warming was real and that the world’s poor would suffer the most.

Now when are we going to look at our influence on the world? I mean the fact that only 5% of the world’s population (that would be the USA) creates 25% of the emissions that cause global warming. That’s very negative. Being a negative impact is easy. Being a positive impact is the hard part. Are we willing to be a positive impactor on this world?

Not just a group of people that impacts the world positively by helping the poor, the underprivileged, the abused with their circumstances but are we also ready to impact the world so that they understand the true meaning of Christ!?! I am not talking about being geared towards the family values but really the true understanding that we can be in a deep relationship with God our Creator through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

It seems that the American church is split. One side says that it’s all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that we just need to spread that news. The other side says that we need to right the wrongs in this world and help people in their circumstances. That we need to helps those who are in need. The reality is that we need to do both!!! We need to be helping people throughout the world with their circumstances in the name of Jesus Christ so that they can come to a personal relationship with Him. Now when is this nation which is so easily able to impact the world going to mix these two ideas to reach the world for God!!

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Quite your whining or be fired!!

From the BBC.co.uk–> German firm bans office whingers

Could you imagine that if you were caught whining in your office or through email, that you could lose your job?

This is really cool in that they say that the negative energy created from whining impacts a person’s ability to work. Employees have said that it has made them happier in more of their life than just work. However for some employees, this policy meant that they lost their jobs or were reprimanded by their superiors.

The creator of this policy was the chief executive in the company. So this attitude that is moving throughout the company is coming from the top. It first starts with the leadership. Isn’t this so true of just about everything including the church? What happens when a pastor is discouraged or worn out? Doesn’t the rest of the congreation generally fall into the same patterns?

Greater Europe Mission works with the European church leaders to help them have what they need so that they can be the positive influences on European society. In eDOT, we work to make sure that pastors and church leaders have the educational opportunities especially if they are not able to get to a residential school.

Going back to the impact of the CEO of a company on producing positive thoughts throughout their work place, I wonder what would happen to that company if it not only had positive thoughts, but that the thoughts conveyed from the CEO were that of Jesus Christ. To learn more about how that works, check out another ministry of Greater Europe Mission: Life Quality International which works to help Christians throughout Europe live a life that follows Christ in everything including what they do at the workplace. Talk about being radical!!

5 year old and a camera

Here’s a little experiment: Give a five year old a camera and tell them to take pictures of important things around the house. Here’s how our little experiment turned out:

Yes, Daddy is important. Good job son!!!

Not really sure about the importance of lotion, salt & pepper shakers and an empty Diet Dr Pepper can but ok. Maybe he meant to take a picture of the cake from our Super Bowl celebration.

I can recognize the importance of the refrigerator to a five year old (especially one with that neat CD hanging on it)

Oh yes, the infamous blanket that if he were without, sleep would never come.

Cartoons!!! Too bad this TV doesn’t get to make the trip to Germany.

And life wouldn’t be complete if there weren’t a comfortable chair to watch said cartoons.

Yes this has been an interesting experiment. We will have to try this again as time passes. It will be very intersting to compare this time with, oh let’s say when he’s a teenager.

Roes Update February 2006

It’s almost tax time again here in the States …dreaded or welcomed depending on whether you’re getting a refund.

Do you know that in Germany, if you declare a “religion” you have to pay a church tax of 10% to the government. Here is an old article out of “In Touch” (a local magazine for English-speakers living in Germany)

The Tithe Tax
“So you decided to live in Germany, be it for professional or private reasons. You were told to go along to the Amt für Öffentliche Ordnung and register; no big deal, it’s the law, even the Germans have to register. You pick up the form and begin to fill it in, most of it fairly innocuous stuff like names, date of birth, address, and so on. There are two little check boxes which might cause some consternation, however. One is “Wehrüberwachung ja oder nein”, the other is “Konfession”. The first one means quite simply:
“have you served in the German Army or are you about to be called up?”.
Since, as a foreign national, you are very unlikely to be drafted, forget this entry and go straight to “Konfession”.

Now that is the tricky one. “Konfession”, believe it or not, means “confession”, or your creed, religion, belief, denomination – your God, in other words. You might wonder why anyone should be interested in something as personal as your belief, but the German officials want to know for the simple reason that the German government made an agreement long ago with the big churches (and some other communities) which allows the state to levy taxes on behalf of these churches/communities. Yes, as strange as it might seem to you, there is such a thing as a “Church Tax” here in Germany. Now let’s assume you have come over from Britain or Ireland to settle here, you are not an atheist, you have always (or sporadically) attended mass at your local Catholic church or have always attended the Anglican service back home, and you have always dropped a few pennies or buttons into the collection box. You might be tempted to tick the box with “RK” (for Roman
Catholic) or “EV” (for Evangelisch/Protestant). This little tick means that, from now on, you are going to pay ten percent on top of your income tax in church tax.

If you want to stop paying the tax, visit your nearest town hall, pay about
25 Euro’s and you get a certificate saying that you left the church. This certificate, once given to the Amt für Öffentliche Ordnung, will exempt you from paying church tax. A few years ago you were told by the person in the Kirchenaustritt-Office that a priest might come and see you to dissuade you or to try and make you reconsider your decision. I am not sure if that’s still done today, but you can always decline the offer politely. With most taxes, you have no choice. But with this one, you have.”

Interesting! Please pray for Germany and the believers there.

On a personal note, we have a contract on our house again. Thank you for your prayers,

Your friends,

Courtney and Krista

New Contract on our house

Hey friends and family,

We got a contract on our house today. A little lower than the last but looks solid to proceed with a closing date of March 8. They already have financing and are moving from an apartment so they don’t have anything they need to sell themselves.

So Courtney’s done with school, we’ve got our Pre-Field Orientation in Colorado from Feb 21-March 17 and now our house under contract. The only thing left is the 100% mark. Yeah GOD! We were thrilled at our progress last month from 57 to 63% and moving on up… We’re meeting with a missions committee next Wednesday in Winston Salem so please pray for that.

Love you lots,

Courtney and Krista

Faster than Light

From Livescience.com –> Faster than light

I know all of you are well versed in Einstein’s (my hero) Special Theory of Relativity that essentially says that nothing is faster than the speed of light. But in reading the article above, you’ll find that some scientists in Switzerland got light to go faster than light (and was even able to slow it down). In reading the article, you’ll see that it’s a perception issue whereas the light is broken up and frequencies are altered to lower or speed up the speed of light. Have I lost you? That’s ok. I’m caught up in the whirlwind of it all too.

But it’s interesting that one of the first things God created was Light (Genesis 1:3) and we are still fascinated with it and trying to figure out how it all works. Light has always played an integral part of our lives. Time is counted based on the amount of time it is from when we first see light to when we will see it again (a day). We even alter time with daylight savings so that we can have more time in the light. When the sun is unavailable, we even create our own lights to imitate the sun so that we can have more light. Even insects are drawn to light (and electrocuted if you have one of those “special” lights). All of creation has been curiously drawn to light.

What about a spiritual light? In Europe, people are striving to be “enlightened”. However, for them to be “enlightened” is to move past Christianity and religion and to have independent enlightenment through the use of their minds. What is it that we have done as the Church to not show the Europeans (and others) where true spiritual enlightenment is? That is it is through Jesus Christ!! Why is it that they view Christianity as out of date and ignorant?

We as Christians need to be “enlightened” in our own lives so that we can reflect the Son’s (read Jesus Christ) light to the world!! Please join with us in this endeavor.