Does anyone have any ideas for a good individual Bible Study?
More on Sprint
Well, the PRL–preferred Roaming List–update to our phones didn't help at all. So, Cyndi and I went back to the Sprint store to have them checked out. We had to leave our phones there overnight, so Sprint gave us a loaner phone to try. it was a Sanyo RL-4920. Just an FYI, it had no issues last night. No dropped calls. No garbeled calls. Everything sounded great. I'll let everyone know what happens when our current phones are upgraded.
Gentoo, again
I finally got another Linux box set up. Once again, I chose Gentoo. Probably the main reason I chose them was their emerge utility. Want to install someting? Simply type emerge –search APP_NAME. Once you have found it, enter emerge PACKAGE_NAME. The application (and any dependancies) are downloaded, compiled, and installed.
I have one additional box I want to put something on. Right now, it has Windows 95, but I think I'd like to play with something different. Any reccomendations? It has a Cyrix P200+ processor (no MMX support), two 4GB hard drives, and 32 MB RAM.
Greek Festival
Cyndi and I walked down this afternoon to the Richmond Greek Festival. It was very interesting. We took a tour of the Greek Orthodox Church, ate tons of Greek food–Randy, I avoided the stuff wrapped in green leaves. The food was very good. We forgot the camera, so we don't have any pictures to show you. Bummer :^(
Bike Riding
Cyndi and I are looking for a good place to go ride our bikes in Richmond. We'd prefer a place off-road devoted to bike riding (well, people can run there too). Anyone know of such a place?
Sprint
Cyndi and I have Sprint cellphone service. When we moved to Richmond, we had kind of poor service (even though we had atleast a bar on our phones). We went to the Sprint store, and the guy gave us a new PRL (preferred roaming list) as a first step. He said that was the easiest thing to try.
Last night, it didn't seem to help much, but we'll give it a few days to see what happens. He also mentioned that they could check our phones. However, that would take 1.5 hours. We were chit-chatting a bit and mentioned that it may also be a capacaty issue. We explained the problem to him, and he said that it could be. I guess we will just wait and see.
I really like my sprint service. I like them as a company. I especially like the free Sprint-to-Sprint calling. So, I hope this really works out.
Sprint Home Phone “Device”
We went to the Sprint PCS store yesterday and saw an interesting device. Imagine a box with an antenna and a phone jack. You plug your home phone into it and get cell phone service. What an interesting idea. This looked really cool. I'd post a picture, but I cannot find one online. If I needed home phone service and didn't care about privacy (remember, anyone can listen in on a cell phone conversation) I would think about doing this. Imagine free sprint-to-sprint to your home.
Witnessing
God has been dealing with me recently about witnessing, and I need some ideas. For those of you who don't know, I work at the International Mission Board (IMB). I would call this a Christian environment. I wake up, go to work, come home, go to church, and have little interaction with those outside "church." I need some ideas on how to witness to people.
I'm looking for ideas that are outside the box. Ideas that show people I really care about them. How can I reach people in my daily life that shows
1.I care about them
2.I care about what happens to them
3.I want more than to just make a tick mark in a book
For this reason, I'm not considering ideas like door knocking, street preaching, etc…. I need some practical ideas.
Another Church?
SBC Life has this article on church growth and planing. Why do we need another church?
Several things hit me as I read the article:
There has been a great deal of emphasis in our Convention recently regarding church planting. The International Mission Board is talking about it. The North American Mission Board is talking about it. Our seven Southern Baptist seminaries offer courses in church planting and have professors of church planting. Our state conventions are talking about it. Our associations are talking about it. Some of our churches are even involved in planting churches. We are the largest non-Catholic, Christian denomination in the world. We consist of more than 16.2 million members and more than forty-three thousand churches. Do we really need another Southern Baptist church?
As of 2004, the estimated population of the United States was 293 million, and Canada was thirty-three million. These numbers, of course, increase when you factor in all of those who live here temporarily (legally or illegally). There are more than 386 thousand churches of all types in the United States and more than twenty-two thousand in Canada.
This means that there is roughly one church — orthodox or heretical — for every 800 people in North America. In particular, there is no Southern Baptist church in Newfoundland, and less than 250 Southern Baptist churches in the entire nation of Canada! Even more surprising, recent reports from Western Canada have revealed that there are towns with populations as high as one thousand without a single church of any kind!
Consider the following statistics: It is estimated that the unchurched populations of the United States and Canada are 195 million and twenty-four million, respectively. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the population in the United States increased 11.4 percent, but the overall church membership declined 9.5 percent. Less than 5 percent of all Canadians could be identified as evangelical
Do we care that people are dying and going to Hell? Do we really care about people? Are we too caught up in "doing the church thing" or "going" to church? People are dying without knowing Christ and His forgiveness. Let's get going!
Dr. Rankin
Every Wednesday, the IMB has chapel. Occsionally, there is a special chapel service where new employees are introduced, terms of service are recognized, etc…. Today was one of those services. As a new employee I was introduced, stood up, everyone applauded, etc…. Afterwards, I hung around to speak with some people and meet new people. Well, while I was standing there, I turned around and was face to face with Dr. Rankin. If you don't know, he is the President of the IMB. (If you want, you can find out more information about him here at the IMB website.)
We made some small talk. He mentioned that it was good to have me there. I said it was good to be there. Standard stuff. However, combined with what he said in chapel, his past, etc…, this came across as very nice and real. Here is a guy who has TONS of stuff to do–remember, the SBC annual meeting is coming up–and he takes time to show up at chapel. But not only that…he makes time afterwards to make conversation. That meant something to me. It gave me a feeling I never had at NiSource about the CEO there.