Month: August 2008

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Tesla Coils, Tesla, and Serbia

I was surfing last week when I came across the site tesladownunder.com. This guy has some really neat pictures on his website that he has made from messing around with Tesla Coils. What’s a tesla coil? Well, I don’t know much, but here is the wikipedia article on tesla coils.

Here are some interesting pictures:

Turns out they were invented by Nikola Tesla who was a Serb. Actually, the people here in Serbia talk about him quite often. He’s even on their money. I’d think that he was pretty important if he were from my country too. Turns out, he is the guy who invented AC Electricity (well, I guess he discovered it…not invented it). Thought that was Edison or someone else? Nope…turns out that Edison discovered DC electric, from what I think I understand.

So, next time you see one of those tesla coils at the next county fair you go to (or at the local science museum) think if Nikola Tesla. When you think of Nikola Tesla, think of the Serbs. When you think of the Serbs, pray for the Serbian people that they might have an opportunity to hear the Gospel and be saved.

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24/7 Music

This video illustrates my problem with praise choruses.  You can take anything and turn it into a 24/7 or 7/24 (the same 7 words sang 24 times).  This is an extreme example, but I hear the same worthless kind of words when I hear most choruses.

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Internet Radio

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  technology is awesome.  Before the internet, we probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to listen to English language radio here in Serbia.  But now, we can listen to tons and tons (and not just the 80’s and 70’s music played here on the radio….they love that stuff) of it.

 Here are a few good sites I have found, just in case you are in a similar position:

Word of Truth Radio
Pirate Chrstian Radio
SermonAudio
Shoutcast (tons and tons of music from around the world)
Rush Limbaugh (I need news somehow and CNN international just doesn’t hack it)
Your favorite radio station from the US.

 [Update 08-18-2008 05:13:48] Added Pirate Christian Radio and Sermon Audio

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Why Christians Must Be Careful or Think For A Minute

Death Think for a minute about the holidays you celebrate:  Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Haloween, etc….   Have you ever wondered how they line up with what you claim to believe?  Why is that important?  Well, if you aren’t careful, you end up like the Roman Catholic Church and think things like famadihana are ok.  For more on it go read this article at the BBC website.  Here is a quote from the article:

There have also been clashes with Christianity. Early missionaries to the country tried to stop it and today increasing numbers of evangelical Christians are turning away from famadihana.

Perhaps surprisingly though, the Roman Catholic Church, the largest in the country, no longer opposes it.

For his part Jean Pierre stressed that in any case it is not a religious ceremony, but a tradition.

I don’t know anything more than what I read in the article, butI believe that true Christians would and should seperate from this kind of behavior.  Why?  Well, once the body (the earth suit) has died, the soul leaves the bod.  That “person” isn’t around any more.  What use is there is revering the body?

Don’t get me wrong, we have many things in our US culture that are the same way:  Christmas and Santa (no, he isn’t real).  Easter and the Easter Bunny.  Haloween.  The list goes on and on.  We need to be very careful in what we think, say, and allow.  Otherwise, we won’t be able to honestly look at our fellow Brothers and Sisters and explain to them why a practice like famadihana is wrong without being hypocrytical.  Go think about it for a bit. 

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We are….

…under water restrictions here in Cacak. Before you think “That’s not so bad” this isn’t your typical we have water restrictions but I’m still going to water the street type of restrictions we see so often in the US. Nope…this is a no water in the spiggot type restriction.

We think it started 2 days ago, but aren’t really sure. We started simply having bad water pressure yesterday…then it came back last night. Today, there were times of no water. We asked two friends and they both said the same thing. When will it end, we asked….no one knows. Probably once it starts raining.

To that end, we bought 20 liters of water today to have to drink. Tonight, we are going to run the tub full so we have a source of water to flush the toilet, etc… tomorrow.

[Update 08-24-2008 16:04:46] I made a new post about our water shortage .
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Sorry

I’m sorry for the lack of posts the past week.  This past week was really rough for me.  I had my worst day since being here:  I didn’t want to go out and spent the whole day looking on the internet.  That didn’t help, but I wasn’t up to talk to anyone.

Thanks for your prayers!  I’m back, mostly, and feeling better.  PTL! 

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Communication Update

In an update to this post where I talk about ways to contact us, I mention that I’m not using the Gizmo client.  Well, after ditching pidgin and skype and gizmo (the client not the service) for Wengo Phone , I decided to switch back.  Why?  Well, I had forgotten that I was using the pidgin encryption plugin and I started having issues receiving calls with Wengo.  So, I’m back to using the Gaim software and Pidgin now.

But, yesterday, I downloaded and tried the new version of Unbutu (the 64 bit edition).  I think this winter, I’m going to try to get it on my laptop and working.  When that happens, I’ll find a free SIP Phone to use.  Any suggestions? 

[Update 2012-12-26 06:52:08] Wengo Phone is now QuoteCom.  I updated the links.