Unhealthiest Drink in a America

That is, according to this blog.

This is one of those temptations I'm not looking forward to:

Baskin Robbin’s Large Heath Bar Shake (32 oz)
2,310 calories
266 g sugar
108 g fat (64 g saturated)

Let's look at America's Worst Drink in numbers:

73: The number of ingredients that go into this milkshake.
66: The number of teaspoons of sugar this drink contains.
11: The number of Heath Bars you would have to eat to equal the number of calories found in one Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake.
8-12: The average number of minutes it takes to consume this drink.
240: The number of minutes you’d need to spend on a treadmill burning it off, running at a moderate pace.

That's just nasty. What are we Americans thinking??

For the non-candy bar connoisseur: Heath Bars are chocolate covered, butter crunch toffee.

Refreshing Rain

It is raining, I mean, pouring rain right now. Large drops, blowing wind, cooler air. A true tropical rain shower.

TCKs in the American White House

From an article by Michael Barone on www.townhall.com

This election is different from all others in another respect: These two presumptive nominees have no particular regional identity. John McCain was born in the Canal Zone, no longer a U.S. territory; grew up on military bases; moved to his wife's home state of Arizona and, running for Congress, noted accurately that he had lived in Hanoi longer than anywhere else.

Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii and lived for a time in Indonesia, went to school in Morningside Heights and Cambridge, and made his career in a city where he had never lived before, Chicago. He has been universally accepted by the Chicago political and fundraising establishment and won wide margins in Illinois. But neither he nor McCain has spent much of his life in ordinary Middle America.

It’s not like these presidential candidates spent large amounts of time outside their home culture, but it’s still interesting that they are both technically Third Culture Kids: children who are born or live in a third culture that is a combination of their home culture and a host culture for at least part of their lives.

Capital E (Thoughts on the Evangelical Manifesto)

Another response to the Evangelical Manifesto from Randy Elrod guestblogging here:

The Death Of The Alpha Leader

By Randy Elrod

We now live in an automagical world. A world that is composed of not one future, but multiple futures. A world of self-chosen communities or tribes that are nodes in large, complex networks of such groups. A world in which hierarchal pyramids of control are crumbling and the Taylorism world of precise affluence has become a Web 2.0 world of mystical influence and social networks.

Viral loops, not manifestos, provide the opportunity for unparalleled influence. This is a world in which documents handed down by well-meaning alpha males result in a stifled yawn. However, this same world moves to the edge of their seat upon realizing that the responsibility to change the world need not be their legacy or burden. On the contrary, the creation of culture is the calling from which history speaks. . . .

Here are more links from Randy’s blog about the Evangelical Manifesto:

Jim Wallis is glad to be a “charter signatory.” I’m glad he feels good about being in the “in” crowd.



More entertaining is from Cathleen Falsani at the Chicago Sun-Times. It’s entertaining, but also naïve. The whole manifesto’s downfall is the necessity to write about evangelicals with a capital E. She points this out but it doesn’t seem to faze her.

Alan Jacobs also wrote a pithy commentary that should have been longer and more thorough. He notes that the audience is decidedly less international and inclusive as the writers of the manifesto might have hoped.

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It seems to me that the writers and “official signatories” sensed a twitch of uncertainty in the air, therefore decided that “we” must clarify the terms before “they” do. That’s the tenor of this manifesto, in my opinion. It’s true they include all the necessary clarifiers to say that they do not want to exclude or deny the majority of Christians around the world with a voice. Yet, they continue to define the terms of the conversation without them. Jacobs points this out when he compares this document to the Lausanne Covenant, which is international and inclusive as much as this most recent "manifesto" is more Western and American.

The writers and signers decided to rein in the diversity of the “evangelical” movement before it gets out of hand. I don’t blame them. I’ve been tempted in the same way. I’ve been in situations—practical and theological and cultural—in West Africa where I felt the sharp pang of doubt and then alarm: “Oh no, this is getting out of my control.” Then, there’s a voice saying, “Quick! Temper the flame! Don’t let it go! Maintain control!” Then, usually in a split second moment, I remind myself why I’ve been called to be in that moment. I’ve probably failed as many times as I’ve passed the test.

I’ve learned to recognize that sharp pang—that desire for control—not as my own conscience or some of kind of well-educated theological barometer. It’s not the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, either. It is Satan’s whisper.

My calling—our calling—is to reject the desire to control. The whole idea of this manifesto misses that key point while at the same time supporting it. Does that make any sense to anyone else?

Could we allow "them" to become theologically astute in their own right without our hand-holding and guidance? I guess our choice is found in words beginning with a capital E--"Exclude" or "Embrace."

Liberian Scars

I was able to spend time in Liberia with some of the most amazing church leaders in West Africa. They have gone through so much with the war during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Pastor Daniel Johnson told me about how his family and that of Pastor Elijah Clay fled their homes into the streets of Monrovia, only to find themselves in the middle of a gunfight, bombs dropping all around them, innocent bystanders only meters away being cut down, blood flowing in the streets. They just sat on the curb and prayed for God’s protecting hand. They walked away unscathed, at least physically.



He told me how he was not able to run errands during those days. If a man was walking down the street, he would be enlisted at gunpoint into one of the ragtag armies. So, his wife went out to search for food. Once she was arrested, thrown on the sidewalk, and accused of being from an opposing ethnic group. Amazingly, at that moment, one of the gunmen recognized her as a high school classmate. He vouched for her and they let her go because she could fluently speak their language. They let her go just before ordering her execution.


Today there are still pockmarks in the walls and holes in the streets from bullets and bombs. There is little to no infrastructure in Liberia today—no electricity except through gas generators. But, the Nazarene church there is the most mature, most giving, most compassionate, most progressive, most impoverished, and most authentically genuine that I have ever been around during my time in Africa.

Here's a close-up of the same building:

No P(ee) in Paris for our Lady the Lab named Josie

Grand merci to our friend Lauren who agreed to take Josie, our lab, to the U.S. with her before our return later in May. There was a problem about the fact that we could not take her as checked luggage on a U.S. domestic flight due to hot weather (the dog was born in West Africa, but that's beside the point, I guess).

Anyway, here is Lauren's story about getting Josie through the airport in Paris from her blog LaurenLaughs.

Here's a snip from Lauren's story:

flying back to the US from cotonou, i had a little extra baggage... her name was josie. her papers said she was a lab, but i'd never seen a lab look like josie before. she was born and raised in cotonou and belonged to a missionary family there. because dogs can't travel (with certain airlines) between may 15 and september 15, the price family (who departs benin after may 15) asked me to bring josie along. this is the story of our adventure together.

josie weighs about 23 kilos. she's really very sweet, though i've only been around her while drugged on sleeping pills (not me, the dog). when traveling internationally with a dog, there are all sorts of hoops to jump through. lucky for me, the prices did most of the hoop jumping. josies shots, papers, and even the little computer chip embedded in her shoulder... everything was meticulously cared for. all i had to do was get her from point A to point B. easy enough, right? eh... no.

Here's Josie before her trip:

Last day in our house in Cotonou

We moved out of our house in Cotonou a couple of weeks ago. In November 2006, we decided then that May 2008 would be our exit from Benin. The leaders are well-established (of course, they need more practice, but who doesn’t), the work is progressing, local leadership has taken the reigns from missionary leadership. I’ve been telling folks that we live in Benin, but work in West Africa. My travel schedule reflects that reality.

We’ve been available for the Benin church as a resource and partner in ministry, and we have many good friends here, but it’s time to move on as hard as it is. In August 2004 when we arrived in Benin-Togo, a missionary was district superintendent, there were about 20 churches (only a few were serious) and 750 members on the books, and no volunteer teams had ever come to Benin. Now, there’s a local leader, Moise Toumoudagou as DS, more than 160 churches, and over 8,000 members. Since May 2005, we’ve hosted 10 teams of 100 volunteers from the US who have spent time in Benin/Togo. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

The boys are handling it okay. Payton has lived there for half of his life. Parker is firmly established in the French school. They both have lots of friends here. Sonya and I have lived in that house longer than any other house in 16 years of marriage. So, last Sunday afternoon we had a “goodbye” ceremony walking to each empty room and sharing memories in each one. It was a good time, but still difficult.

The future is pretty wide open right now. Help us pray into the unknown. (Well, at least unknown from our limited perspective!)

Vegamusic

Completely original and very amusing from heita3 on youtube: