I recently learned of this cool way to help provide audio Bibles to many countries, including those where it’s difficult to distribute Bibles. Click here to read a good article.

In the past, some of our evangelistic websites have been successfully blocked by governments in some parts of the world. This works because the website is in one location and governments can block that specific address. But this audio Bible distribution tool spreads the downloads around to hundreds or thousands of computers. Here’s what they say about it:

The best part is that it’s virtually untraceable. It also is virtually unblockable. The Audio Bible Ambassador is the perfect tool for church planters and evangelists in countries where persecution makes Bible distribution dangerous. Even if government officials catch one sender, they can’t catch everyone when the information comes from a million computers across the world.

Click here if you want to get involved

Here’s where we have been charging our cellphones and other stuff.

Original clutter

I bought a plastic box at Target for $1.00 and a surge-protected power strip for $7.50. I wanted the type with the sockets horizontal to accomodate charging bricks better.

A box and a power strip

I used simple tools from my garage: a drill and a large bit for the power cord and a smaller bit for the charging cables along with a sharp knife to trip the holes after drilling.

Drill, drill bits, and a sharp knife

Drill the large hole for the power strip cable. The Lifehacker article uses a slightly different approach for drilling the power strip hole. I have these wood auger bits that worked well for the hole. The velcro tie-wraps are not necessary. I travel with these some of these chargers so I already had the velcro wraps attached. But they do help keep the box orderly!

Inserting the power strip and charging bricks

Drill holes in the lid for the charger connectors. All of mine would fit comfortably through a 1/2 inch hole. The Lifehacker article has a creative way of drilling for longer connectors that will not easily fit through a round hole.

Charging station at work

And there it is. A tidy charging station.

He explains further:

Life is war. That’s not all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief. It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den. (John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, page 45).

I’ve been thinking about Piper’s words as we have prepared for today. The entire staff and associates of Campus Crusade will be gathering at many scattered sites for a Worldwide Day of Prayer.

Kay and I always look to this time. The theme for this Day of Prayer is “Our Strength and Our Shield”.

Psalm 28:7

The LORD is my strength and my shield;
My heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
My heart leaps for joy
And I will give thanks to him in song.

Another portion of Scripture on this theme is found in Psalm 46:1

God is our refuge and strength,
An ever-present help in trouble.

He is our strength and our shield, our refuge and our strength.

Because life is war, and prayer is our wartime walkie-talkie.

Shame is the ball and chain that holds many people to their pasts. The power of shame is broken by forgiveness. Many people no longer feel guilt, but almost all feel shame or embarrassment over things they have done. This movie traces the life of Jesus through the eyes of Mary Magdalene, who experience Jesus forgiveness.

We had guests from two households. Including those of us who hosted the event, we had about 15 people. So the turnout to the movie wasn’t overhwhelming.

But, we have met neighbors in 30-40 homes. We have shown them we are interested enough to walk through the neighborhood and invite them to something. We have identified ourselves as Christians. Like a lifeguard at the beach, when there is an emergency, everyone looks to the lifeguard. We hope that we’ll have opportunities to talk further with neighbors as life’s crises occur.

And, it was a great evening at the movie!

Thai Air

Thai Airways flight TG325 was roaring down the runway in Bangkok, Thailand. It was after 1 am and I was sleepily waiting for takeoff of our flight from Thailand to Bangalore, India. I remember thinking, “We’re taking longer than usual to take-off. It seems like we should have rotated nose up by now. Maybe the engines on this Airbus A300 are not as powerful as other planes and the take-off run is longer.”

About that time, the pilot slammed on the brakes. Hard. The seat belt tugged. Kay and I were both wide awake now.

It takes a while to get 19 tons traveling at 170 miles per hour slowed down. Three hundred people on flight TG325 were  hoping there was enough runway left.

There was. The Thai pilot was a professional. He did all the right things and we were always safe.

As we turned around to taxi back towards the terminal, Kay commented that she had prayed twice during the evening for our flight to India. She had felt an unusual prompting to pray. The Lord was preparing the pilot, the flight crew, and us for an aborted take-off experience. Kay’s prayers were a part of that preparation.

That is why your prayers are important. Air travel is pretty routine. Except when it isn’t! We do it all the time. It’s amazing how regularly flights take off and land safely. Baggage arrives as expected most of the time.

God allows things to happen “normally” most of the time. Most things are so “normal” that we forget to “pray without ceasing.” But sometimes, he has special opportunities to trust him built into our daily schedule. I don’t know whether it’s special faith-building opportunities, or whether the always-present-but-rarely-seen spiritual warfare breaks out in a skirmish in our part of reality.

But prayer is a very important part of both faith-building and war-fighting. I wrote a few months ago about an amazing thought from John Piper (click here to view Piper video clip):

God, the sovereign ruler of the universe, has ordained that prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray. When James 4:2 says ‘you do not have because you do not ask’, it doesn’t mean ‘you would have anyway even if you did not ask because I’ve got a plan’.

This was a difficult trip from the perspective of airlines and travel. Long flights. Missed connections. Delays. Missing bags.

But in the end, we had one of the most profitable meetings of our global technology leadership that we’ve had. Ever. And we trained 30 leaders in India how to use our measurement system to capture statistics and stories of the amazing things God is doing in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. They will soon train their hundreds of staff. We will soon be even better able to publish abroad the amazing things God is doing throughout that entire region of the world.

And prayer is a major a part. Prayers were part of getting us to Thailand and to India. Prayers were part of the effectiveness of the training. And prayers will help Sam and Robin and Bibisho and others as they lead in helping everyone know someone who truly follows Jesus.

“Prayers cause things to happen that would not happen if we do not pray.”

Quicken no-convert warning screen

OK. I’m not happy. This is a not-so-happy post about my favorite money manager, Quicken. I did the buy-TurboTax+Quicken-and-get-$30-rebate thing. As I installed Quicken, I was informed that the Starter edition “can’t convert a data file from a previous version of Quicken”!!!

This is enough of a change that Quicken felt the need to alert me before installing itself. That’s a good move. It would have been even better if I had been alerted before I purchased the product!

I grabbed the original box and checked to see if I’d missed some fine print. Well, I kind of did, maybe. In the really fine print, the box says “Quicken Started Edition 2009 imports data from Quicken 2008 only.” I have Quicken 2002 on my computer. I’m on the road and have Quicken 2008 at home but never upgraded. So, I don’t know which is correct yet — the inside of the box or the warning dialog box. The dialog box did not say my version was too old, it said none, nada, zippo conversions from previous versions.

So, now I don’t know what to do. Do I pay for the upgrade to another Quicken version so I can use it while on the road? Or do I wait until I get home, install Quicken 2008 to see if Quicken 2009 can convert data files from Quicken 2008?

Any of you have ideas?

Update: I’ve spent about 2 hours researching this “can’t convert a data file from a previous version of Quicken” problem. It’s real. The Quicken Community forums have some unhappy long-time users of Quicken. (Read here…) I found this statement in the forums: “The Starter Edition is for new users only. You cannot open a Quicken file from a previous version with the Starter Edition. You will need to upgrade to Quicken Deluxe or higher to convert and open your Quicken data file.”

Looks like the marketing folks went overboard in segmenting the market.

This has been an important lesson throughout my life. I know it’s important because God keeps helping me learn it, and relearn it, and relearn it, and relearn it… This lesson, which I’ve never seemed to learn, has names associated with it – Jim, Don, Yemi, Tim, Stan, Mike, Roger. I can recall the hard parts of followership associated with each of these leaders I’ve had.

You’d think that I’d catch on and finally pass the application test. Must be something about a hard Seabourn head.

God wants me to look through the difficulties I’m having with _____ (fill in the blank with your personal adversary in a leadership role). God wants me to not even see _____, but to see Him — the sovereign, in charge, never confused Creator King whose #1 purpose in my life is to help me conform to the image of Jesus Christ. He knows that the greatest good to Keith comes when Keith is most like Jesus Christ. And the best way to become more like Jesus Christ is to allow the difficulties in life to chip away at anything that doesn’t look like Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t know of some of those un-Christlike areas unless I had leaders I have difficulty following. Unless I have experiences that I’d rather not have.

As the author of the article puts it, “If our leaders take a wrong turn, God can correct them with useful lessons learned. If we throw away some good years following the wrong man, God can restore those years. An infinitely creative Father can even create good from evil. In fact, it’s His specialty—if we trust Him, and continually ask, what would He have us do?”

There are specific answers that we have to wrestle with – do I change to a different ministry? Do I move to a different church?

But I think the first answer to “What would He have us do?” is to look through the leader to the Lord who is using the leader to help me become more like Jesus Christ. I think that once we’ve answered this correctly, then the specific answers have a more appropriate, seemingly-lesser urgency. Like the Scott Krippayne song says:

Sometimes He calms the storm
And other times He calms His child

This place in Rwanda has wireless internet!!!  I have no idea how widely they have it at the hotel, for example, I don’t know if it reaches my room.  I’m in the meeting room at the moment.  This is amazing. The “shower” in my room is one where you have to stand in a bucket. That is, adding a shower to the room was an afterthought. It does have an instant hot water heater in the showerhead, but it didn’t work this morning. So, a bucket shower with a water heater that doesn’t work but with newly installed wireless access point!