Saturday, April 23, 2011

Prayer Points for Japan - from the field!

Here are some prayer points straight from Nathan and Inge Mikaelsen - missionaries to Japan who lived in Sendai, right where the earthquake hit. Recently they came to our church to give a testimony of what is happening in Japan and to give us some specific prayer points. Here's a copy of the list for all my prayerful friends:

Pray....

1. For a national awakening in Japan - a turning to the true Triune God.

2. For relief workers to share not only food and physical supplies in Tohoku, but also comfort for the grieving, and Jesus' words of hope.

3. For the nuclear power plant workers in Fukushima trying to control radiation leaks. For especially the 6 Christian workers there, to receive divine wisdom for this critical job.

4. For Caleb and Ohara working with CRASH relief efforts. For Dean and Linda Bengsten, and Roger Olson and others who will soon join the relief effort in Ishinomaki city. For Paul Mikaelsen and his girlfriend Nina Tesaker who may soon go to Japan to help.

5. For damaged churches in Tohoku to be rebuilt and more churches planted.

For more information about the Mikaelsens, look here.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Good C. S. Lewis quote for Easter - and for anytime really!

"I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher; but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Librarians - Masters of the Info Universe!

From a great article on cnn.com, in honor of National Library Week:

Librarians: Masters of the info universe
By Kerith Page McFadden, CNN April 12, 2011 9:14 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And, though you might not know it, they are everywhere.

And so in their honor during National Library Week, we enjoy the following tidbits of information.

Famous people who were librarians
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Casanova, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, former first lady Laura Bush and China's Mao Zedong. At one point in their lives, each of them either worked as librarian or in a library.

Librarians are techno-savvy
Librarians don't just use books anymore. Searching through tweets, blogs, podcasts, websites and more to find accurate and authoritative information has become more the rule than the exception.

At a time where anyone can Google just about anything, librarians don't just find information, they find the correct information -- and fast. The American Library Association reports reference librarians in the nation's public and academic libraries answered nearly 5.7 million questions each week in 2010.

Filmmaker's library
Even "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has his own research library on his Skywalker Ranch. Lucas started the library in 1978, and the collection is housed under a large stained-glass dome.

Librarians influence our culture and society
While clearing out old archives at the Palmer Theological Seminary in 2005, librarian Heather Carbo found a working manuscript of one of Beethoven's final compositions.

Librarians track spy info and classified intelligence
When the CIA needs to provide information to the U.S. president, they turn to their librarians. To become one of the U.S. intelligence's community research experts, a librarian must pass medical and psychological exams, polygraph interviews and clear extensive background investigations.

Librarians are heroic
Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, removed 30,000 books from the city's main library before it was destroyed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Their numbers are many
In 2009, there were 206,000 librarians, 50,000 library technicians and 96,000 other education, training and library workers

Librarians are behind the scenes in current events
-- Federal government shutdown. Lawmakers go to the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, for information.
-- The royal wedding at Westminster Abbey. The Abbey's Library and Muniment Room has a historic collection of books, manuscripts and archival material.
-- NATO no-fly zone over Libya. NATO's Brussels Headquarters houses a multimedia library with a collection focusing on international relations, security and defense, military questions and world affairs.

Warning to readers about librarians
A character in "The Callahan Touch", one of science fiction writer Spider Robinson's books, said, "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off."

Good advice.

Kerith Page McFadden has a masters of library science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and has been a librarian at CNN for the past 12 years.