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Is it the next 400 that matter most?
A while ago I linked to a op-ed telling us to watch out for the New ‘New Deal’. Forget about what you thought about it then, its happening now. Government involvement (‘control’ would almost fit) in all aspects of public life has reached a new level and more is being promised.
Am I the only one who gets nervous when a guy like Rahm Emanuel says, “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” One has to ask, “Why couldn’t you do it before?” Is it that people think more clearly when they are not panicking?
25
limited time offer!
How perfect is this? Kenya just announced that the cost of an entry visa just dropped to $25 from $50 until 2010. Check it out. So, come on over ya’ll! If the $50 fee was holding you back, buy your $1000 tickets now! 
24
“obama among dictators”
A recent WSJ op-ed well-summarizes the struggle the Obama administration has initiated for itself by befriending dictators and denouncing its own intelligence and military agencies. True, this style of ‘diplomacy’ has not been tried in a while (…there may be a good reason for that), so we will see what happens. As Henninger puts it:
The hopeful way to view the Obama administration’s openings to Chávez, the Castros, Iran and the others would be: This had better work. Because if it doesn’t, a lot of people who’ve spent years working in opposition to these regimes — in hiding or in prison in Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Burma, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan — are going to get hammered.
Other than physically controlling their populations, the biggest problem for autocrats — most of them narcissistic monomaniacs — is maintaining the legitimacy of their authority, which by definition is always on thin ice. To Mr. Obama and his handlers perhaps it was just a photo-op. For Mr. Chávez it was priceless. Merely being seen or photographed in the presence of civilized society — at summits, negotiations, in state visits — empowers the autocrat and discourages his opposition.
23
pics
(Here’s a few pics with our new [cheap] camera. Most of the shots are from our visit referred to in Ginna’s post.)
22
ginna posts!
Last weekend, we had chai with a Kenyan friend and his family. He is our gardener and also works for a lot of the other missionaries in our area. He is just a great guy. He is an honest Christian man married to a sweet Christian woman. They have a five-year old son. We went to their one-room house in a complex where they share a bathroom with 30 other people. When I say bathroom, I mean an outhouse with a hole in the ground and an exposed shower head. Their house is made out of mbati (tin) and thus, gets hot during the day. They have a dirt floor.
I’m sure many people have heard of, been in, or seen places like this. It is not the place that struck me, even though it was shocking, it was the joy of our friend and his family. They were so thankful that they were now living in this place. They had been living in Kibera (the largest slum here) and had been robbed many times and it was just too dangerous. They talked about how this place was so much better (even though it was right across the street from Kibera).
They proudly showed us their certificates where they had completed a Bible study class and roasted peanuts on a small open stove for us. We had a great time. Liam and their son played together. All the other kids around wanted to get a look at Liam’s blonde hair.
As we prayed together, I realized that I will never understand the kind of faith, joy and hope that they have. I know God loves us all the same, and we will all be in heaven. However, I will never know what they have been through just fighting to survive. Honestly, I have been in lots of mud huts, slum-like places and seen lots of horrible situations, but I have never been touched like this. It is not the poverty; it was the light within them. The breadth of God’s love just amazes me. Who am I to think that you need comfort to know God or that you need to have other needs met before you can truly praise Him? He is working and His presence is strong even in the darkest places on this earth…and I think there may be more of those places than not. It makes me wonder if the comfortable places are actually in greater need of Him?
