Links and videos

So it's been awhile since any news came out from here. Lot to say, and not much I can say, sad to say. But I'm still recovering and visiting doctors and doing exams. I'm pretty tired of it all, but not sure what else I can do. Hopefully there will be something a bit more definitive next week with exam results. In the mean time, here are some cool links and videos:



This is a video from the US campaign for Burma. They are hoping to get a million people to pledge to boycott the Beijing Olympics and not buy from the sponsors. Why would you do that you ask? First, to put the Protest back into to Protestant. Second, this video explains the reasons very well.

I heard a passing missionary talk about Thailand and Burma while I was in college. He was snuck into Burma to see the situation that many of the ethnic groups (the largest group being the Karen) face. I was surprised to learn that many of these people are Christian, Baptists even. He explained that the Burmese military is trying to exterminate these groups. In their villages, they manage to eek out a very meager existence with subsistence farming. However, right before any harvest can take place, the military will come in, burn the crops, burn the village, and kill anyone they find. The only building the military leaves standing is the church. They know that any escaped villager will immediately run to the church to pray when they return. So they ring the entrance to the church with landmines designed to maim and leave of a record of their brutality. Thankfully there is a group called the Free Burma Rangers. They track the movements of the Burmese military and help Karen people to escape before they arrive. They also return to the village and sweep for mines to make sure the area is safe. They do a lot of other stuff in terms of human rights abuse documentation and emergency aid.


Also on the link list is something I've seen on Facebook, but never did until tonight. It's a little online vocab game called Free Rice. You define the word and every time you get it right, 20 grains of rice get donated to some UN food program from the banner ad sponsors. I got curious how many grains of rice make a kilo and it's a lot, like anywhere from 14,000 to 50,000 after a brief google survey. So don't expect to be doing any great shakes for humanity by playing it (although everyone playing does add up) but it's still fun and educational. It's Edutainment! I can't get past level 44.


Finally, we've been talking a lot about evangelism in our context. We watched this video as an example of a gospel presentation contextualized for college students. I actually saw an early version of this in IV my last year. I'm not going to comment on it just because I'm curious as to what people think. That means leave a comment:)

Alright, that's it for now, but up and coming is a song I wrote and am practicing. It's the first song I'll have ever written so hopefully it turns out alright. Thanks for reading!