More from Kenya

January 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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The Brooks FamilyJohnny has published another post about the current situation in Kenya.

Here are a few lines from his post, Nakuru January 2, 2008, describing his attempts to check on neighbours and survey the situation in Nakuru.

I was unable to visit a few neighborhoods. Seems that the residents are stoning vehicles to keep the police out. Fear and suspicion rule the day here. Neighbors have turned on neighbors and armed gangs are running about causing havoc. Of course not everyone has sunk to this cave man attitude about members of other tribes. We hear stories of neighbors banding together despite ethnic differences to protect each other.

The innocent are getting caught up in what I would describe as tribal conflict between Kikuyus, Luos, and the Kalenjin. I have a friend who is Kissi. In his neighborhood he is a minority. Luos and Kikuyus outnumber his tribe, but do not have numbers large enough to oust each other. Each tribe, Luo and Kikuyu formed security squads to patrol at night. My friend was approached by both sides, but he told me he did not know what to do. Joining any of them would pit him against the others, and ultimately endanger his wife and daughter. Rape is common in these attacks, and the assailants do not care how old or how young you are.

Please take the time to visit Pure Christianity and let Johnny, Kate and their children know that you’re thinking of them and praying for them and the people they are serving during this very difficult time.

Please spread the word. If you keep a blog please point people towards Johnny’s blog so that they can stay up to date with the situation and pray for the specific needs that will arise over the coming weeks and months.



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Easier Audio

January 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve installed the WordPress Audio Player plugin.

What that means for you is that any of my posts containing audio will now have a small player included within the post. All you need to do to listen is just click. The file will play directly from the post without having to fire up any other programme.

If you’ve had trouble listening to any of the audio files I’ve linked to in the past give it another try with the Audio Player and let me know how it goes.



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The Golden Compass

January 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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The Golden CompassYou probably got the emails telling you to avoid this awful atheistic movie. I know I did. Lots of them.

Some Christians called for a boycott of the movie and many others sent long winded messages to everyone in their address books to warn them of the danger of seeing this piece of cinema.

The Golden Compass is based on the book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has been fairly strong in his condemnation of Pullman and his projects.

Philip Pullman has an agenda – an agenda about as subtle as an army tank. His agenda is nothing less than to expose what he believes is the tyranny of the Christian faith and the Christian church. His hatred of the biblical storyline is clear. He is an atheist whose most important literary project is intended to offer a moral narrative that will reverse the biblical account of the fall and provide a liberating mythology for a new secular age.

So, is the movie really that bad? Will it cause us all to abandon belief?

Pullman is an atheist and his books certainly leave no doubt that he is not a fan of Christianity but apparently the film doesn’t quite pack the same kind of punch as his books.

One of the segments on my morning radio programme at 98.5 Sonshine FM is a fortnightly look at what’s on at the movies.

Aaron Kamp has been reviewing movies for some time and he posts his reviews at Cinemaniac. Every couple of weeks we look at what’s in the cinemas and what’s new on DVD.

Aaron headed off to the movies last night to see what all the fuss is about. He came away believing that it’s not the atheistic storyline that will keep people away from the cinemas, it’s the fact that movie’s simply not that good.

He agrees that the philosophy behind the books has been watered down and says that the kind of Christianity that it wars against doesn’t really exist anyway. Pullman has built his own idea of what faith is about and then proceeded to pull it down.

Aaron’s main concern with children seeing the movie is not it’s anti-God message, as that’s not really demonstrated through the film, but the message of distrusting and disobeying authority.

If you’d like to hear what Aaron had to say you can click the audio player at the bottom of this post to listen to our conversation.



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A fishy tale

January 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
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FishingTasmania’s Mercury newspaper is reporting a rather fishy story.

In the article, Lost jewellery found in fish, we’re told that a 25 year old woman named Kristy was kneeboarding behind a boat south of Hobart when she was tossed from her board in rough conditions.

In the fall she lost a nose stud from a piercing she had done only a week before Christmas.

Her fiancé was fishing with a friend three days later in the same area and caught a decent haul of fish. When he was filleting a flathead he noticed something shiny.

Kristy was watching on and recognised it as her lost nose stud. The flathead must have swallowed the stud a few days earlier.

You’d be pretty pleased to find something that small after losing it in something as large as the ocean. Which makes me wonder why it’s so hard to find much larger items like lost keys when you misplace them somewhere in your house.

Just for the record, Pauline found my keys for me today after I left for work. Nothing quite as exciting as inside a fish but I’m glad that they’re safe.



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