the adventure I find myself in / das Abenteuer in dem ich mich finde

Month: May 2007

Hochzeitstag

Heute sind es 15 Jahre seit wir damals in der reformierten Kirche Bümpliz Ja zueinander gesagt haben. 15 Jahre verheiratet. Wer hätte das gedacht. "Thanks Lillian for sticking with me". Ich weiss das ist nicht viel für manche Leute. Ich konnte mir dies aber nie so vorstellen und hatte damals vor unserer Hochzeit auch Angst dieses Versprechen einzugehen. Heute würde ich wieder Ja zu Lillian sagen. (Just for the record). Meine Frau ist das grösste Geschenk, das mir Gott anvertraut hat.

Neben vielen Entscheideungen, Verplichtungen und Versprechen die ich in meinem bisherigen Leben eingegangen bin stehen zwei ganz besonders hervor. Die Entscheidung dem Ruf von Jesus Christus zu folgen und den Bund der Ehe einzugehen. Die Erste ist für die Ewigkeit und hat mein Leben auf eine total neue Grundlage gestellt. Die Zweite Entscheidung ist für dieses irdische Leben (auf bis der Tod uns scheidet). Ich bin aber Überzeugt das auch diese Beziehung auswirkungen in das Ewige Leben hat.

Radio Widget update

Swissradio_3

Ich habe letztes Jahr in einem Post über das Swiss Radio Widget geschrieben. Ich hatte später viele Probleme damit und es funktionierte nicht mehr. Ich nehme an wegen dem OSX update. Inzwischen hat Cyberdog das widget upgedatet und ich habe Gestern die neue Version runtergeladen. Leider können in der lightversion nur 9 Stationen (nicht meine Favoriten) angewählt werden. Um sich alle 42 Stationen reinzuziehen muss man SFr. 3.65 bezahlen. Na Ja, dies ist ja nicht mal eine Tasse Kaffee in der Schweiz. Also noch längst verkraftbar.

 

V20
Aus zwei Gründen habe ich nun aber auf ein anderes Radio Widget gewechselt. Als die alte Version von Swiss Radio Widget nicht mehr ging habe ich mich für ein anderes umgeschaut und bin mit Radio Tuner fündig geworden. Zweitens kann ich mit dem Radio Tuner kann ich meine Lieblingssender (auch Ausländische) selber zusammenstellen. Dadurch habe ich nicht eine riesige Liste von Sendern die ich doch nie anwähle. Das Widget sieht nicht so cool  aus wie von Cyberdog, braucht dafür nicht soviel Platz auf meinem überfüllten Dashboard.

 

German Worship

This morning I led worship in the German Community we have every two weeks. This is my latest worship "project". (I wrote about this last year) . Even though I speak German more or less fluent it doesn’t come to me as natural as English. What I mean it is not my heart language. I personally pray in Swiss or English. So praying in "High German" feels a bit difficult.
I have a hard time motivating myself to learn new songs and to practice.  I get away with my experience, level of playing and contempt of the people who come to worship.
I like making music and leading people in worship is probably one my greatest strengths. But I’m kind of searching for something where my heart leaps again.

Today I played an old song in the set. I used to sing it more than 20 years ago. searching through the Internet for German worship songs I found it again and was taken by it’s simplicity, the melody and the text. Everybody seemed to know it and sang harmonies as well as in canon. The good old songs.

Die Herrlichkeit des Herrn bleibe ewiglich
Der Herr freue sich seiner Werke
Ich will singen dem Herrn mein Leben lang
Ich will loben meinen Gott so lang ich bin

Happy Birthday to Me!

I made it…. another year has passed and today I turned 39. Who would have thought I could make it that far. I’m one of the lucky ones. Thank you God for all those years. May they honor You and may I be pleasing to Your heart. Thank you for all the blessings and gifts You have provided for me. I love being part of Your family.

A lovely, beautiful wife
Great children
Good health and strength
Friends all over the world
An adventure
Monthly provisions to pay all the bills
And so many more things you brought into my life……. Thank you!

Please God I would like to understand life better and have more wisdom in dealing with it. Just in case you wonder what you should give me for my Birthday. I leave all the material stuff out. I know you don’t care so much about gadgets as I do.

The end of poverty

Is it an unreachable dream? To end poverty? Or better say extreme poverty as Jeffrey D. Sachs writes in his book “The end of poverty”. I started reading it some weeks ago and try to fight my way through pages of economic change and explanations about the world with its one billion extreme poor people. Thousands of children die every day of malnutrition and sickness. Sachs says it is possible to stop extreme poverty till the year 2025. A very interesting read even for someone who doesn’t have much understanding of economics. It seems to be a very practical approach. I haven’t finished the book yet, but would really recommend it. It gave me some interesting insight into how countries develop.

In the west we are readily to judge so called “third world countries” and point out that it is their own fault and that they should help themselves. But if poverty is at an extreme end, there is no way to get out of it by one self. Millions of people find themselves on the bottom of a spiral without hope of getting out.

Poverty is the inability to choose.

Working with the poor here in Thailand taught me a lot. Still there are many factors I don’t understand. This is a theme that will be researching for months to come. I want to find out what it practically means in our work situation with the Lahu People. One thing that Sachs doesn’t address is the spiritual factor. The Christian Lahu villages seem to be doing much better than their non-Christian counter parts. On the other hand I think the villages who had help in starting their development were able than to develop themselves further out of poverty. Like the Thai Royal projects. I will explore this more in a future post.

Sliding the truck

Truck_on_bridge_2

Yesterday afternoon I drove back from a trip to Fang. After the police check point in Chai Prakan I entered into the mountain pass. Heavy rain started to pour down. So strong it was hard to see. Two kilometers further on it stopped. After I passed a curve the tail of my car wanted to take over from the left. For a moment it felt like loosing control and I saw myself flipping the truck. I went slightly on the breaks and the ABS started to work. I had to steer left and right to keep control of the truck but managed to turn it around coming to a stand still in the middle of the road. I quickly put first gear in to drive to the side knowing there were other cars coming a little behind me. This all happened in just a second. I thank God for His protection and that nothing bad happened.
This is the second time I experienced this. The roads here can get very slippery. The surface wasn’t wet. It hadn’t rained there yet. I don’t understand why this happened. I wasn’t driving very fast either and now this road very well. It was really one of those freak moments.
Thanks for all who pray for us. It seems to work.

Dream job

I took this photo in Bangkok. This used to be one of my dream jobs. Cleaning windows at sky scrappers. I must have been crazy to even consider something like this. It’s fear factor 🙂 I remember in Switzerland climbing tall trees with a chain saw in winter without security rope. " The good old crazy times". Now I live this "normal life" in Asia.
Window_cleaning

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