Google LIFE

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Letter

I decided to write a Christmas letter to my friends and family this year. I work all day with letters that teachers in Asia send to their supporters around the world, and it’s been really good to write something myself and think about who I’d like to send it to and what I’d like to say to them. It’s been a blessing, really, through both the reconnecting (in some cases) and just the reminder for myself to pray for these people–family and friends that I might not see very often, but who care about me and pray for me and want to know how I’m doing. I’m in the process of writing said letter now, and hope to send it soon. My sincere prayer is that it finds people well and encourages them to seek after Christ, but if it doesn’t do that, I hope it at least encourages them to pursue relationship. To care about people enough to say hi and I’m thinking of you, and to remember that I’m thinking about them.

If I haven’t asked you for your address yet and you’d like to get a letter from me, email me at dodd [dot] jonathan [at] gmail [dot] com.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Christmas, letter

Remember Laos

One of the countries my company sends teachers to is Laos, a poor, poorly educated, ethnically diverse, communist/Buddhist country in Southeast Asia. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s often referred to as “Forgotten Laos” because it doesn’t have the name recognition of places like Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar–though, granted, it doesn’t have the troubled recent history of some of those countries, either.

I spent a few minutes this morning tweeting about Lao currency, the kip (₭), and how little value it has. My point was that the nation of Loas is poor and the Laotian people need our prayers if not our money. I asked my readers to “remember Loas,” just as my company’s Laos director had asked me last week when he handed me the 500₭ bill that got me tweeting about this at all.

Literally minutes after I’d clicked “post,” as I was feeling pretty good about my attempt to “make people think” and well, “remember Loas,” a co-worker who’s been staying with me the past few nights walked up to me and handed me five $20 bills–100 USD (or about 20 50,000₭ notes–the highest bank note the country of Laos prints). *My company has a housing allowance policy that pays someone $20 a night to host an out-of-town employee when they come in for business (we have a lot of off-site folks), and I opened up my home to said co-worker for the last five nights, thus the $100 he handed to me.

It struck me pretty poignantly that he handed me cash, first of all, giving me both a reminder of just how rich I really am and a tangible contrast to the 500₭ bill I’d been holding minutes prior. We’re all pretty hypocritical. Example: I can blog about how poor the Laotion people are and then put the $100 in my wallet pretty easily. It’s harder to say a prayer for Laos. It’s harder still to give away our precious USDs to a country we’ve never been to and a people we’ve never met.

Fortunately, the words of a much wiser man echo in my head: “God has not forgotten Laos.” I would encourage you to remember Laos in whatever way you can. Please pray, and if you feel led, ask me how you can support our teachers in Laos (who are ministering to the Lao people in a very real way) or the Lao people more directly.

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On the road again

I’m leaving in a couple of hours for Fort Collins and I’ll be live-tweeting along the way. Tonight I hope to get to Saint George, Utah, and I should be in FoCo (the Fort?) sometime tomorrow night. Thursday I’ll sign some papers for my new place and Friday the movers come to drop everything off! I am pretty ready to have my own space again and to get to know my new town, and work starts on Monday so it’ll be a pretty quick adjustment–but I really am ready for it. I’ll be posting pictures after this weekend, but for now, definitely follow me at twitter.com/jondodd.

Thanks for your prayers (especially for my old man back) and warmly welcome you to Fort Collins, Colorado!

Filed under: Uncategorized , fort collins, moving

Apps I’d turn in my iPhone for

With the release of the first Android phone today (Google’s new open source mobile phone platform), I’ve been thinking about some apps that, if they showed up on an Android phone, could make me want to turn in my iPhone–ok, maybe that’s pushing it. Better scenario: they show up on the awesome phone I already own. Here are the three:

1) Skype app. If it could give me free iPhone-to-computer calls when connected to a wireless network (like you can call computer-to-computer now), I’d pay $10 easily for this app, plus purchase Skype credit to call mobile phones overseas, too (AT&T won’t ever let this happen, I’m sure). Considering I have a lot of friends in China, this may sound more appealing to me than some others–but I would love it and might be my most-used app if it ever came into existence.

2) Hulu app. If you’re a fan of TV and you don’t know Hulu, you’re missing out on tons of great current and classic TV shows for free, with minimal advertising. Hulu is flash-based (and the iPhone doesn’t support flash) but other flash-based sites (like Seeqpod), have released iPhone-friendly players. A Hulu app that worked well would be AMAZING and might be my biggest distraction yet. I’d pay $5 for this, especially if it came with reduced ad time.

3) amazonmp3 app. Of all three (all of which I’m highly unlikely to ever see), this is the least likely, because it directly competes with the iTunes store, which has a nifty downloader automatically on the iPhone–which I’ve never used. I’ve pretty much sworn off tracks with the ugly DRM (me and the RIAA will never be friends again after they killed Muxtape–speaking, of a Muxtape app would be pretty rad, too), and I do all my music purchasing at DRM-free amazonmp3 and through music subscription services like eMusic. There is an amazonmp3 app for T-Mobile’s first Android phone, and that makes me way, way jealous.

BUT, the iPhone does have some super apps, some of my favorites being Remote, Pandora, Last.fm and Shazam. It’s still a great phone (too great, sometimes, as I lamented in my last post), but those three apps would move it from great into near uncharted terriotories of awesomeness. I already have a hard time putting it down, with Skype, Hulu and a DRM-free music downloader, I never would.

Now if only it had copy and paste…

Filed under: Uncategorized , amazonmp3, hulu, iphone, skype, tech

His delight is in…

Question of the day:

How would my day-to-day life look different if I treated prayer and/or time in the Word like I treat my iPhone? It’s the first thing I see in the morning (alarm clock) and the last thing I often see at night (to turn on sleeping music or ambient noise). I keep it with me wherever I am and I’m never hesitant to open it up and read/spend time with it. It’s what I listen to all day at work and where I go for information and enlightenment or to pass an idle moment. A stirring from it gets my instant attention, and its shiny/prettiness makes me proud to show it off and share it with others. It aids many of my relationships and it’s often the medium through which I communicate with the world.

If only I could honestly say those same things about prayer. Or about Scripture. The iPhone is a wonderful tool for so many things (including reading the Bible), but it sometimes serves as a serious distraction for me from things more eternity-focused and Kingdom-centered (as does my computer, the Internet, television, sports, movies, music, books, money–so many of the things I fill my time with).

If you’ll allow me to add my own words to God’s Word, “Blessed is the man who walks not with iPhone in hand, with his face buried and his hands tied to his plastic gadgetry; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Further thoughts on Psalm 1 from Desiring God.

What distracts you from spending time with God and with God’s people?

Filed under: Uncategorized , distractions, iphone, psalm 1

Jesus and art

I love these two paintings of Jesus.

I apologize, I honestly don’t know where they came from. I was having a discussion with a friend tonight about art and stumbled across these saved together in a powerpoint file in my pictures folder. If anyone knows the artists or the source, I’d love to find out. I can tell you why I like them, though, and it’s for a couple of reasons:

1) I love art, and I especially love God-glorifying art. I’ve enjoyed my couple of trips to the Getty this past year, and I’m always struck by the amount of Christ-centered art on display (both literally with Christ as the subject or with a focus on giving God the glory by being great). Regardless of what you think about paintings of Jesus, I wish more art was like that today, and I wish the church embraced it more than it does.

2) I especially love the painting of the Chinese Christ washing the feet of the Chinese disciples because I love Chinese people, and I know that Jesus loves them and cares for their needs more than I ever can. I love Chinese Christians and I want more Chinese people to see Jesus and come to know Him as their Savior, as their Chinese Savior–because He died for China and for the Chinese people. He is not merely a Savior for the West or for white people, but Jesus is for the entire world–every tribe, nation and tongue–and these paintings remind me of that.

Feel free to add your own thoughts or reflections below and I hope to continue the conversation soon.

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Michael Phelps Breakfast

It’s well documented that the man can swim, and he can also eat (12,000 calories daily!). If I owned a breakfast place (which, of course, I wish I did), I’d take advantage of America’s fevered interest in all things Michael Phelps (which, of course, I share) and offer:

The Michael Phelps Breakfast

Which, according to Bob Costas, would consist of:

3 sandwiches of fried eggs (with all the fixin’s)

1 omelet

A bowl of grits

3 slices of french toast with powdered sugar

3 chocolate chip pancakes

Seriously, how intense is that? If you and a friend can finish it off (because, of course, no man can equal Michael Phelps on his own), you’d be awarded a free pass to a local swim club or a Team USA Speedo, something along those lines. Or just the warm feeling of being half as awesome as Michael Phelps, for a meal, for a day. And that’s all we normal folk can really hope for.

Filed under: Uncategorized , awesome, breakfast, michael phelps

北京歡迎妳?

It’s “hazy” in Beijing, and this guy isn’t the least bit surprised. But I am excited. Excited to see the city I lived in for a year on display for the world. That frightens me, though, as Beijing isn’t perfect, and its flaws will be seen more clearly than its charms, I suppose. It was a city that grew on me, but it’s a city I really did grow to love, for (among other things) its food, its culture, its beauty (which is hard to see in the smoggy summer–literally), its history, its old, authentic neighborhoods (which are becoming less and less, but more and more unique because of it), and its foreign-ness (which made living there a constant adventure). It’s funny, my American friends who taught in other Chinese cities refer to Beijing as “Beijing, America” for all the Western comforts it does have (and give me a hard time for living in the capital city). I doubt too many foreign journalists will look at it in that way. But I hope they look past the obvious flaws of the pollution and the government (which I’m not trying to minimize) and see what I loved most about Beijing: its people.

Anyways, I am really excited to see what China has in store for the world and what the world will think of it. I’ll try to post the most interesting things I find over the next few weeks (here and at twitter.com/jondodd), and feel free to fill the comments with links you find. I’ll start with a great location-based interactive map from BBC Sports, complete with Twitterfeeds from its reporters in BJ. If you zoom out and can find the baseball/softball stadium a good bit to the Southwest of all the main Olympic venues, that’s pretty near to where I lived from September 2005 until July 2006.

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FJM blocked by China’s Great Firewall

One of my favorite blogs, Fire Joe Morgan, is blocked in China, according to Rocky Mountain News. The simple answer is that it’s a Blogspot site, and Blogspot is blocked in China (or at least my old site was blocked when I was there), but still, funny. “Hu Jintao Does Not Care For OPS+” is maybe the best headline I’ve read in a while. It’s obviously infinitely fascinating for me to read about everything going on in my old stomping grounds–and there will be lots to read from Beijing in the next couple of weeks–and to hear firsthand from all my friends in BJ.

One blog I definitely recommend, if this, too, fascinates you, is Joann Pittman’s–a colleague and something of a personal hero of mine. You won’t find another blogger anywhere with the wisdom and wit of JP blogging in Beijing.

Also, I missed the earthquake in L.A. this morning (I’m at home in Pittsburgh, of course). Chino Hills is only about 15 miles from my office and I guess they experienced a lot of shaking during the staff meeting this morning. Since everyone’s okay and damage is minimal, I can say that I’m definitely bummed I missed it–probably would’ve been my favorite day at work ever. An earthquake is one of the things I hoped to experience living in Southern California, so I guess I picked the wrong week to be away. But it’s been a great week to be home, too, so I can’t complain.

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