Oh yeah - I have a blog!

What's it been?!? Over 2 months! *sigh* I'm pathetic!

But seriously, I've felt recently that just blogging the day-in/day-out of my/our lives seems a bit self-indulgent.... so it hasn't been that appealing. So I'm not even sure why I'm posting today. LOL

So here's some highlights from the last 2 months:

1) I'm still crazy as ever about my girls! Enough said on that!

2) Things are moving along for our move to Africa. January was pretty intense as we worked on the Mennonite Central Committee application. It's very in-depth, with some pretty serious essay questions. We finally got them all done and off in the mail by the beginning of February. Then, a couple weeks ago, we had our 3 hour inteview with their HR person. It was like a 3 hour personality inventory test - YIKES! Very thorough. We just got word that we are officially approved for placement with MCC. From here, we wait to have more discussion with the Africa department. Those guys and the leadership at The Meeting House are still hashing out details of our placement. MCC has had a few delays.... which means we almost certainly won't be going in the summer as we had hoped. At this point, we are seriously hoping for sometime this fall!

The girls are getting more and more anxious to go, too.... which is very encouraging. I'm sure it will still be hard when it finally happens, but at least they are excited about it.

It seems premature to celebrate that we are ABSOLUTELY doing this - but it sure seems like it. A few more discussions with the MCC Africa Department and we'll consider it formal.

As soon as that happens, we'll start searching for my replacement at the church. That's going to be a difficult process, but we are planning to have a 3 month overlap between me and my replacement, which is incredible. I'm really humbled that the church values my position and my work so much that they will give me 3 months to hand off to that person.

We'll probably still try to sell the house this summer, as that's the hot time for real estate.... and then we'll just live in a cardboard box for a few months. ;)

We continue to do lots of reading about the various situations our African family are facing, and it's heartbreaking and encouraging all at the same time. The situation in Zimbabwe is out of control! In spite of the food shortages and outrageous inflation, part of me still really wants to live in Bulawayo, but it looks like MCC still plans to send us to Choma, Zambia.

Guess that's about all we know for now. This has been a process of much waiting. Good practice for living in Africa, I suppose. Everything takes longer over there, so we better get used to it. And we trust that God is at work in the details.

When we interviewed, the striking thing that came up over and over is how much Arja and I both like things to be within control, on schedule, according to plan, etc. I guess I never realized how similar we are in that regard. It's that attention to detail and in-control nature that has made us both very good at what we do. And yet, that will be the thing that we both need to relearn if we are going to survive there.
I think it will be a valuable learning experience!

3) I've been working on some really incredible stuff for work, and I'm really excited about it - more than I have been in a long time.

Good Friday is always my favourite holiday of the Christian calendar. Particularly since I've joined The Meeting House, I have enjoyed working at producing a unique, deeply moving and emotional experience in which people can contemplate the sacrifice of Christ.

I've been compeltely immersed in this year's preproduction all week.

Here's some highlights of what's to come....

"In Memoriam - Remembering the Christ"
A service set on the day after Christ's death. We have written monologues from the perspective of 6 different people who encountered Jesus at different points in his ministry. They are gathered at the cross in their grief, sharing their memories of Jesus.

We will hear from:

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as she remembers Jesus at the wedding in Cana.

The paralytic man healed by Jesus at the pool.

Mary, the sister of Lazarus, as she remembers weeping with Jesus after her brother's death.

The adulterous woman whom the Pharisees brought before Jesus.

Peter, as he remembers the last supper, and his denial of Jesus.

And an unnamed disciple who shares their current confusion, and says there is nothing left for him to do except to go back to fishing.

The spoken memories will be interspersed with "flashbacks" of the memory on video (similar to LOST flasbacks), with countpoint flashbacks of Jesus' torture and crucifixion.

It will end as a complete and abrupt cliffhanger.... "To be continued".... blackout.... lights up.... end of service.

We can do that this year for the first time, because for the first time, we don't have to pretend it isn't Easter on Easter! In the past, we've been on a week-delay teaching schedule to our regional sites. But being broadcast to our sites live now allows us to actually aknowledge Easter on Sunday! YAY! What a novel concept.

So we'll pick it right back up again on Sunday with another monologue - Peter remembering Jesus' appearance on the shore as they were fishing, and him diving into the water to get to him. It's the beginning of a service of hope and celebration of the resurrection (duh - I guess that's what all Easter services are).

All the elements are coming together incredibly well. Good writing, good actors, incredible video clips and a musical score that is so powerful that it rocks my world.

And the visuals - they promise to be amazing. The stage will be bare and stark.... all except for the cross that we are erecting. I got two HUGE logs (each is about 18 ft long, and 14" diameter). We will suspend it on stage and light it very dramatically. It's going to be incredible. When I was hauling and moving the logs yesterday, I realized that I must be absolutely insane. At Christmas, the 18' trees were difficult and crazy enough. But now - a cross that will weight just under 1 ton and be suspended from the steel overhead! I'm friggin' NUTS! I'm just waiting for approval from the structural engineer before we suspend it - I'd hate to pull the building down or hurt someone. Good thing we are in an industrial building with steel structure and solid concrete floors!

I've dreamt of building a cross like this for years.... this is the right time for it!

I'll post pictures when it's done.

I'm also excited about the big spring teaching series we are preparing for. More to come on that soon, I promise. We are putting all our chips behind the branding and marketing of this one - it has the potential to be incredibly appealing to the non-churched public, and we really want to make them interested. I can't wait for it!!!!

Let's just say.... it's not about "Jesus, meek and mild" by any stretch. Think Jesus, the revolutionary!

4) Spring must be coming soon. The weather sucks here, but I know that spring will come, and I'm so looking forward to it. Remember that list of things I couldn't wait to do last spring.... ditto for this year. The girls are squirrely and can't wait to spend lots of time outside.... and I can already hear the kayak calling my name!

Okay.... enough update for now. If you've stuck around during the last 2 months, thanks for caring and thanks for reading. Sorry this is just an "update" and not more in-depth. I'll try to get back into this silly thing more often!

Peace and love to all of you!

Well Done, Marty

An acquaintance of mine spent over a year in Uganda, setting up a production ministry in a very large church.

This is a piece he put together while he was there.

As a video professional (and one passionate about Africa), I think this is a great piece of work. It's encouraging, fresh, and has a very modern feel.

We are becoming saturated with media about African children. It's something I'm becoming more acutely aware of, and want to be very cautious how I use video to portray Africa when I'm there. More on that later. But for now, I'll say that Marty's work was tastefully done, and gives us a quick glimpse into the lives of African children - children who are portrayed as humans, not just objects in a marketing campaign.

Meet a friend in Zimbabwe

Check out this post on the blog of Forgotten Voices International. Forgotten Voices is a non-profit agency that partners with local churches, primarily in Zimbabwe, to help provide care for orphans. I don't know much about them, but I'm really starting to like what I see. Ryan Keith, the guy who runs this agency, does a tremendous job with his blog.

See this post to read about a woman we met in Zimbabwe. We actually shot interview footage of her, but we haven't had the right opportunity to use it yet.

Mrs. Maposa is one of those people you meet once and never forget (like most people we met in Africa!) She is one of the most selfless and servanthearted persons I've ever met.

Take a moment to read about her on Ryan's blog... and know that there are incredible people like her working hard to change the face of the Africa... pray that God will continue to raise up women like her.

Christmas Eve '07

Another year down, and another wonderful Christmas Eve service(s) experienced by thousands of people at The Meeting House.

Every year, we seem to "outdo" ourselves in terms of production, complexity, and "wow" factor..... all the things that Jesus' birth WASN'T. So this year, we decided to take a simpler approach (in some ways it was simple, and in some, not so much - LOL!)

This year's Christmas Eve at The Meeting House was called "Down to Earth". We tried to convey a more organic, family feeling - as opposed to the highly technical "events" of the past 2 years.

In many ways, we succeeded. And still in some ways, it was quite technical and "wow" factor-ish. And through it all, (surprise surprise) God showed up!

The evening consisted of music (corporate singing and performance) storytelling, a meditation by Brux, and more singing. Pretty simple stuff. But still delivered Meeting House style.

In years past, we haven't done much traditional decoration. So this year, in keeping with the theme, we decided to do Christmas trees. And when you have a 50x75 ft stage with almost 24 ft of ceiling height, if you are gonna do trees, you gotta REALLY do trees. So I put a forest on stage. :)

Above you'll see an 18 ft tree, a 12 ft tree, and several 6 to 8 ft trees.... all with lights. They are all real trees. A guy from the church with a 20 ft tilt-n-load flatbad drove an hour north of Toronto with me to pick them up from a tree farm. Then we used a boom lift to hoist the big ones into the air and we suspended them with steel cable. The picture doesn't show, but there was another 18 ft tree out in the foyer.

Then came the lights - hundreds of feet of lights. Yikes.

As usual, Dave's lighting was wonderful and really created the mood.

Craig's band was killer, of course.

And the Great Wooden Trio (of which there are four guys, not three!) were the perfect guests for our program, singing and storytelling.

I trust that God was present to the thousands who came. I know that he was with me and my production team.... empowering us to serve Him with excellence.

Thanks be to God for his incarnation among us. And thanks to Him for the opportunity to worship him in our own style again this year.

A few more pictures to follow...

Bruxy and baby Maya



Great Wooden Trio





Craig & Band

He's 37, and still a kid!

My brother is such a big little kid... and I think it's so cool!

And it's not as if he just got the Jeep and has to try it out - he's had it for years. Oh wait - he did have to "test" out the new tires - hence the mud!

And the explanation for the snow bank... I LOVE this one...
getting the last laugh over the snow plow driver who thought it would be funny to leave a pile of snow right where he always parks.

Ah - the joys of being a boy with a toy. :)

The desire to make an immediate impact

I've recently had some very good dialogue over email with Joel Percy, regarding the natural desire we feel when presented with incredible heart-breaking scenarios, to "fix" the problem and offer immediate help.

When we met Shelton, Magret and Concillia in Zimbabwe (the three orphans living on their own) I felt that intense desire to do whatever I could to change their scenario. Then, when we introduced them to The Meeting House and talked about their situation on video, I received numerous emails and personal questions asking the same thing... "What can we do immediately for those three kids."

One such email that was very heartfelt and passionate asked the two following questions (note - NO DISRESPECT at all is meant towards the person who emailed this. I have a great respect for his passion, his generousity, and his desire to make a difference in this world!! I wish more people responded with immediacy to the problems in the world!):

How can we help those 3 children without any family to support them? I am sure there are thousands like them, but we have to start with one project. Our Home Church group trys not to get overwhelmed with the magnitude of needs around us, but just take action and begin to make a small difference. Action is our motto!
First thoughts:
1) Can we move these children into a home with support so they can spend their time being kids and going to school?
How much would this cost annually?
2) If option 1 is not possible, can we immediately support these 3 kids with food, shelter, beds, etc where they currently live? What would be the budget for this option.

It may not be this simple, and there are probably many issues, but I have to believe we can do something now.
So today, or tomorrow, can we immediately make a change for those 3 children?


I posed these questions to Joel, and here was his response. I thought it contained alot of insight and challenged some of our typical responses. I have his permission to share it here.

Comments are more than welcome.

First, I totally understand the desire to do something and see immediate results. I don’t question that in any way—I’ve felt it myself a hundred times.

But after having those same kind of reactions myself, and taking the time to talk to people who are a lot more experienced than me in this stuff, I realize I need to slow down my own tendency to try to fix things right away. There are a ton of areas in life where doing something fast and dramatic is actually not the best and healthiest solution. People who try to lose weight REALLY fast, or get rich REALLY fast, or solve their relationship problems REALLY fast, or even grow spiritually REALLY fast, tend to get themselves into trouble and make bad choices. I’ve come to believe that this is one of those areas. The best thing we can do for those kids is to work through existing local channels (i.e. the BIC AIDS Project), draw on the experience of people who know a lot more about the solutions than we do (Mennonite Central Committee) and take a broad approach to helping as many kids as possible while still seeing a measurable difference.

I know it seems kind of counter-intuitive, but the problem with the “make a dramatic difference for 3 kids” approach is that it actually feeds our desire to feel good rather than push us to do what is objectively best in the situation. If we help three kids, there is something in us that emotionally feels a sense of completion. The problem is there is no sense of completion for the hundreds of thousands of other kids in southern Africa who are living without parents, without food, without hope. If we could put all 500,000 (I’m guessing at that number, but it’s not crazy) of the kids in child-headed families in front of us at once, we wouldn’t emotionally feel good about helping three of them on a grand scale and ignoring the other 499,997. But since we can only see three at once, our emotions lead us down a path that is, ultimately, less helpful.

There is a balance to find here. You can focus too much, or you can spread yourself too thin. It’s a tricky balance. On that point, I come back once again for the need for a great partner organization. MCC is better and more experienced at finding that balance than we are. That’s why we’ve given decision-making control over to them.

Bottom line is this…What can we do? Give to Mission 2. Then encourage friends and folks in your Home Church to give to Mission 2. For us at The Meeting House right now, that really is where it all needs to start.

Moving to Africa?

For those who follow this blog and DON'T already know it, or know very little... it's time I share about our potential plans to relocate to Southern Africa.

You probably already know about my (our) growing passion for the people of Africa. Our desire to serve overseas goes back many years prior to our marriage, and has been a common thread throughout our life together. At the time we married, we anticipated being deployed overseas, serving with Brethren in Christ World Missions, within a few years of being married. God redirected us... and for how long, we didn't know. We ended up at The Meeting House 4.5 years ago, and it's been a wonderful place for us to serve, grow and engage in community.

And yet, that desire to serve overseas never died.

As a church, we desired to take a very active role in compassionate ministry to the people of Africa. We sent Joel and Julianne for 10 months to research how we could do that. The decision was made that we needed to partner with an organization that is already there, already doing great work. The last thing we wanted to do was to be a big church with big money, going in and doing things our own way. There's already lots of very intelligent, skilled people on the ground doing great work in Africa. God has gifted us with financial resources... we need to use that to support the great work that's already in place. The organization we feel we are best suited to partner with, and with whom we have the opportunity to make the biggest impact, is Mennonite Central Committee. (Learn more about them at www.mcc.org.)

So our goal as a church is to double MCC's budget for Southern Africa over the next 5 years. We want to raise millions of dollars for them to use to strengthen existing programs in Africa, and to create new ones.

Part of our committment was also to provide personnel... in several ways. Our leadership wants to send a couple (or family) from the church to live in Africa, to fulfill a couple of objectives:

- Communication

If we are asking people in our community to give millions of dollars, we have a responsibility to communicate with them how those finances are being used. We place a high value on communication within our community.

- Logistics

We want to not just send money, but also people. People to serve in various short-term capacities. People to just go and "do life" together with our African family. People who can come back to Canada and share with passion about what's going on there... keeping the vision alive for partnering with MCC and our African brothers and sisters. Others who desire to use specific skills and educational experience to work alongside the Africans for a short period of time.

So we are hopeful that by the middle of 2008, our family will be on the ground, in Africa, fulfilling this role. In so many ways, this is a very good fit for Arja and I. It fits our passions and our skills. It fits with our desire to serve others, and it fits with our desire to serve together as a family. It's the ideal time for our children, and we know that they will gain incredible life experience from it.

Our trip to Zimbabwe in November served to affirm our desire. We came back with a love for the people, for the land, and a passion to use our gifts to serve. We gained a huge appreciation for wonderful things that are happening there, and a burden for the very saddening state of affairs in some regards.

There are many things we will give up when we leave Canada. We will sell our home, our cars, and 99% of our possessions. We will give up our salaries. We will give up much. But we will gain SO MUCH MORE. We will learn to live simply. We will learn to value community over commercialism. We will live, travel, learn and work together as a family. I will learn to slow down (I know many people are waiting to see that happen!)

We trust that through our work, we will help a community of nearly 5000 people in Canada engage in meaningful ways with millions of people in Africa, carrying out the practical teaching of Jesus to love our neighbours. We will be a part of helping people's physical needs be met. We will witness people die of HIV/AIDS, and we will witness others live because they received ARV treatment that they couldn't afford themselves. We will meet people who are starving, and we will work alongside people as they plant gardens with seeds they bought because of micro-loans. We will use video and blogging to tell people's stories... people like Rebecca, whom you can meet through our November Zimbabwe video... (see it here)

I can't wait to meet more of these people, and to introduce you to them.

This posting isn't formalized yet. We have been in discussion with MCC and The Meeting House leadership team. In January, we will formalize our application and interview with MCC. From there, we need to work out a few logistical details, and then, if all goes smoothly, by July, we'll be packing our stuff and boarding a plane.
Where, exactly, we will live, is yet to be determined. It will likely be either Choma, Zambia, or Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. But our role will take us throughout all of Southern Africa.

Stay tuned in the new year as things progress.