NoelHeikkinen.com

Breathe In Deeply

Sep 19, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Sober
.:itunes:. Waitress by Live

Wow.

The response to this weekend’s teaching has been massive.

Based on this clip from the movie “Amazing Grace,” I asked everyone to “breathe deeply” of the pain and suffering in this world.

A lot of people have asked for the stats I shared so I thought I’d post the transcript of that part of my message, along with the references. My thanks to Brett who compiled much of this research for me.

Just a few weeks ago, 23 South Korean missionaries were captured in Afghanistan and two of them were killed. After six weeks, the rest were released but not until many were severely beaten for not converting to Islam. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi has vowed to do it again. He told the Associated Press

“We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful.”

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/08/30/hostages-korea.html?ref=rss
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070904/29174.htm

In July of this year, 36 Christians were kidnapped in the span of one week from one church in Baghdad. None of them have been seen since then but because they are not foreigners it hasn’t received much press.

http://www.persecution.com/news/index.cfm?action=fullstory&newsid=535

In April this year, 3 Bible publishers were killed in Turkey.

http://www.persecution.com/news/index.cfm?action=fullstory&newsid=511

Last year, a Christian woman was clubbed to death publicly for street preaching in Nigeria.

http://www.onefreeworldinternational.com/?q=news/nigeriaalert4192007

The year before, 3 Christian school girls were publicly decapitated in Indonesia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4387604.stm

But all of these are small numbers…let’s look at the big numbers for a few minutes.

In Darfur, since 2003, 2 Million people have been displaced from their homes and 400,000 have been killed.

http://www.savedarfur.org/newsroom/policypapers/darfur_update_july_18_2007/

In the Netherlands, if your child is born disabled in some way, it is legal to kill them and it has been that way for over 15 years.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/003dncoj.asp?pg=1

I couldn’t find any stats on how many babies have actually been killed but I do know that in the United States 4000 babies are killed in the womb through abortion each day—that’s 1.3 million deaths a year and a billion dollar industry.

That only scratches the surface of abortion. The Center for Bioethical Reform reports that each day 126,000 babies are aborted worldwide—that’s 46 million a year!

http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

Many of those are in China where 500,000 – 750,000 baby girls are aborted each year because the government has enacted a “one child policy” and many people want a male heir to pass on their family name. So as soon as they see the ultrasound of a girl, they have her killed.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/2/14/202119.shtml

Speaking of China, 500 million Chinese citizens have no access to clean water and cancer has become the leading cause of death in China because of the severe pollution. There is something called the “Asian Brown Cloud” that blocks out 10-15% of the sunlight in China causing massive health problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&oref=login

China also has an estimated 10 million child laborers many of whom are forced into it. For instance, in 2000, 84 kids were kidnapped to make Christmas lights in a factory. Any guesses where those lights were probably shipped?

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/36/11097

It is estimated that between 400,000 and 4 million people a year are enslaved into either forced labor or sex slavery—it’s a $10 Billion a year industry. Around the world, 80% of forced laborers are women and 50% of them are girls.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/slaves/etc/stats.html

Each year, an estimated 17,500 women and children are sold as sex slaves and smuggled into the United States!

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/060720

Baseball Trick

Sep 19, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Chris Cornell Covers a Classic

Sep 18, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Alliterate
.:itunes:. Coverville 359: Just take my strong advice: Remember to always take cover requests by Brian Ibbott

So I’m sitting here listening to Coverville and I hear the most amazing cover by Chris Cornell. I immediately went online to try to find an embedable version of some sort. I found a video of him performing it live.

I actually like the original a lot, but the cover is even better. It takes a very familiar pop song and gives it some amazing depth. You actually get the meaning of the song much more clearly in his version.

What song is it? Well…I guess you have to watch the video.

The Pain of 256 and The Joy of 1.34765625

Sep 18, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Ahhhhhh
.:itunes:. Polar Opposites by Modest Mouse

One of the hardest things about being on vacation is playing catch up.

Here’s what I accomplished today:

7:30am – 9:30am – Elder Meeting
9:30am – 12:30pm – Responded to Backlog of Emails
12:30pm – 1:30 – Lunch Meeting
1:30pm – 4:15pm – Responded to Backlog of Emails
4:15pm – Smiled at Empty Inbox
4:16pm – Counted how many emails I sent today: 256

That means I sent out an email message every 1.34765625 minutes today. (My iPhone calculator gave me that beautiful number.)

Now off to work in my yard.

Normal blogging resumes tomorrow.

Awesome

Sep 18, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Awed
.:itunes:. Beautiful Addiction by Audiovent

OK, this is seriously one of the coolest ad ideas I have ever seen. (via Rocketboom)

Quote of the Day

Sep 17, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

“Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough.”

- Lord Chesterfield

Quote of the Day

Sep 17, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

(via The MondayMorningMemo)

“You and I know the world is changing at an unprecedented rate. The big fish are no longer eating the little fish. The fast fish are eating the slow.”

-Roy Williams

Jon Stewart

Sep 16, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Thinking
.:itunes:. Innocence Again by Switchfoot

Art sent me this video of Jon Stewart’s first broadcast after 9/11. He included this note:

I’ve really been trying to get buckets together. Thanks for your message this weekend.

I had no idea what he meant until I watched the video.

Gotta Love Stereotypes

Sep 15, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Hi
.:itunes:. Hello by Lionel Richie

We’re Home!

Sep 15, 2007 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

.:mood:. Jet Lagged
.:itunes:. Transformer by Gnarls Barkley

After 19 hours of travel, we finally rolled back into town last night at 8ish.

Grace and I had an amazing time in Maui. The best thing to happen to us was that our internet in our condo didn’t work until the day before we left for home. The first day we were there, I put my iPhone in the safe and only pulled it out occasionally.

What that meant for me was for the first time ever, I had a vacation where I didn’t think about work at all!

It was so refreshing.

Because of this, I have to dive in to get my message ready for tonight, but I thought I’d slap up a few of my favorite pictures from the trip first.

On our second day in Hawaii, we went up to Mount Haleakala. It was a 40 mile drive up a volcano (which was 10,000 feet tall). We left at 3:00 in the morning so we could catch the sunrise.

It was friggin’ cold! Not what you think of when you think of Hawaii. Grace snapped this picture of me waiting for the sunrise. It’s her favorite picture from the trip:

Here’s a shot of the clouds and moon. Yes, we were over the clouds…we had to drive through them on the way up.

Sunrise:

Enjoying Hawaii’s warmth:

I love this picture of Grace. Check out her hair and the rainbow she is “holding.”

We had this amazing convertible mustang:

Unfortunately, so did a lot of people. This could get confusing in some parking lots:

We did “The Road to Hana” while we there. This is a 68 mile drive, with over 600 curves and 54 bridges, most of which were 1 lane. It’s insane. And insanely beautiful. There are so many waterfalls (one of which we went swimming in). Here’s one shot Grace took:

We saw rainbows every day. God must really really want the Hawaiians to know that he isn’t going to flood the earth again:

Our favorite part of the trip was a 4 hour trek into the mountains to zipline. We went with Skylne Eco Adventures, which was awesome. We took a very dusty ride up a mountain, then we zipped our way down. Our guides were hysterical (in the funny way, not the anxious way):

I took this picture with my iPhone from the dinner table our last night there: