the encounter

encounter peep post :: Shari Alfaro

Thought about giving your mom a goat for Christmas this year? I have.

I opened up the mailbox the other day and was instantly intrigued by the World Vision Gift Catalog.

Since Jonathan has been encouraging our community group to re-think Christmas from a season that can be filled with stress, debt, and shopping lists to a time where we turn our focus back to the birth of Christ the catalog made perfect sense.

Instead of the usual pictures of fashion and expensive electronics as gift ideas World Vision suggests their most popular gift, a goat ($75) that will provide milk, cheese, and yogurt for impoverished growing children in places like Zimbabwe. The family who receives the goat can even sell their surplus milk, cheese, and yogurt at the market to earn money for medicines and other necessities they couldn’t afford otherwise. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving!

A goat doesn’t interest you? How about five ducks ($30) for fresh eggs and extra income, a share of a deep well ($100) for safe life-sustaining water every day for up to 300 people, two soccer balls ($16) that will make children’s eyes light up with joy, or brand-new clothing, diapers, and blankets ($25) for kids right here in America?

What a fantastic way to impact people’s lives instead of buying one more thing to add to our pile of “stuff” that we really don’t need anyhow.

Intrigued like I am? Check it out at www.worldvisiongifts.org and get ready to say, “Merry Christmas, Mom! I got you a goat!”

related ::
rethinking christmas

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I’ve been inspired and amazed as I get to know a truck driver Frank Schutzwohl (aka Trucker Frank) more and more over the last few months. I originally heard his story in a series of videos by Tony Jones and then after finding Frank on Facebook, I had the opportunity to chat with him for nearly 2 1/2 hours via skype several weeks back. Our relationship has continued to grow as we chat back and forth via Facebook while Frank trucks up and down the roads.

We’re watching and discussing his videos with Tony Jones in our new community group, but thought this video bio was worth sharing with everyone here.

Join in the discussion.

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I’ve been posing this question to a couple different people today — including our community group. Thought I’d throw this out to everyone to chew on and wrestle with.

Why do we meet together? Why has God put us together? What greater purpose can we achieve together that we couldn’t do on our own?

If you’re involved in a community group, feel free to answer relating to your group and/or answer it relating to encounter as a whole.

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The folks at CommonCraft have put together a great basic video explaining Twitter in plain English (you know – Twitter – that crazy word Smiley mentioned a few weeks ago during his welcome).

If you’re interested in getting started or just browsing Twitter, I’m jdblundell on Twitter.
My best friend, (that doesn’t live with me) Matt, is Medicmml.
My buddy Thomas is headphonaught.
Brian is at Brian12345678 (although you won’t get many Tweets out of him).
You can get encounter news and sometimes interactive questions via encounterthis.

Anyone else out there that we should be following?

BTW – I love the simple video CommonCraft did as well. Nothing with fancy computer graphics – just fun paper images moved around with their hands and fingers.

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Some friends and I have been discussing the idea of building online community in churches through social networking.
We’ve gone back and forth on the idea of using social networking (Web 2.0) sites like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and others, or building unique online communities for each individual church.

Apparently we’re not the only ones having this discussion. There was an interesting thread posted on one of the Flickr groups I’m a part of about churches using social networking sites as well.

So I’m curious. What do the rest of you think about this idea? Do you use sites like MySpace or Facebook? Would you use an “encounter-only” site if it were available? Or would it be a waste of time and resources for you? Let us know by filling out the survey below. Thanks in advance!

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