There are three topics in the book that I will highlight below:

Use Nationals

K.P. Yohannan talks about the use of Western missionaries in Eastern countries a rehash of colonialism. The author speaks about the absolute necessity of using indigenous missionaries who understand the culture and customs of a people. He provided the somewhat funny example of the Hare Krishna’s in airports. Their culture and style seems odd to people in the west and as a result, very few westerners are interested in engaging with Hare Krishna’s. I wonder if western missionaries are perceived similarly in some cases.

Yohannan does not diminish the role the western missionaries currently plays and has played in the past. They have played a role and an important one at that. If one is called by God to go to a specific country, the call must be obeyed. However, he describes a shift that is occurring. First of all, it is becoming harder and harder for Westerners to get into specific countries. In this case, it is an absolute necessity for the missionaries to be indigenous. Also, a local missionary can start right away without taking language classes and learning the culture. The local missionary is already part of that community.

My field of study in college and grad school was International Business. We read case study after case study about this very topic. Western companies would often make the mistake of assuming the products and services that worked in the USA or Europe would work everywhere else. This arrogance led to many failed product launches. First, the product or service had to be tailored to the local culture. Second, it was best if someone from that country, who understood the local customs and culture, did the selling.

Yohannan witnessed firsthand a number of missionaries from the west living in relative wealth in their new countries. Many concentrated on social work and not the proclamation of the Gospel, which Yohannan describes as priority #1 for the church.

Asia’s Problem | The Priority of the Church

One of the strongest points in the book was Yohannan’s description of the priority of the church. That priority is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Social programs are not the priority of the church.

The battle against hunger and poverty is really a spiritual battle, not a physical or social one as secularists would have us believe.

He then goes on to describe how much grain is lost in India each year because rats are not killed as they may one day be the recipient of reincarnation. Because of this religious belief, 26.8 million tons of grain are lost each year in India (20% of the total) due to rats eating or spoiling the grain. This amount of grain could fill a train from New York to Los Angeles. Sacred Cows can also roam freely and eat grain while people in India starve. By attempting to simply feed people and have that as the only goal, the ultimate problem still remains:

Yet despite all these massive social programs, the problems of hunger, population and poverty continue to grow. The real culprit is not a person, lack of natural resources or a system of government. It is spiritual darkness. It thwarts every effort to make progress.

My people have watched the English hospitals and schools come and go without any noticeable effect on either our churches or society.

United States

It was very interesting and humbling to read Yohannan’s description of people and churches in the United States. He talks about indigenous missionaries not having enough money for a bike to get from village to village while churches in the USA add $77 million dollar buildings. His point is that there is an abundance of resources in one area of the world and a lack of resources in another part of the world. Yet church budgets in the west continue to be dominated by buildings, maintenance, and salaries with little left over for missions. Whatever does remain for missions is usually only given to western missionaries at a cost much higher than if that money was provided directly to indigenous missionaries.

Yohannan calls on the western church to be more strategic with giving to missions. Instead of sending a team from a USA church at a cost of $2k – 4k per person, use that money to support missionaries who live in that country. Also, instead of building enormous buildings with everything from gymnasiums to coffee shops, realize that the church is people not buildings and send more of the money towards mission work.

The author also describes his first trip to the USA and how astounded he was at the vast amounts of wealth in the USA and how that wealth is often taken for granted. While reading the book, I was convicted in how I spend my money and time. I was convicted that I have things in storage not being used while that money could be used to do much work in other countries. This book put the concept of storing up treasures in heaven instead of earth in stark display.

I recommend this book to those who are interested in missions in Asia. This is not your typical book on missions and it is quite convicting and humbling. But if you are interested in joining in on what is happening in Asia, this is a good place to start.

The PDF version of this book can be downloaded for free at this link – http://www.gfa.org/resource/books/revolution/

I planned to stay an additional two weeks in the country to work in the orphanage, then enjoy some time reading on the beach. But my plans changed quickly.

As I was moving one of my suitcases about 6 blocks away to the place I would be staying next…I was robbed.

I knew San Jose wasn’t the safest of places but it had only just begun to get dark and there were people outside and cops at each intersection, so I thought I would be ok. I was wrong.

When I was only about 15 feet from one of the cops, a car pulled up behind me, and two guys wearing masks and carrying guns got out of the backseat. They pointed their guns directly at my face and told me in broken English to leave my bag and walk away. I did as I was told.

I remember putting my hands up in the air and thanking them. I’m not sure why I thanked them, but I was in a state of panic. I didn’t look back as I heard the doors shut and the car squeal away.

I’m really fortunate that I wasn’t kidnapped as that happens from time to time in Latin American countries. I was also fortunate that they didn’t ask for my wallet because it was in a pouch tucked in the front of my shorts. If I had had to reach for it it might have looked as though I was reaching for a weapon.

There were a few other strange occurrences earlier in the day that saved me further difficulty. A few other students in the program and I were returning from a two day beach trip when our bus was pulled over by the Costa Rican police. The police, carrying big guns, boarded the bus and demanded to see everyone’s passport. I had assumed that I would not need my passport since I was staying in Costa Rica during the entire trip and had left it in the house.

A girl a few seats in front of me had something wrong on her passport so they took her off the bus and questioned her for a while. This, of course, made my heart pound. Would I be next? When they finished checking the passport of the person in front of me, he turned to the person at my side. When he turned again to my side of the bus, he skipped me and went right to the person behind me without realizing it.

Basically, I was the only person on the bus without a passport and I was the only person on the bus that was not checked for a passport. Because of that experience, I had just removed my passport from the suitcase before I began walking with the suitcase so my passport was not stolen.

Once the car sped away with my bag I ran to my new host family’s home and began banging on the metal gate surrounding it. One of the other students in the program answered the door. She was in a good mood but she quickly changed her countenance as she saw my pale face and that I was shaking. The family was absolutely incredible. The wife was a strong Christian and when she saw how badly I was shaking she immediately prepared a calming tea and even began rubbing my back. It didn’t exactly calm me down, but I was thankful.

I made two phone calls. One to my parents and the other to Delta. I would be returning the following day to Atlanta with the rest of my group.

The father of my new host family drove me back to my other host family’s house. He had a small handgun and set it on the dashboard of the car as we drove the 6 blocks. We stopped by the police office who had been 15 feet away from the robbery and he hadn’t noticed a thing. I have a hard time believing that. I made it back to the other house, told my story to that family, and then had some tequila to calm my nerves enough to sleep that night.

I can take a little consolation in the fact that the stolen bag was mostly filled with souvenirs and coffee. I’m sure the robbers were a little angry when they didn’t receive any money, electronics, or other valuables. My other bags were safely back at the house.

In many ways, I’m very thankful for that experience as it could have been much worse. I could have been beaten, shot, or kidnapped and they could have taken my wallet. I almost had my passport in the bag. I’m thankful because it changed my behavior forever. I am now much more careful when I travel and even when I walk around the streets of Atlanta. I’ve learned to have a better awareness of my surroundings. I also learned that I’m not invincible and that bad things can happen at any time. I panicked in this case, but I realized that if something like this happens again, I cannot panic. When I panicked, my mind went numb. In those situations, I need my mind.

Luckily, that is the worst experience I have had while traveling.

I don’t have that nightmare anymore. My nightmare happened.

It all started in 1999 when I had the crazy idea to ask my parents for a set of bagpipes for Christmas. They were not keen on that idea and said they were too loud. So I started saving my money to purchase them when I had the chance. That chance came the following year in the summer of 2000 while studying abroad in England. On a side trip I purchased a set of bagpipes on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Back at the University of Georgia later in 2000, I heard the blessed sound of bagpipes coming from the historic part of North Campus. I approached the sound and asked the piper if he taught lessons. He said yes and thus began my bagpipe lessons.

Learning how to play the bagpipes is an interesting process. Playing the bagpipes is a physically demanding task, so instead of learning how to play the bagpipes while attacking the physical aspects, you start by practicing with a simple chanter (recorder-like device – see photo). No bags involved, no heavy lifting. You learn technique and some basic songs on this recorder.

Once you can play a song on the recorder then you start learning how to actually handle the full instrument. There are 3 pipes on bagpipes that act as the drone or the constant sound you hear in the background. Then there is the recorder part of the bagpipes where you determine which note is being played. Air must come out of each of these 4 area and must come out rapidly. Therefore, you pretty much blow up the bag of the bagpipes with three full breaths of air before you begin playing. This is why when you watch a bagpiper, they can be playing while not actively blowing into the instrument. The air producing the sound is pushed out of the bag by the arm. Once you start playing, it’s more or less an issue of maintaining a solid breathing cycle to keep the bag full. One can get lightheaded pretty quickly.

While learning how to play the bagpipes, you actually put rubber (or cork) stoppers in the pipes to limit the amount of air required. This allows you to build up to keeping the whole instrument playing while fingering in the right notes. I don’t think there is another instrument that is as physically demanding.

You can’t exactly practice the bagpipes during college with roommates without making enemies. My solution was to go to the music building and go in one of the “soundproof” practice rooms. It was funny because even though the practice rooms were soundproof, the bagpipes were so loud that people would continually peek into the little window to watch me practice.

I took enough lessons and practiced enough to learn how to play 5 songs on the bagpipes, enough to play at a wedding. My first wedding with the bagpipes happened in 2002. It went very well. I played the bagpipes for the recessional and had a great time. Wedding #1 was a success.

Wedding #2 didn’t turn out as well. I play the violin and have played in hundreds of weddings over the years. I’m very comfortable with the violin. If a string would ever happen to break on my violin during a wedding, I could make due with the other 3 strings. With the bagpipes, there are about 5 things that can go wrong and you don’t really have control over these things. For instance, there are reeds in each of the drone pipes. These reeds are similar to what would be used in a clarinet. Moisture can loosen these reeds so that they fall from the pipe right into the bagpipe bag. It is quite difficult to locate the reed within the bag and then shimmy it up back into the pipe.

In wedding #2, this is what happened as I began to play the bagpipes. I had set up the bagpipes before the wedding and had practiced a bit. That practice led to moisture, which loosened the reed into the bag. The reed also acts to stop the air from just flying out of the bag. So as I blew up the bag to begin playing, I pressed hard on the bag to get the initial strong sound and instead it sounded like a cow getting shot. The air rushed out and I froze.

This all happened as the bride was to begin walking down the aisle, you know, the whole most important part of her life thing.

The problem with the reed falling into the bag is that you can’t determine which of the three reeds fell into the bag. And in an emergency situation like that, you surely don’t have time to pull apart each pipe and check for the reed, find it in the bag, and shimmy it back up. So, after the dying cow sound, I held up my finger.

Yes, I held up my finger to the pastor, the groom, the wedding party, and all 300+ people who had now turned around to look for a dying cow in the balcony. I held up my finger to mercifully ask for patience as I figured out what was wrong with the pipes. Luckily, I had one of the cork stoppers in my bagpipe case right next to me. I grabbed the cork stopper and placed it at the top of one of the drone pipes. I had a one and three shot of it being the right pipe. I blew the bag back up (3 full breaths) and started again. Somehow, I had chosen the right pipe and I was able to play Amazing Grace as the bride walked down the aisle minus the bass drone. The episode had lasted about 45 seconds, and those were the longest 45 seconds of my life.

I was so embarrassed that I left immediately. I later heard that a young child asked if there was a monster in the balcony.

Ever since that wedding, I have not had the nightmare. It happened. Perhaps that is the best way to get over any fear.

That ended up being the last time that I ever played the bagpipes at a wedding.

My wife and I were in Edinburgh last year and we stopped by the bagpipe store where I purchased my pipes. It was great. We talked to the guy for a while and heard some cool stories about the bagpipes. In fact, one part of his business was playing the pipes during funeral ceremonies where the ashes of the deceased are spread. The interesting thing is that many times these ashes come from people in the United States and are shipped using a common carrier like FedEx. The person had had as their wish for their ashes to be spread in Scotland to the sound of the bagpipes.

One other thing I find interesting with the bagpipes is that most of the time you think you are hearing bagpipes in a movie, you are actually hearing Irish Uilleann Pipes. Even in the movie Braveheart, where they show the guy playing the bagpipes during Wallace’s father’s funeral, the sound is actually from the Uilleann pipes, a sweeter, softer-sounding instrument, although an Irish one.

I’ve had many opportunities to travel overseas in my life. I love history in other countries. I love learning about battlefields and how specific battles unfolded. You can read all you want in books and watch documentaries and shows, but to actually stand on the battlefield and see the slopes of land, the angles, the odds for each side, is to take in a new appreciation for that little piece of history.

What’s ironic though, and I see this everywhere I travel, is that the locals rarely visit their own historic places. So, even though the recent hikes have led to a renewed interest in learning about the Civil War and in learning more about my surrounding area, I’m also a little embarrassed that I haven’t taken advantage of more of these types of trips in the 18 years I have lived in Atlanta.

I hope to make it a goal to learn more about the local history in wherever my wife and I live in the future. We will continue traveling and seeing other parts of the world, but history exists wherever we will be.

It’s quite common knowledge now that Madeleine Albright discovered the extent of her Jewish roots later on in her life. This book was an effort to better understand those roots. It led to some painful discoveries. She lost a lot of family members during the Holocaust. But it also offers a fascinating story for a book. With the combination of family involvement in politics, extended family suffering due to being Jewish, and Albright’s desire to know all aspects of these connections, this book provides an incredible understanding of the war from a particular country in the midst of the battle.

It was also amazing to learn about what happened immediately after the war. Germans and Hungarians were kicked out of Czechoslovakia. The Communists gained power. One foreign power was pretty much traded for a new foreign power. Yet none of this ultimately destroyed the spirit of the Czech population.

I recommend this book to anyone with Czech roots or anyone who is interested in learning more about the WWII years. Albright was in London during the war, so you receive a Czech and British point of view of the war years. You come to understand what it meant to live in each of those countries during the war years as both a Jewish citizen and as a non-Jewish citizen.

I was thinking the other day about what it would have been like had they captured Hitler alive. What if the judge had required a family representative for each Jewish person who was killed to personally confront Hitler and tell the story about that person. I don’t think there would have been enough time in Hitler’s life to have had heard every story.

That Maxima was such a great car. It had a stick shift, black leather interior, Bose stereo, SE edition, and was fast. The car went on quite a few trips to Florida, one to Ohio and another to Texas.

I had a lot of great memories in that car. It’s amazing how a car can last through so many changes in life. From college, to trips to the Florida-Georgia games in Jacksonville, to driving to my first job, to taking trips with my wife.

The reason I sold it is because my wife and I can get by with just one car. We live in the city. I walk to work and she works from home. We can usually work out our schedules to where we can get by with just a car. And if we ever need it, we can also use a car with Zipcar. We have 5 available Zipcars wihtin a few blocks of our place.

Apparently, this is a trend with “millennials.” We want to live in areas where we can walk to work, to restaurants, and to basic places like grocery stores. We simply won’t do traffic.

So, although I’m a little bummed about selling the car, I’m excited about the move to one car.

I started reading the New York Times at the beginning of 2001. It was required reading for my business law class taught by Dr. Marissa Pagnattarro at the University of Georgia. She was one of my favorite professors at UGA. It was an incredible year to begin reading the New York Times.

In March of 2001, I was to head to China during spring break. I knew some people studying there and I was to spend 3 days in Beijing and 6 days in Chengdu. At the beginning of 2001, there were some major news stories dealing with the Chinese government’s response to the Falun Gong religious group. During these tense months, members of Falun Gong lit themselves on fire right in Tienanmen Square. I was about to go to Tienanmen Square. Eric Eckholm was the journalist who covered these moments in China. I eagerly anticipated articles from Eric and clipped many of them out in order to share with the other students who would travel to China.

After my law class at UGA ended, I continued reading the Times. The thing I enjoyed most was their International coverage. I was studying International Business and I enjoyed reading articles written by journalists who were actually in the countries they were writing about.

Then came September 11. I remember that the September 11 edition of the Times actually had an article where Osama Bin Laden was named. I remember going out to get the paper on September 12th still hoping that the previous day’s events had just been some sort of a horrible dream. They weren’t.

My attachment to the Times grew after September 11th. The Times began having two pages of the paper dedicated to Portraits of the Sept 11th deceased. I remember getting teary-eyed almost every morning as I jumped first to the Portraits section and read little snippets of lives lost. It would tear me up. I bought the book that contains all Portraits of the 3,000+ people who lost their lives that day.

Soon after this, I began reading books that the New York Times’ op-ed columnists had written. My 3 favorite op-ed columnists were Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman, and David Brooks.

I started reading Kristof first. He had written about China and Asia and I read through those books during my time of wanting to know more about China. One line really stuck out to me from one of his books. Kristof and his wife were in China during the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. He said that journalism is the only field where you run towards the very situation in which everyone else is running away from.

Next was Thomas Friedman and his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. I attribute my basic understanding of the global shifts that took place from the Cold War to our recent times to that book. It was as if the knowledge I gained in college studying international business came together with macro forces affecting the world and business. He helped it all make sense.

But Friedman’s other book, The World is Flat, had such an impact on me that I began studying for the GMAT pretty soon after finishing that book. I realized that I needed to and wanted to go to Grad school to learn more about international business. I needed to get better at my skill set in order to compete with the ever expanding pool of talented workers around the world. There have been a few books in my life that immediately led me to make a big decision. This was one of them.

David Brooks was the other columnist I really enjoyed. He was witty and his books were hilarious critiques of American life.

But in the last 2-3 years, I began noticing a big change in the news coverage in the New York Times. I know a lot of it had to do with my views leaning more towards the right. But I truly believe that the Times also began focusing their articles solely from a liberal/left point of view. Maybe I’m just naive and I missed it the whole time from 2001 – 2011, but it seemed to me like every article in the paper came from a strong, no, very strong liberal and left viewpoint. I understand that newspapers have an opinion section and that those sections usually lean one way or the other. The problem happens when the opinion section creeps into the main section and onto the front page.

The final kicker happened last year. I canceled my New York Times subscription. I didn’t want to. I used to look forward to coffee and the Times early each morning. And the Sunday Times, well, that was just a little piece of heaven. But the July 31st Sunday NY Times set me off. One article in the opinion section started with this statement:

“Barack Obama can’t catch a break from the American public on the economy, even though he prevented a depression and saved global capitalism.”
– Stanley R. Greenberg – Chief Executive of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a polling company that works with center-left political parties in the United States and abroad.

“…prevented a depression and saved global capitalism?” Really? My disappointment had been building, but this sentence threw me over the edge.

It came to the point where I felt that the Times was blatantly and knowingly lying to the public. I was especially incensed at the economic coverage of the paper. They should know better. The basic premise of every article was that Obama’s economic stimulus worked and that it was the right thing to do. That premise was never questioned.

That was not the only unquestioned premise. There were many others. Any story that fit the NY Times left storyline was given unbelievable coverage. I know this happens in every newspaper. I thought the most respected paper in the world might have a bit of a higher standard. Especially since the price for the paper was over $650 per year. I obviously thought wrong. The paper has op-ed columnists like Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd. They are disgraces to the world of journalism.

I have been to a number of countries around the world and the unfortunate fact is that most of what the world reads about the United States comes from the New York Times, or from papers who reprint or mimic the NY Times articles. The NY Times even has their own sister paper, the International Herald Tribune, that is the international voice for the NY Times. The NY Times is one voice, but it’s not the only voice. The other voice just isn’t getting told around the world.

My idea is that I would collect all of the golden tickets from all of the students and then we would go in and make purchases together.

To this day, I’m not sure how I did this, but I convinced every member of the class to follow me on this idea. Everyone submitted their golden tickets. The good kids with 5 golden tickets gave their tickets to me as did the other students with 1 or 2 tickets.

I was in a good spot. I had a desk full of golden tickets. The inevitable day came where we were we could all purchase from the school supply store with our golden tickets. We all decided together that we would all get erasers. But there was a problem. There were not enough golden tickets for an eraser for each student.

I don’t recall my exact punishment, but I do remember getting in trouble.

I’m not sure why I thought collecting all of these tickets would be a good idea. Perhaps I thought the bigger pile of golden tickets would better impress the school-supply store owner. They didn’t. Perhaps I convinced the students that we would be able to buy bigger and better things together with all of the golden tickets. We couldn’t. Or perhaps, I discovered greed and preyed on the poor suckers in my class.

I learned a number of lessons that day. One, is that you can’t pool money so that everyone gets what everyone wants. Two, golden tickets collected and piled together don’t somehow create more value on their own. And three, happiness produced by a deskful of other classmate’s golden tickets doesn’t last very long.