I keep getting suprised…

On Monday Ellie entered Premier Primaire (year 1 of primary school) in her French school here in Brussels. She looked very cute in her uniform and was so eager to get there and get in. All of the parents we welcomed into her classroom and we found out where she would be sitting.

And then I was surprised as all the parents started pulling out their cameras and photographing their little darlings in their new classroom at their desks. Now, perhaps this happens in the UK but I have never heard of it. But all the Belgians seemed to be doing it.

I think this is due to the value they put on education here. Kids start at 2 and 1/2. They  always have lots of homework and most Belgians leave education in their mid twenties. It is a strong cultural value; and that is always a surprise to encounter!

I was also pleased to hear that she has started to learn Dutch on day 2! Now that is a little unusual here but very welcome!

Blog This!

The last few weeks have been quiet here in Brussels  as it is holiday time. However, I have been having a lot of fun interacting with YWAMers all over the globe! From Australia to England and who knows where!

What I have been doing is getting a website up and running http://www.planetywam.net. What this site does is grab news from other websites that publish a site summary using a technology called “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication” or RSS for short. Basically wherever you see the symbol on the right lurking you can get a link to  a “feed”, this link can then be used in a program called a Reader to pull the latest news from the website.

The upshot is that if you put lots of these “feed” links from your favourite websites in one place then you will get all the latest news from one place and save yourself loads of time clicking on a long list of bookmarks.

What I have done with PlanetYWAM is set up an Open Source program and given it a list of links. The program runs once an hour and grabs the latest news and then creates one single page of news from the various sources.

The most fun part has been to interact with  YWAMers all over and find a lot more news about the wide world of YWAM than I ever knew before! Plus it is hardly taxing to cut and paste links into the configuration files to keep it up to date!

One of my passions is to connect YWAMers together from all over and it is good to be able to achieve a little success through this project… and I will write soon about my thoughts on creating effective communities.

Could you take a moment to pray?

Dear Friends,

The other day I was sent an email from an old friend of mine who now lives as a Pastor of a Messianic Jewish Congregation in Israel. He has been experiencing persecution along with his congregation in the small town of Arad in the Negev Desert.

He sent me some news items that explain what is happening. Firstly there are a couple of News Items from Israeli television that explain what Messianic Judaism is all about:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2q_3sktQBY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqMDi9V9qNU

Then there is a CBN report on Arad and what’s happening here and includes an interview with Yakim. (http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/210220.aspx)

I was talking with Yakim a few months ago and he was telling me the increasing pressures these congregations are coming under. So please pray for them. I think you will find the news reports here very interesting.

Cheers,

Kevin

Isn’t it the most important thing?

I was thinking today of a quote a read somewhere recently where the author was writing that one of the key attributes of a leader was that they were someone who had vision for people, that is, that they could see where people could get to and could help them on the way there.

I was pondering this today as, after all, in my role here in YWAM Brussels I am a leader and I need to develop others. I thought about my staff and those other people I have influence on at church etc and yes I can see lots of vision for them. Perhaps, I can see ways of putting it into action too!

But what about others? Do all leaders really see this and really push themselves into this a critical role for themselves? Now many leaders have high levels of responsibility and that puts a squeeze on their time but I know in YWAM that there are many levels where the responsibility is low and the opportunity for influence is high. Do leaders at this level develop and champion others? I think the answer is yes, BUT, I think that it is not nearly systematic or determined enough. After all if you are promoted to a position of leadership you should be considering all those whom you lead as the prime people to be developed. Not other people who may be at a distance. At least not in the primary case.

I’m not getting at anyone here, just voicing my thoughts and observations of what I see. I would also like to be a part of resolving it. And for that I will need much more prayer and reflection to see ways to develop those I lead.

2 things I saw today…

Keeping with the spirit of my New Years (+6 months) resolution and coupled with a clever idea of making lots of very small blog entries I would like to tell you about two things I saw today…

1. Whilst walking to collect the kids I watched a car driver stop on a roundabout and then reverse around the roundabout until he could reverse up a one way street! Fortunately the road was clear and it was a good think also that he had enough road sense left to stop at a pedestrian crossing for the poor man who was frozen in disbelief at what he could see. This would be a quirky story if if was not the 3rd Belgian motorist I have observed reversing on roundabouts in 3 years!

2. I saw my first Digitally projected film at the cinema today. I have to say it was beautiful. A pin sharp picture, no artefacts and no flickers of dust etc. that you get on ordinary projectors. Lovely. I saw Shrek 3 with the kids. The film was fabulous in its visual detail - if you look closely the clothing is very real and folds in such a realistic fashion you will not see it because it is so ordinary! However I could not suspend my disbelief for long as it was such a damp squib of a film and sadly not that funny. But it looked good!

Why doesn’t he blog more?

I know that is what thousands of people are crying over the internet - Kevin, why don’t you blog more? Well here goes. My New Year (+6 months) resolution is to blog more!

So no holding back here goes…

A terrible ache in all the diodes down my left side…

For a long time now I have had an annoying problem here in the YWAM building in that all the computers on the left hand side of the building would run very slowly over the network; not slowly enough to stop work from happening, but slow enough.

We used to have a recurring problem on Monday’s at 5pm when the left hand side of the building’s network simply refused to work until resolving itself mysteriously on its own by 10am Tuesday. This happened so regularly we knew how to work around it.

Our building’s network is split two, one half stretches all the way to my office and up to the top floor of the building via a relay of 8 port switches. And it is always fast! The other half stretches through the office and down into the basement.

In the centre we have a 4 port US Robotics router that connects the two halves and also connects to our broadband cable modem and out of the building along the tubes and pipes of the Internet. I always assumed the problem were the cables I had crimped together or some strange electrical interference from the Aurora Borealis or simply mice munching the cables in walls.

The other day, having got completely frustrated working on a machine on one half of the building that was crawling along on the network, I left the office and went shopping. I had a spare switch knocking about and I suddenly realised what the problem was. The US Robotics router was simply not up to the job of switching the data around the lan. So I replaced the 4 ports into the 8 port switch and linked just one port to one port on the router.

And… speed again! Can’t believe it took me a year to figure it out though…

So I guess the lesson learned is that a cheap switch might be more efficient than a cheap mulit-port hub/router etc. (not that I am complaining too much about the router - it has a great firewall).

Sorry if I put anyone to sleep there, but maybe it will help you!

Kevin

Sharing Windows printers with computers running Linux

One of the things that I have found hardest to get working over the years is printing to a printer attached to a Windows machine from my Linux machines. In general Linux will print to about everything and even has some success with those cheap GDI laser printers that rely on Windows to render pages. Postscript printers work wonderfully as do Network printing.

My particular problem has been to print to Inkjet printers attached to Windows machines. Well after a long, long search I have made progress thanks to some Ubuntu mailing lists. It turns out that Windows XP (and I guess 2000 and Vista too) have some extra facilities that you can use.

If your Windows printers are shared over your Windows network and all is working well you can get Linux printing working well by:

On the Windows XP Machine

• Go to the Install Software and Install Windows Software. Choose to install Other Network File and Print Services and choose the Unix Line-Printer service.
• Go to Management Console’s Services sections and TCP/IP Print Services. Make sure these are started and set to automatic so they run at each reboot.
• On the Windows Firewall (or other Firewall program you are running) open port 515 on the and call it LPD or something
• Finally on the printer you want to share disable bi-directional printing support as this just doesn’t seem to work over the network.

On the Linux Machine (I use KDE desktop but it should be similar in Gnome or even from the http://localhost:631 control panel)

• Create printer
• The backend should be a LPD network printer
• Give IP address or host name of printer
• For the print Queue give Windows share name of the printer
• Follow through with the installation and select the right driver for the printer.
• Give it a good name and save!
• Try a test print! Success! (I hope!)

Cheers,

Kevin

Personal best…

Poor much neglected Blog! Still here am I about to start an entry so you can cheer up.

I was thrilled and surprised today to achieve a personal goal! I ran 10,000m today! It was not in a race but part of my weekly exercise of running. I took up running about 15 months ago after I had a wake up call to do something with my fitness level now before it was too late! I never seem to have the cash for a Gym and don’t fancy that anyway. Here I have a fantastic park to run around (2.25Km a lap). I have been gradually pushing myself onwards to run further and today made it through 4 lapm one more than my personal best. I still felt OK so I pushed on to do another half lap and… had ended up running 10k!

I am toying with entering the Brussels 20k run this year but I will need to see time I have spare to train with.  It has gone a lot better since I started doing some research and learnt how to run and how to increase your distance. There is a lot of help on the Internet that was very useful! I wish I had read more before I started out running. But getting running and making it a habit was the hardest thing! I never started this to enter races! Just to keep pushing myself onwards.

20 years ago…

Today was my first day back at work after my long and greatly appreciated furlough. The first thing I did was spend time reading and praying - it is too easy to get overwhelmed with the mountain of Good Things To Do, and that is what is felt like before the furlough time!

Anyway I realised that is is pretty much twenty years plus a few days since I started on my journey as a Christian. I was sixteen when I decided to live this way and I haven’t looked back since. I am glad that the decision I made then, in the period of 5 days, has been so long lasting.

When I think of the tremendous way that God has helped me with my low self-image, blessing me with a wonderful wife and two marvellous kids and enabling me to stay married for 12 years (Note to self - Anniversary this Sunday!), helping me to work for YWAM for so long and support myself and family with no serious debts, addictions or other mess ups. I think I have a lot to be grateful for. However these are not the reasons I have stayed a Christian as there have been tremendously challenging at times. I’m not a Christian for the good times only.

Yet, I am VERY grateful. This is twenty years I do not regret.