While in Nairobi we will be visiting several different slums to speak and pray with residents, teach VBS and play with children, host a gathering of the Jacaranda women, and lead worship services.  Each time I go on one of these short term mission trips I ask myself if the time and resources expended on such a trip is the most effective way to help those in such overwhelming need.  Do the little ways in which we serve the people we meet throughout the week really make a difference or could those resources be put to better use?  I’ve always come to the conclusion that there is no way to measure the value of actually meeting someone face-to-face or picking up a child and demonstrating just by your presence that they are valued and loved.    Each time I also pray that I return with a changed heart, improved perspective, and renewed passion to be an advocate for those left behind

If you would like to partner with me in this experience, you can do so in a couple ways.  First and foremost, you can pray for our group in the months of preparation leading up to the trip and while we are in Nairobi from April 13-24.  The second is you can choose to partner financially by making a donation to help defray the cost of the trip ($2600).  I have been saving the money needed to pay for the trip each month, so there is no pressure to donate.  I just offer it as a way to contribute for those who would go on such a trip if they could but cannot for various reasons.  To make an online donation:

1. Go to http://www.crosspoint.tv/give/
2. Click “Make a One Time Donation”
3. Select “Bellevue” from the Campus dropdown.
4. Select “Other” from the Fund dropdown.
5. Type “AARON OLSON -NAIROBI” in the additional box that appears below Please Specify.
6. Enter your information, donation amount, and payment information and then click “Submit.”
7. If you make a donation online, you can fill out this form and email it to either laurie@crosspoint.tv or myself olson.aro@gmail.com  to be certain that your donation is tax deductible.

Atomic Tom – Take Me Out (Live on NYC Subway)
This is almost a year old, but I’m just now discovering it.

And finally, some Reggie Watts:

Falling for You
Skip to about 50 seconds in.

I Just Want To

Glad I Stayed

Which class in high school or college impacted you the most? Why?

Some of the classes influenced me the most in college were literature and humanities classes taught by Professor Howard Fulweiler. I remember them vividly because Prof. Fulweiler was an amazing man. He was well past the age he could’ve retired (and he did finally retire before I graduated) but continued to teach because it was his love. He was the old school type that still wore the tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. Other students who got the younger, hipper professors leading their sections might’ve felt sorry for us for getting the old guy, but we quickly realized how extremely lucky we were to get to learn from him before he was gone.

Professor Fulweiler had a white beard and his voice had a gravelly quality. Listening to him speak, you could easily imagine him as a pirate (or at least a pirate’s grandfather). It could be entertainingly rough and gruff one minute and warm and soothing the next. He had an awesome and enviable passion for literature and when he would read us passages he would throw himself into a character. You could just tell that in his day he was surely a fantastic actor – Shakespearean or otherwise.

He was a major influence on me as a freshman when I decided to change my major to English. Each week he would make us write pensees (one page papers containing our thoughts on our reading assignments) and then critique each others work before submitting. It taught me how I could use the analytical part of my mind, which everyone had always told me should be concentrated on a math or science field, to dissect and interpret my true love – literature.

He was seemingly a contradiction. He told us stories about being in the army and struggling to read Ulysses by James Joyce at night while in his barracks. He was proof that the ancient notion of ‘warrior poet’ was possible. You needn’t be either a manly man or a lover of art and the written word. You could be both at once. And he singled me out at the end of both semesters with a letter commending my work. Looking back, validation from a man like that was huge.

“Cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or be disappointed in us.  Cynics always say no … for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.”

“If somebody says ‘Your money or your life,’ you could say, ‘Life.’ And mean it. You’ll see things collapse in your time, the big houses, the empires of glass. The new green things that sprout up through the wreck — those will be yours.

“The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, ‘We already did. We have made the world new.’ The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.”

“The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups, and they are known to change the world.“

“Take action. Every story you’ve ever connected with, every leader you’ve ever admired, every puny little thing that you’ve ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes. Learn what you can and move on. At the end of your days, you will be judged by your gallop, not by your stumble.”

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

From Russell Baker, pulitzer prize winning writer:

“Listen once in a while. It’s amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven’t heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody — now gone — whom you loved. Or sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamelessly foolishly.”

If you know me, you know that I, like many other people, like to read quotes and excerpts from speeches that contain words of wisdom. Sometimes they are novel concepts, sometimes they are common sense articulated in particularly poetic, witty, effective or humorous ways, and sometimes they are bits of wisdom that I know it would benefit me to keep at the forefront of my thoughts.

I recently found a list of top 10 commencement addresses on time.com that featured a lot of good wisdom. So, I thought I’d start sharing them in a series on my blog.

From Steve Jobs:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition … Stay hungry, Stay foolish.”