Reprioritizing Your Life

Tony Schwartz from the Harvest Business Review had some good insights into re-arranging priorities in a busy life.

He wrote that, “We mistake activity for productivity, more for better, and we ask ourselves ‘What’s next?’ far more often than we do ‘Why this?'”

It is important for us to prioritize and build in effeciency producing habits that become second nature.

Read more via “No” is the New “Yes”: Four Practices to Reprioritize Your Life – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.

John Moore’s: An Immigrant’s Journey

One of Moore’s images showing immigrants crossing into Mexico from Guatemala.

Getty Images photographer John Moore took his coverage of immigration stories a step further when he traveled  to the Mexico-Guatemala border, where Central American immigrants cross the Suchiate River, beginning their long and perilous journey north through Mexico. View his images here.

On my way to Tapachula to get a visa renewed, I witnessed people openly crossing the Guatemalan/Mexican border on rafts just below the bridge where immigration officers are checking documents for those who cross legally. They were going both ways.

Those headed north may have been just starting their journey to attempt a border crossing into the USA. Those heading south had loads of products, gasoline, etc. that they were not-so subtly smuggling into Guatemala where untaxed gas is openly sold along the highways at nearly $1.30 (US) cheaper than the going rate at legal gas stations.

TESL: A Case Study

 

Learning about Carl Learning English

April 28, 1999

The subject of this case study is a male Vietnamese student at Oral Roberts University.  For the sake of anonymity I will refer to the subject as “Carl”.  Carl is 40 years of age and has been in the United States for 23 years although he has been studying and practicing English over a period of 26 years.  His English studies began in seventh grade while still in Vietnam.  Carl is right handed and worked very intently on the tests I asked him to take.  He seemed very systematic and patient with the material even when he did not understand part of it.  At the time of our interview, he had his watch set 10 minutes faster than real time.  Yet, despite his apparent attempt to be on schedule he arrived about that many minutes late to our meeting.  In this case study I will discuss Carl’s learning styles and strategies, his personality factors contributing to learning, and sociocultural factors involved in learning. Continue reading

Purposeful Attitudes

23 February, 2000

Human attitudes toward each other reflect a deeper level of consciousness toward God.  In her short story, “The Displaced Person,” Flannery O’Connor shows how self-righteousness and prejudices are within the characters while subtly allowing the reader to recognize those same attitudes in himself.  The text has the feeling that there is great significance in the words that hold a sense of power.  Still, the story retains the smooth rhythm that keeps the attention of the reader with a natural ease.  O’Connor uses a limited omniscient point of view to give the reader a sense of being alongside the ever-observerant Mrs. Shortley in the fields, barns, and conversations as she sees, hears, and takes note of all that occurs until the author carries on the story without her.  The symbolism O’Connor creates in this story is beautifully mysterious, strangely prophetic, and subtly vibrant.  Despite the seriousness of the ending, the displacement of characters en masse keeps the reader acutely aware of the irony of misconceptions, biased attitudes and disregard for Christ. Continue reading

Mission Trip Devotional Resources

Team Devotionals in Action

I recently hosted a mission team from Michigan and they had some great team devotional and individual resources that they brought with them to encourage the youth to build in quiet times and deeper devotional times into their team’s down times.

I’m going to start referring new teams to this resource for those who don’t want to or have time to re-invent the wheel with their own custom devotional resources for the team.

LeaderTreks also has pre-trip and debriefing tools available.

Mission trips should be more than just mountain top experiences. They should be life changing.

via LeaderTreks Student Mission Trip Resources

Leadership Development among Navajo Youth

Michael P. Shead

Senior Paper

International Community Development

Oral Roberts University

Tulsa, Oklahoma

December 7, 1999

Part II: The Community Development Project

For part one click here

Leadership training among the Navajo men  between ages 12 and 17 in the Shiprock Agency of the Navajo Nation Reservation.

A Note From the Researcher.

A comprehensive documentation of the needs and suggested solutions for any people group would probably fill volumes.  This document is not, by any means, an attempt to address all the needs of the Navajo people but to identify specific leadership issues and present a possible solution in this area.

This project is an effort to contribute an organized leadership training program for young Navajo men.  Its purpose is to train up young leaders who know Jesus Christ as Savior and friend and who will be able, honest, and wise leaders in every area of Navajo life.  This project will take on several stages before completion: analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation and empowerment.

Michael Shead

Tulsa, 1999

Continue reading

Defining Community Development

Michael P. Shead

Senior Paper

International Community Development

Oral Roberts University

Tulsa, Oklahoma

December 7, 1999

 

 Part I

Chapter 1: A definite purpose and plan

Defining Community Development

Community development is a process. Development is a long-term process of helping people to help themselves.  It is said, “Give a man a fish and you will have fed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and you will have fed him for a lifetime”.  This is the concept of community development–to empower people to care for and improve themselves.

In his book, Two Ears of Corn, Roland Bunch defined community development as “A process whereby people learn to take charge of their own lives and solve their own problems.” (1982).  It is a development of attitude as well as resources. Bunch noted that poverty is often linked directly to mental attitudes more than actual physical situations (1982).

Community development includes many different areas: agriculture, economics, literacy, hygiene, and others.  No matter what area in which the development is taking place it is important to remember that the purpose is to empower the people within their own society and culture so that changes are coming from within the culture and from the people, not merely because an outside influence is changing them.

In 1973 Dale Kietzman presented a definition of community development to the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).  He said, “Community Development is the process of helping to strengthen a community (and its leadership) so that it can resolve, through its own initiative, the problems which face it” (Yost & Yost, 1999). Continue reading