jeudi 22 juin 2006

Missions, books, organization

Just some of the things that I dearly love.

During the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to talk to people about the spiritual needs in Quebec, which is why this journal entry caught my attention right away. I'm glad that word is getting out about this mission field within North America and I pray that God will continue to send workers into the harvest there. I think the coolest thing for me now is that when I mention Montreal and Quebec as a mission field, people are no longer surprised like they were a few years ago. It's become generally accepted that I don't need to go overseas in order to be a cross-cultural missionary - I can do it within my own country (clarification: missions can and should be done everywhere, but it's not necessarily cross-cultural everywhere).

This is an illustration that I heard at a conference in Quebec: if you had 13 daughters and one of them was really sick, which one would you tend to? A bit simplified but true. Quebec needs Jesus so much and she needs people who are willing to go there to build up the church. The Joshua Project reports that the percentage of evangelicals among the Quebecois now totals 0.8% of the population, which is an increase from the frequently quoted 0.5% but that is still less than 1%. I love what Tim says about how Christians there "worship like they mean it". It's true - and it's one of the things that I miss about being in Montreal.

In a complete change of topic, I've realized today that I have absolutely no more room on my bookshelves. My room is a current mess from trying to sort things out so that I can make more space, but alas - you simply cannot squeeze books. I hate to break it to my parents who have already built a huge storage unit inside my closet for this very reason, so I think I need to make a trip to IKEA... I also have the problem of cataloguing what I own so that I can avoid having to return duplicate books again. I'm using LibraryThing at the moment but I know I'm going to surpass 200 books soon and will need to subscribe to this service because it is abolutely wonderful. I do have to say that I've never gotten the point of tags; I must be the only person out there who believes that one tag is sufficient for each item that needs to be categorized. But using LibraryThing beats an Excel spreadsheet anyday; it's quite possibly the best internet thing I've used since Blogger.

I suppose getting this book will help me to figure out how to categorize things in real life and not just on the internet. It's probably my favourite HGTV show because I can actually put their concepts into practise. Even though I tend to be pretty neat, the biggest problem I run into is with paper. I have piles and piles of paper (not to mention numerous boxes filled with them in the basement) that I need to go through this summer and decide how to organize them all. I never realized I would need to find books on "home economics" and orderliness this soon. As an aside, it's funny that when I see books published in 2001 or earlier, I think "that's a little old." Well, off to do some more organizing!

Currently listening to: The Book of Genesis (not that I understand Hebrew)

* This blog is now 3 years old!

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