We’ll I have had some good confirmation that I’m in the right place here at MAF. First, Susan and I were asked to do our presentation for the Ministry Partnership Seminar a couple of weeks ago. That’s where the new missionaries learn how we do fund raising.

We updated our presentation to reflect the fact that I’ve been here doing real work for more than 6 months now. We received very positive feedback on our presentation. People said it was obvious we were excited about what we’re doing.

Then just last week, our director and some other guys on our team were in town for meetings. Two or three people said they appreciated my passion.

I just now got done with a meeting with a guy who is going to be representing us and helping educational institutions in the Arab world to do distance education. I got to tell him about my current project and about my vision for using cell phones for mobile learning. And I realize how excited I really am about this work.

It’s fantastic to have the actual work I’m doing matter for the Kingdom. But please pray that I’ll continue to grow in my passion for Christ Himself.

David just left for a missions trip to Salt Lake City, Utah with our church youth group. Please pray for safe travel and that God will work through them and in them.

I’ll be attending a conference in October in AZ. We’ll be combing that with a deputation trip. And I’ll be recruiting for MAF at Urbana 09 between Christmas and New Years. I have *lots* of work to do to make these trips as effective as possible. Please pray that all the details will come together. And we’re thankful that by working Urbana, we’ll be able to go back to Chicago for Christmas.

Right now, Susan and I are preparing to help with the Ministry Partnership (fund raising) Seminar next week.  And I’m trying really hard to get the 1st version of our new product (a system to create digital libraries) out next week.

And did I mention we’re working on starting a church too ?! We discovered Cowboy Churches while on deputation. It’s just what it sounds like. And there’s an obvious need for one in this area. We have a good friend who has been a pastor  and now runs a youth horse ranch ministry here (http://www.blazinghope.com). He and I are starting to meet weekly to pray and to plan. God willing, Blazing Hope Cowboy Church will launch next Easter.

Thanks for praying!

There are lots of things on my heart today.

I wanted to share is about the training I had this past week. I was basically learning to teach people how to tell stories. It’s a technique called Simply The Story (STS) (http://www.simplythestory.com) . It’s very powerful in oral societies especially. And I’ll be working on ways to use technology, mobile phones in particular, with this technique.

I’m also excited about using STS in our family worship. Plus I was asked yesterday (I finished this training on Sat) to teach another adult Sunday school class at our church. I said I wanted to teach a multi-generational class using STS.

Finally, God gave me a renewed vision for reaching our neighborhood. I realized that God has put a group of us Christians right next to each other. Our next door neighbor and two neighbors across the street are all Christians. I just told Susan I want to have all those neighbors over for dinner to God Storm how we can reach our mostly Mormon neighborhood. I think STS might come in here too.

I should add to that I am a visionary and get new ideas all time. So besides praying for these things, please also pray that I will have wisdom in what I take on. It would be very easy to get so busy in outside ministry that I neglected my primary ministry to my family.

Thanks for praying!

MAF Learning Technology is excited to announce the production release of DEScribe Editor, gold version. DEScribe is a desktop editor that makes e-learning course creation easy. Courses written in DEScribe can be exported and run on a variety of e-learning platforms. The gold version initially exports to MAFLT DEViewer and, soon after, Moodle.

Features include simple creation of a course TOC (table of contents), uncomplicated image and style importing, a straightforward plug-in toolbox, and painless project workspace sharing with teammates. These features, along with a customizable GUI work environment (available in several languages) enables subject matter experts to create courses directly. If they know how to use a word processor, they already know how to use DEScribe. This streamlining of required operator skills dramatically lowers the overhead of e-learning curriculum development.

For more information, please visit the MAF-LT DEScribe forum.

You can download it here.

We had a great time with Mike, though we could not meet on Friday, for fear of fresh wave of rioting after another MP was shot. The church in Kenya has never been praying like the way it has been lately and we thank God for answering our prayers. My family members are all fine and I thank God. Please pass my regards to all MAF staff that know me.

Mission Aviation Fellowship-Learning Technologies Division (MAF-LT) http://www.maflt.org/index.html announces the release of another exciting Distance Education software tool. Portable Moodle makes the world’s most popular Internet course management system, Moodle, available to the word’s 1 billion people who have access to computers, but not the Internet.

MAF-LT spent two years developing this tool to advance God’s Kingdom. Currently available in English, pending releases will soon offer Portable Moodle in Spanish, Russian and French. Portable Moodle may be downloaded at no cost from. Tax-deductible donations to cover course development and continuing support will be thankfully accepted. For more information, go to the Portable Moodle forum.