Christmas Shopping

Found some wonderful stuff whilst out shopping for Christmas presents for my two daughters. Here's the slogan from the side of a box containing a doll:


What??? And why would that sell a doll to me? Here's another one...


This is how you teach your two year old to poke people in the eyes. Fantastic.

There is a third picture of a real product taken in a real supermarket (in the hair & beauty section) but I don't know if I should post it. It's a bit naughty. What do you think?

Pageant Report

Well, we made it. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

And as we had hoped, it was absolutely the best pageant ever. Nothing went wrong, nothing got missed or forgotten! The choir were outstanding, the band were tight, the soloists sang beautifully, the cast were great - they delivered all their lines perfectly and hit all their cues on the nail. They were funny, tender, over-the-top when needed and very moving at just the right moments. The animals behaved and unlike a very memorable previous year, the sheep did not start mating as the Pastor reached the climax of his gospel message.

Thank you again to everyone who made it possible.

The part that made me stop and think was in the first performance. Nick (King Herod) was delivering his lines: "A new King? So, he’s finally here – all of the predictions, all of the prophecies – ha! I will show them. I will show the world – my power is far greater than some prophesy! I will destroy this so-called King of the Jews! There will never be another King in Judea so long as I am alive!" and all the time the little kids crouched down on the carpet in the front rows were booing and hissing just like in a pantomime.

And then Nick said "And who will come to bring him gifts?" and they all shouted "I will!", and again after the next line "Who will come to worship him?" all the kids shouted out "I will!" Wow! It was so moving - totally spontaneous and heartfelt.

Of course, the relief that it is all over and that it went so well is now tempered with the worrying thought "What on earth are we going to do next year?"

The camels are here

Well, I'm going downstairs to check them out. They've walked about ten miles from near the Sakkara pyramids. From my office window I can just see a camel head weaving around above the bushes outside.

The pageant is going to be great - funny and moving and thoughtful and with really great music. The tent looks AMAZING!

What is the value of a blog?

You must have heard that old semon illustration where we are told if you break the human body down into it's constituent elements, you know, water, carbon etc, our net worth on the open market is about $4 or something like that.

My blog is worth $3,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?

Well, you might have seen this piece of fun down there at the bottom right of the blog. It's just to make you think, because this blog's purpose is not to make me money, but in the last month or six weeks since I first posted this, the value has gone up from around $500 to nearly $4,000. That's a 700% increase. Interesting.

This is calculated by analysing the amount of links a blog has registered on Technorati, and then cross referencing that against the capital value that AOL put on WeblogsInc when they bought it last year. And because more people are reading this blog and linking to this blog, the notional value has gone up.

Of course this is ridiculous, because no-one is really going to pay me $4,000 for this blog are they?

Anyone?

There's no PETA in Egypt!

Just discovered this article on the web about fear of mistreatment of animals in Christmas Pageants. I'm glad they're not sending us nasty letters.

PETA Mistakenly Targets Alaska Church

Anyway, our camels, donkey and sheep are the sole livelihood for the guy we rent them from - there's no way he would allow us to mistreat them. And there's no way that they would get hurt - he's looking after them all the time they are here.

Does anyone else think this article is ridiculous?

Oh yeah, we have a live baby Jesus too. Maybe we should notify the relevant authorities and get a certificate of permission.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed during the posting of this blog entry.

Christmas Pageant

(Hooray - blogger let me post the picture :-)

On Sunday night we have our annual Christmas Pageant here under the tent. It's going to be amazing! It's a dramatic presentation of the traditional nativity story, with a few twists here and there, but because this is Egypt, we have resources that most other churches don't. For instance, have you ever seen the nativity story performed where the shepherds have real sheep? Or where Mary comes in actually riding on a donkey? Or where the wise men make their entrance on three camels? Down the church aisles?

You need to be there. Especially if you've never been to one before.

6:00pm or 7:30pm Sunday 10th December.

Except the 6:00pm is already sold out.

Wedding Drums

We had a fantastic wedding yesterday. Wale, my "Africa Live Service" worship leader married Emma who is also on our church staff as an Assistant Cells Director. The wedding was at 10:30am in the church, and then we had a great reception at the local playing fields / ball park. Wale is Nigerian, and came to Egypt as a football player (there are many African football players here in Cairo) so all his teammates sang for them at the reception and welcomed Emma in to the team. Check out this video:

Highs and lows

In our house, at family meals, in the evenings, we often go around the table and ask each other what our highs and lows have been that day.

Well this has been a week of highs and lows. One of the highs was leading worship at the evening service tonight. We have a new drummer, Joel, and a new guitarist, David who is also in my men's cell group, and they can seriously play. The band sounded great, and the singers sung their hearts out, and even though the service was packed with so many elements it made it hard to create a good flow, the worship was really wonderful, and I felt like we'd been to the throne room.

Let me just point out that this was nothing to do with me. This was all God.

I've had the kind of week I never want to have again. I finished a book back on Sunday where one of the main characters dies by falling from a high tower. He lands in a crumpled heap on the ground, and then the book records the emotions and experiences of the other characters in dealing with this tragedy, where their whole world has been turned upside down. Well, my Pastor, boss, mentor and friend, Dave, died three months ago in similar circumstances, and as I read this story I nearly burst into tears right there in Cafe Greco. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and immediately relived the horror of those moments three months ago all over again. I closed the book and walked up road 9 in a bit of a daze.

Anyhow, this week has been the emotional aftermath of this fresh wave of grief, and I've been a wreck. I have felt low and useless and inadequate and lethargic and demoralised. You may not have noticed, because I'm good at hiding it, and I didn't really realise it fully myself until today.

On top of this we have our Christmas pageant in ten days time and it's a big deal and I'm responsible for it and I had to apologise to three people today for not being on the ball with it. On top of this two of my colleagues are getting married on Saturday, and our girls are bridesmaids, and I'm leading the music in the service. That's why church tonight was such a high, I was leading worship, but I was certainly not doing it in my own strength.

God showed up just when I needed Him most.

Worship Leader Magazine

Hey - I got published!

Got this magazine through the post in a brown paper envelope this morning, turned to page 29, and there I was, looking back at me. Very weird.

I really liked the point that the main article writer was making about "blended worship" not being a musical style or blend of styles, but that it is actually a blend of worshippers from different cultures and nations around the world offering up praise simultaneously. Then there were a series of interviews with worship leaders from different countries - Brazil, Singapore, Nigeria etc and Maadi Community Church, Cairo.

Anyway, go and buy it. I'm in it :-)

Guitar Amp Modelling

Ok, so apart from actual musical instruments, there's some other stuff in the armoury. Electric guitar players use a whole battery of electronics to make the diverse range of offensive noises that we love so much. Here's what I use...

Amp Modellers:

The ingredient that makes playing the electric guitar so much fun is often also it's greatest weakness - yes, I'm talking about volume. Most players will say that they need to turn the amp up loud to get the right tone out of it, and for the most part, that's true. Particularly with tube amplifiers, a decent volume level really lets the vacuum tubes work at their best, and that particularly sweet singing sustain is often only available when the amp is really cranked and the valves are beginning to distort.

This doesn't often go down well in church.

So amp modellers are the church guitarist's best friend. Some engineers have spent far too much time in studios and labs analysing the frequency responses of various classic guitar amps at different settings, have simulated this in software, burned it on a chip and then built a little box to reproduce it when you plug in your guitar. The really good think for us church guitarists is that the manufacturers claim that all of those fantastic tube amp harmonics and that lovely warm tone is available with the volume turned right down, or even with your headphones on. And to a degree they are right; manufacturers such as Line6, Behringer, Boss and SansAmp. They can all be plugged directly into a PA system mixing desk, and routed through the monitors thus eliminating those big, expensive, loud and heavy guitar amps from the platform.

In the real world though, there is always going to be a significant difference between spending thousands of dollars on a Mesa Boogie, and spending $100 on eBay for a little blue box that "faithfully" reproduces the tonal range, not just of the Boogie, but thirty-one other similarly desirable amplifiers too. But you know what? For $100 it sounds amazing. And it's incredibly flexible, and does not break my back when I'm moving it around as it only weighs a kilo or so.

Confession time. I have a Behringer V-Amp, firmware upgraded to V-Amp2. Bought about five years ago on eBay. Yes yes, I know some of you think Behringer has bad business ethics... but I didn't buy it from them. Anyway, it's great, models 32 different amplifiers and 16 different speaker cabinets, and has a selection of effects available too. It's the anchor for everything else in my rig. I control it with a Rolls midi foot pedal that I once again found on eBay about five years ago for something like $40.