Bono talk

I know it is old news but I find this a really powerful talk. If you have not yet stopped to listen to Bono's address at the national prayer breakfast, you can hear it on the podcast on the one blog. It is a podcast in the top right hand corner of the blog (Note- the One Campaign does some announcements and Switchfoot plays a song, but you can skip ahead right to Bono talking if you want to).

Google Mars

Since I was a kid I have been amazed by anything dealing with Space. Google just launched a new page where you can look a some NASA pics of Mars. It´s pretty sweet!

Holy Week

This week Spain has been celebrating Semana Santa. In Santiago catholic churches do processionals throughout the city and focus on different events that happened throughout Holy Week, but especially focus on the crucifixion. Yesterday we saw one of these processions with the girls on our way home from the park. The first time you see one of these processions it can be kind of freaky. If you don´t understand what is happening you really wonder why masked people are walking through town carrying heavy altars and crosses (in Spain it has nothing to do with racist organizations). A lot of the people who take part in the procession do so as a form of penance. I think that they cover their faces out of a mix of guilt and humility. Humility that they can´t say or think, "look at what a great person I am, I am carrying such a heavy cross for my penance".

Many of the ones that I have seen in past years have been very dark, focusing mostly on Jesus' death. I was pleasantly surprized by the one we saw yesterday. It was definitely solemn with the simple drum cadence and the eary trumpet blasts, but throughout the procession it had reminders that Christ did not remain dead on the cross. They also had children carrying various objects to symbolize different parts of the passion (bread, a cup, pieces of silver, a longe stick with a sponge, dice, a white robe, etc..). If you were paying attention it told the whole story.

One of the coolest things about it was that the girls kept asking us questions about all of the things that they saw. It was a great teachable moment, a different way for them to learn about the story of Easter. It all culminated with Abigail´s question "Dad, why did Jesus have to die?". I did not want to give her an easy or trite answer while we were distracted by drums and trumpets, so when we got home we pulled out her Big Picture Story Bible. We read about Jesus and the cross. It showed his disciples asking questions after his death including "Why did Jesus have to die?". This led into us having a great discussion about what happened to Jesus and why.

Welcome back

Lori has been on a sort of blog fast for the past several months, but has returned to the blogosphere. I welcome you to visit her blog here.

Religion and Spirituality

In the preceding post I put up some stats from a recent Spanish newspaper article. "The Other Bailey" has been working in Spain for ten years and left some great comments on Jacob's blog under this post. Here is a quote from him.

"These surveys are all about religion, but not about spirituality. My experience has been that Spaniards are very interested in spirituality (something they have not found in the Catholic church) and are not turning en masse to atheism and agnosticism."

Religious Stats in Spain

Jacob just posted on his blog about an article in one of Spain´s leading newspapers, El Pais. It is packed with youth statistics and their views on religion. Here are a few quick stats.

Young people in Galicia between 15-24 who claim to be:

-Practicing Catholic 8%

-Non-practicing Catholic 40%

-indifferent and Agnostic 24%

-Atheist 20%

-Other Religion 1%

Level of importance in life: 1 is no importance 4 is a lot of importance

Health 3.89

Family 3.79

Friends 3.58

Studies 3.25

Politics 1.92

Religion 1.76

Image that Spanish young people have of themselves

Consumeristic 59.8%

Rebels 54.1%

Only think in the present 38.3%

Worker 20.3%

Generous 13.4%

Mature 11.4%

Technology Donations

At the cafe we currently have two desktop computer stations available for our customers and we would love to have some laptops for people to check out and use to connect to our WiFi as well. If you have an old laptop that you don't use anymore that is good for connecting to the internet, please consider donating it to the Café to help us enrich our customers' experience at Terra Nova.

We are also interested in having a video projector for the café to be used for showing in-house films, movies, comercials, etc... If you know of any organizations or churches that are looking to donate an older VP, please let them know that we are interested.

"It is both a modern and spiritual place"

That is how the article about the cafe starts off in the local Gallego newspaper Galicia Hoxe. If you understand Spanish you may be able to understand enough in the article to get the gist of what it is about (It is written in Gallego, the local language). It is a pretty fun piece that appears in the equivalent of the life section.

Our concepts of the Church That was the title of the discussion that I led at GBU (Spanish Inter-Varsity) last night. We talked about how church buildings are viewed and used in the contemporary church setting compared to what the Bible says about church buildings. It was a lively conversation with some really good thought processing happening among the students.

News in Spain

Basque terrorist group declares cease-fire.

Spain intercepts immigrants.

Undercurrent of racism surfaces at Spanish Soccer games.