Join me as I bike Sea to Sea

I'm a month late, but I want to point out an important day: World AIDS Day.

I want to quote all the true and sad statistics about the increasing amount of people infected by HIV and all those dying from AIDS. But not today. Partially out of laziness but I don't want to push guilt on any readers

AIDS isn't a disease that just affects the person infected. It affects whole families. Parents die and leave children that need to be cared for by grandparents, taken in by other families or worse, they fend for themselves. Essentially it erasing a whole generation of adults. When a family is already struggling in poverty, this intensifies the struggle.

So, spend some time thinking along with me about the horrible effects that HIV and AIDS are bringing upon our world.

I am happy to announce that I've made a brochure explaining what I'm doing next summer and why. You should see one soon in the mail, if you don't check back here and download it.

Also I am officially taking a leave of absence from work next summer. I thought that they wouldn't go for it, but they did!

One of the pastors at Shawnee is going to be announcing their sponsorship of me on January 13th at the morning service. Please pray that the congregation is excited for me, but moreover that they will understand that plight of the poor.

Quick update:

I will be leaving in under two-hundred days. Actually, 199 days 8hours and 30 minutes. I'm so excited! 200 days is really a long time, but its exciting and overwhelming what can happen in that amount of time.

I have my plane ticket to get out there now also. So, I am continually taking the steps to make this tour happen for myself.

I want to share a website that I've found.

mdgmonitor.org

The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that the United Nations adopted. Even though this goals encompasses almost aspect of life, they are specific and are to be completed by 2015. This is exciting to see such a large governance make development such a high goal. You should check it out.

Anyways, the website about (mdgmonitor.org) allows you to track the progress of these goals in many different ways. You can use maps to view each goal's (and each sub goal's) progress in each country or get written reports on each country. I love statistics and appreciate that I can track the progress this way.

Take a couple minutes to explore the website. But more importantly, I hope you will become more engaged and informed about the MDGs.