Cameraful

We got a new little pocket camera that came in last week. We are excited to again to documenting history through pictures. I am sure there will be more forthcoming, but here are a few from our test run. What an amazing invention!

Unrest

We get our international news from the BBC world service. Not exclusively, but every time we are in the car we are catching the latest news from around the world. I think it is kind of like NPR on steroids. Anyways, we never really had access before to this kind of "on the go" international news coverage in the states. We could obviously go find any kind of news on the web, but we just dont always do the work to get international news. So, we have been following news of the unrest across the Arab world. It is so fascinating and so confusing, full of so much potential and so much danger, big personalities and the everyday man. I think it is one of those things that is so big and so complex that all we can do is watch, learn, and pray. Pray that God would work these events for His glory. That His peace can shine through all of the conflict. He is big enough!

Cameraless

We are without a camera. If you have hung around this blog for any length of time at all, you know that we love taking pictures. It has felt really weird and almost panicky that we are missing a part of our kids lives. I am sure it is not that critical, but there have been times that we get the urge to break out the camera and realize that it isnt there. The crazy thing is that we like to have two different cameras, one little pocket camera for more mobile times and our main camera for nicer pictures. Our main camera is being sent in for a repair and our pocket camera is broke beyond repair. So, we hope to have a new pocket camera coming this week and this will hopefully get us back to documenting our lives through photos.

We can never catch him!

Drew is a pretty good little signer. He is not fast, but he is proficient. But, we really hardly ever see him do it. He really wont do it just with us, it generally needs to be when he is away from us and only with deaf people. We see it when he is just making small talk like, how are you, or good morning, etc. But, we never really get to see him sign for an extended period of time. He does go to the deaf school 2 days/week, but we dont get to sit in his classroom to watch him interact. So, a while back, a work team asked him to help translate a bible story and he agreed. You see, he loves work teams. He goes bonkers over work teams. So, below are a few pics of his "signing face." We didnt even get the pics, we had to get them from the work team. So, maybe we will have to use a hidden camera sometime to catch him in the act. Until then, these pictures are the best we've got.

Name the differences

Q - What makes a deaf person different than a hearing person?
A - Their hearing is impaired.

I am not trying to be trite with this question, it is not a joke. Granted, deafness does result in cultural differences, but as a person, the only difference is that they can't hear. The impact of this is significant. We deal with this on a daily basis. The thesis statement goes like this; what we believe about who a person is will affect how we relate to them. We have seen the outworking of this in the lives of people who genuinely care about the deaf, but are not convinced that they are the same as the hearing. They presume upon them greater disabilities. While their love is real, their actions result in hurting rather than helping. And, while the differences seem slight, when worked out over years upon years, the deaf begin to believe themselves that they have these greater disabilities. Its tragic and serious. I guess the moral of the story is that we really need to examine our genuine beliefs about other people. Our beliefs will affect how we relate with them. And, if our beliefs about them are not informed through who God sees them to be, we will be doing them and ourselves a disservice.

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I dont have any mushy poems and all inspiring thoughts are escaping me. But, we got is a relationship that is growing. I guess that is inspiring enough because we couldnt ask for more. Not perfect, but becoming more perfect. We are more in love today than we were when we got married and we are giving thanks!

Aspiring Photographers!

That post over there inspired this post here. Every once in a while, we put batteries in an old camera and turn the kids loose. Here is some of their best shots. In the midst of tons awful pictures, there were a few funny ones. They love it and they come up with some pretty creative stuff. It reminds me of the TED video by Sir Ken Robinson about today's education system. If you havent seen it, you should check it out. He gives a fascinating presentation about how we educate the creativity out of our children. Here's to trying to keep them creative.

Time Flies

Its February! Almost halfway through February. As I was going to post something here on the blog, I decided to click into the drafts folder to see if I had any unpublished posts that I had written, but never used. I stumbled across the pictures above already uploaded into a post. After a bit of research, I found out that the pictures were taken around the beginning of June 2009. I dont remember why I had originally uploaded these pics or what I was going to write about them, but I am glad I did. Because today, they took me down memory lane. They reminded me of His goodness. As you can see from the last picture, Keri is pregnant with Daisha. And, it is probably just a couple of weeks before she was born. We didnt know and as the Lord would have it, I guess we didnt need to know. I guess that is why we call it faith, we have no idea what the day will bring and we have no choice but to trust Him. Memory lane always gives my system a good shock and as I look at the pictures of only a little more than a year ago, I give thanks!

Weight Loss Program

"Get a Haircut" and here are few other recent pics of the family.

January Jamaica Update

January 2011 Plattner Family Update

What if all of your “everyday” prayers from last year were answered in the way you wished them to be answered? Stop and think about it. For a moment this excites my heart, but then I start looking at the math. A couple of things stick out. So many times, the best answers to prayers have not come in the way I expected and had they been answered in the way I expected, it wouldn’t be good. The timing would be off and the answer would be wrong. But what about the other prayers that would get answered, the ones asked in the purest of motives. How amazing would that be? I hope that the answers to those prayers would represent the Kingdom advancing, but I think it would also tell another tale. The tally sheet of my prayers shows that I would be the main beneficiary by a large margin. This was a good challenge to my heart from a sermon I was listening to last week. It provoked me to look in the mirror to check myself and my communication with our Father. At first it invoked a small guilt trip, but then I remembered grace, then I remembered sanctification, I remembered that this is a journey, a walk. Yes, I often find myself praying selfish prayers and that needs challenged. But also, Jesus’ instructions for us in the Lord’s prayer similarly has a lot of references to ourselves; our daily bread, forgiveness of sins, protection from temptation, and deliverance from evil. So, after my brain has slowed from chasing these thoughts around awhile, I have settled into a challenge to check the self-focus of my prayers, but not to forsake asking our Father for help everyday. And, making sure a focus of our prayers is for those beyond the walls of our house.

On January 6^th, we landed back in Jamaica and rattled our way back up to Knockpatrick. We started getting our things unpacked and trying to get settled back into life. Two days later, we picked up our first work team. The next three weeks were full of work teams, a board meeting, an audiologist group, and a whole bunch of chaos. Actually, it went really well. We had some great groups come through and we were encouraged by the fellowship. It was busy and exhausting, but it was good. The farm continues to plug along, but it has not received the amount of care it requires. From being gone most of December to coming back and being too busy to care because of the work teams, the Agricultural education side of the work has taken a turn for the worse. But, the next few weeks look like they should be more productive. We have also remained busy with various teaching responsibilities on the weekend and we continue to seek his grace for a clear message through clear signs.

Our family continues to experience His amazing grace. The kids have done great adjusting back to life in Jamaica. They similarly live two very different lives, work team lives and non-work team lives. Work teams for the kids means lots of people to play with, lots of people to give them candy, and lots of social time. Non-work team time involves real life, entertaining themselves, reasonable sugar intake, and family time. We have talked about this dynamic a lot and we pray that our kids can balance it in their heads and benefit from it in the long term. Keri and I continue to grow in our love for each other and are trying to understand more everyday what it means to depend on His grace.

Thanks so much for your continued love and support. We love hearing from you. The number of people from when we were back for Christmas who reminded us that they were praying for us was so humbling. It looks like we might be coming back to the states earlier than expected and for longer than we expected this spring, but we are still working out some details. We should have a more complete update on those developments by the end of February. Until then, we try to keep surrendered hearts that are ready to do His will.

Something doesnt look right

Drew is a numbers nut. I mean a real numbers nut. He is in his "happy place" when he has something to count, record, and report. Well, last week we got our basketball hoop fixed and this has been fodder for his fascination with numbers. For the past week, he has mastered his counting by 2's and 3's and has began tracking his number of total made baskets. So, the other day as we began a game of one-on-one, after I made my first basket, which was a 3, he announced the score as of the game as 1066 for Drew and 3 for Kirk. I then explained to him that you can start over the score for a new game and that we should start at 0-0. He accepted this and we played a game to 10 in which I won 10-8. A little later in the day, he showed me his current tally of the score which at the time was 1072-10, which I am guessing was my 10 points from the game we had just played and an attempt to add his 8 to his tally. As you can see from his "scoreboard", he then began graciously "playing on my team" and at the time of writing this entry, I had scored 6 more points and am 1056 points away from catching up to little "Pistol Pete."

Culture Code - Book Review

Cracking your Church's Culture Code

Cracking your Church’s Culture Code is a good book. Allow me a minute to explain to you how the book took me on a little bit of a confusing journey. When I first read the title, I was hoping that this book applied to a broader segment than just pastors, as I work in the non-profit world. After beginning the book, I was pleasantly surprised that the book was not specifically targeted only to Church-world and it could be applied across a much larger spectrum. But, as I proceeded through the book, picking up good pieces of wisdom on the way, I found myself wanting the book to more specifically provide instruction on the unique issues presented in Church-world. Obviously, in the business world, the dollar is the bottom line, but in church-world, people are the bottom line. Now don’t take me wrong, Dr. Chand consistently highlighted the fact that people should be the bottom line, but in Church-world, issues of grace, reconciliation, and loyalty make some of the people issues a little cloudy. The book focused more generally towards larger organizations with strong, well-defined executive teams. Also, I had one other slight critique, as I struggled with how Dr. Chand contrasted leadership vs. management. There is a sense in which we have the freedom to say what we say today, because of the foundation that was laid for us by the previous generation. It seems to me that leadership can only be examined, extolled, and preached because the previous generation did a good job of laying a foundation of management. Not that management alone can get you where you need to go, but I sensed a disparagement of management in contrast to an exaltation of leadership. I think reality does not let us get this out of balance. I mention these couple of critiques for the sake of honesty, as I did take away some good nuggets out of the book. I will reference this book again in the future as Dr. Chand did a good job of laying out some functional list of questions, acronyms, and self-tests that will prove beneficial. The main premise of the book, that culture, not vision or strategy, is the most powerful factor in any organization, is worthy of a book. The longer I work in ministry, the more and more this becomes a reality. I have had the opportunity to view this through an accepting culture where vision or strategy couldn’t have destroyed the mission. And, I have seen it through a discouraging culture, where a positive change in mission or strategy could not reach past the culture. These issues are worthy of a serious time investment and Dr. Chand did a good job beginning that conversation.

P.S. - I have a material connection because I received a review copy that I can keep for consideration in preparing to write this content.