Hands Headlines

Olympic athletes are put on a pedestal - literally and figuratively. The world craves success sometimes more than they do.

Whether or not they are viewed as winners, each Olympian experiences struggle and triumph.

At a time when each athlete’s personal story is under the spotlight, this web site features a few competitors who have experienced ultimate victory.

I particularly point your attention to Rwandan distance runner Dieudonne Disi. He has experienced horror and tragedy. Yet, Christ has changed his life with powerful comfort and forgiveness.

The Struggle and Triumph web site and corresponding DVD are works of Campus Crusade for Christ’s sports ministry - Athletes in Action. This is an incredible tool which you can use to introduce sports minded friends to the message of the gospel.

You can view video clips, read the personal stories and see the contextualized gospel presentation online or on the DVD. We highly recommend the DVD.

Tags: athletesolympics struggle triumph aia video story

This dog’s a runnin ragged. . . are we?

Life sometimes seems like a blur. Much of this blur is normal life - especially with kids - and we enjoy normal. Yet, there are days we just need a break!

Pray for Shannon and I to be refreshed and get some rest from the previous few months. This current season has been quite busy - almost overwhelming - with family and ministry going full speed ahead. Part of it is just the phase of life we are in with three young kids and home school. Children and life bring surprises - like trips to the ER with a broken arm. Also, we’ve done some extended traveling the past six months with family and ministry.

Another side is just finding balance to all of the great opportunities around us to serve the Lord - parts of our ministry are exploding in growth and we literally can’t keep up. Pray that Shannon and I would spend adequate time together and that the Lord would supply down time as well.

We continue to need your prayers for the Lord to deeply sustain and guide us.

The “land down under” - a vast area of outback territory with kangaroos and koala bears. It’s a popular vacation spot but also a dry and thirsty land spiritually. Only 3% of the population would consider themselves as connected to any Christian church. Most likely even fewer have a growing personal relationship with Jesus.

Campus Crusade’s missionary staff in Australia and New Zealand have invited Shannon and I to serve at their annual conference September 23 - 28.We’re very excited about the opportunity to come alongside these 170 or so staff and hear what their needs are for Internet ministry and communication systems.Most of our time will be spent interviewing the staff, learning what existing systems they have, determining what technical requirements are needed for growth of their ministries and offering training and implementation for the global systems our team has already developed.

 Please pray for our travel and the conference . . .

•    Lift up our children - staying the whole week we’re gone with the grandparents (Eads family).  Pray for wisdom and perseverance of the grandparents, too!
•    Ask that we’ll not be too jet lagged in order to serve well at the conference. We arrive on Sept 23rd after 21 hours of air travel and a shift of 15 hours in time zones!
•    That God will be greatly glorified through the conference and the Australian and New Zealand staff would be even further grateful to reach out in Kingdom service.

A while back the Hand family adopted a practice which helps us remember you in prayer. Your name - along with the names of all of our ministry partners - is on a strip of paper in a bowl that sits beside our dinner table. Before every meal, one of the kids selects (at random) someone to pray for. The Lord reminds us of how grateful we are for your partnership with us and this is another way we can connect with you. Since you are truly a partner in our ministry, it’s our privilege to lift you up! Recently we’ve been reminded that you may have some specific prayer needs which we can lift up for you.

It will give you an idea of what the conference was like: A once in a lifetime experience of seeing believers from all over the world, united in one purpose.

For more info, view our post about the conference from June.

Just last month, the JESUS Film was translated into its 1,000th language! In fact, according to the Jesus Film Translation Progress Report Web Page, as of August 23, 2007, they have officially translated 1,009 versions of the film. This is a huge milestone, as the film is now available for people groups in their native language covering 90% the world.

Many of you know about the JESUS Film. Created in 1979 by Campus Crusade for Christ, it’s a full length docu-drama used by missionaries and evangelistic teams around the world. Years ago I used the film in Eastern Europe to introduce several people to Christ.

For people who can not read the Scriptures or who just are more attuned to responding to visual media, the film is an excellent tool. Many other mission organizations use it. In fact, it is the most translated film in the history of the world.

Even more amazing is the story behind the translation of the 1,000th language - a language called Ho. Ho is spoken by about 1 million people in Central Asia and India.

Jesus Film translation work for the Ho language began 10 or more years ago in India. Involved in the effort was Australian missionary Graham Staines. One night in 1999 Staines and his two young boys traveled to a small village to meet with believers. Only a small percentage of villagers had come to faith at the time, and it was considerably dangerous to be in opposition to the prevailing religion. During the trip, he and his boys spent the night in their Jeep. While they slept, radical Hindu leaders surrounded the Jeep and set fire to it. Graham and his sons were burned to death.

After receiving news of the murders, Mrs. Staines said, “I’m terribly upset but not angry. My husband loved Jesus Christ, who taught us to forgive our enemies.” She continued to serve as a missionary in India with her daughter. Last month, for the first time through the Jesus Film, people from the Ho language were able to see and hear the complete story of our perfect Forgiver and Redeemer Who lives today.

P.S. Sadly, but for the glory of God, many other Jesus Film workers have been put to death around the world. See more in our post about these amazing men and women here. The photo above is from the memorial plaque honoring Staines at the Jesus Film Master Studio in Orlando. If you’d like to learn more about the Jesus Film and its translation work around the world, come visit us in Orlando and take the Jesus Film Master Studio Tour.

Humbling. Every person you see here plus over a dozen others have lost their lives serving with our ministry. Every time I walk by their photos - memorialized in a special area of the Jesus Film offices here at Campus Crusade for Christ Headquarters - I am humbled. These are my brothers who lived, serving in a similar capacity as we do, yet in a very different environment overseas. Many had families and young children.

They all died in the midst of attempting to show the JESUS Film to people who have never heard. Yet, because our Redeemer lives, in several cases many more people - even some of their attackers - came to know Christ as a result.

You can see this memorial and read the story of each person if you visit us in Orlando and take the Jesus Film Master Studio Tour.

The video only takes 3 minutes to watch in entirety. It was created by CommonCraft. You can view the original on the CommonCraft site or read a transcript of the video.

This is the BEST NON-TECHNICAL EXPLANATION of how to stay updated on your favorite web sites. If you have ever wished, “Boy, I wish there were a simple way that my favorite web site would notify me whenever they post new stuff,” then this video is for you!

It explains how to use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to stay updated. Almost all new web sites are offering free RSS Feeds (or syndications).

RSS Subscription Feed for HandsHeadlines.com is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HandsHeadlines

Why not use what you learn in the video above to stay updated on HandsHeadlines.com? It’s one of your favorite sites, I’m sure!

Again, the video is super simple. It’s called “RSS in Plain English.” This is not for geeks. Normal people will like it.

If you are thinking, “I just want to stay updated by email, that’s all.” Then there is a different free service you may want to check out offered by a web site called FeedBlitz.com See our post about it here.

Well, we’re off. We left Orlando Monday on the first leg of our journey. Click map to see our planned stops. We should have taken a photo of the loaded minivan. It was a feat.

We really appreciate your prayers for us each step along the way to our training events!

We have some special needs related to our travels to the training events this summer. See the details about these on our previous post. Would you pray that the Lord would provide?

If He directs you to help financially, you can give a gift in a variety of ways. See our donations page.

All of these travel and conference expenses are totally reimbursable IF we have extra donations come in to cover them. These are not regular budgeted expenses so therefore are not included as part of our monthly financial support.

Here’s the scoop on exactly what we need:

About $2,875 for gas, lodging, food, and training event costs.
Since this trip will cover about 4,000 miles round trip, that works out to about 72cents per mile. Any gift of any amount would be appreciated. If you want to give very specifically, then . . .
$72 will cover about 100 miles.
$360 will cover about 500 miles.
$720 will cover about 1,000 miles.
$1,440 will cover about 2,000 miles.
$2,875 covers the whole trip.

Thank you for praying about this. Our first hope is that the Lord would receive all the credit and glory regardless of how He responds. As always, we walk by faith with another great opportunity to trust Him with the details of our life!