The Peck Family

This is the web site of JR and Ingrid Peck. We would love to hear from you, we can always be reached at jr.peck@ccci.org.

OK – I was a little confused, some of the information on what to do was confusing and there was just a lot of confusion. This page clears it all up. In a nutshell, to watch the broadcast one needs to sign up for it. It will be available starting Saturday evening, though I think they make a great suggestion – watching it during half time of the game. Though I’d want to double check and make sure it will fit in that time frame. Anyway, if you are interested in watching the breakfast, follow that link and all will be made clear.

Every year, before the Super Bowl, there is the Super Bowl Breakfast. At the breakfast the winner of the Bart Star Award. The Athletes in Action/Bart Starr Award is given annually to an NFL player who best exemplifies outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field and in the community. This is a very cool event with a lot of the top names in NFL football attending. But why I am I telling you?

This year the breakfast will be edited (to shorten up the time frame a bit) and broadcast over the internet. It’s going to be available by 6 pm Saturday, the 6th of February. (Eastern Time I assume.) I’m not sure how long it will be up, but this is a great opportunity for any men’s group that wants an opportunity to get together and watch. The Gospel will be presented. Or if you have a friend or neighbour that you would like to see it you could do that too. There is no cost to watch it. I’m assuming the video itself will be available right here once it is ready. You can get more information about it at the Athletes In Action page about it. I’m sorry for the late notice, I just found out about the web broadcast today. The AIA page has some video from last year if you want to see what it is like. I’ll be checking it out, I hope you do too.

The situation in Haiti is all over the news right now. I’ve been reading, listening and praying about it. There are a number of ways to help and I hope that you are getting involved. CCCI has staff and teams in Haiti of course though to my knowledge we haven’t been able to get word from any of them yet. The national director for Crusade in Haiti was actually out of the country with his son when the earthquake hit. He has not been able to get in touch with his wife and other children. We are praying for him and it is my understanding he’ll be back in Haiti tomorrow.

As you know CCCI is made up of multiple ministries and a number of them are actively engaged in providing aid and relief in Haiti. You can check the main CCCI site to give any of our other groups that will be working their. Though I think in this kind of situation GAIN will be our primary means of offering immediate relief. Their site has more info, and a place where you can contribute to efforts that will be taking place in Haiti.

And finally, stupid as it is, I feel a bit of pride whenever I hear or read that the carrier being dispatched is my old ship, the USS Carl Vinson. Vis Per Mare.

My wife lived in Ghana for a year before we met. She has some great photos and had some pretty unique experiences living without most of the modern conveniences we take for granted. She did without things like electricity and running water.* She has a pendant she bought there that she wears on a necklace. It is cut in the shape of the Adinkra symbol Gye Nyame. It means “except God” and represents the supremacy of God.
We’ve been married for over 11 years now, and I’ve always imagined that this was a local symbol peculiar to the village or region where she was living. Then last week I was looking at African Tees and saw it on a shirt. I did some digging, found the links I’ve put above, and others. I just started googling and following the links and it was a great time.** There are a quite a few Adinkra symbols and they have some great meanings. One that I found to be especially interesting is Funtunfunefu-Denkyemfunefu, Siamese crocodiles.
Siamese crocodiles have two heads, as shown in the symbol, but one stomach. It is in their best interest to cooperate yet they fight over food. This symbol represents the importance of democracy and unity in diversity. What an incredible picture of a concept that so few really grasp. That it comes out of Africa speaks volumes, in my mind, to the fact that even when humans can clearly see the right path, we are incapable of walking it on our own.

And of course on a smaller scale it makes me think about the Church and Christians. We are a diverse group, spread all over the world, called to one purpose. Yet often our greatest levels of conflict are with one another. This in the face of the fact that we are commanded to do the opposite and have been given the Holy Spirit to assist us in that regard. It seems in times of conflict and strife with one another that this ought to be a key indicator that has us stop and search our hearts and motives. Are we walking in the Spirit or in the flesh?

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
Ephesians 4:1-6(NLT)

Footnotes below the jump.
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We pray that your Christmas is as wonderful and blessed.

Here at the Peck house we were up early, our bed surrounded by eager children. They were apparently completely unaware of the fact that it was still dark out and much too early. But there was no going back to sleep for that crew, and so no chance for us as well.

Last night we attended a wonderful service at church and came home to light the last candle of our advent wreath. We read together about what Christmas means. I’ll leave you with that.

“3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

6 Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:3-11

I had one of those mornings a couple weeks ago, the kind of morning where I woke up a bit late, the kids were running late, it took Rachel forever to eat her cereal, I was late getting my morning coffee, but finally, Rachel made it to safety patrol for the school and I got in the van to drive Eddie and Hannah to school.  As I was driving, I was pretty cranky, but managed not to yell at the kids which is a miracle in itself.  In my head I was throwing a pretty good pity party.  Fortunately, there were no crazy people in the car loop honking horns or taking forever to make the left into the school.  I dropped Eddie and Hannah off at the front of the school and as I was driving slowly in line leaving the school, that’s when I saw this first mom.

Lately, I have recalled the face frequently in my mind.  The cheeks on her face were red and splotched as tears spilled down her face.  Her hair was thrown back in a quick pony tail with hair coming out of it in many directions.  Three kids were in her car, two little ones in the back and one that was dressed for school.  She wiped her face several times as it was evident she was trying to put herself together.  Fortunately, she never noticed my stupid stare in the few seconds her image imprinted itself in my brain.  The child in the front seat had brown eyes and was staring openly at his mother with a face filled with concern.  I had never seen her before and I’m not sure if I will again.  I have been there before, in her situation.  The times where you are overwhelmed and the tears are hard to control.  My heart was filled with empathy.  After seeing her and then driving by her, my pity party vanished as I realized how good I have it.

That same night, my kids and I were riding bikes through the neighborhood delivering invitations to our neighbors for a cookie exchange we were having in our neighborhood.  As we rode our bikes by a particular townhome, a women stepped out holding a small child, most likely under the age of one.  We were a bit of a distance away from her, so we crossed the street and rode our bikes up to her.  The kids stayed on their bikes, and I got off of mine so I could give her the invitation.  As I approached it, I saw the tears on her face as well.  Tears were actually on her eyelashes and she quickly wiped her face as I drew nearer.  I invited her to the event and talked with her a bit.  She is new to the neighborhood and speaks excellent English, but profusely explains how she needs to learn English, when I don’t know but about 12 phrases in Spanish.  She explained to me her loneliness for others.

These 2 women in my mind represent so many people in our society that perhaps go unnoticed, but yet, they are hurting.  JR constantly reminds me, “People’s lives are usually worse than what we can imagine”  I’m not really sure why I am sharing this.  You see, I am reading this book called The Reason For God and I am so impressed at the authors ability to tell us, quote is mine because it’s how I interpret it “Hey, we’re all screwed up – the only goodness we get is simply an act of God’s grace – don’t think you are better than you are, don’t judge people, love them, be there for them, help them, reach out to them.  Don’t ignore them.”  So, I think of these 2 women.  I met the one woman, because she did come to the cookie exchange.  Join me in prayer for both of them.

I’m still a little groggy and trying to get my sleep schedule back to normal, but the meetings I attended in Singapore went great and it was worth it. We were able to chart the future of our Global Measurements Application. This means a lot of work in the months to come, but I believe God is going to use that work to greatly impact the ministry world wide.

We had a group of global IT leaders that met together, and a few that joined in virtually. Our new video conferencing system is going to be fantastic once we can ensure bandwidth at each location that is sufficient to handle the signal. (Unfortunately we aren’t totally there yet, but we are getting closer.)

I’ll have more to report on the trip and Singapore itself very soon.

Chris Sleath is a Brit, that lives in Texas and is the Director Of Virtual Movements for Africa and the Middle East. One of the things I love about working for CCCI is that this isn’t all that odd ball a mix around here. Virtual movements or virtually led in CCCI speak are movements that involve remote interaction. Chris has some information that is going to help me connect the dots with some of the stuff about the proliferation of mobile devices. I was in a meeting with Chris a bit back and he had a presentation he shared with us about Virtually Led Movements. You can download it from his blog and look at it yourself if you have software that can open pptx files. I’ll give you a few highlights.

His vision is

“Building spiritual movements so that everyone who has a TV, radio, internet access or cellphone in AFRICAME knows someone who truly follows Christ.”

.

Chris has put together an impressive amount of information about the penetration of various types of media across Africa and the Middle East. He also compares the way each media can fit into our strategic goals and plans. It’s pretty fascinating reading if you are interested in that kind of information on a nation by nation basis. Then Christ gets down to brass tacks. There is a lot of budgetary information next, which would probably be quite an eye opener for many. But I want to leave you with something that drives home my excitement about what cell and internet coverage world wide means.

Chris summarizes our field experience as this: In our Paris communications center 85% of the messages coming in are from internet based evangelism. TV and radio together generate the other 15%. Setting up a web site costs less than 1/10th as much as the studio and equipment required for TV and radio. Almost 600% higher response rate for 10% the cost.

Do we ditch radio and tv? No, we want to use every tool available. But we are working hard to be in the front end of what is happening with phones for the very simple reason that it is going to provide unparalleled access and impact to the people of the world. The internet and mobile phone tools we are developing will help us get going quickly, in a cost effective way so that we can build up movements that can benefit even more from radio and tv. I’ve got more to share on this, but we have a good start here.

The Economist ran a special report last month, “Telecoms in emerging markets”. As the name of the magazine would indicate, the focus of the report is on trends and their economic impact. I’m not so concerned with economics, though in very poor places I do like to see people gain the tools to improve their situation. But what really hit me as I read the report are the implications for anyone with a message they want to get out. I’m one of those people :) I’m in the information business, the Good News business to be exact.

Here are some key quotes.

In 2000 the developing countries accounted for around one-quarter of the world’s 700m or so mobile phones. By the beginning of 2009 their share had grown to three-quarters of a total which by then had risen to over 4 billion.

These are estimates because the growth rate makes it tough to get decent numbers. Here’s information on the first 3 months of 2009,

…an additional 128m signed up in India, 89m in China and 96m across Africa… India is adding the biggest number each month: 15.6m in March alone.

Those numbers are so huge it’s tough to get my head around them. On top of that consider this,

A study by the World Resources Institute found that as developing-world incomes rise, household spending on mobile phones grows faster than spending on energy, water or indeed anything else.

People in the developed world may see this as foolish since a phone could be viewed as a luxury item or something trivial. In a world lacking in other infrastructure a mobile phone represent unprecedented access to information, increased communication and a new ability to make decisions based on knowledge. The second section of the report quotes nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus,

When you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get out of poverty in a couple years.

Let’s hop to the last section of the report, “Finishing the job”. It begins like this,

How long will it be before everone on Earth has a mobile phone? ‘It looks highly likely that global mobile cellular teledensity will surpass 100% within the next decade, and probably earlier,’ says Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union…

The world has been getting smaller for some time and this is that process becoming even more rapid. They estimate that “…within 5 years and certainly within 10 – every person that wants a cell phone will probably have one.”

With that outlook, how important is it that we are able to engage people via mobile devices? Following right behind it will be broadband over those service; the Internet everywhere. The entire world will literally be connected in a type of two way conversation that has never existed before in the history of mankind. We are seeing God connect people and resources to put us right at the front of this revolution in communication. I’ll have more specifics on that next post.

I’ve been a slacker on keeping this site up to date. Once the kids got back into school things got a lot busier. September slipped right on by and October is going too fast. God has been good and everyone is doing well. A lot of my time has been spent thinking about mobile phones, I’ll be writing more about that soon, maybe tomorrow.

Next month I’ll be in Singapore, talking about mobile phones among other things, with technology leaders from all over the world. There are some amazing things happening that are, I believe, truly game changing.

We are busy and blessed to have so much great work to do.