A few of our favorite Brooklyn eating establishments:

Egg

Dumont

Doner Turkish Food

The Blue Stove

Variety

Roebling Tea Room

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter–the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last–the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.” -E.B. White, Here Is New York

HT: Jon Tyson

Melissa and I are working hard on moving to New York City in the coming weeks and months. The first step was to discard all extra clothes, furniture, and “junk.” Its incredibly cathartic to toss so much out. Our attic is completely empty (except for a lone Christmas tree). Our closets are down to the essentials. I got rid of my desk and have taken over Melissa’s previous desk for my freelance work (she is so gracious and flexible). We were able to sell our sofa and chair to a good friend, and replaced it with a simple sofa bed / futon from Ikea.

The only thing keeping us from making the move at this point is the financial buffer we will need for the higher cost of living in Brooklyn—primarily the first few month’s rent. I’m working as hard as possible to gather the funds needed. God is providing graciously for our needs and I expect that the money will be in place in mid-October.

We’ll be joining Williamsburg Church. Over the last few years, the people there have been among the most kind and loyal friends I’ve had. Nothing makes me more excited than the prospect of throwing ourselves completely behind what is happening in the ministry there.

In the meantime I’m headed to Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro next Tuesday with Tim Keesee and Pete Hansen. We’ll be shooting a documentary film primarily about the mission work of David and Kristi Hosaflook. In the past couple months, friends and family have graciously provided the funding for the trip. In the end, I will only be spending a couple hundred dollars of my personal funds. The Lord has been kind to move in the hearts of others to give to this venture. I’ll certainly update you all upon our return.

Oh, and there’s a rumor floating around that I’ll be starting an amateur photo blog named after a Paul Simon song. This is true. Can you guess which song title?

I was able to get a Nikon D90 for the upcoming trip to Albania. Last night Melissa and I walked around Downtown Greenville for a while as the sun went down. I hope to continue to improve my abilities, but these are a few of the first shots that I’m pretty happy about. (Oh, and I added a few others from Myrtle Beach last week.)

Dear Friends and Family,

I am writing to you to let you know about a trip that I will be taking this coming September and to ask that you consider how you could be involved in supporting me as I go.

I have been asked by Frontline Missions to join a small team on a trip to Albania to produce a documentary film about the country and the work of David Hosaflook.

David has served as a missionary to the people of Albania since the early 1990’s, and has been instrumental in starting several churches in both urban and rural areas of the country. David and his wife Kristi, along with their children, have been called by God to live in a sometimes dangerous place in order to further the message of Christ’s kingdom and meet the needs of the people of their local community.

Frontline will be visiting the country to produce a feature length film to introduce Western Christians to the extreme physical and spiritual needs of this country. The film will be distributed on DVD sometime before Christmas of this year. We hope and pray that this film be more than merely ‘inspirational’, and will galvanize the Christian church into prayer, action, and evangelism in this part of the world.

Three of us will be leaving near September 9th and will return to the U.S. a few weeks later. During this time, we will spend time in some of the main cities of the country, as well as travel to several remote villages.

The first film in the Dispatches from the Front series was completed early this year. You can learn more about that episode at www.dispatchesfromthefront.org.

The hard expenses for the trip are $2200. This includes flight, food, and some lodging expenses. Additionally, I am looking to supplement this amount with funds to cover the purchase of a camera that will allow me to be a second shooter on the film. The cost of the camera is $1500.

Please consider how you could be involved in this work. Whether or not you can support the project financially, please pray for the spread of the Gospel, for our safety, and that the narrative we capture will display the needs of the region in an accurate and compelling way.

If you can support this trip, please send checks noting “Missions: Brannon Albania Trip” to:

Emmanuel Bible Church
269 Lakewood Dr.
Greenville, SC 29607

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Brannon McAllister
1 North Garden Ct.
Greenville, SC 29615
864) 346-2910
brannonmcallister at gmail.com

One of the most helpful little Mac utilities around is Fluid. It enables you to set up self-contained “desktop” apps for any web application––such as Basecamp, Gmail, or even Wordpress. Create your own PNG icon, or just use the native icon that appears in that web page’s URL bar.

When you open Fluid, just enter the URL of the site.

I used Fluid to create a Wordpress app, just for posting and editing on this blog.

Thanks to many other bloggers who have already posted this. I’m unsure of the original source.

by Tim Keller

_________________

RELIGION: I obey-therefore I’m accepted.

THE GOSPEL: I’m accepted-therefore I obey.

RELIGION: Motivation is based on fear and insecurity.

THE GOSPEL: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

RELIGION: I obey God in order to get things from God.

THE GOSPEL: I obey God to get to God-to delight and resemble Him.

RELIGION: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I am angry at God or my self, since I believe, like Job’s friends that anyone who is good deserves a comfortable life.

THE GOSPEL: When circumstances in my life go wrong, I struggle but I know all my punishment fell on Jesus and that while he may allow this for my training, he will exercise his Fatherly love within my trial.

RELIGION: When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self-image must be destroyed at all costs.

THE GOSPEL: When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical for me to think of myself as a ‘good person.’ My identity is not built on my record or my performance but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism.

RELIGION: My prayer life consists largely of petition and it only heats up when I am in a time of need. My main purpose in prayer is control of the environment.

THE GOSPEL: My prayer life consists of generous stretches of praise and adoration. My main purpose is fellowship with Him.

RELIGION: My self-view swings between two poles. If and when I am living up to my standards, I feel confident, but then I am prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. If and when I am not living up to standards, I feel insecure and inadequate. I’m not confident. I feel like a failure.

THE GOSPEL: My self-view is not based on a view of my self as a moral achiever. In Christ I am “simul iustus et peccator”—simultaneously sinful and yet accepted in Christ. I am so bad he had to die for me and I am so loved he was glad to die for me. This leads me to deeper and deeper humility and confidence at the same time. Neither swaggering nor sniveling.

RELIGION: My identity and self-worth are based mainly on how hard I work. Or how moral I am, and so I must look down on those I perceive as lazy or immoral. I disdain and feel superior to ‘the other.’

THE GOSPEL: My identity and self-worth are centered on the one who died for His enemies, who was excluded from the city for me. I am saved by sheer grace. So I can’t look down on those who believe or practice something different from me. Only by grace I am what I am. I’ve no inner need to win arguments.

RELIGION: Since I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.

THE GOSPEL: I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost.

“I had this experience recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone who is now in her 90s, but she’s been a poet her entire life.

She told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the field, and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. She said it was like a thunderous train of air, and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape.  When she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, in her words, was to run like hell.  She would run like hell to the house, and she’d be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page.

Other times she wouldn’t be fast enough. So she’d be running and running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house, and the poem would  barrel through her, and she said that she would miss it, and the poem would continue across the landscape looking, as she put it, for another poet.

Then there where the times where, this is the piece that I never forgot, there where moments where she would almost miss it, and she’s running into the house and she’s looking for the paper, and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her.  Then she said she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it, She would catch the poem by it’s tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page, and in these instances the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact to the word, but backwards from the last word to the first”.

-Elizabeth Gilbert on US poet Ruth Stone