Our church school is currently in 3rd place in the Kohl’s Cares Facebook Contest and we could use your help with a few votes, Fr. Anthony Messeh recently sent out this message about it…

Do you believe in miracles?  Well I do and I believe that God may be sending us a chance to witness one right in front of our eyes.  You all know the church’s financial need these days – especially with the upcoming construction and financing.  God, who has promised never to leave us or abandon us, has put a great opportunity in front of us and we need your help to make it happen.

We have a chance to win $500,000 through a contest being held on Facebook by the store Kohls [www.facebook.com/kohls].  They are giving away $500,000 to the 20 schools [public or private] that receive the most votes in their contest.  We need you and everybody you know to go online and vote for Good Shepherd Christian Academy.  Each person is allowed to vote for a certain school 5 times and we need all 5 of those votes to go to Good Shepherd Christian Academy.  For instructions on how to vote, please see the bottom of this email.

And then, once you have voted 5 times, go tell others to vote for Good Shepherd as well.  We need everyone to spread the word to their colleagues, neighbors and friends.  Tell your friends in other churches across the U.S. and even back in Egypt.  Anyone can vote from anywhere in the world!  If it helps, I created this video that you can forward to your friends, explaining why they should vote for us.

I believe that God is sending this contest to us at this time because He knows our need.  For those who were around back in 2002-03 when we were building the current Sunday school building, God did a similar miracle at the time.  He sent us several hundred Sony Vaio computers as a donation and through the selling of those computers, we made a profit of about $500,000.  He just put that money in our lap and I believe He is doing the same thing right now through this contest.

This is your chance to be part of a great work by the Hand of the Lord.  Go vote for Good Shepherd Christian Academy 5 times and then spread the word to everyone you know.  I have no doubt that if we all put our hands together on this and then put those united hands in the Mighty Hand of our God, we’ll see something big happen…

How to Vote

1. Go to www.facebook.com/kohls
2. Click on “Vote Now”
   1. If prompted to “LIKE” the organization click on the option to “LIKE”
   2. If prompted to “ALLOW” access to your information click the option to “ALLOW”
3. Click on SEARCH SCHOOLS and type in Good Shepherd Christian Academy
   1. a.  Make sure to choose the Good Shepherd Christian Academy located in FAIRFAX VA
4. Once chosen, then click on “Cast A Vote”
5. When done, remember to go back and cast your 4 remaining votes as well
6. Go back and place another 5 votes for St. Clement Coptic Orthodox Christian Academy (another school the Coptic Church has in Tennessee).
7. Pass this message along to everyone you know

I wanted to share something I recently read in “On Living Simply” by St. John Chrysostom.  It amazes me how applicable this 4th century wisdom is to today’s politics (and many other aspects of our lives in the 21st century)!   Enjoy……

Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. Worse still, the rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold form the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first – and then they will joyfully share their wealth.

-St. John Chrysostom

Budget Caclulator- Mint.com

Dave Ramsey on How to Get out of Debt

Stealing a page from #citrt (Church IT Round Table) playbook, I setup a 24/7 chat room we can use to discuss Orthodox Christianity and any other related topics.

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=orthodox

#orthodox on freenode

IRC Primer

I use xchat on Windows and Linux as an IRC client…

Login and we will go from there.

After the worst earthquake in a long time, Haiti needs your prayers first and foremost.  If you would like to support organization that do work there, here is few good places to start learning about them.

• Consumer Reports Money Blog – Haitian earthquake relief: What to know before you donate
• Good Intentions Are Not Enough – The DOs and DON’Ts of Disaster Donations

• International Orthodox Christian Charities – Relief for the Beleaguered People of Haiti
• Bread for the World – How to Help in Haiti
• Compassion International – Haiti Earthquake Response Fund
• Convoy of Hope
• Samaritan’s Purse
• Squashed – Responding to the Haiti Earthquake

I am sure most of my Coptic Orthodox Readers have heard about the StMarkDC Graduate Passion Retreat, but for the rest of you who haven’t this is not the event to miss!  The winning entry to the video contest says it all…

The retreat is from February 19-21, 2010 and will be held at Sandy Cove in North East, Maryland.

This retreat will prepare you for Holy Week and change your life if you let it. Discussions will be given by Bishop David, Father Bishoy Andrawes, Father Anthony Messeh and Father Paul Guirgis.

Registration Information and details at http://www.stmarkdc.org/en/gradretreat and on Facebook.

From the Drupal/F1 project page…

This project’s goal is to create a solution for integrating Drupal with the Fellowship One Church Management System (ChMS).

Use the chipin widget here to help make this project happen. When the chipin amount is reached, development will begin. The development approach will be incremental, so once the base module is developed we will be adding features as time goes along.

The chipin here will fund the following features:

• Base Drupal/F1 integration for both Drupal 6 & Drupal 7
• The core work will basically get Drupal talking to the F1 database, doing core API integrations.
• The initial focus will be on user integration. User accounts from Fellowship One will be integrated into the Drupal user database. This includes basic profile information as well as login and site access.

Once these features are complete, more will be added. Next stages will focus on event integration and registrations.

Many thanks to Rob Feature and Matt Farina for getting this going.

Kaweem, a good buddy of mine and extreme gadget aficionado has recorded an awesome 3-part video review of Google’s Nexus One.

Google announced support for push email for Gmail and Google Apps User today via ActiveSync. The feature is already active and works well. Google now offers a somewhat complete mobile sync solution supporting contacts, calendar and email. Syncing is supported on Windows Mobile, iPhone and S60 platforms, Google Android already supported push Gmail.

Push mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile: the choice is yours

I know I am long overdue for an update on what’s been going on with OrthodoxSermons.org, we launched the new site on July 12th.  The team at Mustardseed Media did a wonderful job and we are continuing to work with them for additional features on the site.

One of the features I am most excited about on the new site is the ability for other Orthodox Churches to easily upload their sermons, once uploaded those sermons can be embedded back on the church site.

For the techies who may be interested, we are currently hosting the site on a Virtual Private Server at Slicehost and and all the media is stored on Amazon S3.