Monthly Archives: October 2007

How to be a beautiful woman

Posted on October 26, 2007 by | Leave a comment

“Recipes to be a beautiful Woman”

 

In talking about beauty, I think every woman loves to listen about. There are some articles in the newspaper or magazine that present some recipes how to be a beautiful lady. Of course it is not easy to get the beauty like the artist because we need to spend much money. So who is the most beautiful in this world? Artist? Princess of Diana? Who? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, please tell me who the most beautiful in this world?” and the mirror will say: “YOU!” Wow… you must be shock! While saying: “Could it be?” Of course you could be the most beautiful in this world. What is the recipes?

  1. Trust in the creator. God creates you as God’s beloved daughter as the image of God and build a web spider with others in a linkage of God’s perfect love.
  2. Have a pure and thankful heart. From this pure heart will shine an inner beauty in your life. To praise the Lord in all the time because you feel the grace of God.
  3. Have a positive thinking. Positive thinking will help you to be relax and have a nice smile and the eyes will shine care and positive action
  4. Having love of Christ. When you have something to share you will never think twice to give to the people who loves you even the person who hates you. Be a love and an instrument of love and God the source of love will give you more love. Love also show mercy and forgiveness especially for those who hurt you. Without forgiving others, your face will be worse, even worst cause there are some persons who live surround you but they cannot make you smile… even you will get worst. No body wants to have an ugly face but how will you smile if you meet your enemy and never forgive them?
  5. Having not only one favorite color, so you will love all skin color (black, white and yellow). see also the rainbow of life… Full of color in the midst of rain and sunny it will shape the beautiful color of rainbow.
  6. Smile with the crystal from the blue sky and you will see the widest world with blue peace….

So anytime you success to do this recipes, please ask God as your mirror: “Who is the most beautiful in this world?” God will say: “of course you are!”. This recipes is from me…

 

Benny Sinaga

 

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Posted in Life

Ramadhan with Moeslim in Indonesia

Posted on October 26, 2007 by | 2 Comments

“Idul Fitri 1428H”

 

Moeslim is the majority religion in Indonesia. This year, they celebrated Idul Fitri 1428H (Hijriah) exactly on 13-14 October 2007. There were some activities that they usually do. During one month before Idul Fitri, they are fasting. At the night before the day of Idul Fitri, they are moving around the down town for shouting: “Allah Hu Akbar” means God is great. They praise their God (Allah) because Allah has given them a victory during the fasting month. This fasting month is called as “Ramadhan”. They believe that Ramadhan is the most important month, holiest month and full of blessing because they can fight with their body desires. On Idul Fitri, Moeslim people usually visit their parents’ home or their relatives’ home. They gather together to forgive each other and celebrate it with some delicious food. Other do a charity action: like to visit orphanage or to give some food for street children or the marginal people. On the other side we can see also the phenomenon that non-Moeslim people also greet them to show their respect. We can see some people shake hands one to another. Of course on that day (Idul Fitri) they celebrate it with worship together in the mosque and shout “Allah hu Akbar!”

 

Benny Sinaga

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Posted in Life

Theology and Human Rights

Posted on October 24, 2007 by | 4 Comments

Why should I care about human rights abuses in a country far, far away?  Why should I care about human rights abuses in my own country if they aren’t directed at me?

Many of us have probably heard faithful people ask these questions, whether it be about Sudan, Palestine, or Burma, to name a few.  Maybe some of us have even asked these questions ourselves.  How would you answer?

Is there a connection between theology and human rights?  Do certain faith traditions (Lutheran or others) have a certain understanding of a link between the two?  Does your faith compel you to act in a certain way when you witness human rights violations?

These have long been important questions that faithful people have struggled with.  If we do recognize a link between the two, what should we do?  Should we pray, send money, engage in advocacy work, educate others, or stand in solidarity some other way?  Should we advocate that our own country intervene, either miliarily or otherwise?

This post is more about asking these questions and hearing some of your responses.  I myself struggle to answer some of these questions, and also to articulate my feelings to others.  We cannot deny that we continue to witness and experience many human rights abuses, in our own countries and abroad.  And so the quesiton is, what should we do?

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Posted in Faith, Justice, Life

Engage: LWF Global Training for young leaders

Posted on October 24, 2007 by | 1 Comment

How can young people change their churches? What can they contribute? What is really important to them? How can they learn to gather other young people to effect change?

“Engage: LWF Global Training for young leaders” is going to address these questions and hopefully answer a few. The program will work with the theme of the next LWF General Assembly “Give us today our daily bread” and will explore what this means for young people in diverse contexts.

It is an ambitious program in three phases:

1. Four regional meetings train young leaders from LWF member churches in leadership through bible study, workshop sessions and encounters. These meetings are going to take place in Asia/Pacific, Africa, Latin and North America, and finally Europe.

2. Local level. The young leaders return home and implement an activity in their home churches together with local youth.

3. Global Meeting. The participants are stewards for the LWF General Assembly in Stuttgart 2010. After the assembly, there is going to be a global debriefing meeting where the nearly 50 participants share their experiences with each other and get some additional training.

The first regional meeting is going to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, March 13-19, for the member churches in Asia/Pacific. Applications from Asia/Pacific are invited before January 15, 2008. You find all the necessary information here. In order to apply you need the endorsement of one member church of the Lutheran World Federation in Asia/Pacific. Only the head office can issue such an endorsement. Here you find further information and the application form.

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Posted in Asia/Pacific, Church, Ecumenism, Faith, LWF, Youth, Youth Ministry, Youth participation

India and Dignity

Posted on October 19, 2007 by | 1 Comment

A few days ago, I visited India and participated in an National Ecumencial Youth Workshop “Youth, Dignity and Spirituality” in Jeypore, Orissa. I was the first time in India and it is really a fascinating country (I even gained some weight because of the great food).

Angelious Michael, the energetic youth secretary of the Jeypore Evangelical Lutheran Church, organized not only the youth workshop but also the celebrations for the 125th anniversary of the Jeypore church. In the workshop, he brought together young participants from most Lutheran churches in India and some ecumenical friends. I enjoyed very much the discussions and conversations. In my presentation, I spoke about how the concept of “human dignity” became the basis of human rights and how we find the basis of human dignity in God’s love for us.

In our discussions, we came up with a definition of “human dignity” that I consider quite helpful: “Human dignity is the right to be respected.”

In groupwork, two topics came up that I found most interesting:

- Dignity and gender. Some young women in the group pointed out that the very fact of distinguishing the genders and assigning specific roles to one gender threatens the dignity of one gender. To be more specific: If the society tells young women exactly how they have to behave they are not really respected for who they are. They are only respected if they limit themselves to a maybe narrow understanding of what it means to be a woman.

- Dignity and displacement. In the Indian state of Oriss, there were several large industrial projects. The industry claimed large areas of inhabited land. With government approval and only a small financial compensation in their hands, farmers had to leave their land and had nowhere to go. Many of these often illiterate or at least poorly educated people are dependent on the care of others.

There were a lot of others issues. I am going to write about one or two in an upcoming post.

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Posted in Asia/Pacific, Church, Ecumenism, Enviroment, Faith, Justice, Life, Poverty, Poverty/Affluence, Youth, Youth participation

LWF youth interns for 2008 chosen

Posted on October 18, 2007 by | Leave a comment

It was an exciting process. During the last two weeks my colleagues and I were browsing to a lot of good applications for the internship in the Lutheran World Federation for 2008. It was a tough call to make but now it is decided. We are going to have three interns:

- Rolita Machila from Zambia will work with the Department for Theology and Studies.
- Chan Cheon Mun from Hong Kong, China, will work with the HIV and AIDS Desk in the Deparment for Theology and Studies.
- Gloria Andrea Ayala Porras is going to work together with Adrienne and me at the Youth Desk.

I am sorry that many did not get the chance to come here to Geneva. But they are having a chance next year.

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Posted in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Church, Ecumenism, Latin America/Carribean, Life, LWF, Youth, Youth Ministry

Youth Liaison – Connect with LWF

Posted on October 3, 2007 by | 4 Comments

This week, we sent out invitations to the member churches of the LWF to nominate Youth Liaisons. There were youth liaisons to the LWF for quite some time. The original idea was to have somebody the LWF Youth Desk can send letters to directly and this person would be responsible to share this information with the other youth / young adults in this church.

Today, I don’t write many letters anymore. I write mostly emails and it really does not matter whether I send them to five, ten or 700 people. Therefore, today it is much better that we are in contact with more people directly through this blog and through email newsletters.

But why do we still need youth liaisons then? In the new nomination period from 2008-2010 the task of a youth liaison has changed. It is not anymore about distributing letters but it is more about connecting with other young people around the world.

In order to do that, we are testing online consultations as way to discuss issues and to recommend further action for the youth desk, the LWF at large and other entities. The online consultations are going to take place probably twice a year only for a limited time of a few weeks. Therefore, the task of youth liaisons has become mainly to gather the opinions and ideas of the youth and young adults in their church.

I am really excited about this new possibility to connect with even more young people from Lutheran churches around the globe. If you are a young member of a Lutheran church you can help by asking your leadership whether somebody has been nominated. It would be great if many youth organizations and youth structures are part of the process.

Here you can find out more about the youth liaisons and contact persons.

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Posted in Church, LWF, Youth, Youth Ministry, Youth participation