Nike’s ad, “Write the Future” debuted a few weeks back and is absolutely stunning. It’s less of a commercial and more of a globe-spanning, 2.5 minute short film. It sucks me in every time I see it.
Adidas Originals’ ad, “Cantina 2010″ is phenominal. It debuted just a week ago, but has already racked up nearly three million views on YouTube. I don’t even want to spoil the premise or the details of this ad. You just need to see it.
Obviously, Nike & Adidas have set the bar ridiculously high, and although most other companies won’t reach the same heights, I’m curious to see what will emerge in great advertising over the next month of World Cup soccer.
]]>If you are in youth ministry (whether you are paid or a volunteer), I can’t recommend the conventions enough for the training, encouragement, and general soul nourishment that you’ll get while attending. I’ll be there running media in the big room sessions (for the first time as a contractor and not official YS staff) in both San Diego and Nashville and I’m stoked for it.
]]>I’ll start with our last day in Haiti. In conversations with one of the two Marassa tent communities, we had asked them what needs they had, and one of the answers that came back was that they wanted and needed prayer. So we offered to come back the next morning and spend time praying for the community and individuals from that tent city.
Now I’m going to take you all the way back to our very first day in Haiti. Before we had even crossed the border from the Dominican Republic into Haiti, we visited a field hospital that was caring for people injured in the earthquake. It was there that we met Roody. Previously, I posted a video of him singing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”. This is an extended clip featuring some of our conversation with him and showing a bit about our experience at the hospital:
]]>While in Haiti, we experienced a day of people dancing, singing, parading, and praising Jesus in the streets of Port-au-Prince. Here’s a short video to give you a small glimpse into what that was like:
]]>This is a community we spent some time in while in Haiti that had been displaced from their homes and were now living in tents in a field behind their former neighborhood. One of their main needs is for better tents and tarps. With the rainy season is starting in the next couple of weeks, their current “tents” (essentially sticks and sheets) won’t hold up for very long. For more information on how you can be part of helping Haiti, click here.
]]>Our second day in Haiti also happened to be the second of three national days of prayer and fasting that were happening all across Haiti that weekend. We had no idea that this would be going on when we scheduled and planned the trip.
It was incredible. Everywhere we went in Port-au-Prince, there were people overflowing out of the churches. We visited two gatherings but we must have seen dozens more. The first we visited was being held in a walled-off field and there must have been somewhere around 2,000 people there. The second probably had around 5,000 people. It was being held at a church, but the church couldn’t hold everyone so they had set up in an open courtyard next to the church. The church was actually being used as an overflow area! On top of that, people were crammed into alleyways and side streets all around the gathering.
At both gatherings there was preaching and praying and singing to God for hours upon hours.
]]>On our first day in Haiti, we visited a church/medical clinic that had been caring for injured survivors of the January 12 earthquake. While there, we met a woman named Michelle and heard her heartbreaking story. Her and her husband were some of the very first people we met after we crossed the border from Dominican Republic into Haiti; and through listening to their story and praying with them, the weight of pain, grief, and loss of the earthquake, as well as the hope and resilience of those that survived it, became very real.
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