Have fun C. Bongwater

I'm quite sure it's true, unfortunately. He got violently sick (due apparently to overexcitement) and passed away 11 days later from a brain hemorrhage complicated by pneumonia.

Yes, it has caused an especially huge splash here in Taiwan. The society (especially the young people portion) has evolved to become extremely entertainment-driven. Every weekend for this whole month now people have been packing the theatres to see this new phenomenon! And they call the depression symptoms "Avatar blue".

Love the quote from Randy Alcorn. Spot on!

I guess the impression that I got is to not let greed blind you to loving and respecting others or into destroying one thing to get to another. The point was that what existed in their world was really incredible (some cool network of things being connected in a whole "circle of life" sort of thing), but the miners just saw the mineral and were willing to destroy all the other stuff just to get to that.

This could look like choosing only to eat certain types of fish or seafood so as not to deplete our resources in the ocean, or choosing to eat locally grown foods, so as not to add to the pollution in transporting foods from far away, or in rotating crops and not just deciding to crow corn (that needs to be chemical processed to be edible) because the government will pay you extra money to do so, and in the process not allowing the soil to be replenished with the nutrients that would naturally happen through a rotation of various crops. There wasn't a super direct correlation, but in the movie they talked about listening and learning before just jumping in and taking.

It also felt like doing cross culture ministry. Stepping into a culture and setting aside your way of doing things and thinking to learn from others. Being open to different groups of people and not assuming you know everything.

It's interesting to me that these young men were all Christian (former) homeschoolers who came home agreeing the importance of the environmental movement and that big corporations and the military are power hungry and greedy. Makes me wonder about how easy it is for beautiful technology to get the intended message through.

Not that we don't need to work on the environment and I know military leaders can be imperfect but it was still amazing to me how easily the pagan message was accepted by homeschooled engineering and science students.