Father Dave’s Monday Missive – July 2nd, 2012

Hi guys,

I get the feeling that punctuality is never going to be one of my assets.

I’m always scrambling to make appointments on time.
Church always starts 10 minutes late.
And I never seem to be able to publish my ezines on time.

And I know I wrote to you last week, telling you about the competition, which was about to be launched in the ezine.

And I know I said that I’d have it all completed by the end of the week and … now it’s Monday.

 

So …

 

I’ve decided that rather than try to do the impossible and get everything running to schedule,

I’ll start sending our regular ‘Monday Missives’ and just keep you in the loop on what and where we’re up to here.

The Competition

Fighting Father Jim tells me that the competition is ready to go!

The only problem is that I have no idea how it works yet.

I do know the competition page: http://how2changetheworld.com/contest/

And I do know the prize – your own personalised version of our spectacular arcade game –http://www.father-dave.org  – where it will be you with the gloves on, you doing the punching, you making the smart remarks, etc.

The purpose of the competition will be to promote my ‘How 2 Change the World’ eCourse (http://www.how2changetheworld.com and I think the way it works is that every time you ‘tweet’about the course or ‘like’ it on Facebook, or tell the world about it in some other way, you get points, and the person with the most points after one month wins!

Anyway, I’ll confirm all this with you ASAP and let you know any other rules that you need to know, but you may well be able to work it out for yourself from the competition page and get a head start!

The Member site (www.fighting-fathers.com)

I must be frank and tell you that while the eCourse is a lot more than a sales package, I do refer to the member site regularly in the course and I don’t hold back in extolling its virtues.

Indeed, I am hoping that more people taking the eCourse will result in more members forwww.fighting-fathers.com

This is in fact my long-term survival strategy.

Members pay $10/month to be a part of www.fighting-fathers.com.

My estimate is that by the time we get 200 paying members we’ll be able to cover our monthly online costs.

At the moment we continue to run at a significant loss and can only keep going because we’ve had some generous sponsorship.

I mention this here because a lot of people have asked how best to support our work.  The answer is very simple: sign up as a paying member to www.fighting-fathers.com.

And be assured that if we do end up ever making a profit from our online activities, none of it will go into my pocket.  On the contrary, it will be funnelled into our offline work – the Fight Club, the Bush Camp, the Youth Centre, etc.

Fighting!

This is taking up a lot of my energy at the moment, which might seem odd for a Parish Priest, but we have four professional boxers in our church, and all of them seem to have fights coming up!

Big Solomon Haumono (who is on the staff of our Youth Centre) fights in Auckland, New Zealand, this Thursday. I fly to Auckland on Wednesday.

Solomon Egberime (known affectionately around here as ‘little Solomon’ [for obvious reasons if you know both men]) fights the following week – Friday July 13^th – in Melbourne.

He’ll be defending his Australian Junior-Welterweight title, and it will be my privilege to be in his corner too.

The dark horse in the bunch is Lovemore Ndou – another beautiful Christian man who has won two world titles already but would like to make a comeback and be the first 40-year-old lawyer to win a world title!

I don’t have any confirmed details regarding Lovemore’s pugilistic activities at this stage but … ‘watch this space’! 😉

I should mention too that I’m hoping to have some more fights myself soon. Indeed, I may get an opportunity in the next few weeks.

And I only just found out about some world boxing championship for us over-50’s-fighters that’s apparently being held in Kansas City, Missouri in the first week of August.

It’s probably implausible for me to try to get there at this stage, but you never know! 😉
Syria

The other thing that continues to weigh on me, of course, is the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East – Libya, Israel/Palestine, and of course, Syria.

The ongoing disinformation campaign regarding Syria depresses me.

The rebels continue to target Christians and expel them en masses from their homes and villages, yet the Western media continues to depict them as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, trying to bring down the wicked prince!

I won’t go into further details here but if you want to hear some perspectives that you won’t get through the mainline media, look at some of the articles and videos I’m recommending through my Twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/fatherdave).

The Video

And I mustn’t close without giving credit to Fighting Father Denning,

who did a magnificent job putting together a video compilation of all the action from our 120-round Box-a-thon.

I’m still waiting to get official confirmation from the Guiness people that I’ve set a new world record, but at least now I’ve got a world-class video record of the event!

It’s on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocgD6GF1g5c

Please share it with your friends.

OK. That was a loooooong Monday missive! :-0

May the Lord bless and strengthen you for the work to which you have been called

Dave

dave@fatherdave.org
www.fatherdave.org