Visiting Joshua
Barb, Luke and I went to Joshua Gidado’s house Friday afternoon for a short visit, and got a good dose of en-couragement by this courageous young man. If you haven’t heard about him before (see previous post), Joshua suffers from severe osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bones) and has lived nearly his whole life in a child’s wagon. He has no use of his legs and minimal use of his tiny arms and hands. He relies totally on his family and friends for nearly every activity of life, from reading to eating and bathing.
For most of our visit, Joshua talked about the football (soccer) team he coaches. Yes, almost unbelievably, this man who cannot walk or even push himself in a wheelchair is an avid football fan and coaches a community team. He mixes exhortation and preaching along with coaching, believing that the lives of the players, the values they play by, and the example they give is more important than just winning games.
The team was recently invited to a tournament in Kantagora, many hours drive from Jos. Joshua told how the team raised money for the trip, including each of them paying 3000 naira, about two weeks’ salary for a laborer. They didn’t get to play much as they lost early in the schedule, but the association was so impressed by the team that they invited them to another tournament even farther away.
I asked Joshua how their team is different from others, how they would be noticed. He told me a few examples
- We stress sportsmanship and goodwill;
- We don’t lose our tempers and get abusive when referees make bad calls against us;
- We buy the other players minerals (soft drinks) if we can afford it, or drinking water
See why I say that Joshua en-courages us? He could be full of self pity and has plenty of reason to complain. I’d consider him a good example if he simply existed and had a good spirit. But he goes beyond that to an active service that is building bridges, making peace, and showing the world what God’s love is about. May I do even half as much as Joshua!
May 1st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I’m writing this to inform you about a project I am working on something that will help missionaries like you raise awareness and support. I am in the planning stages of launching a missionary news website (possible name is God’s World News) and I would like you to be part of it.
I’m a professional Internet marketer, SEO expert and web designer. I have been thinking for some time that there must be a way I can use my skills to further God’s kingdom. After doing some analysis, I discovered that although there are many missionary blogs and websites, there are not many that have been optimized correctly to get a lot of readership traffic. You are probably aware of this, but a couple of the most important ways to get a lot of traffic is by having a high Google (Google, because it gets the most search traffic) PageRank and by having new content – A LOT of new content.
That is were you come in, with the content. Before I launch the news website, I would like to get 150 (eventually, I hope to have even more than this number, but this would be a good start) missionaries around the world to agree to be “news journalists.” If you are interested, I would like you to be one of the 150.
If you choose to participate, I would need you to agree to provide at least 12 articles in a year’s time. The topic choice would pretty much be up to you. You could write about events in the country, challenges you are facing, tips for new missionaries, how God provided for your needs, and more. You can also submit videos and photos. I just ask that everything submitted is high quality and original. It’s fine if it’s been published in print before, but if the content is already on the internet, the news websites PageRank will be reduced. The reason I say a year is because that is the time period through which I will evaluate how well the idea is accepted and whether I should continue the project. Call it beta testing if you want But that is about the necessary time needed to make the website a success.
If successful, there would be thousands of hits a day on the website. You would benefit by having many thousands of people around the world read about how God is using you. Hopefully, some of these people would support you with prayers and/or finances.
If you are interested, please contact me by sending an e-mail to joe@josephkolb.info. Please let me know your name, the country you are working in, your missions name, your website, how many articles you would like to submit during this testing phase (12 or over), your contact information, your website, and any questions you have. Please provide as much of that information as possible as it will be hard to keep track of everyone if I have so many participants. Sometime after I get your e-mail I will contact you with more detailed article criteria.
I think that’s about it for now. Oh, yeah one more thing, I would like participants to add a link from their website (if they have one) or blog to the news website. In-links is another way that Google uses to establish PageRank.
Thanks in advance!
God Bless You!!
Joe<
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Wow! What an inspiring and challenging testimony. God bless Joshua!