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Breaking The Silence PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dan Nelson   
Sunday, 27 May 2007

We finally have internet access!  It came earlier this week and we are now able to update this site a little more frequently and also send out updates to our faithful prayer partners.  We are pretty excited about this.  Rather than try to recap the last several weeks, I think I'll just fill you in on our day today since it was a typical day for us.

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Botanical Gardens on our Cell Phone camera
We had decided to attend the church of a co-worker of mine.  Daniel and Kati go to a Brethren church in Zagreb, so we had asked them how to get there and what people typically wear.  This morning I grabbed my man-bag (the girls love to call it a purse) which has my passport, cell phone, language note pad, Bible, wallet, camera, and keys in it and left an hour early in case we got lost on the way.  We hopped onto the bus to Crnomeric and from there grabbed the number 2 tram into Zagreb.  We made it in 1/2 hour.  Since we had time to kill, we walked to the botanical garden which are free to enter and explored them briefly.  We had not planned on the botanical gardens but as we left, we all mentioned that they were a wonderful way to  start church.

The service was all in Croatian.  We are getting better at Croatian, but it is still very difficult to follow anything other than greetings and simple phrases.  Praise songs are great though, because we can pick up lots of phrases that are repeated over and over until we learn them.  One I caught this morning was "Ti si moj kralj!" which means, "you are my king".  It is an exciting moment when you can lean over to your family and say, "Hey that means you are my king."  However, it is a little frustrating when they all say, "Yeah, we know".  I'm getting used to that as well.

When it came time to take communion, we encountered another of those extra decisions we have to make a lot.  One cup was passed around to everyone and it was wine.  Do we give it to the girls or not?  Bonnie and had a quick discussion and made a call (I'll leave the decision up to you if you ever have to make it) just as the cup came by.  Unexpected things keep popping up in places we don't expect them.

As the sermon started I was thinking that my time here so far feels like surfing.  I have never actually surfed, but I often feel like I am on a little board on top of a huge wave that is constantly moving forward.  There are times of beauty when you relax and look around, and times of intense activity as you struggle with your board, knowing that the wave won't stop to let you get back on.  Even the falling in is not bad, but riding the board is a heck of a lot more fun than struggling to get back on to the board.

After church we relaxed a bit, and then I drove Bonnie to an empty parking lot so she could practice driving the stick shift and then Bonnie drove home for the first time in Croatia.  This was her first time to drive in Croatia.  The traffic here is more intense than in the States so it took her a little while longer to choose to drive.

Thats the day and it was actually very typical for us.  I am looking forward to the time when things like going to church are more of a routine process for us.  However, I am also thankful that we are here and acclimating to this new culture so well.  It is truly a blessing in the way God has orchestrated so many events around us to make this a smooth transition.  He is good.

 

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Progress Meter PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dan Nelson   
Saturday, 17 February 2007

Progress Meter Image Progress Meter is a Joomla module I created to allow a user to display a very simple vertical bar indicating a percentage of progress toward a goal.  It is very configurable and used on this site as our Support Meter.

It is released as open source and is available here or off the Joomla extension site.  If you use it on your site please post a comment on the Joomla extension site so I can the warm fuzzies of knowing it's used somewhere. 

Once you install Progress Meter, you can set the following

Progress Goal
Current Goal Level
Meter Border
Meter Background
Meter Foreground
Meter Text Color
Meter Height
Meter Width
Module Text
The target number
The current level of the target reached
The border color for the meter
The color for the unreached part of the goal
The color for the reached part of the goal
The color of the text for the percentage inside the meter
The height you would like the meter to be
The width for the meter
The text displayed alongside the meter

 

For support for this module, you will need to register for the site and then go to the Forums. 

Updated 02/21/2007

The following bugs were fixed:

  • Fix width descriptor to say width, not height.
  • Trap divide by zero error.
  • Fix percentile bar to not extend past module height.
  • Fix percent figure being written outside box on low percentages.  It now writes above the percent line until it fits below the percent line.

I also added one feature:

  • Added macro codes (#GOAL# and #C_GOAL#) to Module Text so user can display goal and current progress without changing the numbers in the text every time a new number is entered into the Current Goal Level.  Enter the goal and progress numbers as you want them displayed, use the macros in the module text, and they will display as you entered them.  Don't worry about entering $ signs into the Progress Goal or Current Goal Level fields.  The module strips those characters out to get just the numbers before doing any math.
You can use the module text field to display the Goal and Progress fields beside the vertical bar.  Also, you can enter html codes into the text.  I was able to embed a youtube video into the module, so if you try to embed a PayPal link and it doesn't work, let me know and I will see what can be done.
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Missionary Humor PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dan Nelson   
Tuesday, 07 November 2006
ImageI had a new experience today.  I have been making literally hundreds of phone calls in the past month or two as I have been trying to contact churches, verify addresses, and follow up on packets sent to churches.  Apparently I have fallen into a rut.  I just hung up on a phone call in which I said "Hi", and mentioned I was with SEND International and a ministry in Croatia.  There was a moment of silence followed by the pastor asking if I was a person or a recording!  Perhaps I ought to switch gears for a few minutes and stop the calling.
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