RAISING THE PHOENIX (links corrected)

Yesterday's post linked you to my blog, PHOENIX OF HIROSHIMA which tells the story of our family yacht from the laying of her keel to her lying at the bottom of the Sacramento River 60 years later.

A growing group of us hope to get the Phoenix, a boat famous from anti-nuclear voyages during the Cold War, up and sailing again by 2020. Here is our latest newsletter to people interested in helping or just in following her progress. If you want to be on that mailing list, write me at hiddeninjesus@gmail.com.

   Dear Phoenix Phriends:

Things have been crazy here, but crazy good. We have had questions from some of you that involved lengthy answers and helpful advice/ suggestions from others, all of which we have responded to directly. As a result, things are coming together rapidly. We have a non-profit organization willing to be an umbrella and project manager for our project, handling accounting for funds and are considering that. Phoenix owner Naomi Reynolds has given me permission to make decisions like this one and is even willing to turn over ownership of the boat "if necessary" to an "appropriate organization." For instance Golden Rule is owned by Veterans for Peace, not an individual or family. That will help with fund-raising. TO DO: First, ASAP, we have to get the boat on top of the water instead of under it. That involves: 1. Getting an appraisal of her current condition. Divers went down in 2010 and you can read their appraisal at http://phoenixofhiroshima.blogspot.com/2010/05/phoenix-open-letter-from-new-owner-capt.html We need divers to go down and make a new appraisal.  2. Then we need her raised and towed to a dock. In 2010 the estimate for that job was $17,000. Now the estimate is $25,000 but I think that includes towing her all the way to Shipwright Co-op shipyard in Washington. Second, we have to decide on a shipyard for the reconstruction. Golden Rule was restored at Zerlang and Zerlang's shipyard in Eureka, CA. Zerlang's gave Golden Rule free parking for the 5 years it took to restore her. (She also had LOTS of volunteer labor.) But Leroy Zerlang isn't inclined to start another huge project like that with the Phoenix. Shipwright Co-op in Port Townsend, Washington, is ready and willing to do the work if we can get the Phoenix there. They expect it to take two years and cost from $500,000 to $1 million. Third, we have to get her to the shipyard. My nephew Tony is a long-time, long-distance trucker. He has contacts with companies that transport boats that size. He can get an estimate when we know where to take her. Fourth, we have to provide plans of the boat for the shipyard. This will be easy. We have copies of the plans of the boat, not the original plans but plans Tomas Daly had drawn up when he bought the boat from Dad in 1972 or 3. He did a massive restoration at that time. (I think he paid $20,000 for the boat and spent $45,000 on the restoration.) Originally the boat had a cockpit way aft with a tiller. Later Dad put in a wheelhouse farther forward and a wheel. Also, my mom took slides of every stage of the building of the Phoenix and Jerry has digitalized those slides. Every step of the original process was done BY HAND. You can read about it at http://phoenixofhiroshima.blogspot.com/2016/06/phoenix-time-place-and-loved-one-1st-of.html and in the first installment of Dad's article in the Saturday Evening Post, "We Crossed the Pacific the Hard Way" at http://phoenixofhiroshima.blogspot.com/2016/06/legible-text-part-1-we-crossed-pacific.html So it should be pretty straightforward to get the boat restored. Of course Ted and I remember what the layout was like below decks and can give input. We also have some photos of the galley, the main cabin, etc. Several of us on this list are going to try to meet in person soon to discuss all this and at least narrow down options. Setting up a fund-raising plan can be done concurrently. Any other comments, questions, suggestions are welcome! We have added a few people to the mailing list. I'll send out a revised one soon. Blessings, Jessica Extra Ballast, Phoenix of Hiroshima, 1954-64 (and Jerry, too) FYI: The first three newsletters were: 1. PHOENIX OF HIROSHIMA - Proposed restoration 2. RAISING THE PHOENIX: Practical Issues 3. RAISING THE PHOENIX: "What are you asking them to work toward?"

PHOENIX OF HIROSHIMA (link corrected)

Dear Friends,

I've been busy with an old blog lately, re-structuring it to share, in chronological order and without posts on other subjects intervening, my previously unpublished book   The Reynolds Family, the Nuclear Age, and a Brave Wooden Boat.

It's the story of the boat my dad built, Phoenix of Hiroshima, which became our home, took us around the world (1951-54), into the U.S. nuclear test zone in the Pacific (1958) and to the USSR (1961) to protest nuclear weapons. We had all kinds of adventures!


 

Jerry's quotable quotes

I told Jerry something and after a moment he said, "What did you say? I couldn't hear you cuz my ears were yawning."

Misting Morning (not just misty)

Today it was our turn.
We didn't just pass them on our walk,
on somebody else's lawn.
They came to our house,
meeting us on the street as we came home,
following us to our door.
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.
He stood guard while she ate
Ezekiel 4:9 breadcrumbs.
Sesame.

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

Tracking events and trends in Israel, the U.S., Russia and throughout the Epicenter (the Middle East & North Africa)

 

 May 27, 2016

Study finds 10 million Muslims have become followers of Christ since 1960.

(Washington, D.C.) — An unprecedented spiritual revolution is underway in the Islamic world.

From 1960 to 2010, the number of Muslims who have converted away from Islam and become true followers of Jesus Christ has skyrocketed, from fewer than 200,000 to some 10 million people. Amidst persecution and even genocide, the Church in the Middle East is growing in ways never seen in fourteen centuries of Islam. And there is now scholarly documentation backing up these numbers. . .

Read the rest at https://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/author/joelcrosenberg/

Can prayer really change history?

. . . Right now, the Gospel is sweeping the globe at a rate that is unimaginable. . . People’s hunger for the good news of the Gospel is reaching an all-time high. Across the planet followers of Jesus are increasing by more than eighty thousand per day! China now has more followers of Jesus than members of the Communist Party. In Africa the church is growing by thirty-four thousand every day. We are living during the greatest time of harvest ever seen in world history.

Avery Willis, the VP of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, reports as high as 70 percent of the total number of people who have been saved throughout world history, have come to Christ in the last hundred years. But get this: 70 percent of that number has been saved since 1945! Let me boggle your mind with one other layer of observation from this world mission’s expert: 70 percent of those saved since 1945 have been saved since 1990! That's how fast the Gospel is storming our world today.

What does that look like? In Nepal, just 2000 Christians were known in 1990; ten years later that number had grown to more than half a million. Cambodia has turned from a killing field to a mission field.  Cambodia claimed only 600 believers in 1990; there is a reported 200,000 today. In Korea during the 20th Century, the country advanced from being 2 percent Christian to about 29 percent Christian today. Ethiopia and East Africa are experiencing one of the greatest movements of God in history.

In Uganda alone, HIV/AIDS once claimed the lives of one-third of the population. The World Health Organization predicted the complete collapse of the Ugandan economy by the year 2000.But revival has come to that country. With the salvation of many has come a transformation in morals; AIDS is down to 5 percent. So great is this revival that one church alone went from seven in attendance to an average of 2000 in just two weeks! Currently, that same church has a membership of 22,000 and has planted 150 other churches.

In Ethiopia there is a small region where evangelists have seen 10,000 people come to Christ, but there is not even one pastor to shepherd them. This is just more evidence of why God is leading me to write a pastor’s training book and why Cornerstone is ready to provide the resources to train 9000 pastors serving 8 million believers.

In South Sudan, Dennis Neal reported that Cornerstone Church is funding scores of teams who are taking the Jesus Film to about a half million souls per year! Such explosive growth is hard for us to imagine.

In almost every quarter of the globe, Christianity is advancing...except for four primary areas: North America, Japan, Australia, and Western Europe. Guess what one of the common denominators is everywhere Christianity marches forward: Christians spend time in prayer together. Track what God is doing in Korea, in China, in India, in Eastern Africa and you will find behind-the-scenes prayer meetings. . .


From Cornerstone Church, Long Beach e-newsletter, Summer 2016

Tokens of His love

When He gives me health and sight and galaxies and food and Jerry and trips to Hawaii and good sleep, why do I still search out a single perfect rose, the song of a bird, or one dirty penny on the sidewalk as a token of His love?

Gender assignment (#3): A sex-change I would approve

My friend Sandra gave birth in her early twenties to one of the .05% of babies born as hermaphrodites (now called "intersex"). The baby had horrifying birth defects. Some of the organs, or parts of them, were on the outside, including reproductive organs. The nurse didn't even know what to tell Sandra when she announced, "It's a ---"

Everyone present in delivery was in shock--and Sandra stayed in shock for most of her life.

But the baby was alive, and it was her baby, so Sandra chose a name which could go either way: Dana.

The doctor insisted it was Sandra's responsibility to decide which sex to "make" the baby. The baby's father didn't stay to help. He couldn't face the decision, the situation, or fatherhood of such a baby, so he split. Sandra never saw him again.

With no one to consult and her mind locked in fear and confusion, she couldn't think. Her heart cried out, How can I make a decision like this? That's God's responsibility!  But she couldn't hear anything from God.

The doctor explained that it was easier to form female genitals than male. So Sandra authorized surgery, signing papers to have Dana be female. Within a year or so she adopted Dana out to a couple who received her lovingly. They kept her on the pills supplied by the hospital to provide or supplement Dana's female hormones.


Dana grew up never feeling like a girl. Kids at school taunted her mercilessly. As she entered puberty, through no fault of her own, her voice deepened. She developed facial hair and musculature that led kids to label her "butch" and worse. She was miserable. Suicidal.

Sandra would go see Dana sometimes but Dana was no longer her responsibility. And Dana's parents doggedly contined to give Dana the female hormones and refused surgery.

Then Sandra passed away and I have had no way to hear how Dana is doing. I want to tell "her" parents, "Dana's gender assignment at birth was male! No matter how you dress or doctor Dana, he is male. He identified as a male all along and puberty revealed it!  It's coded in his DNA. Let him become who he is!"

I can't speak for every sex change applicant--the vast majority of cases cannot be Biblically valid. I think the man we saw outside a theater the other day wearing a fluffy pink dress and pigtails had to have been programmed that way either by expectations or sexual abuse, by nurture not nature.

But in this case, in the face of all opposition I would stand by Dana's right to an operation to gain congruence with his gender assignment at birth

Gender assignment at birth (#2)

Last Sunday, our senior pastor Dr. Jerry Rueb, spoke out against the so-called "Bathroom Bill." At the end of his message, Praying with a Thankful Heart, from Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 1:3-11, he said, 

"Love that lasts is love that actually has some boundaries to it. Love that has all discernment. This is love that gets it, love that tells the truth and thinks about consequences to (actions).

"It is not loving to enable someone to continue in a harmful direction when you have the power to stop them. It is not loving to sit and be quiet and shut up when people believe something that is totally false. It's not loving to give in to evil just because standing up might be considered to be politically incorrect.

"And yet I meet Christians who (say), "I don't judge anyone!" That's not biblical. I hope you have more discernment than that. You'd better know the difference between good and evil because we have stuff happening around us that's flat-out evil.

"I'm talking specifically about a bathroom bill that came from the White House to the Justice Department to the Department of Education and threatens our school districts through Executive Order--to lose funds. Title 9. I read the document. It's disturbing to me.

"I'm going to go on record because I know I'm on live stream. This goes--anyone can watch this. I want you to know this is not a political statement and I am not a political hack nor do I get involved with the political side of things. But I can tell you this--I'll make myself very clear. Whenever anyone, I don't care if it's the president or the Congress--if anyone steps over the moral line, they're in MY territory. And I will speak out on it." 

And then he does. 

Listen to his reasoning and his plea at http://livestream.com/CCLB/Sundaylivestream/videos/124517005 (May 29, 2016) starting at 54:00.