After several years of plotting and dreaming and several months of tweaking and tuning, I’m excited to let you now about Steph’s new photography website.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, cruise on over there and have a look around… heck, schedule a photo shoot while you’re at it!

And if you’re feeling especially generous, give her official facebook page a quick ‘like’ and point your facebook friends to the website.

And if you REALLY want to help her get going, buy your favorite print from Steph’s new online store.

You can also check out the new blog and subscribe to stay informed as she posts new content!

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2011/04/14/announcing/feed/ 0 http://www.therieslands.com/2011/04/01/pregnancy-support-services-fundraiser/ http://www.therieslands.com/2011/04/01/pregnancy-support-services-fundraiser/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:51:14 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=5325 One of my favorite things about our church is that we are always looking for ways to be involved with serving our community.

Events like ServeRDU are designed specifically to build intentionality into how we interact with the world and put Jesus on display.

This month, the Summit church is partnering with Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest through an event called 4,000 Steps.

Our small group has formed a team with the goal of raising $1,000 by the end of the month.

This is where you come in:

There’s already a slick little website setup where you can contribute to this goal. If every reader of this blog this month gave just 10 bucks, we would blow our goal out of the water!

AND if you sign up to give a repeating monthly gift, it will be doubled by an anonymous donor (and that isn’t code for me and Steph). That means that your $10 per month commitment would add up to $240 towards the goal this year!

So, please give it some thought, and when you’re ready, head on over to this link and click “support Zack”.

Thanks!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuohmD4Ajk8

Three weeks ago, Osh, Kyrgyzstan was a very large city with a very large population of Uzbeks, a people group very dear to my heart.

Today, a significant portion of the city lies in ruins. Hundreds are dead, and tens of thousands have fled the city.

Many Uzbeks have gone back to Uzbekistan, where it is much more difficult to reach them with the message of the Gospel.

My dear friends and former teammates were living in Osh. They are safely back in the states, but very uncertain of their future. It is possible that their whole neighborhood has been burnt to the ground.

Please pray with me that God will use this to advance the cause of the Gospel in Central Asia.

The article I just stumbled over begins:

WHEN her baby died soon after delivery, Gulbahor Zavidova, 28, a poor farmer’s wife, longed to be pregnant again. After months of trying she and her husband visited a doctor who told her she could never have another child because she had been sterilised.

The procedure had been performed immediately after she gave birth, by doctors who did not ask her consent. On learning she could not bear children, her husband left her.

“Not a day passes without me crying,” she said. “I was outraged when I found out what they had done. How could they do such a horrible thing without asking me?”

According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women like Zavidova have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.

Uzbek sources say the measure was ordered by Islam Karimov, the president, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years. The policy is aimed at keeping down the country’s poor population — with 28m people, it is Central Asia’s most densely populated state.

I think something about our demoralized American sense of reality will tempt us to assume this is some kind of over-dramatization or over-simplification. But it isn’t. I saw the corruption of the Uzbek government for just shy of a year while I lived there, and I have no problem believing this.

It’s a dark, hopeless place with a dark, murderous, and thoroughly corrupt government.

Please pray for them with me.

Remember this series of posts from several months ago?

I wrote about the book “Religion Saves (and 9 other misconceptions)” by Mark Driscoll, head pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

The book is based on the sermon series by the same name (which you can watch, listen to, or download for free).

Well, this month, like every month, ChristianAudio.com is giving away an audio book, and this month it’s the audio version of ‘Religion Saves’! It’s completely free!

Just follow this link during the  month of February, and you can download the book in mp3 form!

I especially recommend the book for those who consider themselves to be skeptics or opponents of Christianity. I think the book does a great job of clearing up several common misconceptions about the teaching of the Bible.

If you get it, please let me know what you think of it!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtFENgBUllA

This is the trailer for a documentary that was recently released called “Collision”.

Here’s the synopsis, as copied from the ‘About’ page of the website:

COLLISION carves a new path in documentary film-making as it pits leading atheist, political journalist and bestselling author Christopher Hitchens against fellow author, satirist and evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson, as they go on the road to exchange blows over the question: “Is Christianity Good for the World?”. The two contrarians laugh, confide and argue, in public and in private, as they journey through three cities. And the film captures it all. The result is a magnetic conflict, a character-driven narrative that sparkles cinematically with a perfect match of arresting personalities and intellectual rivalry. COLLISION is directed by prolific independent filmmaker Darren Doane (Van Morrison: To Be Born Again, The Battle For L.A., Godmoney).

It is too often the case that any type of debate about faith becomes disrespectful, arrogant, and exaggerated. Based on the trailer and what I’ve heard, this looks like a significant exception to the rule!

Be on the lookout!

Have any of you seen this?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsDyAgKWA34

If you’re a high school senior or a college student — or that age — I would highly encourage you to consider checking out Passion 2010.

It’s a conference just for you, with music from Chris Tomlim, Steve Fee, and others, and life-changing teaching from Louie Giglio, Francis Chan, John Piper, Beth Moore, and others!

I went in ’05 and then Steph and I took a group in ’07 and both experiences left a significant mark on me.

The price is steep and the date falls right after new year, but it’s totally worth it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

That lizard in the photo above: it’s called the “Jesus Christ” lizard.

Seriously.

Why?

Because it can walk on water.

From the article:

They drop into the water and then run across it, earning the lizards their nickname, the “Jesus” or “Jesus Christ” lizard.

Exactly how they do so is revealed by the slow-motion, high-definition footage taken at 2,000 frames per second.

“Because they run so fast they create a bubble as their feet hit the water and then they push off from this bubble before it bursts,” says Simon Blakeney, a producer on the Life series who helped direct and film the footage of both reptiles.

“They can only run at that speed. If they were going any slower, for example, they wouldn’t stay upright, they would slip into the water and would have to swim.”

How insanely awesome is that?

And then there’s this little guy, the pygmy gecko:

Again, from the article:

At just 2 to 4cm long from head to tail, the Brazilian pygmy gecko (Coleodactylus amazonicus) could be battered by a raindrop and risk drowning in even the smallest pool of water.

So it has evolved to be essentially waterproof, which in turn allows it to walk across the surface of any puddle it encounters.

Can you imagine God’s creative process?

“This guy will be fun. I’m going to make him especially sensitive to water and then give him the ability to walk right across the top of it. Scientists will have a blast coming up with a theory on how this works…”

So awesome.

He made you, by the way…

You’ll find a couple of photos of Josiah, and if they get the most votes, we can use the cash to get his college fund started!

You can vote for as many photos as you want, and you can vote every day ’till mid-November.

If a couple-dozen of us vote every day, we can do this thing!

* There is one catch — and I don’t understand why they did it this way — but you have to create a Disney Family account in order to vote. But you only have to do it once, and you can un-check all the boxes that say “send me spam”.

Chris Tomlin, Louie Giglio, & Christy Nockels will be doing a Christmas tour this year!

As you can see, they completely neglected our great state of North Carolina when they planned this thing, but I’m still tempted to try and get to Virginia Beach.

Anybody interested?

My great, great friend and brother, Tim, launched a new website this week: www.PeaceMakersBlog.com

Tim has an amazing heart for muslims living in America, and his vision is for this blog is to serve as a place of respectful dialog between christians, muslims, and jews about our agreements and disagreements regarding the most important topic in the world: God.

Please take a minute and go show Tim some love on his first post, Abraham in the Holy Books.

Don’t forget to leave him a comment and subscribe!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v32UvLWH1pg

Next weekend, I’ll be in Durham with some of my favorite Bible teachers in the world.

I can’t wait!

There’s still room to sign up if you want to join me: www.Advance09.com

Moves like this are common in Uzbekistan, as the government, composed of murderers and thieves moves closer and closer to the soviet dictatorship that supposedly fell apart after the Cold War.

Here’s the abstract:

In a move that appears designed to give the Uzbek government total control over the legal system, officials in Tashkent are requiring all defense lawyers in Uzbekistan to reapply for licenses to practice law.

Many defense lawyers believe that those who refuse to do the government’s bidding will end up having the license renewal applications rejected. Uzbek judges and prosecutors are already appointed by the executive branch.

Pray for Uzbekistan.

Pray for God to open the eyes of those who are lost.

Pray for God to tear down or reform the corrupt, broken leaderhship.

Pray for God to have mercy.

And thank Him that He allowed you to be born in a better place…

I had just returned from being overseas for almost a year, and Steph was in the process of heading overseas for a 2-year commitment, after 9 previous trips.

We decided to pause for a length of time to start our family and learn how to be a good husband and wife, but one of our long-term dreams is still to move overseas and work together someday. And even though that seems ridiculously out of reach sometimes, we continue to pray and plan for it.

One of the biggest obstacles that we have is our finances. We have quite a bit of debt to pay off before we’ll be in the position to step back from a ‘typical’ American lifestyle and take a very small salary working in what we hope will be a third-world country.

So, I’m constantly looking for side projects. I do a bit of amateur photography, and have recently been busy designing and writing a handful of websites (here are a couple recent examples: EdgeDevelopment-inc.com and Acts242Church.com)

Are you looking for someone to put together a website for you? Have you been thinking about starting a blog or a small online store to take your hobby to the next step?

Why not get in touch with me and let me go to work for you?

Just shoot me an email at zack.riesland_at_gmail_dot_com and we’ll see what we can do!

It makes me sad that the Obama administration will probably completely ignore this because they ‘need’ to build an air force base there.

Here’s how the article kicks off:

On its final working day in office, the Bush administration re-designated eight countries as severe violators of religious freedom but waived possible sanctions against Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, officials said Monday.

The moves were reported to key members of Congress in late January but were not made public until Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department informed the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about them last week, State officials said.

On Jan. 16, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed documents labeling Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Sudan as “countries of particular concern” for abuses of religious worshippers. The Obama administration took office four days later.

Read the rest…