Part 1

Part 2

“Beyond the Gates of Splendor”

This is an abbreviated version of the story of missionary pilot Nate Saint and fellow missionaries Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Jim Elliot who went to Ecuador in 1955. They went to help the Auca Indian tribe, which faced extinction at the hands of the oil companies and each other. The songs are by Steven Curtis Chapman – this was showed originally at one of his concerts. (Jim Elliot was the husband of Elisabeth.)

I just sent a copy of Cara’s CD to one of the people who ran the Perspectives class that she took last year who requested a copy so that she could play it for the class. Perspectives is a class that’s offered all over the U.S. and teaches people about christian missions. One of the songs that’s on Cara’s CD – They Walk On – was written when she was taking the course.

The first verse of the song:

“There is a lady at the jungle’s edge/
she has a toddler in tow and a calico dress.”

The full lyrics to the song are here, just click the “lyrics” button next to the song name. And you can hear a snippet of the song here.

It turns out that “Calico” isn’t a term that is familiar to everyone. Chris (my husband) heard the song and thought that it said “Calico Dreads” – he is from Jamaica, after all, so maybe he can be excused because of that? If you want to know more about calico, you can read up on it here.

Back to the song, the verse is based on the life of Elisabeth Elliot, whose husband, Jim, was killed while a missionary in Ecuador in 1956. After he was killed, she WENT BACK to the people who killed him, and spent two years with them.

That kind of forgiveness is unbelievable to me.

Here’s the screenshot of the Web page right now. Check out the second listing! GEEZ!

I am still working on getting the final Website up for Fat J Records. But I have the design and the URL…it’s just getting the final pieces up there and live that I’m waiting for.

I’m not sure if you know how getting a URL and putting a site up online works. But what happens is that you buy the URL (also known as a domain name) from a company that sells domain names – the one that I use is GoDaddy.com. (I recommend them, they’re good. And there are a lot of bad domain name firms out there, so be careful if you plan to buy a URL!)

Anyway, when you’re waiting to put your new design up on that URL, they “park” that domain for you – meaning that no one else can buy it because I own it. But when it’s sitting there, waiting for me to use it, GoDaddy runs ads on the site so that if someone happens to go to that page and clicks on a link, GoDaddy makes a little bit of cash.

But the links that are up there right now are hilarious. Cara pointed this out to me last night. Next post will have a screenshot.

So I finally took the plunge and showed Cara the site. I was nervous. She is picky and especially so when it’s something about her. I must have given her 100 disclaimers before sending her the link…”It’s not FINAL yet. It isn’t THAT GOOD yet. You might not like parts of it, but give it a try. You know I am just doing it really fast, right” I mean, I probably made her think that it was going to be totally embarrassing and she was going to have to fire me and Fat J Records on the spot. But something surprising happened.

She liked it.

I am relieved. Now I just hope that all of YOU like it, too!

If you ever go to a country that speaks Kirundi, here’s a link to some common phrases.

• Cara: I met a guy at Walgreen’s today. I went up to him and said hi because I could tell he was from Africa. I asked him where he was from and he said Uganda. So I told him that I was in Burundi (because it’s close to Uganda) and he was sooo happy.
• Me: That’s cool.
• Cara: Then I said a greeting to him in Kirundi [the language of Burundi], Amahoro, and he was even happier.
• Me: That’s the greeting?
• Cara: Yeah, it means something like peace. So then he said “Amahoro something or another,” some long greeting that he said back to me, something in Kirundi that I didn’t understand.
• Me: So how did you respond?
• Cara: “Si.” Because I always start speaking spanish in foreign countries.

TuneCore gives every artist that uses its services their own page. Follow this link to see Cara’s.

Can you see the special marking that makes this the “collector’s edition?” (Sorry if this picture is too small to see…it definitely might be!)

I am in the process of trying to order more CDs – we are nearly out of the first batch (thanks for buying, everyone!) and so I need to get more. We have a great company that presses the CDs for us – called TuneCore – but we are having all kinds of issues getting this second batch printed. All these issues are stemming from the fact that the first batch of CDs had two issues with them that we are trying to correct with this print run.

The first issue was that the song names weren’t showing up when someone put the CD in their computer. And we wanted to fix that issue. Turns out, that problem is a result of something that I didn’t do on our end (registering the songs with this company called Gracenote). The good news is that once I correct that issue, everyone will see the song names show up – even people who bought the first batch of CDs.

But those of you who got one of the original – special edition, we call them – CDs, will always know who you are by one small error that’s on the back of the CD. Can you guess what it is?