Sharing thoughts

I love talking. Sometimes I am talking and think, "you know, I am probably annoying the heck out of this person listening to me ramble on." But then I keep talking.
But sometimes talking things out is necessary. Too many people try to keep things bottled up. Talking and writing things out gets thoughts out of your mind for other people to think about and advise you on. I have lots of ideas and too many times they just stay ideas in the mind that I long to get out. Writing has always been a good way to get them out, but talking has been as well. Sometimes we think that no one cares about our ideas or our thoughts or worries. Of course, God cares about them, and so many other people care as well. I think we underestimate how much our friends care about us sometimes. We think that we cannot share because no one will care. I do not think that is true. I love to hear from other people. I love to listen or read people's ideas or people's struggles, whether it be just to listen, or to offer advice. One of my favorite things to hear about are people's dreams for what they want to do in their life. I have one friend who is working on getting Christian radio stations up and going in places where they don't have them, another who wants to teach kids about baseball and God through camps, another who wants to teach non-violent communication through blogging, a few who want to plant churches and others who want to do all kinds of things. Don't keep your ideas, thoughts or worries bottled in, but be sure to share them with God through prayer and with those close to you or with me. I would love to hear about them and help you in your walk with God through life as much as possible.

Video idea

So I thought of a video idea a while ago and when I told Sarah her eyes kind of just rolled. She is not too into video ideas as I am. But I thought that I would write a little here about it and actually I think that I am going to start recording more ideas on this blog to see what people think.
So we did a day in the life of video that was pretty fun to do. I think most people liked it too and it gave a good idea of what we are up to here in South Brazil. So I want to do another one when we get to the Amazon. Only this time I want to use a bunch of movie quotes. So I will try to collect a bunch of lines from movies to put into the script of the Day in the Life video. But I won't say what movie they are from. I will just have as many as I can put into it. Then I will post the video and have a competition. Whoever sends me the most exhaustive list of quotes, who said them in what movie, will win a prize to be given on furlough, or at some point.
What do you guys think? Good idea/bad idea?

Another Crazy Idea

So I get all kinds of crazy ideas in my head and this idea keeps coming back to me often. It has to do with supporting missionaries. So many missionaries are under-supported (not us, Praise the Lord). The average for a missionary to raise support is around 4 years. That is a lot of time. So what is a way that we could raise more money for missionaries; or use the money we have wisely?
What if we supported missionaries the way some of us plan to support ourselves, or our kids going to college, or retirement? With real estate. I have written out a big dream plan using millions of dollars, but let's say that we start out small. One church or a couple churches could buy a foreclosed house or condominium. For a mission trip, church members could go to this house (that is actually in their area) and fix it up. The electricians, plumbers, real estate agents, painters, landlords etc... could all use their gifts and talents to fix up a house and to manage it while renting it out. The money received from renting could go towards supporting missions. So here is what the financial investment looks like: 50-60,000 to buy the home; 5-10,000 for materials to fix it up; free manual labor from church members; the return would be around 700 dollars a month (depending on the real estate prices in the area), so $8400 a year. Well before 10 years, the church would already have reached their initial investment, plus have that real estate value still. The church could have the option to sell the real estate at any time and possibly buy two pieces of property with what they make and do it again.
Churches could also go in on it together. For example, I have several supporting churches in certain towns that could get together and do mission trips together fixing up these houses.
So, I have told this idea to a few people and most of them think it too risky. What are some of you all's initial thoughts?