After returning from CPhI in Spain this year and a week of sun in the Dominican Republic in early November, it is hard to imagine that Thanksgiving is only a week or so away and Christmas is next month. Family is of course one of the most important aspects of our lives. What we do from 9-5 is in many cases a means to an end of supporting our families. So enjoy your families especially at this time of year as you remember the great and blessed country we have. A note regarding "our move" to new offices - not gonna happen. Our landlord finally decided to be reasonable - in fact more than reasonable and they made us an offer better than we would have realized had we moved. So we're staying put! 

The last time I wrote anything for this page was over a year ago when oil was $126 a barrel and we were about to head into turbulent economic times. Well, Ben and Hank saved the world and here we are climbing out of the other side of almost economic armageddon. One benefit if you will of the collapse in the real estate market has been a drop in the rental rates across the country - even here in New Jersey. We are taking advantage of this when our lease expires in January to move our office, just a short distance across the street here on Chestnut Ridge Road in Montvale, so the only thing that will change is the number "50" in our current address. We'll keep you updated through e-mails and this page. Hopefully, the move will not be too disruptive. We should not lose e-mail service during the transition but our phones may be down for a day. But even this will probably belimited to only a couple of hours due to the technology we all enjoy in the good ole U.S. of A. 

Almost every year since 1999 I have had the privilege to travel to Peru for 1-2 weeks during the summer to be involved in missionary work among the less fortunate of the world. We hike through the Andes Mountains for several days, visiting a different Quechua village each day. It's an exciting ministry and one that I have not grown tired of. We take toys and candy for the kids and, being a missionary trip, Bibles for the adults. We also show an evangelistic movie called The Jesus Film. This year the trip takes on a special significance. After 43 years of work by Wycliffe translators and local Quechua evangelists, the Huaylas Quechua New Testament was dedicated last August in Huaraz, the largeest town in the Callejon de Huaylas. (The photo above was taken from a scenic overlook at about 11,000 feet MSE.) This year, we will be distributing copies of it in the villages we visit. It is significant on two counts; it is The Bible and it is the only written document in the Huaylas Quechua dialect making it a very important part of their disappearing culture. Visit The Andes Blanket for more information.     

The windows in my office allow me a view into a swath of woods about 100 yards deep by several hundred yards long. At various times of the year, we have various animals that wander through the stands of hardwoods; deer, flocks of wild turkey, Canada geese or a lone Kildeer that returns every year to make a nest in the parking lot. It's an ideal place for songbirds, too and I have taken advantage of the proximity to nature to hang two bird feeders outside my windows. We all love to watch the goldfinches and the purple finches (photo above) come regularly through the summer. And in the spring, I always seem to get several male Rose-breasted grosbeaks right around May 4. Birds are a wonderful distraction from the "labor" that goes on in this office. And they are a reminder of the beauty of the simple things in God's creation that we often fail to notice. 

"Rescue Efforts Overwhelm China," is the headline on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. The gut-wrenching photo of two soldiers carrying an injured girl reminds me of my own two Chinese daughters. The official death toll at this time is almost 15,000 reports say it could reach as high as 50,000. Our Hong Kong office commented in today's e-mail that over HK$600 million has been raised for the Sichuan Earthquake Relief Fund and that this earthquake is "one of the worst in our history. Our prayers are with the survivors.    

After a long, gray winter that brought very little snow but more than its share of gloomy, damp days spring followed suit. Late March and early April continued the streak of chilly, damp weather. But then spring arrived. A week of 70s caused an explosion through the deciduous forests of northern New Jeersey. The flowers on the ornamental trees around our office were spectacular. Even the non-ornamental trees like the common red maple put on spectacular shows. Most of the flowers are gone now although the redbuds are still in full bloom.  

From my travels to China, I have come to be very attached to two Chinese girls, Wu Min Jian and Zhang Ai Ping. In fact, they are my daughters. Min Jian was adopted in Nanning in 2003 and Ai Ping in Guangzhou in 2005. They are a constant reminder of the people I have worked with for over 20 years. But of course, they are so much more. As the attention of the world is drawn to China this August because of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I can't help but laugh that we have a smaller version of "Chinese Olympics" every day in our home.    

For the past week, I have been the IT guy here. (That's the "information technology" guy.) I got fed up with our old ISP (Internet service provider) when, the last time I called them for technical support, I was told that the equipment wasn't theirs, that "I needed a ticket if I wanted technical support," and if I wanted to log into my ftp space to update New Chemic's website, I "had to ask whoever it was who designed our website for the login information and the password" because they didn't have it. We had been paying almost $700/month for this "service," which also included a limited T1 line of barely 400 kbytes/s and only 20MB storage for each e-mail. We switched to Optimum Online and for $79/month our speed jumped by 50X, our storage per e-mail jumped to 500MB and our website is being hosted here. Optimum also provided the software, included at no extra charge, to create this website from scratch in a little more than an hour. That sure beat spending weeks learning how to use programs such as Flash and Dreamweaver. Optimum's technical service has been excellent. With a few phone calls, I was able to configure our switches and our WiFi router myself. It was a snap logging into our host account at Network Solutions and re-pointing our DNS servers to our new web hosts. I am a simple guy. I like simple solutions. If I am at point "A" and need to get to point "B" don't give me a circuitous route. Straight lines are just fine. I am not here to play "IT Guy." I have a company to run and the keeping the main thing the main thing is, well, the main thing!