With the latest update, iBooks will now accept PDFs – retaining their full formatting. This means the iPad (or the iPhone) could become significant portable libraries of missions material. Any PDF (e.g. Mission Frontiers, the Perspectives reader, the World Christian Foundation courses, missions e-Books, etc) could be easily viewed on an iPad.

http://bit.ly/a0ijgx – This is an interesting new resource from Catalyst Services: a step by step manual walking your church through a process of discovering, select, and implementing a “high impact cross-cultural initiative.” I haven’t personally seen or reviewed it, but according to the website it incorporates “best-practice recommendations of over 100 church partnership practitioners highlighted with real-life stories of all types of congregations which have done it successfully.” If anyone’s used this, feel free to comment on it below.

http://bit.ly/9637Ub – The Mission Exchange has a $20 Update on the Status of At Risk Women.

Bill Gates reviews a provocative book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, about agricultural biotechnology.

What I’m reading this month:

• Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel H. Pink. This is an older book, but it has received great reviews, and one blog poster commented that it was one of the books (along with Gladwell & others) that defined the ’00 decade. It isn’t disappointing to me. It’s timely for me right now, but more than that, it reveals a lot of trends–which I haven’t seen this well described elsewhere–impacting swarming. Swarms, after all, are often volunteers or “free agents.” He talks about “microproeneurs” (very small businesses) and makes a lot of comments that would be applicable to micro-missions (small mission agencies with under 10 workers having an outsized impact on the unreached). Well worth the purchase.
• The Screwtape Letters: With Screwtape Proposes a Toast by C. S. Lewis. I’ve returned to this because I’m planning to start a small group at church focused on this book, using Focus on the Family’s incredible audio dramatization of it. Does anyone know of some really good discussion question guides for the book, preferably free?
• The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life by Len Fisher. This was recommended to me and I’m sampling it, but it looks like it’s just a popular introduction to the idea of complexity and swarming. Not sure there’s anything new here.
• Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures: this is another book I’m sampling but I anticipate I’ll buy it eventually. His previous book, On the back of the napkin, was an excellent guide to teaching you how to solve problems or explain processes by drawing illustrative pictures.

What are your four top books this month?

Book Review: Rescued by Angels: the story of miracles during the Rwandan genocide
Bp. Alexis Bilindabagabo

This small thin book contains the story of “Bishop Alexis,” who lived through the Rwandan holocaust and miraculously survived. The title is somewhat misleading since Bp. Alexis never particularly met an angel and has no “concrete” evidence that angels rescued him, but this small quibble aside the story is a wonderful if harrowing recounting of the many pains and the many miracles that did occur.

Chapter 1 opens with a brief recounting of Bp. Alexis’ life, and how he was a refugee three times: first in 1960 when his father took the family to Burundi to escape from political unrest and second in 1973 when another revolution forced Alexis and his brother to flee for their lives, escaping ethnic cleansing by following the same path. This was followed by his call into ministry and his work in Kigeme diocese. (The third time as a refugee is the period the greatest part of the book focuses on.)

Chapter 2 examines the root causes of the Rwandan crisis, looking at the influence of the Belgians in causing socioeconomic distinctions and discrimination in a very troubling few pages. Essentially according to Bp. Alexis, the Belgians distinguished between the Batutsi and the Bahutu on the basis of who had cows. The Batutsi had more than 10 cows, and the Bahutu had less. Then the Batutsi were made leaders by the Belgians and were forced to implement political leadership (oppression) of the rest. In the 1950s when the Tutsis wanted political independence, the Belgians switched sides and supported the Hutus against them. Eventually this lead to unrest and warfare and the ethnic genocides of the 1990s.

Chapter 3 explores the beginnings of the genocide. When the killings began it appears the Batutsi knew what was happening. Groups of organized killers were moving through the country (not all Hutus were killing Tutsis). In a particularly moving section Bp. Alexis describes how they prepared to die by teaching those under their care about Jesus, and how the first miracles occurred: militias on their way to kill those under Alexis’ care reached the same spot in the road and there grew confused, then wandered off without killing anyone. At the same time the chapter chronicles the stress, the incredible life-threatening decisions that had to be made by trusting God, and the ‘litany of suffering’ they endured as they heard time and again that someone else they knew had died.

Chapter 4 explored many of the great miracles that occurred, when men came to kill them and yet one way or another they were saved. At many points Bp. Alexis was asked if someone could take his children away from the town and across the border, yet they felt God telling them to stick together and so they did.

Chapter 5 recounts how a military force came to occupy their town, and how the commander reassured Bp. Alexis that he would be protected. Despite the fact that he was a Batutsi living amongst an entire camp of Bahutu soldiers, he was indeed protected. By the end of the chapter, however, French forces were being deployed and the military camp protecting Bp. Alexis and his family was being pressured to eliminate them since they had witnessed too much. Finally the military commander sent Alexis and his family across the border into the Congo, in yet another miraculous act of protection.

In the aftermath of the genocide, Bp. Alexis began to ask, “Why was I saved?” He felt he was saved for a purpose, and has since returned to help with the orphans in Rwanda. All in all, this is a great book, similar in some ways to “God’s smuggler,” the story of Brother Andrew’s life (albeit more horrifying in certain ways).

In 1998 I wrote about the future of books, and speculated about the implications of the electronic availability of books. That day is now here: the Amazon Kindle with a 2GB SD card can carry nearly 2,000 books; and an 8GB SD card is easily available. While over 120,000 books in Kindle format are available from Amazon, this does not include the additional thousands of e-books available in other formats (e.g. Mobipocket), as well as the fact that a Kindle can easily use standard HTML, Word, and PDF formats—which means you could feasibly carry every issue of Mission Frontiers, IJFM, EMQ, IBMR, Missiology, Lausanne World Pulse, whole encyclopedias, Operation World, several versions of the Bible in your favorite language, and all of the readings for the WCIU’s World Christian Foundations course. At $350, any missionary ready to buy an iPod or a cell phone should seriously consider the investment.