On this blog I have bagged various organisations for bad or ordinary service.

Time for a great story.

Recently I bought a SAMSUNG copy/fax/printer for the church.

We have just transfered all our internet and phone stuff to AAPT who set up a duet line. This means we could keep our fax number, but have it on the same line, and get charged about 1/10th the price.

I suspected my new Samsung Fax would support this, so I rang their customer care guy. Not only did he help me, he rang me on my mobile so he could then ring my landline and set it up for me. I cant believe how

• knowledgable he was
• helpful he was
• efficient he was

He cared about my problem, knew how to fix it, and did!!!!!
His name was Mark by the way,
well done SAMSUNG

Preparing for my second part of the series on Parenthood.

Here is something thats interesting.

Skin hunger is a relatively new term that has been applied to the emotional response engendered by the loss of touch in our society. One of the five basic senses, touch is the only one deemed essential to human life. (emphasis mine) During WW II babies in orphanages developed Failure to thrive or even died when deprived of human contact. In a classic study by Harry Harlow, newborn monkeys were taken from their biological mothers and given surrogates made of either wire or soft terry cloth. The baby monkeys consistently chose the soft mother even when deprived of nourishment. The need for bonding outweighed even the basic necessity of food.
The need for touch extends beyond the early developmental years. It is the first sense to develop in utero and the last to diminish as we die. Babies and children with loving parents are cuddled and kissed and touched. As a child ages he seeks to become more independent and may even resist too much lovin’. How many of us parents have mourned the day our children became too big to sit in our laps anymore? Boys, especially, are discouraged from showing too much affection. To be a man means to be strong and stoic and emotion is deemed a sign of weakness.
Adolescence is a time of self discovery and growing sexual awareness. As kids grow into teens they may seek sexual intimacy even when not emotionally ready because the need for touch is so strong. How many girls have had sex prematurely when all they really wanted was to be held? Compounding the problem, many parents will decrease physical contact with their teens because of fears of inappropriateness.
Maturing into adults we face a world that explodes with sexual images but discourages more than a friendly nod or a handshake in public. Sexuality is OK but intimacy is not.
The elderly, the disabled and the very ill, aka the “Untouchables“, are at greatest risk of touch deprivation. Living in isolated homes, the elderly and the disabled often have limited mobility and fears of victimization may prevent their venturing out. People with a terminal illness like HIV may have very little contact with another human being due to inherent fears of the disease. Although not as fulfilling as human contact, a pet may provide the bonding and comfort needed.

Story

It is fantastic. Does not matter what industry you are in, or what you are on about, this is a great site to visit for marketing and service tips and angles.

Ipod this, ipod that.
Apple’s Ipod is the market leader of music players at the moment.
Trendy, stylish, easy to use, and trendy.

However consider this.
It has very limited transferability to other platforms
It only does one thing, or maybe two if you counnt playing videos.

Sony have introduced a mobile phone which is also a great Mp3 player.
My PDA is a smartphone and plays video and most audio files. It also has an expandable memory slot.

This means I only have to carry one instrument to do all those tasks.
I cant see the Ipod’s sales domination lasting more than another 3 or 4 years, unless something dramatic changes about the product.

Parenthood Part One (spirituality and proactivity)

The truth, or perhaps more of the truth, has come out about Ted Haggard.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) — Less than 24 hours after being fired from the mega-church he founded, evangelical Pastor Ted Haggard confessed to a “lifelong” sexual problem.
In a letter read to members of his New Life Church Sunday, Haggard said he is “a deceiver and a liar.” Haggard apologized to his congregation in the letter and asked for their forgiveness.
“There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life,” Haggard said in the letter read by Pastor Larry Stockstill, a member of the board of overseers of New Life Church. On Saturday, members of the board ousted Haggard from the 14,000-member church, citing his “sexually immoral conduct. story

Ted got up in front of the whole congregaion and wept and confessed. His wife has said she will stick by him.
Having observed these situations up close before, when a Pastor committs adultery, the only way for real healing for both the leader and the congregation, is for all the dirty stuff to be confessed to, be frank and honest about.
Men, men, men. The Valiant Man course we are doing at Bedford is so relevant to how I am feeling at the moment. Men have to be honest about the struggles they are going through, even if that struggle is one with homosexuality, sexual addiction, or something else which is embarassing and ‘hidden’.

I don’t want to lose any of my mates in the ministry to this sort of thing, nor do I want any of the blokes in my church to succumb to this, or be crippled but it.
We have got to get better at doing life together.