Vacancies at the Empowerment Centre

I received an email from The Empowerment House about vacancies, and decided to share wholesale. I am not affiliated with The Empowerment House, and have never attended any of their programs. I wish any applicants the best; the application deadline expires in a week. The email content follows.

The Empowerment centre is a Christian Ministry which includes KA TV (DSTV channel 345) which aims to revitalise the Christian TV experience in Africa by showcasing wholesome inspirational, educative, informative and entertaining programmes for the whole family showing various genre of programming including Christian reality TV shows, Musical shows, Drama, Talk shows etc. It also includes Empowerment house a church ministry with a vision to empower lives and transform society in accordance with Acts 1:8 and Empowerment college, a life changing school of Leadership & Management, Ministry, Business and Marriage.

VACANCIES

• Chief Administrative Officer
• Front desk Executive
• Personal Assistant to CEO
• Media Executive
• Business Development Manager
• Head of College
• Office Assistant
• Studio Production Executive
• Driver
• 3D/2D Graphics Artist (Still, Motion & Website)
• Security Operative
• Audio Production Executive
• Editing Executive
• Transmission executive

The Empowerment Centre recognises that the quality of its staff and their contributions represent its most significant asset in fulfilling its mission. We wish to attract staff who are keen to join and who, once here, will feel proud to be contributing to our success. In return, our aim is to ensure that the career and personal potential of staff is rewarded, recognised and developed in a properly resourced and supportive environment.

The Empowerment Centre considers all our staff as Christian ministers using their skills to minister in the 21st century world, only spirit-filled Christians who are ministry inclined need apply. You should also note that The Empowerment Centre is affiliated to a church ministry. Successful applicants must be comfortable with the ethos of the ministry and are required to be part of the ministry, anyone who is not able to meet this requirement for any reason need not apply for any of the positions.

Interested candidates should request for detailed job description and application procedure for the interested post from careers@empowermenthouse.com, please state interested post in email as application procedure varies for different posts.

Only Applications sent in the required format will be considered. Completed applications should reach us by 5.30pm on Friday, November 30. No telephone job enquiries please, Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Location for all job vacancies is Lagos and Salaries are negotiable (Depending on experience).

Mommy's kiss

Two days ago, it seemed my little brother was not well. Today, he was rather cranky, and after my sister left for work this morning, I found him crying on the staircase for her and for his mother. I was already carrying his baby brother, but managed to carry him as well and get downstairs, where his mother was. Unfortunately, I misjudged our collective width and he hit his head on the door and wailed a little louder. Yet, when he saw his mother, he got quiet really quickly.

No doubt you've had such an experience growing up — maybe not with mommy, but with someone else — someone whose touch, whose voice, whose words — any, or all of these could calm your troubled heart and reduce even physical pain to bearable limits. Maybe even now, you still have such people around you, even though you're grown and have learned not to cry in the open (for the most part, anyway).

I never really realized it before now, but hurting people need more than just medicine. They need care. I was wondering what it would be like to have a major illness and have the best medical treatment delivered with surgical precision and in a cold, detached manner. I have no idea what it would be like, but I don't want to experience it.

The human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear a crushed spirit?
— Proverbs 18:14, New Living Translation

Keith Moore, in his message series A Fighting Spirit, talks about the importance of a fighting spirit to recovering from life-threatening illnesses. I do not seek to downplay the importance of a fighting spirit, but care can stir up or strengthen a person's fighting spirit (please see my previous post, Love's Roof, for an example). That's what happens when Mommy comes with a kiss and a Band-Aid for a scraped knee — that kiss and hug will do wonders beyond what just the Band-Aid would do.

Am I advocating for dumbed-down, watered-down truth? No. NEVER, EVER compromise on the truth of God's word. But where your doctrine and your preaching, your facts and figures and proofs from scripture fail, maybe a kind word or two, a hug and a listening ear will accomplish more for healing broken hearts and bodies than you could ever think possible. And the more the hurt, the greater the need for that care.

Love's Roof

Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
— 1 Corinthians 13:7, The Amplified Bible

I don't remember when exactly, but I was lurking around the interwebs and found Ann Voskamp's post on how to make any relationship better, and in it, she talks about the Greek word stego used in this verse. I remembered it today, because I saw a tweet by Pastor Poju Oyemade of Covenant Christian Center, and I realized just how apt the word, roof describes what love does to us. Love's a roof, a covering. Not when you love, but when you believe you are loved, or to use very bad English, you've the lovee, and not the lover.

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to talk to someone, and they were going on and on about my happiness, about how I deserved it and how it mattered, and I really wasn't in the mood to listen to them. One thing led to another, and they said that in my last relationship, I was happy. I discarded the idea (and the conversation), but I recalled that a few months into that relationship, someone else said they saw me smiling a lot more, and that they were sure that my girlfriend was good for me.

Looking back, I realize that I felt someone special loved me, and it was sufficient to change my outlook on life. My circumstances weren't that great, but they felt bearable because I believed I was loved. I definitely went overboard in making that relationship my primary source of happiness, but that was my safe zone, my hiding place.

The KJV renders this verse: Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.. Looking at the language, it seems that it's implied that storms will come: if something is going to bear (up under), then definitely, something's coming up top. This points to why I caved in when that relationship ended: the roof that was taking all the hits from the storms I was weathering was removed, and I didn't have a fallback roof.

This week, I read a tweet that reminded me of God's love for me (1 John 4:16). For some reason, in a world that went crazy and refused to make sense since, that has become a bastion of hope. When I'm tempted to look back at what I've lost, and despair things will ever get better, spending some time to think about God loving me has been my new crutch, and it's served me better than pornography or masturbation ever did.

I haven't arrived, but I've left. Perhaps sometime soon, I will really laugh without reserve, not because I'm trying to distract myself, but because I'm healed, because I know that God loves me.

I'm glad I've a new roof. Beats getting exposed to the elements.

Ignorance Required

For a couple of days now, I've been playing around with OpenLayers. Since it's been my first foray into anything related with online maps in general, I've had to pick up things at a much slower pace than I'd normally be comfortable with. One of the things I needed to do was to find out how to create a color-coded map, like this.

There was just one problem: I had no idea what that kind of map was named. And I can be really weird (just silently pass by) about being precise about things like names and spelling. So, I logged in on IRC and asked something like: hello. let's say i had a map and wanted to color regions based on some characteristic (average household income, for example). what's this called, and how may i go about doing this? in both the OpenLayers and Python channels on Freenode (#openlayers isn't very active in my opinion, but someone in #python might have done something similar).

After about 20 minutes with no answers, I realized that I was letting my desire to be on target (so know you know I can be perfectionist) manifest as a fear of looking like an ignoramus (yay! I know long words!), and for me, there are few things I'm probably scared of like being made to look like a fool, either by myself, or someone else. I decided to take the risk of looking like an idiot and google openlayers color coding. from one of the links displayed, I saw the word choropleth in the page text and so googled that. It turns out (like my machine learning lecturer is fond of saying) that was exactly what I wanted to do, and googling openlayers choropleth has, as is usual in today's world, overloaded me with information. As an added bonus, I found out about Natural Earth, which will probably be a very useful resource in future.

In the style of Box of Crayons' Great Work Provocations (a short, daily — working week only — newsletter on doing great work and which I highly recommend), how are you allowing a fear cripple your development? What can you embrace with courage today?

Have a great week ahead.

Stand Out from the Crowd

I was lurking around as a guest on one of the forums Google leads me to, and I saw this post and decided to reproduce it wholesale here (without permission). Let's discuss this (Twitter, G+, comments) after the jump.

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

'Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without...thinking...' Romans 12:2

A man walking into a bank held the door open for the lady behind him. Instead of thanking him, she said, 'You don't have to hold the door because I'm a woman.' Smiling, he replied, 'I'm not doing it because you're a woman, I'm doing it because I'm a gentleman.' As believers we do what we do because of who we are 'in Christ', not because of how society thinks we should act. John says, '...The Holy Spirit...lives within...so [we] don't need anyone to teach [us] what is true...' (1John 2:27 NLT). In his book 'Hope Again', Chuck Swindoll says: 'In the Marine Corps...our troopship carried us...onto Japanese soil...For many of us, it was our first visit to a foreign country. We were surging with excitement...Our company commander called us together...and...said..."Remember, for the first time in your lives, you're the foreigners. This isn't your country or your culture...you're the minority. These aren't your fellow citizens; they don't speak your language. They know nothing of your homeland except what they see in you...Act in a way that the Japanese people will gain a good impression of your country."...As Christians,...our citizenship is in heaven...We belong to the kingdom of God...We need to be on our best behaviour, otherwise people will get a distorted perception of what our homeland is like...Our earthly culture is pagan to the core...God left us here for a purpose...to demonstrate what it's like to be a member of another country, to have a citizenship in another land, that we might create a desire for others to emigrate.' Think about it!

Bob Gass

Edit: I checked out Bob Gass' site and realized it's today's devotional.