Home Thoughts From Abroad

Regular visitors to this site may have noticed that Steve has been curiously silent of late. Bless you for noticing. I have not abandoned my obligations to whatever posterity may bring in our wake. I assume, I hope correctly, that these reflections over the last seven-plus years have been of some value, even if only to myself. Perhaps they have been of some value to you as well. Perhaps someday our grandchildren will read these pages and gain some insight into what constitutes a godly life.

My absence is easily explained, as the following half dozen posts will show, by a term that has been intense almost beyond endurance. I know in every fiber of my being, that God has called me to my present responsibilities. Yet I also know, that despite all the gifts He has placed in my care, like Paul, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.” Sometimes, in order to remind us that this work is of Him, and not ourselves, He allows us to be “Afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Cor 4:7-9). Such has been my lot this term.

The burden of this term did not sneak up on me unawares. I saw it looming in the distance even as far back as the first of June, when I returned to Malaysia for my second year as Project Coordinator for corporate social responsibility for Taylor’s Education Group. I had already spent half a year in getting the outlines of a website together and building the framework for it in Sharepoint, a Microsoft product more suited to internal communications than external. The two great advantages of Sharepoint were that it cost nothing to use, as Taylor’s already had a license, and it could be easily ‘migrated’ to a more visually appealing and socially accessible site once it was constructed. As a previous post indicates, that internal site was launched at the end of July.

There were many, perhaps even the majority of voices, that advised me that I should be satisfied with this product and simply release it to the public, rather than keep it ‘hidden’ behind a staff and student login. I would not. It was not what I had envisioned, and it was not the site that our visionary CEO Dato’ Loy wanted. I took the product to him and asked for his permission to engage the services or a competent web vendor to translate this draft site to something that would show off his university, colleges and schools in the best possible light. It was a remarkably easy sell.

It was to be an incredible amount of work: web vendors to be vetted, ICT departments to be engaged and brought on side, marketing departments to be mobilized, community service coordinators in six other institutions to be consulted, cajoled, and encouraged to participate. There were hundreds of pages of text to be written and rewritten, hundreds of images to be selected and uploaded. Starting in August and finishing just three weeks ago, it has been by itself a huge undertaking. But as you will see in the following posts, it was hardly ‘by itself.’

Nor is it ‘done’ in the sense that there is still much to be edited in this new format and piles of new text and images pouring in daily. Despite its many features – the map is one of my favs – there are still things I want to add, such as a video marketplace, where participants can pitch for support, embedded right into the site. But it is done enough for me to finally get some much needed rest and recovery, and done enough for me to finally invite you, gentle reader, to have a look for yourself. This is the result of perhaps two thousand hours of labour. May God bless the labour of His servant in this, and may it accomplish the purposes which He intended.

Please see the IMPACT site at http://csr.taylors.edu.my