The World is Flat

Another big book to bite into and I am excited about this. Hatch read some excerpts of this book to me last summer on a trip to Moab. The concept behind the book is fantastic.

I've read about two and a half chapters so far and I must say that we live in the greatest era of time. It's amazing how far we've come as a society since 1990. The 90's and the 00's have got to be the two most productive decades the world has ever seen. We're very fortunate to be a part of it. It seems to be snowballing even now. The advance of technology picks up speed each day. It's wonderful to be smack-dab in the middle of it!

I had a thought about one of the initial points of the book - outsourcing. When Friedman talks about outsourcing, even some of the people he interviewed about outsourcing, the picture that is painted is one of the "simple" or "easy" or "mundane" tasks being sent out of the country. While I wish our country's employment rates continuously grew, I like one side effect the books discusses. That is that Americans are being left with the sophisticated, creative jobs. The ones that require more expertise and ingenuity. The salesmanship and the customer relation. It's difficult for people who have been in manufacturing their entire lives to be out of work with n where to turn. This type of an environment does force us to evolve and develop new skills. Skills that ultimately push us to achieve more than we ever would have. Sometimes that's a slow, painful process, but that is one of the things that has made America the greatest county in the history of the world - the ability to overcome and thrive.

April Book?

So a couple of ideas have been brought forth, but we still have no book for April...Consensus?

Just finished book

Well I officially finished the book last night and like the rest of you I did enjoy the end of it more than the first half. Like was said before, it was a good reminder that things are happening that will allow for the second coming to approach. Above all else I remembered that God works in interesting ways and has many resources to accomplish his purposes.
When I was in Mexico I hated the Christian churches so bad because they would always lie about us and really made things dificult sometimes. I began to have a little hatred towards them. Reading this book reminded me that those churches opened a lot of doors for religious freedom to be preached and without them my work would have been 10 times as hard. I realize that in all of these middle east countries the other Christian churches will play a huge part in bringing Christianity to them and opening up future doors for LDS missionaries. For that alone it made me glad that I kept reading the book when I almost put it down at one point.