Thanks to another needgreater blogger, I discovered this great website today, called Needgr8r.com. As you can probably tell by the name, the site's purpose is helping needgreaters get to their chosen assignments quicker, stay longer and be more productive.

Most needgreaters are always on the look out for online work. Though traveling back and forth between two homes might work for some, it can be tiring. Besides that, it is tough finding someone to take care of your bible students while you're gone, and no one really wants to leave their bible students for half a year. Teaching English online is actually something many needgreaters do here in DR, but not everyone has that option. But this site, needgr8r.com, may help them out with that.

For those who are familiar with sites like Odesk, this is basically the same thing, only it's run by JWs and made for just JWs. It is place that connects people looking for work with people who need work done.

There are three main categories to this site:



FIND WORK



If you're a needgreater looking for freelance work, all you have to do is set up a profile with a brief review of your qualifications of whatever you are choosing to do and either wait for someone, that is looking up your area of work, to contact you or search the "find work" page (as seen above) and find something to apply for.

FIND FREELANCERS



But, you might be looking for someone to get a job done instead. For this, after logging in, all you have to do is click the blue button on the top right corner of the screen, "post a job" and fill in the form with all the necessary information and wait for a needgreater to contact you. You also can go to the "find freelancers" page and either look for individual freelancers under "services" or look for online businesses that are owned and operated by needgreaters under "markets". 

THE NEEDLIST


 The "needslist" I find especially cool. It's sort of like a JW craigslist. All those little blue circles on the map are listings for various things. For example, there are three listings right now in the Dominican Republic. One is looking to buy a jeep in Rio San Juan, another is looking for roommates to move in with in Sosua and the third is looking for someone to housesit a 3 bedroom house in Jarabacoa for the months of March and April (Note: This is actually sounds like a pretty good opportunity for anyone wanting to try out the needgreater life for a couple of months. There is a lot of need in Jarabacoa.)


I think needgr8r.com is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time but the problem is the site is still relatively new and not a lot of people have heard of it. Right now, there are about 100 needgreaters from all over looking for work but there are currently only 17 job listings. See the how that might not work?

So, to quote the website itself "Want to learn a new language, hobby or musical instrument? Need help with your accounts, formatting documents or writing reports? Do you or your children need tutoring in math, science, or computer skills? Could your business use admin assistance or other skills? Would you like help with personal items? A one time job or a few hours a week is very helpful to serving in foreign assignments, so learn more, post a job, and support a needgreater".



So, things have been keeping pleasantly busy these days. With the ASL class, two beach trips, the Visit to Bethel Headquarters special day on the 14th (is that how it's called in English?) and the circuit assembly, there will a lot to blog about.

One thing that I must blog now is something cool that happened last week. For about three weeks, there has been a local radio station running a talk radio program with the theme "What is the Bible's view on true Christians being involved in politics?" and apparently the host has been interviewing various pastors and religious leaders of the more popular religions in this area. So, we got our turn on last Monday. The host asked for someone to represent Jehovah's Witnesses on this topic and Bethel sent Brother Genao, a special pioneer who was actually one of the first brothers I met in DR, to do so.

It was an excellent discussion that lasted about 45 minutes and I later learned that the host cut out all the commercial breaks in the hour so our brother could have all the time he needed to explain the Bible's viewpoint.

Some of the questions the host asked were:

Since David, Daniel and Joseph all held positions of high authority in the political scheme of their time, does this mean that God approves of his people being involved in politics today?

If God used kings and politically involved people to carry out his will in the past, does that mean that he will use a true Christian, place them in a political position, use them for purpose and therefore, unite religion and politics?

The word "politics" does not appear in the Bible, but the words "kingdom" and "government" do, what is the difference between the two?

Why do god-fearing people or true Christians take the initiative, seeing how the world is today, to better the world now?

What is the official stand of Jehovah Witnesses about true Christians getting being involved in politics?

Brother Genao gave an excellent witness. My two favorite texts that he mentioned and that I felt especially drove the point home were 2 Samuel chapter 8:7, where Jehovah tells Samuel that Israel had rejected him because they were asking for a king and John 6:15, where Jesus, knowing that the people were about to make him king, left to the mountain alone to get away. These two texts really make it clear how both Jehovah and Jesus feel about politics.

Appropriately, January's magazine talks about the difference between human government and God's kingdom, so we are all armed and ready for the repercussions this radio interview might have. Hopefully I'll have some good experiences to blog about soon!




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