February Felicitations

shikungigi

No, this is not about Valentine’s. Breathe out. I did not do my monthly preacher piece in January. For that reason, I will do two in February. This will be short and straight to the point.

Bata Shoes…

Today I listened to the story of how Bata entered the African market. The man with the sermon told it. Maybe I had heard before and never actually thought about it, maybe this was my first time at this. You know how we Sherlock-like people are, we delete stuff from the mind if it is not important. Hehe. Anyway, apparently Bata sent salespeople to Africa to scout around and see how good the market was for Bata shoes. One guy returned with the complaint that nobody in Africa wore shoes so there was definitely no market for the product. The other saw opportunities and expressed his enthusiasm at starting in such a ripe market!

I Googled the story and it appeared true, though the publications still refer to it as a story that is told and they also give their own versions of the same story. Whether that is exactly how it went down or not, I know that Bata is the main shoe company in Kenya. You probably have Bata shoes on as you read this, or slippers, or you own a pair of Bata footwear. If not, you probably wore Bata Prefect or Toughees back in school.Tomy Takkies

If Bata listened to the first guy and shunned Africa, Bata shoes would obviously not be the shoe for Africa. But he went with the second guy and here we are, running to Bata shops all the time, even after complaining about them. Okay, let me speak for myself. I have said Bata shoes don’t last before, but the truth of the matter is some last, some don’t. Point is, Bata Shoe Company is awesome, especially when they lure me back with their offers like last Sunday. 😀 The attitude of various players definitely got it there.

4 When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” 6 And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking.

Luke 5. Peter ditched his attitude in an instant and reaped the fruits.

Attitude…

My high school principal loved talking about attitude. She would say that attitude determined our altitude. I have talked about attitude before on this blog. The way there are so many clichés about attitude and why you should have a right one. The fact that they are clichés does not make them any less true. If you hate your job, ask yourself why you do, especially if you don’t do your best in the first place. If you have a certain attitude towards people close to you, ask yourself if it is a justified attitude.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Proverbs 23:7

Screwtape Letters

I have been reading C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters any time I can. Moses Njenga loves his books. He recommended one and I am on a mission to read them all. Screwtape Letters are fictional letters from an agent of the devil to a rookie devil who is deployed to our world to focus on causing a new Christian to fall. The thing about C.S. Lewis is that he wrote in a way that requires a reader in this day and age to read very slowly, as my friend Dickson concurs, to understand the profoundness of his apologetics. If you are not careful, you might not get what the book is about well into it. So rookie devil, Wormwood, receives letters of advice from his uncle, Screwtape, filled with ‘wisdom’ on how to be an effective devil. He mentions the way to causing a Christian to stumble is to present distractions to ensure that he is kept away from the true meaning of Christianity. One of the distractions includes making the ‘patient’ focus on the negative side of people he interacts with, sometimes a negative side that only exists in his head only.

“3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.”

Are you guilty of the above when relating to people you love? Tafakari hayo. Attitude things.

Right now, as I was almost publishing this, Zemanta, a blogging tool I use, just pushed a story about fire gutting part of the Bata shoe factory in Limuru. Oops. So even when everything is all good, bad things will happen, as you well know. How you take it makes the difference. It’s a new week! Start off with the right attitude. You never know where it will get you! If you hate Valentine’s Day, well, I am not sure how I can help you there. 😀

All my love!

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