Putting certain Category links on the front page

I’m trying to put the titles and links of categories in the top two boxes at

http://www.residentsagainstracism.org/wp2/wordpress/

Using the ‘Static Front Page’ from http://www.semiologic.com/projects/static-front/ and the RunPHP from http://www.nosq.com/2004/10/runphp-wordpress-plugin/

When I put PHP into either of the boxes i get no output other than the raw php.

Maybe I’m going at this all wrong, anyone have any suggestions?

thanks

jd