Here is their prayers:

Dear God,
In Sunday School they told us what You do. Who does it when
You are on vacation? - Jane 8 years old

Dear God,
I think about You sometimes even when I’m not praying.
-Elliot 8 years old

Dear God, Did you really mean “do unto others as they do unto you?”
Because if you did, then I’m going to fix my brother.
- Darla 8 years old

Dear God,
I didn’t think orange went with purple until I saw the
sunset You made on Tuesday. - Margaret 7years old

Dear God,
I read the Bible. What does “begat” mean? Nobody will
tell me. - Love, Allison 8 years old

Dear God,
Are you really invisible or is that a trick?
- Lucy 7 years old

Dear God,
Is it true my father won’t get in Heaven if he uses his
bowling words in the house? - Anita 8 years old

Dear God,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it
an accident? - Norma, 6 years old

Dear God,
Instead of letting people die and having to make new
ones, why don’t You just keep the ones You have now?
- Jane, 7 years old

Dear God,
Who draws the lines around countries? - Nan, 6 years old

Dear God,
The bad people laughed at Noah - “You made an ark on dry
land you fool”. But he was smart, he stuck with You.
That’s what I would do. - Eddie, 7years old

Dear God, I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church.
Is that okay? - Neil B., 8 years old

Dear God, What does it mean You are a Jealous God? I thought You
had everything. - Jane S., 6 years old

Dear God,
Thank You for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was
a puppy. - Joyce L., 6 years old

Dear God,
Why is Sunday School on Sunday? I thought it was supposed
to be our day of rest. - Tom L., 7 years old

Dear God, Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before,
You can look it up. - Bruce B., 8 years old

Dear God,
If we come back as something - please don’t let me be
Jennifer Horton because I hate her.
- Denise E., 7years old

Dear God,
My brother is a rat. You should give him a tail. Ha ha.
- Danny Michelle., 7 years old

Dear God,
Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if
they had their own rooms. It works with my brother.
- Larry P., 5 years old

Dear God,
I want to be just like my Daddy when I get big but not
with so much hair all over. - Sam G., 5 years old

Dear God,
You don’t have to worry about me. I always look both
ways. - Dean W., 7 years old

Dear God,
I bet it is very hard for You to love all of everybody
in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family
and I can never do it. - Nan D., 5 years old

Dear God,
Of all the people who work for You, I like Noah and David
the best. - Rob C., 8 years old

Dear God,
My brother told me about being born but it doesn’t sound
right. They’re just kidding, aren’t they?
- Marsha B., 7 years old

Dear God,
If You watch me in Church Sunday. I’ll show You my new
shoes. - Mickey D., 5 years old

Dear God,
I would like to live 900 years like the guy in the Bible.
- Love, Chris B., 6 years old

Dear God,
We read Thomas Edison made light. But in school they
said You did it. So, I bet he stoled Your idea.
Sincerely, Donna Quinter, 5 years old

Dear God,
I do not think anybody could be a better God. Well, I
just want You to know but I am not just saying that
because You are God already. - Charles Finney, 7 years old

Random Posts

• October 23, 2008 -- New Book Examines Your Brain on Technology (0)
• January 22, 2008 -- .stop the TRAFFIK. (0)
• August 23, 2007 -- (0)

1. Art is made by a human being.
2. Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.
3. Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art.

By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we’re doing when we do our best work.

Random Posts

• July 30, 2008 -- Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer (0)
• May 12, 2009 -- How and When to Celebrate (0)
• March 10, 2006 -- 2day is friday: Here’s a friday story! (0)

My grandmother, Billye Coffman, raised me on a farm in eastern New Mexico.

She took me in after my mother abandoned me in a motel room in Odessa TX.  At the time, she and her husband were breaking up after twenty years of marriage.  Tough stuff.  He left us in less than a year.  He cleaned out the accounts, ran up the bills and told everyone in town his wife was crazy.  A few months after he left, two men came to our house and repossessed the stove and refrigerator.  That was the first time I ever saw my grandmother cry.

A few years later, while eating breakfast, she and I saw a mountain of a man walking through our wheat field.  He was heading straight for our house.  She and I met him halfway in the orchard.

“Can I help you, sir?” she volleyed.

“I pray so, mam,” he confidently replied.

“I need a day’s work and a meal,” he continued.  ”I’ve been walking for over a week, making my way from Oklahoma to my relatives in Winslow, Arizona.  I lost everything to a swindler in Tulsa, and all I have is my winning smile.”

Billye agreed to give him a job for the day.  She gave him a few tasks only he could perform, such as pruning branches on tall trees, painting the trim on the barn and chopping some kindling.  He dove into the chores like a new-hire.  I followed him around the entire time, peppering him with questions.

Around noon, Billye brought us two paper plates loaded with franks and ranch style beans, along with some fresh mustard potato salad.  He dug into the plate with his plastic fork like it was a steak dinner.  Between bites he waxed philosophical.

“Your grandmother is an angel, sent from heaven to have faith in a stranger,” he told me.  ”I’m glad I walked this farm’s way”

At the end of the day, Billye thanked him and paid him in cash.  She fished out a twenty dollar bill from her clutch purse, a small fortune to us at the time.  She prayed with him, and asked God to find him more work on his way to Arizona.  She noticed that his shoes were dogged out, with holes in both soles.  She told him to wait as she went to the house and found her deceased father’s barely worn black wing tips.

“There, now you have new shoes for tomorrow,” she said, beaming.

He thanked her, with tears in his eyes.  He put his new shoes on and strutted off to the west, carrying his possessions in a pillowcase.  My grandmother put her arm around me, and pull me close to her side.

“Today we are rich,” she told me.

And since that day, I’ve never been poor.

Random Posts

• January 22, 2009 -- History’s Top 10 Liberating Leaders (0)
• May 2, 2008 -- :-) (0)
• October 14, 2007 -- Rowan Wiliams on Dawkins (0)

What do I mean by finding success on the far side of failure?  Well I find that almost all successful people have experienced significant failures in life or in their work, but they have learned from their failures.

On the other hand, it seems that people who don’t recognize their failures or don’t seek learning from them, are often the ones failing again and again. Why? Because they haven’t learned the lessons from the failure—they haven’t gained self-awareness or understanding; they haven’t understood others or their marketplace; they haven’t developed the maturity for humility and integrity—and they find themselves repeating their mistakes again and again.

Think about the failures or mistakes you have made. How did you respond to them? What outcomes did you get? How have they helped you today?  What can you learn from your failures?

I would love to hear from you.

Remember if you want to make significant progress in your life, don’t forget to find success on the far side of failure!

Random Posts

• January 21, 2006 -- Unselfishness versus Love (0)
• April 28, 2009 -- Wash your hands and go back to work (0)
• October 27, 2006 -- Portugues#3- Alem dos limites, Beyond Limits (0)

Download the e-book and read it on your Kindle, Nook, laptop or computer. Contributors include: Dave Ramsey, Tim Sanders, Anne Jackson, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Hugh McLeod, Dan Roam and the list goes on and on and on.

Download What Matters Now.pdf  (3167.2K)

Random Posts

• May 7, 2009 -- A Whisper that Can Change the World (0)
• March 5, 2006 -- Come up here! (0)
• May 8, 2009 -- volunteers…3 simple questions (0)

The White House website
American Red Cross
Partners in Health

Random Posts

• March 15, 2006 -- Have you seen that movie? (0)
• October 5, 2006 -- Devotional #14 (0)
• May 8, 2009 -- teaching your students the purity code (0)

Random Posts

• December 23, 2009 -- why porn might bring this culture down (0)
• November 1, 2006 -- Quote# (0)
• December 22, 2009 -- My New Year’s Resolution: 25% Less (0)

Bodoni, it transpires, is on the mend after a stroke and, in the prognosis of his doctor, has suffered total loss of episodic — or autobiographical — memory. To hasten recovery, he is discharged to the care of his psychologist wife. But a tour of the locales of his life — his well-appointed apartment and his book studio — summons no sense of familiarity, only words and descriptions once read. “I only remember words,” he says, summing up his reduced ability to engage with the world. Sessions with his best friend and with his grandchildren fail to help him identify with the given version of his past. To do so, recommends his wife, he should go to Solara, to his ancestral home in the hills.

So far words have come unbidden to Yambo, as he’s known to friends and family. The doctor would be confirming his capacity for colour recognition, and his mind would whir: “A-tisket, a-tasket, a green and yellow basket… Was it red? Was it brown? Was it blue? No! Just a yellow basket.” Received memories of fog blanket him, a metaphor for his situation: “Unreal city,/ under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/ a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/ I had not thought death had undone so many.” In the park he sees two policemen on horseback and, voila: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

The Solara villa offers an escape from this thicket of quotation and stereotype, an opportunity for considered classification. The villa’s attic and closed passageways, its abundance of archival material and the care of an old domestic assistant eerily parallel the architecture of the mind. In Solara, Yambo begins picking through the raw material of his past, collections of childhood books and stamps, of old women’s magazines and newspaper clippings. In this lavishly illustrated volume, this is also an opportunity for Eco to display the readings of his own past, and counter the menacing quest for the dark spaces of personal memory with a playful cataloguing of the artifacts of popular culture that index collective memory. He finds a curious intersection of his best friend Gianni’s powerful remembrance of a childhood episode and his own rummaging in a 1938 record: “If I could make a thousand lire a month,/ it wouldn’t be a lie to say that it would buy/ all the joy a man could want.” Every fragment is a tool in reclamation of the past.

Yambo systematically reads through collections of stories, in his adulthood investigating the effect of fascism on comic book balloons and the processes by which “foreign” stories are naturalised. Basically, he seeks a homing device to find how his self and conscience were constructed. Leafing through atlases, he wonders: “What was it that linked my childhood to German West Africa, to the Dutch West Indies, and above all to Zanzibar? In any case, it was undeniable that there in Solara every word gave rise to another. Would I be able to climb back up that chain to the final word? What would it be? ‘I’?”

As his reading progresses to notes jotted during the war years, as he recovers his Partisan past and hushed accounts of his grandfather’s aid to members of the resistance, a suspicion lingers that somewhere amidst all this lies the reason for his stroke. Recovery of that explanation — the weakest link in the book — throws him towards another medical emergency and rapid descent into emotional turbulence.

Identity, in Eco’s narrative, is tethered firmly in historical memory, but it is in the end extremely fragile.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana — ably translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock — certainly does not have the urgent brilliance of The Name of the Rose. However, as a catalogue of a life made richer by literature — popular and classic — it invites rereads. So what if Eco does show off? He makes it such a fun performance.

Random Posts

• May 6, 2008 -- Legiao Urbana pra nos.. (1)
• June 22, 2006 -- Seeking a Future and Hope for the People of the Amazon (0)
• December 20, 2009 -- Christmas Greetings! (0)

Here is a sample platter of what I'm talking about

"In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, 'Ow, I hurt my leg. I can't run. A lion eats me. I'm dead.' Well, I'm not dead. I'm the lion. You're dead."

"I come from a long line of fighters. My maternal grandfather was the toughest guy I ever knew. World War Two veteran killed twenty men and spent the rest of the war in an Allied prison camp. My father battled blood pressure and obesity all his life. Different kind of fight."

Jim Halpert: "Dwight, if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?"
Dwight Schrute: "I can travel anywhere, except Cuba, and I will travel to New Zealand and walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor and I will hike Mount Doom."

"I have been Michael's number two guy for about 5 years. And we make a great team. We're like one of those classic famous teams. He's like Mozart and I'm like...Mozart's friend. No. I'm like Butch Cassidy and Michael is like...Mozart. You try and hurt Mozart? You're gonna get a bullet in your head courtesy of Butch Cassidy."

The thing that strikes me about Dwight is that, even though people think he's a few hamburgers short of a Happy Meal, he still just sticks with his quirky personality and obviously different view of the world.

And then I thought, You know what? Christians in the world are a little like Dwight! No, not in the Looney Tune, legend-in-his-own-mind sort of way-rather that Dwight takes teasing, insults, and social rejection and sticks with who God made him to be.

And so should we, folks. You must remember that to say yes to following Christ is a simultaneous no to being accepted by the world. This is a promise from the very lips of Jesus Christ:

If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you (John 15:18-19).

It's not that we should go out of way to be rejected; it's just that when you pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ, you get voted off the island.

Why? Because now you're no longer a part of the self-seeking, pleasure-driven, materialistic culture that permeates our entire world. Suddenly you're saying no to things that displease God, and probably coming off like you're better than everyone else. And even though you're not better than them-and you know that-others won't quite see it that way.

So at that point, you have two choices. You can back down on your commitment level and play Christian when there's no risk...or stick it out and find hope in these words from Jesus:

What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man. When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, their ancestors treated the ancient prophets that same way (Luke 6:22-23).

So if you are feeling like a Dwight in "the office" of this world because of your loyalty to Christ, take joy in the fact that you're on the right team. You may not be the bomb-diggity with all the folks around you, but you can be sure that one day Jesus will look you right in the eye with a proud look on his face and say, ''Well done, my good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:21).

To me, that's worth being a Dwight for the rest of my life!


Flashpoint: Ignite into Action

Even though the world may reject us when we stand for Christ, there are always people watching us and looking for a hope that goes beyond this life. This week remember that when you stand for Jesus, God uses that to open people's heart to the gospel message. For a great example of this, check out this amazing story:

http://prayerfoundation.org/favoritemonks/favorite_monks_telemachus_coliseum.htm


Accelerant: Feed the Flames
And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect (Hebrews 11:32-40).
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10).

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name (Acts 5:41).

Lane Palmer serves as a writer for Dare 2 Share Ministries International (D2S) in Arvada, Colorado, a ministry committed to mobilizing teens to relationally and relentlessly reach their generation for Christ. For more information about D2S, please visit www.dare2share.org.

1. Breaking students into small groups is never easy.

2. Breaking students into smaller groups when groups grow is never easy.

3. You can lessen the pain when you use the term "launch" instead of "split" (i.e. "we'll be launching a new group out of this group because great things are happening in here."). Launch can be positive. Split can be negative.

4. Let small groups know from the beginning that "launching" new groups is an exciting thing. Tell them it's a real possibility when the size of the group reaches ___ number of students (___ = whatever you decide on).

5. There will be a natural decline in intimacy when students start a new group--that's normal. But, if the groups just started 2 weeks ago, most likely your groups haven't begun to scratch the surface of intimacy. The sooner the better is the time to launch the new groups.

6. If your groups are "open groups" (meaning students can be added as they arrive) you'll always face this "problem" (what a great problem to have). As students in their small group grow spiritually, they will most likely reach out to their [lost] friends and invite them to join a small group. The only that I know to keep the numbers small and not disrupt the small groups is to change your philosophy to a "closed group" (meaning that once a group starts, it stays that number until the quarter/semester/school year is over (whatever you decide on)...and when a new student come, the student begins in a group that isn't "full". There are pros and cons to every youth ministry strategy.

7. Don't really have anything else to write here for #7...it's getting late (it's midnight) but it seemed like have 7 points would be a cool thing. Not sure if any of this is helpful...Oh, here's a thought; term your changes "experiments" and be willing to allow them to fail (who cares if something goes wrong--if it was an "experiment"). Learn from your experiments and begin to develop principles for small groups that you're passionate about and/or ones that work for your particular youth ministry setting.