Soul and Spirit

Don’t Forget Haiti!

Here is the January 12 updated from Christian Aid Ministries:

This week, CAM sent three air-shipments and two 40′ sea-containers to Haiti. They contained 3,705 tarps, ropes, 652 hygiene kits, 224 comforters, 1,797 blankets, 104 pairs of crutches, 49 pallets of medicines and supplies, 32,000 pounds of rice, 3,780 pounds of beans, 1,200 cans of chicken. We also sent beans, canned chicken, and other items for our regular Haiti school program. Our regular programs must go on, in spite of the tremendous amount of earthquake needs.

Lisa Miller, staff member in Haiti, writes, We are still feeling tremors here occasionally. Tuesday evening we felt one; it lasted just long enough to make me wonder if the tremors are ever going to stop.

An unexpected blessing arrived yesterday. Another aid organization shipped down a pallet of baby formula with no way to distribute it. They contacted us, and we now have a pallet of baby formula to distribute to our clinics – a much needed item.

The need for cash donations to help the hurting in Haiti is urgent.

Please visit my Haiti page for more information and for donation options.

Buried: Sifra and Ocean

I do not live in a news vacuum. But I just learned this: Florida teen murders street preachers.

Titus Sifra and Steven Ocean have been buried. I assume.

So has the story of their murder and apparent martyrdom. I just used Google to search the Web for stories mentioning both of their names. Results: 64 pages. So I did a news search. Results: 3 pages. Finally I did a blog search. Results: 5 pages.

Everyday hundreds of people fall victim to street violence in the US. On the evening of Jan. 30, Steven Ocean, 23, and Titus Sifra, 24, became victims as well when Jeriah Woody, 18, shot and killed them at point-blank range after they shared the message of Christ with him, according to a witness.

The witness said Woody got a phone call and said he “had to go” after listening to the two for 15 minutes. He turned and started walking in the other direction, but then he suddenly turned back towards the three men wielding a gun. He shot Sufra at point-blank range. When the Ocean ran, he chased after him, shot him from behind, walked up to him and shot him in the head execution style. The witness ran in the other direction and escaped.

However, although the case is almost two weeks old now, there has been little media coverage.

Did you know?

Dear Credit Card User

For more than a week I’ve been planning to write to you about your credit cards.

Now I just read that Changes to credit card rules won’t perfectly protect consumers. The writer makes some of the same points I was planning to make, though mine are based on personal experience and not on research of the new laws.

Another change generally keeps lenders from raising interest rates on existing balances, though you still could see rates go up on new purchases, provided they send a warning of the change.

Consumers received a taste of this desperation in the last few months. Knowing that by Feb. 22 their interest income would be reduced, lenders raised rates, changed credit limits and dropped many customers.

Even people who paid on time were shocked by the changes lenders used to cut their risks and enhance revenue.

Now comes Phase 2. Analysts expect consumers to be hit with new fees, such as annual fees for holding credit cards and penalties for rarely or never using cards.

The law requires that people be notified clearly of changes, but many people ignore their mail.

“…lenders raised rates, changed credit limits and dropped many customers,”” she wrote.

Some of them certainly did for me!

A couple raised their rates.

Another dropped credit limits because of card inactivity. (That reduction was in the range of $10K.)

Yet another simply closed a had-not-been-used-in-a-long-time business card.

And all of the above were utterly unexpected. And none of the actions were because of some recent bad activity of mine. The card holders were just getting ready for the new law to go into effect.

Interestingly, though, Discover Card treated me quite differently on a personal card. First of all, they slashed my interest rate. And did so retroactively by a month or so. (I called them to ask for a reduction.) Thank you, Discover! You guys have been nice to me before; I appreciate that.

Had You Heard?

Tests show bagged greens in Oregon, elsewhere have bacteria

Obama used National Prayer Breakfast to attack anti-sodomy laws for Uganda

Al Qaeda poised to try major attack in United States within 3-6 months, intelligence chiefs warn

UN calls for treaty to prevent cyber war

Obama Administration Admits It Wrongly Tracked Abortion Groups in Wisconsin

US says it may kill Americans abroad

Religious attire mirrors tenets of faith

June Bontrager, Porter Mennonite Church

Haiti: God’s Miracle for Darlene Etienne

Darlene Etienne in Haiti

Praise God! And bless the rescuers!

French rescuers pulled a teenage girl — very dehydrated, with a broken left leg and moments from death — from the rubble of a home near the destroyed St. Gerard University on Wednesday, a stunning recovery 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city.

Darlene Etienne was rushed to a French military field hospital and then to the French military hospital ship Sirroco, groaning through an oxygen mask with her eyes open in a lost stare.

“She’s alive!” said paramedic Paul Francois-Valette, who accompanied her into the hospital.

Authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water, little alone more than two weeks.

Source: Stunning recovery: Haitian girl pulled from debris

Bless God for this wonderful miracle!

And kudos to the French rescue team who hadn’t quit yet.

President Roth’s SOTUS

Personal memo to each of you who voted in the 2008 US Presidential election: One at a time, you could have elected me. 😯

In an hour or so, President Obama gives his State of the Union Speech.

But what if it were President Roth (as in, I) giving the address, what could you expect?

  1. No advance copy to anyone (except my wife)
  2. No teleprompter(s)
  3. No Presidential special guests beyond former Presidents willing to attend
  4. No speech writers
  5. No partisanship
  6. No laundry list of my accomplishments or my goals
  7. “Ask what good you can do for you neighbor…then do it.”
  8. “I have asked what good I can do for you. I’ve come up with two things I can promise right now. First, I will veto any legislation that has any earmarks attached. Second, I will push hard for a reduction in income tax rates with matching reductions in federal spending.”
  9. “We have had a hard year. So did the Pilgrims. And they had a time of thanksgiving. For what are you thankful? Fellow Americans, answer the question in your own hearts. Then tell each other. Let’s cultivate a spirit of gratefulness.”
  10. “President Carter, please stand. Thank you, sir, for…” followed by three good things he did for the country.
  11. “President Bush 41, please stand. Thank you, sir, for…” followed by three good thing he did for the country.
  12. “President Clinton, please stand. Thank you, sir, for…” followed by three good things he did for the country.
  13. “President Bush 43, please stand. Thank you, sir, for…” followed by three good things he did for the country.
  14. “I reaffirm my appreciation for our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The Almighty has blessed us beyond measure through the principles and laws established by our founding documents.”
  15. “I am grateful to be an American. We live in an exceptional country. God Himself has bestowed on us freedoms and liberty few nations have enjoyed. We have carelessly surrendered too many of those. We have brazenly abused others of them. And many we have put to good use for ourselves, our families, our communities, our country, and even our world.”
  16. “I asked you about your own thankfulness. You aren’t here to express them in this forum. But your representatives are here. So we’ll have a fifteen minute open mike period in another five minutes or so. In that time slot, Senators and Representatives with a sincere personal expression of gratefulness may have a maximum of fifteen seconds to say one thing for which they are thankful. While you’re thinking, let me tell you some things for which I’m thankful…not as President, but as Mark Roth….”

See what you missed? 🙄

You may be thankful for that also. 😉

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Above all, love God!