$ 20 MILLION dollars

The Packers and Brett Favre situation is definitely weird. In the latest news, the Packers offer Brett Favre $ 20 MILLION dollars ( 2 million a year for 10 years ) to remain retired.

If Brett wants more money that is a sweet deal. I will sit at home with my family and get paid quite a bit of money. HOWEVER, I think that Brett's desire to come back and play football has more to do with playing then just the money.

So, what is going to happen ? Who knows at this point. If he gets reinstated, will he show up at camp ? Will the Packers pay him 4 12 million dollars to sit the bench. Will Brett quietly sit on the bench and collect 12 million dollars .....

Or will a scene be caused and will he be traded or released ???

I have no clue ... the sage continues.

Kids Care Club

Today, I went over and had a meeting with the new Wooster City School Superintendent, Michael Tefs. It was a very good meeting. I went over to him to ask about partnering with the schools; especially the elementary schools to launch a Kids Care Club in Wooster. The meeting went very well. He also seems like a great guy and has passion and zeal about making our district a great district.

However, I want to share with you about KCC today. Here is some information:

What are Kids Care Clubs?

Kids Care Clubs are groups of kids who work together to help others around the world. The fact is, a Kids Care Club can be started with friends, a school class, an after-school program, or as a club within any youth organization.

All it takes is a group of eager elementary and middle school kids, plus and adult “facilitator” who keeps things organized and helps kids carry out their service projects.

Kids Care Clubs is dedicated to developing compassion and inspiring a spirit of volunteering in elementary and middle school children.

And remember, when kids work together with a little help from a caring adults, wonderful things happen !


What do Kids Care Clubs do?

Our country and our world face serious social issues, such as poverty, illiteracy, hunger, children in foster care and more. The kids of today will inherit these problems and must work toward solutions. And the truth is those solutions will come more quickly if a devotion to serving others begins early in life.

That’s what Kids Care Clubs are about. Each month, the clubs tackle a new project. Each project deals with a social issue like those mentioned above. Other projects are timed to holidays and special events – such as Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Day and Earth Day.

So Kids Care Club members don’t just learn about problems – they get the tools to start solving them.


How do Kids Care Clubs Help Others?

People at home and around the world are helped all year long through the compassion and spirit of Kids Care Clubs members.

Through hands-on service projects such as Eat Wise-Exercise, Team Up for Kids in Foster Care and holiday Hope Chests members of Kids Care Clubs help the eldery, hungry, homeless, disabled, sick and victims of disasters.

How do Kids Care Clubs Help Make A Brighter Future?

When kids learn at a an early age that caring about others make a real difference, the lessons can last a lifetime. By serving others, kids connect with people from different economical situations. With a wider, more tolerant view of the world they live in, kids grow into empowered adults, devoted to service.

Did You Know?

Quaker is proud to be the Premier Partner of Kids Care Clubs. The Club is a program of Points of Light & Hands on Network

There are more than 75,000 kids in 1,400 registered Kids Care Clubs. Kids Care Clubs are not only in the U.S. but also in Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia

Our KCC

We are going to be launching our KCC this year. We will be having our "kick-off" on Saturday, August 23rd to let the kids and the parents know about the program. We will then have our first meeting on September 3rd. Our meetings will be the First Wednesday of the month.

At these meetings, we will celebrate our past successes and plan what the up-coming programs and service projects will consist of. We will also have time of fellowship and team-building during the meetings.

The program will be for all children in grades K-8.

We are looking forward to having children serve in our community.

President Bush Visits Ruth E. Harris

President Bush made an unexpected stop during his afternoon visit to Northeast Ohio that made it a day to remember for a 91-year old birthday girl.

The Presidential motorcade was departing a Gates Mills fundraiser en route to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport for a plane ride back to Washington, when a sign caught the President's eye.

The sign read: "Mr. President, please stop to take a 91st B-Day picture with Ma."

A group of people were crowded on the side of the road, trying to coax the President to honor "Ma," who happens to be Ruth E. Harris. She was celebrating her 91st birthday.

The President did stop, and so did the traveling press, the secret service -- and nearly everyone on Ruth's block.

President Bush sat with her, holding her hand and taking pictures for several minutes. "You look great," the President told her. "Where is the birthday cake?"

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They did a news story on this during our 11 o'clock news and thought that I would share it. I thought it was pretty cool.

Safe Vs. Unsafe People

Yesterday, I was reading some blogs doing "research". I was researching church community and saw that Kathy had done a post recently on safe communities vs. unsafe communities. Her post was driven from a book that she had read called Safe People.

After reading the list, I thought that her lists (the books) may be a good foundation for the sermon that I am working on for August 10th. The sermon is going to be the launching pad for our care groups that we are going to begin at Zion.

If I am a little honest, I am getting a little nervous about the groups, BUT that is not what this post is about. This post is about something that I believe ALOT of people are struggling with.

I mentioned this list on YMX and there are a few people who are beginning to discuss the list. A number of them have been hurt and have been abused by individuals, communities and churches. The reason for this is that the people they have been associated with have been "unsafe".

Now, to be honest, there are alot of them (us) that have been unsafe ourselves and with us being unsafe, we have damaged ourselves and others. I think that it is vital that we strive to be "safe" people and that we surround ourselves with "safe" people.

Too often though, we enter relationships with "unsafe" people and we do not put boundaries in them and we get ourselves hurt. So, without further ado; here is the list for safe and unsafe people. Read them and see about the following two things:

- are you safe or unsafe ?
- are those you are in relationship with safe or unsafe ?

unsafe people (and communities):

- think they ”have it all together”; no admitance of their weaknesses
- are defensive instead of open to feedback
- are self-righteous instead of humble
- only apologize instead of changing their behavior
- avoid working on their problems instead of dealing with them
- demand trust instead of earning it
- blame others instead of take responsibility
- lie instead of tell the truth
- remain stagnant instead of growing
- resist freedom instead of encouraging it
- flatter us instead of confronting us
- condemn us instead of forgiving us
- stay in parent/child roles instead of relating to us as equals
- unstable over time instead of being consistent
- gossip instead of keeping secrets

safe people (and communities):

- accept us just like we are
- love us no matter how we are being or what we do
- influence us to develop our ability to love and be responsible
- create love and good works within us
- give us an opportunity to grow & stretch & practice
- help us feel comfortable being “ourselves”, to be authentic
- allow us to become the us that God intended
- use their lives to touch ours and leave us better for it
- help us be more like Christ
- help us to like & love others more
- make the relationship more important than opinions
- receive instead of just give
- are humble & willing to say what they need
- are honest, kind & don’t pretend
- work through resistances instead of giving up

It is my hope and prayer that we will be safe people. It is my hope and prayer that the care groups that we are forming at Zion will be safe communities. Then because we are safe, people will experience Christ.

Viola

Today was my day to go up to the Viola Clinic. The Viola Clinic is our communities Free Medical Clinic. I go up there to give a helping hand. No, do not worry, I am not giving medical advice and they do not give me free reign with the needles. I am one of the behind the scenes people.

My job is rather simple, I take individuals medical files that have visited the clinic and I refile them back into their system. After I finish filing the medical files, I go to three of the workers and shred their papers.

Today, Stacey was up at the Cleveland Clinic with Bethany, so I had the boys with me. Thus, they went ip to the clinic with me. They were fantastic and everyone commented on how well they were.

The reason for this post is to notice the fact of how "nice" the place is to go to. They are so friendly and welcoming to everyone and as you watch people "scurring" around; you can not tell who wprks there and who volunteers there; which I think is very cool. You really feel like you are part of a caring community ..... which leads me to the church.

Is that how it is in the church ?

I believe that most churches need work in that area.

Church Blogs

One of the things that I have been working on is setting up some church blogs. The blogs will all have their separate sites but they will all link to one another.

I have tried to do the "home blog" in such a way that it makes it easy to navigate. I am not sure if I succeeded or not. If you want to go check it out and let me know, that would be great.

If you are familiar with wordpress (which I used), I used pages (tabs) to announce the blogs. When you click on the page, you get a brief intro and link to the new blog.

Hopefully, we can get individuals using it. I was happy to see the initial number that clicked on Kids Care Club when I sent the letter out to the kids letting them know about the new ministry and the blog.

AnyWhoo, here is the home blog

The Prayer of Obama

I find this wrong on so many levels:

An Israeli newspaper's decision to publish a handwritten prayer left by Barack Obama in the cracks of Jerusalem's Western Wall drew criticism Friday as an invasion of his privacy and his relationship with God.

In the note, placed at Judaism's holiest site Thursday, Obama asks God to guide him and guard his family.

"Lord — Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will," reads the note published in Maariv.

Maariv ran a photograph of the note on its front page Friday. It said the note was removed from the wall by a Jewish seminary student immediately after Obama left.

Thankfully, this comes out from them not too much later:

The paper's decision to make the note public brought quick criticism from religious authorities. The rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz, called it an intrusion on Obama's intimate relationship with God.

"The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them," Rabinovitz told Army Radio.

The newspaper's action "damages the Western Wall and damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves," he added.

Rosenblum made it very clear as well:

"It's inappropriate that the prayers of a person at the Western Wall should become a subject of public knowledge at all," said Jonathan Rosenblum, a Jerusalem-based analyst of the religious community and director of the Orthodox Am Ehad think tank.

"There is a rabbinic prohibition against reading other people's private communications, and certainly anyone who goes to the wall expects that those communication will be protected," Rosenblum said.

I understand that those in the spotlight are scrutenized and that our political candidates for presidents are watched constantly BUT there needs to be some line that we are not allowed to cross.

UN MILLENIUM GOALS

There are somethings that occur and then you do not hear much more about. I have been doing some researching on the goals and how they are processing. Some are doing good, others are doing terrible. Here are the goals:

GOAL 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

GOAL 2: Achieve universal primary education

GOAL 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

GOAL 4: Reduce child mortality

GOAL 5: Improve maternal health

GOAL 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

GOAL 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

GOAL 8: Develop a global partnership for development

I would love to see these occur. I would love to see us ERADICATE them. But, we need to put a plan into action if we want to see it occur.

just tinking

A Church Garden ?

Very Cool.

messiah Lutheran Church in Grand Island, Nebraska is trying a new method of seeking relief from rising food costs: growing their own. Volunteers are maintaining a new community garden across the street from the church, which has sections reserved for church youth and 10 area families. Local businesses donated plants for the 2,000 square foot garden.

Global Poverty

I think that I may be challenged to go to the following conference and see how this may help our church, our community and our oureach.




Bottom-Up Approaches to Global Poverty: Appropriate Technology, social Entrepreneurship and the Church


The way that Christians respond to those most in need is a sign of God's presence. But the mission of the church does not move in one direction-from West to East, first to third world, or affluence to poverty. Nor is it controlled from a central location or organization. Located in every province of every country, the church is situated to react to the needs of the poor in an especially powerful way-from the bottom up.

Prompted by God's call to meet the needs of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed, Christians can respond sensitively and productively to poverty though faith-inspired practices of appropriate technology and social entrepreneurship. The former draws on a community's existing talents and resources to produce technology that is simple, inexpensive, easily maintained, culturally acceptable, and responsive to genuine human needs. The latter finds alternative approaches to corporate structures that provide opportunities to improve the physical and social conditions of the poor.

Instead of rivals at cross purposes, these three forces-local church, appropriate technology, and social entrepreneurship-hold enormous promise when they converge, for they have the potential to create genuine social change and express Christian faith and witness.