Hello again my friends;

The last time I talked I was telling you about some of the new changes here at G. L. O. V.. E. Since then, we have finished up our Thursday night community parties for my local church (Brookside -- Vida En Cristo Jesus United Methodist Church) and I can honestly say that in my own opinion it was a great success. We did have a few glitches such as a couple of nights getting double booked for entertainment while one night had nothing booked and our final evening was supposed to be a Christian puppet show, however the puppeteer unfortunately had to have emergency dental surgery that day and was unable to perform. Although to her credit she did come and try.

I do want to thank each and every one who volunteered their time and talents to come out and entertain and a community which they are not even a part of. Being a small church we have basically no budget and so could not pay to have them yet not one of them failed to agree immediately to come and do God's work. There were the man from the fire department who came twice on their own time in order to close down the kids, although I do believe that there were as many adults running through the water as children. We have the praise band from El Masia who works with St. Paul's United Methodist Church and were giving enough to come and play for us not once but twice. We had our own friend Matt Grey who came out and played not only some of the more popular and well known Christian songs in both English and Spanish but we were also lucky enough to have him play some of his own original music which he has written for his own Christian ministry which you can find at WWW.2 mites.com. We had our friends from Bethany United Methodist Church who came and spent an evening helping everyone with Christian crafts as well as teaching dance moves to some of the more popular Christian songs to the children there. And we had the wonderful Davidic dancers from the Remnant of Israel A Messianic Jewish Temple.

Of course, there were the stores and and individuals who donated food and drank as well as Joe, who was there every week to do the cooking. I can't even begin to list all the wonderful people who came early and stayed late in order to set up and clean up afterwards, the people who worked for weeks planning everything, handing out flyers, printing all the flyers, knocking on people's doors to invite them, running registration, putting the food together, leading the prayers and devotions and many other things which I'm sure I've forgotten. But the outcome is this a neighborhood is definitely aware of us, we serve more hot dogs than I think I've ever seen in my life including totally running out on one night and we've had three new families visit the church to which seemed to be staying!

To my own benefit this last Tuesday evening I started a new Bible study in an assisted living home and so each Tuesday evening I will get to spend another hour studying the Bible with my new friends.

I thought I would go over a few things I picked up from the Christian news this last week. I don't know if I should put my own opinion on them or just let you make up your own mind so I'll probably be doing little of both.

Before I start though, here's something we all need to think about, "Jesus answered, the work of God is this: to believe in the one he had sent."(John 6:29)

This first news story I have to admit is one of the reasons that I am so strong on evangelism. Please don't get me wrong, I do believe that everyone should be taught about Jesus Christ and what he does for us. But I also consider myself to be fairly tolerant of people who rationally decide that it's not what they're interested in. That doesn't mean I'll stop trying, but it doesn't mean I don't decide they're a bad person. However, this story which ran in the daily news net on the 17th really does scare me because it comes to close to so many Biblical predictions. news:www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107234

Ok, now those who know me know that one of my biggest vices is polotics. But being a minister I always try to keep my views to myself publicly. But sometimes you just have to speak up when you see something that just tears at your gut and this is one of those things. I hope no one out there takes any of my examples the wrong way and labels me a biggot. I love all of you and wish you nothing but the best but these are just things to illistrate how bad things can go.As most of you know our country began based on two giant oposites. On one hand we claimed to base it on God and his will along with religious freedom.I app;aud these ideas and try to live them eberyday although I do admit to the belief that Chrisyianity is thr only true religion of God. The other principle was commerce. Unfortunataly the biggest commerce was slavery which I abhor. And to make it worse I know for a fact that mt ancestors owned slaves. I know this because one if them was my great great grandmother. Luckily the Civil War ended slavery and gave all of the ex slaves the right to.....well to do exactly what they were told because they were given freedom but not rights. In the proccess of gaining rights though some things good and bad happened. You see since they really had no culture here other than slavery they turned back to their African roots. Now I have no really problem with that except for a couple of things. My first problem is with the idea that I as the decendant of a slaveowner even though I've never even entertained the idea of being one should have to make reperations to the decendants of slaves who were not personally affected because it was their ancestors who were so horribly wronged. The second leads into my main topic here. You see I listed 2 principles at the begining. But we are being drawn away from one by the other. I know that many of you prefer to be called African American, possibly becayse thanks to slavery you don't really have roots before that to identify with but how many of you have ever been to Africa either? And yet in school we have African American history month. Here we also have Hispanic American history month. Before you get the wrong idea, no I'm not asking for a European Amarican month. Nor so I have a problem with teaching about all off the great men and women from these cultures. But I also belive that the regular history books should be rewritten to include them as the AMERICANS they were. By deviding history or adding anything in front of American we just keep saying your'e different. I don't care what languafe your grandparents spoke if you as a U.S. citizen you are an american. But we concentrate on these things and it helps to distract us from the fact that we are meant to be one nation undsr God. Everyone concentrates on these things and so they don't notice how many of our schools are putting in footbaths and providing special areas for non Christian children to go and pray during the day. And how many years has it been since it was Legal for Christians to pray en masse in school? And now that they have you distracted on August 26th 2009 U.S. Education Seceratary Arne Duncan all but came our and said, on the 46th anniversary of his greatest speach no less that soon we will no longer be teaching the views and speaches of Dr. Martin Luther King becaus of his religious referals in them.

I had planned to write more tonight bit I think thar rhis would be a good place to shut up, ask you to read Dr. king's words, and stand up together and hold hands as we as AMERICANS pray to keep GOD in AMERICA.

Good morning; or at least they would probably tell me that it was morning if anyone were up. But, at 130 in the morning there aren't too many of us with our eyes open.

It seems that once again I have managed to get way behind on everything I gave doing. Sometimes lately I feel like a quadriplegic juggler.

So I guess we should start within the news (gossip?) About all of our members here on staff here at G. L. O. V. E.

Well, we have Infuriating Emmy to start out with. Emmy is a junior in high school this year. She has really been looking forward to being an upperclassman. What she did not look for was all of the homework of an upperclassman taking mostly honors classes. Needless to say after her first full week she has spent most of her weekend crashed trying to catch up on her sleep.

Then we have Jolly Joe Cool. There's not a whole lot to say about Joe this time. He has been gone a good part of the time staying with a friend. When he is home she is still the king of the videogames but other than that I'm not sure what's going on in his life.

Beautiful Becky has started a new class at her college. This one is on the Kings and Prophets. I don't believe it's anything she can't handle but there does seem to be a lot of work involved in this one. I know that one of the authors she will be reading is one she has had before and really does not care for but I have faith in her and the Lord and so I know that she will do great. She's also been very busy with our Thursday night parties at our local church which I will talk about soon in this blog. Also, while working on her degree in Christian ministry she needs to do another practicum. I know that she has chosen to do this one on prayer. Not just time spent in prayer, but also the different types of prayer. I know for one thing she plans about three different prayer walks followed by services held strictly to lift up the prayers of the neighborhood that she gets while on her walks. I think she plans to include prayer circles as well but I'm not sure. I do know that she seems to have it all figured out except for implementing it. Of course, she is now an official member of the youth leadership team. And she is now working on putting together our evangelism team.

Magnificent Mollie; unfortunately I don't see as much of Mollie as I used to. Her grandson Jesse has been staying with her on vacation lately and so she has wanted naturally as spent as much time with him as possible. On top of that he arrived during the week that her church was doing their vacation Bible school. I'll let you know more about what's going on with her and hopefully get her back to working on her own blog as soon as I can.

We do have four new members or in a way five who will be doing blogs here. None of them are fully set up yet but I thought that I would go a head and tell you a little about them.

First, we have pastor Maranda, he is a minister with the United Methodists church and has been leading the services for our Spanish speaking part of our congregation. Now that we have gone bilingual and only have one service I'm not sure exactly what his plans are but I know that he will be with us for a while yet. He has asked for a blog for himself mainly for our new church website but we will get the pleasure of having it here as well.

Pastor Smart; Pastor "C."as she likes to be called is the other United Methodist minister from our church. You may or may not be seeing a lot from her on her blog as she hasn't yet decided if she likes the new ways of doing things. But, I have a feeling that it probably won't take her too long to warm up to them. She has already asked about the possibility of conducting an online Bible study. I will say that there's not too much that can stand in the way of her and her flock. This is a lady who was assigned to a church in one of the poorest parts of town and rather than complain that she only had a congregation of less than 10 people she decided to move into the area to get to know the people around her and has built up the congregation to a point where even though we are a small congregation our numbers are respected.

Osmar; Osmar is difficult for me to describe. Partially because his native language is Spanish but I think mostly because he does not believe that he can speak English even though he and I have had several conversations and I definitely do not speak Spanish all though I wish I did. But after those conversations and after hearing him do a devotion as well as preaching twice I can guarantee you that this man truly has a heart for Jesus Christ. Beautiful Becky describes him as a big huggy bear. I'm not sure that I'd go that far but I do know that when you speak with him both his eyes and his smile light up with the love of God. In the conversations that we have had never once no matter what the topic was has he failed to mention God in it.

Rosalia, or more correctly, Rosalia and Ms. Julia; I first met Rosalia when she and some other members from El Messias church volunteered to play at one of our Thursday night communoty parties. Now don't get me wrong, Rosalia has a beautiful voice and it shows that she is playing for the Lord, but that is not what drew mw to her. You see Osmar had agreed to to the devotion that evening and I don;t know how it was agreed upon but since his native tongue is Spanish Rosalia translated what he said into English. Let me assure you that there was a true passion for Jesus from both of them that you will not find on any television show or even in most large churches. When these two finished a simple devotion it was all I could do to say thank you to them they had effected me that much. The following Sunday Beautiful Becky and I attended servicees with the Spanish speaking friends from our congregation and Osmar happened to be preaching. To our great surprise Rosalia was filling in with the praise band that night and she remembered us. Knowing that we do not speak Spanish she again volunteered to translate the Message that Osmar delivered and this time I was litterally brought to tears as I answred the alter call. Ms. Julia her Mother was also there and I do remember her praying over me as I kneeled before Christ;s alter begging him to change me into what he wants me to be. Later I did ask both Osmar and Rosalia if they would be willing to write blogs. Both did agree though Rosalia pretty much let me know that hers would be a joint effort between her and Ms. Julia. Now knowing that Ms. julia has done evangelism in several countries as well as around the U.S. and that Rosalia is following in her footsteps how could I ever refuse an offer like that. Those of you who lmow me know that evengelism for Jesus Christ is my mission in life. I dream of leading just one person to salvation, but even more I havee nightmares about the one person that did not try with who misss out on eternity with paradise. I pray that God will allow me to learn from all of these wonderful people.

I do have quite a bit more that I want to say to you, but since this has already taken almost a full day I think I,ll stop here for now and start a new post after my Bible Study tomorrow evening.

Until them I pray that each of you live in the love and salvation offered only by our Lord Jesus the Christ.

Blessings from Rev. Dr. Tom your servant in Christ.