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.