Happy Valentines Day!

                                                  




   "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word." ---Ephesians 5:25 & 26---
   With another Valentines Day upon us, these are (as always), important words to keep in mind. Guys, we should never take our women for granted. In the course of day to day life, we all get caught up in various activities that seem to be more important than our relationship at the time. We should try to make the ladies feel special on more than one day a year. Just taking time to thank them for all they do to keep the family together, emotionally and physically, goes a long way! Think about it!
  

Teens & Pregnancy

   Our  13 year old daughter recently came home with a baby!! Before anyone out there jumps to conclusions about bad parenting etc.; let me tell you that it was a "computerized " infant  for a class at her school.
Most of the kids that had to do this were able to take the "child" for just one school night. However, wanting for the experience to be more like "real life", she elected to bring this "child" home for the weekend! Yes,3 nights; Friday,Saturday & Sunday night. Well, let me tell you after several days of sleep deprivation, her nerves are on edge big time. She never dreamed it would be as hard as it has been.
   I think these types of programs are very useful,in order to give the kids at least some understanding of the responsibility that having a child invloves! Suffice it to say that any idea of the "fun" involved has gone out the window,& I have no doubt this; in addition to similar reinforcement at home,will make her think twice about experimenting with sex before marriage!

Tim Tebow & SuperBowl Ad Controversy

 

                                                           

                                                                                                                      

By Garey Ris

By the time Super Bowl XLIV rolls around, millions of words will have been written about the three quarterbacks involved. Of course Peyton Manning and Drew Brees will get more than their fair share. The third signal caller has never played an NFL down.

Associated Press

Tim Tebow wants to talk to you about your uterus.Pro prospect Tim Tebow, just off his stellar career at Florida, will appear with his mother in a controversial pro-life ad that CBS plans to run. As commercials go, it’s already generating lots of conjecture. In other words, it’s probably not the standard Super Bowl spot that aspires merely to be funny, such as the “office linebacker” commercials.
Tebow relishes being a role model. The devout Christian does missionary work, wears eyeblack with Biblical verses and promises to remain a virgin until marriage. In the commercial, by the conservative group Focus on the Family, Tebow’s mother, Pam, will recount how she ignored medical advice to have an abortion when medical problems threatened her life and gave birth to Tim, her fifth child.
Not everyone is happy with the Tebows’ message. “What both Tebows appear to miss in their passionate pro-life advocacy is that it was always Pam Tebow’s choice as to what to do with her pregnancy: though doctors advised her to terminate it, they couldn’t force her to do so,” Latoya Peterson writes at Jezebel. “The Tebows are now taking the stance that the only permissible option is to not terminate pregnancies, effectively denying other women the choice that Pam Tebow herself was able to exercise.”
At Real Clear Sports, Art Spander writes of the changing dynamic for athletes. “Sport used to be so clear. Athletes were athletes,” Spander writes. “They played games, signed autographs and were invited out to dinner by alums who might have been breaking NCAA rules but it wasn’t like robbing a bank or anything. These days are different. Players question coaches, support political candidates and prove they got something out of school other than a letterman’s jacket.”
The Orlando Sentinel’s George Diaz doesn’t like mixing politics and sports, preferring commercials with “talking frogs. Dancing lizards. Clydesdale horses falling in love. Danica Patrick getting her sexy groove on for GoDaddy.com.”

DawgSport’s T. Kyle King defends Tebow’s choice to appear in the ad.

FanHouse’s Jay Mariotti, who isn’t interested in Tebow’s views during the Super Bowl, thinks there’s a lot of downside for any team that drafts him. “Tebow is raising eyebrows across the NFL, where league and team executives must be conscious of public relations within their communities,” Mariotti writes. “When kept in a proper context and equilibrium, the missionary and humanitarian work done by the Tebow family is breathtaking. But to grandstand on the biggest stage in the world makes me wonder if Tebow is more interested in crusading than playing the game.”

However, Yahoo’s Jason Cole argues that Tebow’s popularity could have an immense benefit when the NFL draft comes around.

As for whether Tebow’s actually good enough to quarterback an NFL team, Digital Sports Daily’s Travis Duncan says it’s premature to make much out of Tebow’s early struggles in practice for the Senior Bowl college all-star showcase.

Children & Obedience

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. And ye fathers,provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonnition of the Lord." Ephesians 6: 1&4...KJV

  There is a fine line in discipline invloving children. We want to be "good parents",but that involves the right kind of discipline. Spanking not beating, can produce a healthy respect for rules. Beating or spanking beyond what is necessary to ensure compliance,will alienate kids & in the long run, most likely cause a
lack of respect.
  Conversly, too little discipline can cause the same result! We want our kids to like us,& be friends with us,but at times we must stop being the "friend" and act as the "parent" once again. This back & forth as "friend" then "parent" again, seems to be the norm for most successful child raising. Along with this goes a"healthy example" the parents should set, involving their own behavior!
  Respect for the other spouse in the marriage relationship is vital as well, in setting a good example of a working marriage, that hopefully, the kids will grow up to emulate!

mountain pix

http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/drives/rocky-mountains/2

Against All Odds--Girl Survives Over 2 Weeks Under Rubble !!

By VIVIAN SEQUERA and BEN FOX, Associated Press Writers Vivian Sequera And Ben Fox, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 20 mins ago


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A 16-year-old girl pulled from the rubble more than two weeks after a deadly earthquake was in stable condition Thursday, able to eat yogurt and mashed vegetables to the surprise of doctors, who said her survival was medically inexplicable.
Hundreds of thousands of other survivors hoped for a breakthrough of another kind — the delivery of badly needed food aid.
Key players in the Haiti earthquake relief effort, in what may prove to be a pivotal meeting Wednesday, decided to better coordinate by dividing up the shattered capital, giving each responsibility for handing out food in certain areas.
Food distribution thus far has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times shoved aside the women and weak and took their food.
"These things should be done in a systematic way, not a random way," Dr. Eddy Delalue, who runs a Haitian relief group, Operation Hope, said Wednesday of the emergency food program. "It's survival of the fittest: The strongest guy gets it."
Wednesday's rescue of teenager Darlene Etienne from a collapsed home near St. Gerard University, 15 days after Haiti's great quake killed an estimated 200,000 people, was the first such recovery since Saturday, when French rescuers extricated a man from the ruins of a hotel grocery store.
Etienne is stable, drinking water and eating yogurt and mashed vegetables, said Dr. Evelyne Lambert, who has been treating the girl on the French Navy hospital ship Sirocco, anchored off the shore of Port-au-Prince.
Lambert said that Etienne has a 90 percent chance of survival
"We cannot really explain this because that's just (against) biological facts," Lambert told a news conference. "We are very surprised by the fact that she's alive. ... She's saying that she has been under the ground since the very beginning on the 12th of January so it may have really happened — but we cannot explain that."
Etienne may have had some access to water from a bathroom of the wrecked house, and rescuers said she mumbled something about having a little Coca-Cola with her in the rubble.

Fruit Of The Spirit

   If  we are "abiding in Christ" the Holy Spirit will cause our lives to produce "fruit".This "fruit" is the inner working of His Spirit, guiding &; prompting our spirit,so that we will act or think in a certain manner!
   "But the fruit of the Spirit is love,joy,peace,longsuffering,gentleness,goodness,faith, meekness,temperance:
against such there is no law." Galatians 5:22 & 23.
   This is not acheived by our effort. It is His Spirit alone inside of one who believes in Christ Jesus of Nazareth, as their Lord & Saviour!! Of course our "humanness" will at times hinder the display of these "fruits"; but He will guide us back onto the correct course. Stay in the Word, pray to Him,He is always there
& wants to commune with us!!!