HAPPY VALENTINE DAY POEM!

When I was asked to write a poem for our 1976 Valentine Banquet program for pastors and spouses, I came up with a poem that is a favorite of my children and many friends. The poem is a fun piece about married love and is full of chiches and inside jokes for pastors by design. I hope it adds to the charm of the poem.

WE

I was I and he was he . . . A ceremony made us "we.”
When in the sight of God and men . . .
We pledged our troth and kissed our kin
And set our sails . . . breathlessly
On the matrimony sea.

My handsome prince . . . He held my hand.
My every wish . . . was his command
Until one day . . . I said, "I think we . . .
Should see my friends . . . More frequently.

He said, so loud . . . It shook the house
That he was man . . . and not a mouse
And furthermore . . . he said we should
See his friends more . . . he said we would.

He said, we would . . . most certainly
I said, we won't . . . We both said "we"
Strange, when we do . . . Or don't agree
One thing is clear . . . We both say "we"

Now that's the secret . . . For love to grow
Through Summer's sun . . . and Winter's snow
Through diaper rash . . . And teething ills
From P.T.A. . . . to college bills

Through three-point circuits . . . And inner-city
And Pastor Parish Relations Committee
Through Conference moving time . . . again
When you’re not one . . . of the bishop's men.

Through covered dishes . . . Well, thick and thin
Love like this . . . will never end
For when we do . . . or don't agree . . .
We still find joy . . . in being '"we".

by Ruth Baird Shaw ><>

LOVE. BE LOVED. TRUST IN GOD. SING.

LOVE, BE LOVED, TRUST IN GOD, SING.
My daughter, Janice called my attention to an article about a woman who is 111 years old! Janice remaked, "mother I can envision and hope you will still be living at that age." Well, like Mrs Williams, "I love, am loved, trust in God and sing." But i do not want, nor expect to live to be a centenarian and certainly not a "supercentenarian," (a person who survived beyond her 110 th birthday.)

Lera Williams was born the year the century turned. On Wednesday, February 9, 2011, Lera celebrated her 111th birthday. She married at 18 and survived the Great Flu that very same year.

She had eight children, two who died before her, which is the single worst thing that could happen to you, she says.

Mrs. Williams still remembers her grandparents like it was yesterday. She remembers riding sidesaddle on a horse and paddling a skiff across the Cumberland River when someone put her in the boat and told her to paddle. She never had a desire to learn to drive a car.

Lera remembers her daddy reading the Bible every morning and every night. When asked about life, she says "life is a wonder." When asked about time, she says it sure "flies fast."

According to the Gerontology Research Group, an international body that deals in longevity research, Williams is Kentucky's oldest and is probably the 64th oldest person living on the planet. She is someone they call a "supercentenarian," a person who has survived beyond her 110th birthday.

The frail, smiling woman doesn't seem too impressed herself, calling it a "normal life." She married C.M. Williams in 1918, but he wasn't the first man she had an eye on. She says there were others who "made me giggle." C.M. and Lera lived in his parents' house, because that was what everybody did back then.

All her children, seven girls and one boy, were born with the help of a midwife. She believes in God with her whole heart. Her children knew they were loved, just as she knew she was loved by her parents.

Her husband died in 1961. They had been married for 43 years. These days, Lera lives at home, a block away from Campbellsville University. Her daughters take turns caring for her, each living a month at the house. "She's been a wonderful mama," says Anna, 78, who makes sure Lera eats well and has her crochet near at hand. Lera says it helps that she is not afraid of much either. Except snakes.

When terrible things happened — and they did — you had to accept them. Anna reminds her of the time when Lera was a young mother, and a warm day in January brought a tornado ripping through their home, causing it to collapse. Baby Nellie Catherine was in a bed that was crushed; another small child was in a bed that was not.

Her youngest daughter, Betty, is 68. Her eldest, Eloise is 91. Asked if she still offers motherly advice to Eloise, Lera says, "I tell her what I think."

Lera's white hair frames her face of nearly flawless skin. She says she can't hear so well anymore. She hasn't left the house in 14 years when she broke her hip, and because the only medicine she needs now is a little something for her heart and a little something for blood pressure and her vitamins, it was the last time she saw a doctor.
"I never was one to go to the doctor," says the little woman in the big chair, surrounded by pictures of her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and her great-great-grandchildren.

In a conversation lull or, says Anna, very early in the morning when she is not certain it is time to wake up yet, her mother will sing old Methodist hymns like "Oh, how I love Jesus," singing in a soft lilt.

Lera Williams does not fear death. "I look forward to seeing all these people who have gone before me," she says, quietly but sure. She was looking forward to the company that came on Wednesday to share her 111 birthday cake and punch. "Please come back tomorrow," she says, by way of goodbye.

If you want to know a secret to long life, Lera Williams says, this is all she can offer: Love. Be loved. Trust in God. And sing!

Small Town Life for a Widow in the 1970's.

In the 1970's , my mother was a widow in her 80's, living alone in in a small town in Georgia. Her house was a duplex with the other part of the house rented to another widow.

The 1970's was a time when women were addressed as Mrs. or Miss. (Picture on right is Ieula Ann Dick Baird as a young woman)

Although her income was small, Mrs. Baird always had enough money to loan or share with any friend or neighbor. This had been true as far back as I remember. I learned much from my mother about many things and one was leanring how to "stretch a dollar." Mama also had enough money to pay her utility bills, and she had enough to buy any groceries, pay her doctor and pay for any medicine she needed.

She had electricity, a telephone and indoor plumbing; luxuries that were not available to her in her early years. She had a television, where she would always tune in to hear Billy Graham and other pastors when their preaching was televised. She kept up with the daily broadcasts of The Guiding Light soap opera and read religiously the Bible , other Christian books and the daily newspaper.

The Atlanta Braves! Mama was their biggest fan. Although Mama had a hearing loss, she turned the television up loud and listened until the game was over, even when the game continued after midnight. One time her closest neighbor (the lady who shared the duplex) complained, “Mrs. Baird, I cannot sleep with your television on so loud, could your turn the sound down?”

Mama told her kindly, “Mrs. Mathis, I am sorry but I cannot hear it if the sound is turned lower. But I am going to watch the Braves the brief time they play.” Mama then went on to explain to Mrs. Mathis how she herself had worked at night for a time and how she could sleep soundly during many daytime noises by training herself to shut out the daytime sounds. Mama told her, "Mrs. Mathis, now when you hear the Braves playing on my TV, you just think to yourself, 'Mrs. Baird is enjoying listening to the Braves,' and then just put it out of your mind, turn over and go back to sleep."

As the youngest daughter, I visited my mother probably more often than any of my siblings. But she would tell me not to neglect my own family or my own church to visit her - that she was fine. But I would visit and while there, do any shopping or chores she needed done.

Wonderfully, I did need to not worry about her as much because she had wonderful neighbors in and out of her house often and a nice "Grocer man“ who come to the door to take her order as long as she lived.

It was Mr. Barkley who owned and operated a small grocery store between Porterdale and Covington. I was visiting one day when he stopped in to see what groceries Mama needed.

He came into her unlocked and opened back door, sat down on a chair near Mama and said, “Mrs. Baird, what do you need today?

Mama replied, “Mr. Barkley, I’m about out of apples," Then she added, “I need a sack of flour and some co-colas and a few eggs.” He seemed to already know the amount of each item.

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Barkley was back with the groceries, lifted them out of his box, sat them on her kitchen table and gave Mama the bill. She counted out the cash and paid for her groceries.

Mama also had a doctor who had known her for a long time and was almost as old as she. Dr. Sams made house calls and was always ready to come to see her at her home whenever she needed medical care. This was a great situation as Mama did not drive.

I am told that my mother had been quite adapt at driving a “horse and buggy" early on but had no interest in learning to drive a car.

As Mama was getting to the end of her life, I visited her more often and had told her to please call day or night when she needed me. She called one day and said, "Ruth, you told me to call you when I needed you. I need you." I went down immediately and decided as soon as I arrived (about an hour away) I needed to call Dr. Sams and take her to the hospital in Covington.

Mama lived only two more days. As my oldest sister Louise and I stood at her bedside, Dr. Sams said with tears in his eyes, "Ruth, I am so sorry about your mother." Mama died on Dec 7, 1973. She would have been 89 the next March sixth.

Dr. Sams, her doctor, died 4 months later. Mr. Barkley, her grocer, also had a fatal heart attack a few months later and his grocery store was closed after his death.

Sex tourism thriving in U.S. Bible Belt

Sex tourism is thriving in Atlanta, according to recent reports.

They tell about "Brittany," at age 16 was drugged into oblivion while pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door in a sleasy hotel in Atlanta.

A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, and where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.

"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.

A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.

But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.

"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).

Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according to experts.

Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet, where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.

Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.

Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.

He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with the Peachtree City Police Department.

"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said Steinberg.

The FBI has identified 14 U.S. cities as centers for the sexual exploitation of children. In addition to Atlanta, they are Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.

RUNAWAYS AT MOST RISK
In all, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 underage girls are prostituted in the United States, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.

Most youths caught up in the sex trade are runaways, like Brittany, whose 19-year-old "rescuers" soon demanded a return on their investment.

"I didn't have any place to go. My mom hated me for what I was doing to the family," said Brittany, who did not want to be identified by her real name.

Up to 90 percent of runaways are believed to end up as prostitutes, with a third lured into prostitution within 48 hours. Some are sold into sexual slavery by their parents, according to a 2005 study by the Atlanta Women's Agenda.

Some get seduced by recruiters. Pimps use handsome young men and sometimes girls as fronts.

"A 16-year-old controlling a group of girls will not face the same penalties an adult would receive," said Patricia Crone, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice Demonstration Project.

Once snagged, the grooming process begins. Typically, the pimp's friends sleep with her, then come threats, beatings and gang rapes. Caresses and gifts, including drugs and alcohol, follow abuse, the Atlanta Women's Agenda study found.

Brittany said she was showered with fancy dinners, clothes and methamphetamine. But she also describes horror. "It made me feel dirty. It was demeaning," said Brittany.

The sex slaves are trafficked in and out of cities to supply sporting events, conventions or rap concerts.

During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties nightly, said Baker of the group CEASE.

The pimps even held an annual "Player's Ball" in Atlanta in 2003, openly buying and selling women and naming a "Player of the Year," according to the Atlanta Women's Agenda study.

The risks are worth it. While there are few reliable statistics, child sexual exploitation is believed to be the world's third-biggest money maker for organized crime, said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.

One reason for the demand is the false assumption that youths are disease-free.

On the contrary, with tissues not fully developed, they are more prone to lacerations. HIV infections among females aged 16 to 21 are 50 percent higher than for men, a 1998 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported.

Atlanta has won two new federal grants to establish units to fight the trafficking of underage sex slaves and to hire more undercover detectives, said Carole Morgan, director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy.

But the experts fear that may not be enough.

"It won't stop until people say, 'My city isn't safe for kids anymore,'" said Crone.

"This is a place where you can buy, sell or rent kids. It must be stopped."
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

When A Soldier Comes Home

WHEN A SOLDIER COMES HOME

WHEN A SOLDIER COMES HOME ...IT IS SOMETIMES HARD...

...to be tolerant of people who complain about the hassle of getting ready for work.
When a soldier comes home, he finds it hard....
...to keep a straight face when people complain about potholes

IT IS SOMETIMES HARD

...to be understanding when a co-worker complains about a bad night's sleep
...to be silent when people pray to God for a new car.
...to control his panic when his wife tells him he needs to drive slower.
...to be compassionate when a businessman expresses a fear of flying.
...to keep from laughing when anxious parents say they're afraid to send their kids off to summer camp.
...to keep from ridiculing someone who complains about hot weather.
...to control his frustration when a colleague gripes about his coffee being cold.
...to remain calm when his daughter complains about having to walk the dog.
...to be civil to people who complain about their jobs.

..to just walk away when someone says they only get two weeks of vacation a year.

...to be forgiving when someone says how hard it is to have a new baby in the house.

The only thing harder than being a Soldier.. Is loving one.

Christmas During the Great Depression.

People keep asking about growing up during the Great Depression. Specifically, “how was Christmas celebrated? "

Today we see Christmas decorations in stores before labor Day. When I was a child in the 1920's and 30's, we did not start decorating for Christmas in September. Neither we nor our neighbors had the time nor money to decorate for Christmas until Christmas week. Usually it was done on Christmas Eve.

Our Christmas tree was a pine tree brought in from a nearby wooded area between our house and the Yellow River. In my earliest memories of our Christimas trees,(late 1920's) we decorated the tree with strings of popped corn, red and green roping from the store and home made roping made of colored paper rings as in the picture above.

I remember at least one Christmas when we had the red and green roping from corner to corner across the ceiling, coming down into a swag with a large Christmas green paper bell attached in the center! It was the kind of bell that folded up and made a round bell when spread open.

I remember as a child, lying in bed on Christmas Eve, trying to go to sleep so it would be Christmas when I woke up. Christmas was Christmas Day.

Children in my day didn't have as much reason to be excited about Christmas presents as children do today. Or perhaps they had more reason?

When I woke up, there would be a stocking (one of my knee stockings left on a chair beside my bed) filled with candy and raisins (dried on the stems), a large red apple and an orange. There would also be some stick candy and chocolate drops and nuts, walnuts, pecans and large Brazil nuts.

I might also receive a pair of warm gloves, a scarf or cap and a pair of roller skates. I loved skating and skating up and down the paved sidewalks was a common activity for children and youth. We had paved walkways as everyone walked. The first paved roads in my town are in my memory bank as the South began to recover enough to prepare roads for the a few cars that were appearing in the mid thirties.

We did not have bowls of fresh fruit and/or nuts on the table or in the fridge all the time as now. Of course, we had peaches, pears and country apples in season. But not large red "store bought" apples. Not oranges.

Oranges had to be shipped from Florida so were expensive and rare in the late twenties and early 30's. My mother (3-6-1885 - 12-07-1973) told me how she and her little sisters would sit and eat their once - a -year orange and excitedly swap slices with one another.

Bishop Arthur J. Moore, a prominant Methodist Bishop of my mother's generation told "if one fell madly in love with a girl, he might share one piece of his Christmas orange with her".

Cooking and sharing cakes was one of the special Christmas traditions in our area. Mama always cooked a Japanese Fruit Cake. I do not have the recipe but the three cake layers of the JFC would be put together with two fruit and nut layers.

Mama's chocolate cake (still the best chocolate cake I have ever tasted) with her homemade fudge icing was my favorite. She made favorites for family members and friends including a coconut layer cake, an applesauce raisin cake, and several other kinds. Cakes were ready to be served when neighbors and friend dropped by for a Christmas visit.

Mama always cooked a hen with dressing and a ham for Christmas also. Mama cooked only one turkey that I can remember. She bought the turkey alive (chickens were also bought alive in those days.) I remember that after Mama got the turkey prepared (it's head chopped off, plucked, cleaned, dressed, and cooked), she had lost her appetite for turkey.

I hate to say it, as some of you may be on your way to a Turkey Dinner, but Mama never wanted to eat turkey again. I think the ordeal of preparing a smaller bird was not quite as traumatic as preparing a big turkey.

I have seen Mama wring the neck to kill a chicken, then pour boiling water over the limp bird and pluck the feathers off a few at a time. Smelly! Then she would singe the smaller feathers and hairs off with a burning piece of newspaper, scrub the skin, and finally take the insides out.

Mama would never have been so "wasteful" as to skin the chicken, as I soon learned to do. This would delete the "singe the hairs off" step.

Also, being a city girl, I could never wring the chicken’s neck but found it easier (and I thought more humane) to chop the neck off with an ax. Just thinking of this has helped to make me more and more vegetarian.

Santa Claus Is Alive and Well

" There is no Santa Claus. " My big sister dropped the bomb, "even dummies know that."

I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit Grandma.

My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns.

I knew her cinnamon rolls were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true. Grandma was home, and the rolls were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" she said...."Ridiculous! Don't believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go." "Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun.

"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through it's doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

I was only nine years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping.

For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, and the people who went to my church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-4 class.

Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he just had no coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby." The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat in Christmas paper. A little tag fell out of the coat, but Grandma said it was okay and just tucked it in her Bible. We finished wrapping the coat and tied the package with pretty ribbon, then wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it.

Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever, officially one of Santa's helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk.Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going." I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his doorbell and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.

Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.

Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were: ridiculous. Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.

Grandma has long since passed on, but I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside. ....It says, $19.95

Remembering the Goosebumps

On a summer bicycle tour of Hawaii, a friend and his companion pedaled up a hill as a rainbow arched across the horizon. Then, to make the scene even more awesome, a cooling rain began to fall while the sun was still shining! In awe, he turned to his friend and said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could bottle this up and bring it out some dreary November day?” The friend replied, “You need to do what my father taught me. My father told me to remember my goosebumps.”

Remember the good times? We should look back to recall those moments that brought sunshine in our lives; the “goosebump” moments are the rainbows in the storms of our life.

Someone has named the season we are now in “Hallow-thank-mas." The so-called “holiday season” begins earlier and lasts longer than ever. Now, it begins before Halloween (with increasingly elaborate Halloween decorations) and continues through the many festivities of Christmas. Sometimes it seems Thanksgiving gets overlooked and forgotten, but it is one of our more important celebrations as a nation –– a time when we pull away from our work and spend time with family to acknowledge all the blessings that have come our way.

Thanksgiving Day as a holiday began in the fall of 1621when the Pilgrims in America who had survived their first winter in America were facing the uncertainty of their second winter. The wheat and the peas they had brought with them failed to germinate. At one point their daily rations were 5 grains of corn. In the fall of 1622, there was enough food and shelter for the survivors to last a second winter. While they still had problems; they were filled with gratitude to God; that level of gratitude is credited with getting them through subsequent winters and the numerous future challenges and problems that they faced in establishing their roots in this new land.

Back in the fifties when my husband was a student pastor, he drove about 90 miles every weekend to preach at a small country church. The children and I usually went with him and stayed in a non-furnished five room “parsonage with a path.” But Thanksgiving Sunday, 1952 I stayed home in our small college campus apartment with a sick baby. I was exhausted from losing sleep and it was a cold and dreary day. After finally getting the baby to sleep, a little after eleven, I turned on the radio (no TV) while washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

A preacher was in the midst of sermon about things for which to be thankful. He said, “Have you ever thanked God for dirty dishes.” And as tired as I was, I smiled and looked down at the sink full of dishes that I was tackling. And I realized: “If one has dirty dishes, there’s been food to eat. People with no food do not have dishes to wash.” Have you ever thought that the beggar out on the street has no dishes to wash, no floors to mop or furniture to dust?

The preacher read a poem that I have never seen in print but remember it as something like this:

“Thank God for the dirty dishes
For they’ve a story to tell
And from the stack I have to wash
We’ve eaten very well.
While folks in other lands,
Are glad for just a crust
From this stack of evidence
God’s mighty good to us.”

Thanking God for the things we usually take for granted is a step in the right direction on Thanksgiving Day and every day. In our own time, too many of us seem to have an “Archie Bunker” attitude saying “I do not say grace at the table…because I buy the food and Edith cooks it." A good place to start, then, is to begin with zero and move up to the level of being grateful for ordinary things of life, food to eat, a clean bed, a warm house, fresh apples, turnips greens and cornbread, the smell of flowers, a Christmas tree, a church. And freedom! I think I may have gotten a new idea of what “zero” means when I saw some women from Afghanistan, a few years ago, expressing their thanks for being able to uncover their faces and the Afghan men being free to shave or grow a bread as they wished.

One of my favorite stories is about an immigrant shopkeeper whose son came to see him on day and complained, “Dad, I don’t understand how you run this store. You keep your accounts payable in a shoe box, your accounts receivable on a spindle, and your cash is in the register. How do you ever know where your profits are?”

The father replied, “Son, when I came to this country, all I owned was on my back. Now your sister is an art teacher, your brother is a doctor, you are a CPA. Your mother and I own a house and a car and this small store. Add all of that up and subtract the clothes on my back and there is your profit.

I suspect that many of us could give similar testimonies.

Helen Keller, blind and deaf, said, “I thank God for my handicaps. Through them I have found myself, my work, my God.”

Whatever it takes in our hectic world, we need to find God.

Some of us rarely think about God and the blessings he pours out on us. One source of ingratitude is lack of thought! “Think” in the Anglo-Saxon is related to “Thank.” A “thank” is a “thought.” To “think” is to “thank.” The Psalmist tells us to remember, to think, and to thank. “Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits.” Forget not…remember. Thoughtful people are thankful people.

Trick or Treat; Happy Halloween! !

Halloween Trick or Treat beauties at my house last year! Little Red Riding Hood, Beautiful Witch , Flapper Girl and Boxing Champ!

Wilberforce Signing!

On the evening of December 10, 2008, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act was passed by both houses of Congress. The White House invited 10 representatives from non-government organizations to be present at the Wilberforce signing in the Oval office (December 2008). They also invited 4 political appointees in various offices that deal with anti-trafficking efforts.

Pictured above is our daughter , Dr. Janice Crouse, who was one of those chosen for this historical signing in the Oval office (slighly to the right of President George W. Bush ) The Wilberforce signing was part of the Battle to Pass the
William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act . (1)

These chosen for the signing were people who have worked on the front lines of the policy battles over the anti-trafficking efforts.

The widespread and increasing use of rape as a systematic weapon of war, even of genocide, the international trafficking in persons, mainly women and children, has also risen alarmingly. Children are sold and women are lured or kidnapped and then sold into sexual slavery.

William Wilberforce 1759-1833
William Wilberforce came from a prosperous merchant family of Kingston-upon-Hull, a North Sea port. At twenty-one, elected to Parliament for his native town. A conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1785 changed his approach to politics. In 1787 he became, the parliamentary leader of the slavery abolition movement. William Willberforce labored ceaselessly for the abolition of slavery.

John Wesley, on the 24th of February, 1793 at age eighty-eight year, a week before his death, wrote the last letter he would ever write. The letter was to Wilberforce ,urging him to continue the fight for the Abolition of Slavery. Wesley said, "...Oh, be not weary in well-doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall be banished away..."

It was under John Wesley's preaching and work among the poor in England that a revival of Christan faith and care for the poor spread thoughout England. At the time of the American Revolution it swept across the ocean to American with the great evangelistic preaching and work by George Whitfield, Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury.

It was Christians, like Wilberforce and Wesley who fought against the evil of slavery. As far as we know, no one of the Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Secularist, Atheist or other religion ever fought to end the worldwide system of slavery.

1.Other invited quests for the signing in the picture above include L to R, Michael Chertoff- former Secretary of Homelan Security, Michael Horowitz-Hudson Institute, Rachel Lloyd- Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS). New York City, NYC. Gary Haugen- International Justice Mission, Brad Miles-Polarius Project, Kevin Bales- Author of Disposal People, Directly behind Janice Shaw Crouse is Richard Land, head of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for Southern Baptists