Guys, Where are we?

Uncertain times, that is for sure.

Gold, invest in gold. No wait, it’s dropping in value today. Where is the dollar going? Internationally down in value. So invest in gold. Right?

Well if you invest away from the dollar, aren’t you investing away from you countries own economy? Wellthat could be a wise economic strategy, short term anyway. What does your investment say about what you value? Does it say you value your country? Regardless of who is in office, are you just going to vote based on your pocketbook?

Nobody can blame you of course. There is always the response you could give: “What was I supposed to do?” My money was losing value. So is that what you do every time adversity strikes. Find another island to jump on? If you do that, chasing money, you will eventually end up somewhere away from where you are supposed to be from, won’t you?

It’s one thing to be forced out, it’s another thing to chase the greener pastures, so make sure you are really supposed to be on certain band wagons before you jump on.

Today I was reading Philemon. It’s only one chapter, “you can do it. Paul was covering a debt for Onesimus. Onesimus was Philemon’s’ slave who had run away. Paul had met him while he was under house arrest in Rome. He shared Christ with Onesimus. Then Paul did something strange. He counseled Onesimus to go back to Philemon. He also told Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother, not as his slave. Then Paul also told Philemon that he would cover any debts that Onesimus had charged up.

Do you have a friend like that? We all do, really, his name is Jesus.
This idea of helping someone out isn’t only a Christian concept. It has happened in the Old Testament.

If someone fell into a bad situation, others would come in and help by keeping some of their property Leviticus :25 verse to 28. Which could then be returned in the year of Jubilee.

In some countries this obviously isn’t the case. If you lived in Yugoslavia when it was occuped by the Germans, and Tito took over and now was in power. People just came and took whatever they wanted as your house was taken and given to others as a token of communism. If you had some nice neighbors they would maybe gather a few of your families possessions as they were piled up in your front yard, and try to hold them for you in their house in hopes to return them to you one day when and if things got better.

So where are we today? Do we wait to see if we can buy somebody’s house for 11 cents on the dollar to better ourselves? I guess we could say that’s capitalism. “What was I supposed to do? If I didn’t scarf it up, somebody else would have!”

If we see our brother in need I John 3:17 “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?”

Guys, where are we? This question comes from Charley, one of the Characters on ‘Lost’. This popular ABC’ program will be airing its final season in Feb 2010. Until then we have to put up with things like Flash Forward. I guess ABC gave the actors from Lost some time to find other work by delaying the final Season. That is why Charlie showed up on Flash Forward the other night, I guess. Actors need work too and get the axe just like all the rest of us.

Hopefully you’r not on the island and Lost

tonylinebyline speaking Pastorally

Devotion For CCRSM Sunday November 15

Yes, you get it first.

So important is the topic of grace to the believer that Paul addressed it very strongly in the book of Galatians.

As humans it is part of our weakness to accept in any final way that is by grace that we have been saved. We try to add to it our works. A habit left over by our flesh that daily needs to die. We begin in the Spirit and so tend to be made perfect in the flesh.

In Galatians chapter 3 Paul brings this out for us. It was on the top of his mind. He had a bad reputation to overcome being someone who carried out persecution against the church, being an apostle born out of due time, having such an in depth knowledge of the law, the Greek language. Almost anything he did could have been misinterpreted by someone. This is why he had to be so strong on the topic of grace to the church in Galatia.

We too are steeped in a culture. Almost anything we do can be misinterpreted and often is. Are we living a life that is transparent? What do people see when they look at us? Hopefully the work in progress that we are. God could have just finished us up and people could see us how He sees us, a finished work, His epistle, His poem. But He left us in an earthen vessel so that people could see Him shining through.

May the light of God shine through you today.

 

Pastor Tony H

Halloween Alernatives CCRSM and Others

Click On The Poster For More Details.

Halloween 09 Invitation from Markus Hempell on Vimeo.

Visit This Halloween Display While You Are In the Rancho Santa Margarita Area.

French Onion Soup – We Did It

So ate well we did! Here is a twitpic of the soups after baking in our cheap table top oven at 450 deg.

Hatta and I love French Onion Soup at Vie De France.

So we decided to try and make some FOS (Thats code for French Onion Soup).

Hatta found the recipe on line. I cut up 3 sweet onions. And we learned not only how to carmelize onions. Something everybody knows, right? Well not me, thats for sure. But carmelize we did. Took about 45 minutes. Then we learned how to brown the onions. Wow this is the key to FOS. Get the onions right and the rest is pretty simple.

The LED Light Bulb – Not Saving Money Yet

Just by way of updating you who might be interested in my so exciting blogging. I am going to have to take my new LED GU10 light bulbs back to Walmart. They are just nowhere near bright enough.

Good lighting is so important to reading as well as drying your hair. See below. But if there just isnt enough light, they gotta go. Wah! I did so want these to work. 3 time 3 watts compared to 3 time 35 watts.

Signed: Waiting for the higher light output LED lights.

Trying something new.

We have a ceiling fan. Something that is supposed to keep you cooler.

So I saw these LED light bulbs at Walmart and decided to give them a try. Should put out cleaner light using 1 watt of electricity. The old bulb uses about 40. Not to mention the heat that 3 of them put out.

My wife will have to go back to using a hair dryer instead of the lights on the ceiling fan. And the ceiling fan can be used to cool now instead of spreading heated air. Hah!

About $15.00 each. Made by GE Part #73153 Bulb type GU10.

These bulbs and thinking like this are going to change the future of power. remember I told you that.

Notice the cleaner white light on the center bulb. Thats the LED

Poll – Data Backup

Click Here To Take My Poll on Data Backup

May The Lord Be With Your Spirit

II Timothy 4:22

In times of uncertainty we can often find ourselves in a state. Our heart or inner being, where we live and breath, under attack.  Our confidence shaken. Our faith in question.

The apostle Paul knew that his time on the earth was quickly drawing to and end. So in II Timothy he was trying to transfer as much as he could to the young minister.

We have our own spirit. That is what makes me me and you you and everyone else who they are. We are beings in physical bodies temporarily until we put on immortality. Hopefully that immortality will be spent in heaven. However that option is up to everyone. There is another place, sad to say, not prepared for us. Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. So do all you can to stay out if it.

Our spirit is what the Lord is interested in. We should be too. Paul actually said “May the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” So keeping yourself near Jesus as much as possible would seem to be the goal.

When you are with someone you can pick up a lot of information about them just by listening. Listen to Jesus with your spirit. Your spirit and the spirit of Jesus, communing with one another.  It is interesting that Paul didn’t say may the Holy Spirit be with your spirit. That probably would have been fine, depending on your doctrine or dogma. But Jesus came to the earth in person as we see in the gospel of John. He wanted to be with His creation. And still and always will.

Do you have days when you feel confident? When you do feel confident, where is that source of confidence coming from? It may be from your job, bank account status, car you drive. Or is it because you have spent time on a spiritual level with Jesus? That is where you want to get your confidence from. Jesus. Time with Him, in His word. Prayer and fellowship with Him.

Pastor Tony

Poll – Voice Recognition

Click Here to take my poll on Voice recognition.

Health Care Public Option Uganda

The people in the US are going through a change in the area of health care. Congress is looking for viable models. The “Public Option”. A cooperative non-profit is a term we are hearing about in the last week or so. Is this something that could work for the US?

Faces of despiration

Well the answer of course is “it depends”. It depends on what changes people can and will allow everyone to go through. Thank God that not everyone needs health care at every moment of every day.

What I am saying is that there are many people that are healthy right at the moment. Of course that will change. There is not an option for that. We will all get sick of something at some point. Or need health intervention for some affliction or emergency. But until that time you can and should pay into the health care system the same as private insurance.

Of course the government can and should be involved in health care. After all they should care for the health of all their constituents, right?

In Africa in most places health care is non existent. In other words if you are pregnant and need a C section. You are probably going to die.

After spending a recent month in Safe Harbor’s Midigo Health Center, a level III hospital about 100 yards away from Calvary Chapel Midigo. You can see a working model of health care. I don’t know too much about medicine, I just see people getting the health care they need. Free.

Free, not to say without cost. There is a cost. This health center is funded mostly by the efforts of Christians who want people to live and have some access to health care in this remote area of the planet. Live so that they can hear the gospel. Live so they can be who they are. But you can’t hear the gospel if you die first because your appendix burst. Or malaria got the best of you.

Pastor Trent Douglas Presenting Medical Gift on Behalf of Christians in America.

While in Midigo the Ugandan government Ministry Of Health visited the Health Center. The occasion was a Christian group from the US came with a sizable donation of medical items and a team work in the health center. This isn’t the first time that the Ugandan Ministry Of Health came to visit. In fact they were the ones that made the closed hospital available for Safe Harbor to use many years back. When Dr. Juventine did a clinic under one of the mango trees that are on the property.

On this visit they offered to recruit 2 Ugandan doctors and raise Midigo Heath Center to level 4. 

It seems as each party works together. The Christians, donors, the Ugandan government, a member of the community that just brings a bunch of Avocados to give Dr. Juventine, a group from the US with medical supplies. All things are working together for the glory of God.

It seems to take people like Dr. Juventine and Dr. Elizabeth, Christians, Government and people. All working together. Not to say that it has to be Christians only. But in this case that is what has been happening. You see the population in this area is mostly Muslim. 

Hundreds Gather For Medical Presentaton

Should or can health care be free? It seems it can be. Is it socialized medicine? I don’t think so. It just seems to work when everyone involved does what they are supposed to do. It isn’t without cost as I stated before. Some medicines do come from the Ugandan government. They want to have a part in someting that is working and has positive results.

Can everything be treated? No. There are heart patients that are not going to make it because the specialization isn’t there. The facilities are just not there. Maybe one day. After more working together. This work has just been growing and growing.

If you would like to know more about Midigo Health Center. Please contact Safe Harbor International Relief. www.safeharbor.us

Operation Observation

One of the observations I was able to make was the photography of Dr.’s Juventine and Elizabeth performing an emergency appendectomy.

On July 9th a young lady about 17 years old named Agnes needed an operation. Dr. Juventine asked me if I wanted to come in and observe? I said yes. One reason was that I had my appendix out when I was 14. I can remember that I was too big of a child for the children’s hospital and not quite and adult, so they decided to operate on me at the children’s hospital. They had some difficulty due to my size and a lack of surgical tools, gowns for etc.

So my heart went out to this yound lady. Who had to have her operation here in Uganda.

We scrubbed and dressed.  Dr. Elizabeth prepping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had been working in situations as just a “go for” for Dr. Juventine before. We first worked together in Southern Sudan’s oil fields. We landed on a 2 day relief mission that missed it’s landing point. Patients had to walk to where the plane left us and didn’t arrive until about midnight. He worked all night as a few of us tried to help. I got to hold the flashlight as he looked into peoples wounds. Some of them from the war. I can remember a man cam up to Dr. J after standing in the long line. He had his eye shot out. It was gory. Off and on since 1997 we have found ourselves working together in various ministry situations. So I took the opportunity and went in to observe and film as best I could with my Blackberry Bold 9000 set for low resolution. And a Flip  Video.

 

It was also a great opportunity to see the new Operation Light in use. (Thanks so much to all of you who donated to this light through Safe Harbor International Relief last year.)

The operation took about 2 hours. Nurse Anette did the anesthesia and Dr. Elizabeth closed. She has a special suturing technique that will leave Agnes with almost no visible scars. It is her specialty.

If I get time and $20. I might upgrade my blog and post some of the Flip Video of the operation. I have the whole procedure in segments. It’s not for the squeamish.