healing prayer

i'm taking the alpha course right now and last wednesday night the topic was healing. the leader asked if anyone had any knowledge from God to speak it out so whoever that might apply to they could go to that person for healing prayer.

several people said different things. i was really hoping someone would say something about backs but no one did. a lady sitting a few tables away from me with her back turned to me said that there was someone that had a problem with their lymph glands. i gotta say that kinda took me by surprise.

when she said it i got sharp pains across my whole groin area. i'd never had them before. i looked upward and in my mind thinking ok God i know i have a problem there You didn't need to make me so painfully aware of it.

eventually i got up to speak to this woman. she did not know me, i did not know her, i had never spoken to her before never mind telling her anything about my illness. i told her that i had a problem with my lymph glands. she said it had been on her heart all week and she had been praying about it. she said i had a serious problem in my groin area. at this point i would've said whoa! freaky, except i got these really sharp pains all across my groin again. and again i looked upward wondering why God had chosen to remind me by giving me the pain. now this really was weird. how could she know except that God had told her. i told her i had lymphoma and she asked what that was. she knew i had a problem with my lymph glands, she knew that i had a serious problem in my groin area, yet she didn't even know what it was, just that it was. weird.

this morning i was wondering about the 2 times i got the pain. i'd never had it before and i haven't had it since. i wondered if God was telling her that someone had a problem and if she was asking God if the person wasn't aware of it to let them know (by way of stabbing pain). hm.

every wrong thing that i see in you, God finds in me.

incredible!!!

gold cup - costa rica vs mexico. i like mexico and would want them to win - against any team other than costa rica. after a regular time game, costa rica down one player due to a red card, mexico was unable to score. in extra time costa rica lost 3 more players to red cards. unbelievable!!! and the announcer says the referee was a little excessive in handing out red cards. ya think!!! finally mexico scored to win the 1/4 final.

after church i watched real madrid win the spanish league title 1-0 against mallorca even though barcelona won 5-1. wanting barcelona to win it was a nail biter every time real madrid had a shot on goal. except that i was eating candy and now my jaw hurts. the more exciting it got the faster i chewed.

the world cup is only 2 weeks away. woo-hoo! i can hardly wait.

spm bbq

ok so i chickened out.

i was working in the kitchen cooking & cleaning for a father / daughter banquet which was before the single point ministry (spm) bbq. we got everything ready for that then started on the spm bbq stuff. i was not entirely comfortable thinking about going to the bbq, in another area of the church, so i kept working in the kitchen. they kept trying to kick me out to get me to go to the bbq. i finally went with the intention of getting a coffee, saw 100+ people that i didn't know and went right back to the kitchen. and stayed there. i knew about 5 people, the 2 leaders who were outside working the bbq, 2 women & 1 guy but couldn't see them in the crowd.

i'm not the type to just sit down at a table full of strangers and start making conversation. i'm not the best conversationalist at the best of times, never mind with people i don't know.

i worked my tail off in the kitchen and it felt really good to be physically active but i could barely get out of my truck when i got home and then i massaged my body with a535. lol they kept telling me to take a break but i knew if i did that would be the end of me. all in all it was a good day.

i need to get out more

i've been told that a couple of times lately.

i'm single and i'm content in my singleness. i have been attending alpha and my table leader is another single lady. it came out in conversation that my last date was about 6 years ago. a fellow from church had asked me out and i told susan i thought it was more an opportunity for me to witness. after a movie we went to timmy's and that's just what it turned out to be. he told me i was glowing and i knew i was because i could feel it. i was talking about Jesus, my favourite subject. i guess my little light was really shining that night.

i lead a very dull boring life compared to most but i'm content.

i thought of my singleness and thought how if i am home alone all the time how can my light shine. it's ok for me cuz i'm content but what about people that aren't.

a friend told me someone had cancelled for the singles retreat at rockridge canyon last weekend and asked if i wanted to go in their place. i said sure i'd like to go - it's beautiful up there. i wasn't sure about going to a singles retreat though.

2 weeks ago i had gone to a singles night at church. the only reason i went was because it was a worship and praise night. i had been asked to go before but always said no saying i thought it would be like a meat market. sure enough the thing i most dreaded happened. there was myself and another woman at a large table and a man came over and sat down right beside me. there were 8 other places he could've taken. i felt like 'fresh meat' and decided right then and there i wouldn't go back.

when i was told about the singles retreat cancellation my friend said i needed to get out more. i had prayed about it and told God that if He wanted me to go He would have to provide because i had just paid for an alpha retreat 2 weeks before that and i couldn't afford another weekend away. there was also a conflict in dates. the dates got changed & i was given the space when someone cancelled. ok so i figured God wanted me to go. why? i'm not looking for a spouse - i'm content being single. i thought maybe it was to be an encouragement to someone which i guess is what it turned out to be.

tonight there is a singles bbq at church. the last scheduled event before summer. i had been debating whether i wanted to go or not. i had met several very nice people at the retreat, some of whom go to nv but it was as i was emailing a friend about her wedding that i had a twinge of something. so i thought what's the point of letting your light shine if there's no one around to see it. so i guess i'll go to the bbq.

how can we help?

As horrible as some of these articles were to read, it is important that we make ourselves aware of what is going on around us. But that is only one part of the equation. Information/statistics are not meant to shock us into inaction but to awaken a passion in us to take action.Something I always remind myself, is "there but for the grace of God go I". I then challenge myself, what would I hope and pray for individuals to respond to these issues if they were my children or children known and loved by me enduring these daily realities.Each of us has the power within us to bring about change. Further I believe each of us has a responsibility to be a voice for a fellow human being who is through no fault of their own or choice of their own in a situation beyond their making. It has been said many times that we can be a voice for those without a voice. Let's be that voice, together, today.

1) Tell someone else about what is happening around the world.

2) Write your MP to find out what Canada's response is to these situations (especially in light of the recent G8 meetings).

3) Encourage someone to take action - by either sponsoring a child today, telling someone else, volunteering their time, writing a letter or making a donation to projects working to effect change. May God continue to bless your efforts and motivate and energize you to be a beacon of light in the darkness.

this was written by someone i know at world vision. she has shared these and other stories as part of the Poverty and Girl Child Campaign to raise awareness for the need to 'be a voice for the voiceless' to promote the need for child sponsorship.

how many children could be sponsored with the money we would save if we gave up buying 1 cup of coffee a day, or buying the latest fashions, or the newest cd's, videos, toys and gimmicks.

there but for the grace of God go i, or you, or your sister, mother, wife, or daughter.

Atrocities of a war without end

Congo is officially at peace, but the horrors go on for thousands of women and children who suffer sexual abuse in violence fuelled by guns and greed. A tiny child with a gaping, bloody gash between her legs. A young woman whose breasts are stretched grotesquely out of shape. A woman whose lower face resembles a skull, her mouth carved away by vengeful rapists. These are the pictures that Justine Masika Bihamba carries with her on her travels, in the hope that the world will see the plight of sexually abused women in the mineral-rich provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo. For many Westerners, stories of the savage five-year war that crushed the country and killed some 3 million people are part of the horrific past, now that Congo is officially at peace.But for the broken and desperate women who call on Masika in her threadbare office in Goma, the atrocities are ongoing. For them it is war without end. "This is sexual violence that amounts to torture," says Masika, a quiet-spoken, solid woman who co-ordinates the collective Synergie des Femmes pour les Victimes de Violences Sexuelles. She was attending a women's human rights forum yesterday at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. "Eighty per cent of the violence is around the mining areas," Masika said. "Those areas are all about guns and greed. There is no government control and people take what they want." Including women. For the gun-toting men who prey on them “many of them battle-hardened ex-fighters“ toddlers, teenagers or elderly women are fair game for sadistic attacks that defy the most twisted imagination."Women are not just raped, but assaulted with sharp objects to mutilate them, including razor blades," says Masika.

Child soldiers still fight in Congo

Report DAKAR, Senegal “Congo's new government has failed to stop the use of child soldiers“ merging forces of former warlords into the regular army without weeding out hundreds of underage fighters, an international human rights group said yesterday. New York-based Human Rights Watch said 300 to 500 children, some as young as 13, are serving in newly combined army brigades in remote North Kivu province. The group said the figures came from local and international child protection workers. "The head of the army has given the order that child soldiers need to be demobilized and taken out of the ranks, but despite the order, nothing is happening," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a London-based Congo researcher with Human Rights Watch.In one instance last month, the group charged, a brigade commander dragged six children out of a vehicle belonging to child protection workers. Three of the youngsters were later taken in by United Nations peacekeepers, but the other three are unaccounted for, the group said.Officials in the Central African nation's government said they were looking into the allegations, and could not comment until the investigation finishes."We have said there will no longer be children in the army,'' said Maurice Kanyama, counsel to Congo's information minister. "For the moment we can't say yes or no on this. We need to verify it. Around the end of next week you can have some conclusions.''

Prostitution legislation to remain unchanged

OTTAWA - Decriminalizing prostitution would lead to the exploitation of women and it is, therefore, off the table for the current Conservative government, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says in a report."This government condemns any conduct that results in exploitation or abuse and, accordingly, does not support any reforms, such as decriminalization, that would facilitate such exploitation," Mr. Nicholson wrote the House of Commons justice committee. "For these reasons, this government continues to address prostitution by focusing on reducing its prevalence."Prostitution itself is not illegal technically, but other anti-prostitution laws effectively prohibit it, such as a ban on communication for the purposes of prostitution in a public space.Font: ****Mr. Nicholson was responding to a report from a justice subcommittee, which was unable to come up with a consensus on whether solicitation should be removed from the Criminal Code after studying the issue for almost two years and hearing from about 300 witnesses across the country.He said the government considers prostitution to be "degrading and dehumanizing" and that it is "often committed and controlled by coercive individuals against those who are frequently powerless to protect themselves from abuse and exploitation."In a December, 2006, report, the majority of MPs on the subcommittee concluded sex between two consenting adults should not be illegal, "whether or not payment is involved."

Women at risk despite falling HIV drug costs

JOHANNESBURG Access to AIDS treatment improved dramatically in the developing world in the past year -- with drugs getting cheaper and many countries finding new ways to reach more people with care. But the situation remains bleak for pregnant women and children with HIV, according to a new report by the World Health Organization, UNAIDS and Unicef. In sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than two-thirds of people with HIV-AIDS, there has been an astounding acceleration in the rollout of life-saving anti-retroviral drugs. In 2003, just 100,000 people in all of Africa (where 28 million are living with HIV) had access to the drugs. By the end of 2006, there were more than 1.3 million on the medication."That's a 13-fold increase in treatment, it's a major jump," said Kevin De Cock, director of HIV-AIDS for the WHO. "Treatment scale-up in adults is remarkable."Yet even with the increase, less than a third of people with AIDS who need the drugs can get them -- both in Africa and across all poor and middle-income countries, the figure is 28 per cent. "We need to keep pushing and push harder," Dr. De Cock said.Children continue to lag painfully. While the number getting treatment jumped 50 per cent to 75,000 last year, that represents just 15 per cent of those who need it. Ninety per cent of children with AIDS live in Africa.And just 11 per cent of the two million pregnant women with HIV --again, the vast majority are in Africa -- had access to anti-retroviral treatment in 2005 to prevent them from passing the virus to their babies."You have to ask yourself, is there not enough prioritization of women and children?" Dr. De Cock said.

PRAYER POINT

From the Voice for the Voiceless booklet
Female Labourers Definition Female labourers are women who work too long, too hard and too much, especially in back breaking manual labour.

Out of the 550 million working poor in the world, an estimated 330 million, or 60%, are women. The majority of women earn on average about 3/4 of the pay of males for the same work. An African peasant woman typically works 16 hours daily trudging long distances to fetch firewood, animal fodder and water, growing and harvesting food, tending crops, and cooking and caring for her family. This leaves little time to seek education and training, the very things that enable women to break the cycle of low status and poverty. Worldwide, over 60% of people working in family enterprises without pay are women. On a one hectare farm in the Indian Himalayans, a pair of bullock's works 1064 hours, a man works 1212 hours and a woman 3485 hours in a year. Who is like our God who rescues the poor from those too strong for them?

Psalm 35:10
PRAY This verse over the exploited women who are forced to work too long, too hard, too much For godly business owners
For Bible based family structures

ACT - Reflect on the biblical concept of work and appropriate rest. Apply it in your life.

POVERTY & THE GIRL CHILD - PRAYER POINT

WAR - Definition War is the waging of armed conflict against an enemy.
The primary victims of today's wars are civilian women and their children, not soldiers.

Rape has been widely used as a weapon of war. Women have been deliberately infected with HIV and AIDS or raped while pregnant. They have been used as means to undermine, disgrace and threaten the perceived enemy.

Thousands of girls in Uganda have been abducted to serve as soldiers, domestic servants and sexual slaves. In Angola, up to 30,000 girls were abducted by armed forces during its civil war. Girls are often obliged to be sex slaves or "soldiers wives".

Torture of women frequently includes sexual violence with a view to humiliating and degrading the victim. Additional consequences are STD's, forced abortion, or sterilization.

PRAY - God sent his son to be the Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 That the kingdom of God would be established in peace and that it would protect those most vulnerable.

For Christian diplomats to be Peacemakers.
For Counsellors to help process the grief and hatred.

ACT - Study one hot spot of war and pray into this region.

reading the bible

having weird thoughts this morning, like almost on being on the verge of depression. not knowing where my life is going and not knowing where i want it to go.

i thought of all the things God tells us in the bible, how much He loves us, how He comforts the broken hearted, how He gives us our hearts desire, everything we need to know He has told us in His Word. i thought of the bible as God's love letter to us and knew i needed to read it. my utmost for His highest today referred to psalm 25. 3 times in psalm 25 david says (my) hope is in You.

how can people have hope if we don't know where to find it? twice He tells us basically the same thing. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them His way. He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.

i read other parts of the bible but nothing touched me as psalm 25. it just blows me away to think of how God knows us so well as to know our hearts and what we need at any given time. what an amazing love, to know us so intimately and care for us so deeply.

we need to read the bible. we need to know God. we need to have an intimate relationship with Him. then we will know He is our hope and our salvation.

thought of a pyramid in a new way last weekend when the facilitor at the alpha weekend retreat put his hands together to make a pyramid. he said when we draw closer to God, we draw closer to each other. i knew that but when he did it with his hands it seemed more real.

i still don't know where my life is going or how i'm going to get there but it's ok cuz i know that God does. and my hope is in Him.

being a christian

i'm hearing some weird confessions of faith lately, directly and indirectly, and i think how Jesus will say He never knew us. when asked how long she had been a christian one person said that she has been a christian all her life, but then she added that she sprinkles pixie dust wherever she goes??? then she met the living Christ and He blew her socks off.

another lady says God talks to her all the time but she never reads the bible. God gave us His Word as an instruction manual. why would He give it to us if He never intended us to read it. i think if God was talking to me all the time He would be telling me to read His Word.

at an alpha retreat last weekend a sweet little older lady met Christ for the first time after a lifetime of going to church. she thought something was missing but didn't know what it was. after all she'd been going to church all her life so she figured she was a christian. this wasn't weird - it was sad and it made me wonder how many other people go to church, have always gone to church and have always thought they were christians.

other people that say they are christians but don't go to church. one man told me he was a christian but stopped going to church and would worship God in his own way. if we are not in fellowship with other christians how can we love one another, serve one another, encourage one another. Jesus calls us to do all this but we have to be together to do it. we are the body of Christ which means we have to be together.

heard a cool thing on the radio yesterday. how do you start a church? you need 2 people - one a hugger and the other a huggee.

HISTORIC BIRTHDAY

World's oldest twins turn 105 - Born in Saskatchewan before it was a province, pair celebrate milestone in different countries

When asked to pass on advice to younger generations, Robertson focused on charity.

"I think every earning person should support a child overseas. People earn so much now, and we have to share."

my sentiments exactly!!!

we don't think about what we need and what others need. we think of what we WANT and we don't worry about what others NEED.

i met someone who claimed to have given away 65 pairs of shoes, but she still has 115 pairs of shoes in her shoe room. it was all i could do not to show my disdain.