Catalyst Atlanta is coming soon. For more information see http://bit.ly/agfgS7. For registration see http://bit.ly/bA8vyZ.

Vote in your primary election! This is a very critical election, as those we have voted for in the past are constantly failing us today. This is true at both the Federal and State level. I really can’t support anyone running for reelection in my area for State or Federal. It’s that bad.

In my area Wyden, for example, constantly works for health reform. Now that’s good. But he has gotten over 1.5 million dollars from the health institutions: insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and related companies. I have prescription coverage, but I also have to use two prescription eye drops that cost me about $100 each and are not covered. Each time I purchase one of these tiny bottles, it as if the pharmacy is screaming that me that Wyden doesn’t represent my interests. Why are these tiny drops so expensive? Wyden must go home.

Ditto for financial reform. Dodd acts like he is for financial reform. Sure, he’s running for election and Dodd is hurting bad for votes. We need reform. My Senator Merkley says he’s been helping this guy with the reform. But Dodd has gotten over 13 million dollars from Wall Street to protect their bonuses, CEO pay, parties in Las Vegas, and more. Dodd has no serious interest in reform. He can stall things to after the election (or maybe past something that is very weak), and then be back in the pockets of Wall Street after the fall election. Merkley is not running for reelection, but he does need to wake up.

And now the government is putting you on the hook for Europe’s debts. See:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/10/federal-reserve-opens-credit-line-europe/

To get voting records and info of your representatives see:
http://www.votesmart.org/

At the state level, my representative (Devlin) fought to increase taxes. I wrote and told him no. To protect himself politically, he joined others and referred it to the voters. The unions bought that vote in January. My Corporation taxes have doubled. Prices in Office Depot, Staples, Fred Meyer, and even at my donut store shot up to cover the new taxes. I raised the prices for my services to cover the increased prices. Devlin is a gelding. He needs to be sent home. Ditto for the other state representatives. They don’t represent me.

It’s time we sent ‘em home. If you are registered Democrat and want to vote for a Republican or Independent candidate in the primary, vote the weaker Democrat now and then you can vote the Republican or Independent against the primary winner in the Fall. If there is no “weaker” candidate, then write in who you want. Just don’t vote for a loser. The opposite is also true. Also don’t vote a candidate on a single issue, and study each candidate carefully. Don’t vote anyone out when the one running against him or her is even worse.

Don’t be in an illusion. The media and those of influence try to fool you. Don’t be fooled! Obama and most of Congress is owned by Wall Street, not Main Street. Get in there and fight for your freedom or you will lose it. Want to see another illusion:
http://holykaw.alltop.com/amazing-visual-illusion

Get ready for massive changes in Washington, D.C. next fall.

Start getting ready for the November, 2010 elections. Remember the motto (unless you like being abused): If they’re “IN;” they’re “OUT.”

Remember this on the 2010 Election Day. . .

1. Your U.S. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.

2. They voted to NOT give you a Social Security cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011.

3. Your Medicare premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years and you will not get the 3% COLA or $660/yr. Your total 2-year loss and cost is $1,600 or $3,200 for husband and wife. Plain enough?

4. Every member of Congress will get an added $10,000 which is putting them very close to $200,000 per year. They’ve exempted themselves from the healthcare changes they wish to enact on us. Sounds like an elite class to me. They should be on the same health and pension plan we are: Social security and Medicare – or they go home.

5. Do you feel taken advantaged of? They vote themselves a raise and better benefits. They only care about WE THE PEOPLE on election day, right? You never did anything about it in the past. The time for action is near!!!!

6. Do you really think that Nancy, Barbara, Patty, Harry, Chris, Charlie, Barney, John Murtha, et al, care about you? SEND THE MESSAGE — You’re FIRED.

7. Our present elected representatives are loyal to their party. They are bribable, do what is in their OWN best interest. They have completely ignored the massive debt this country is in and are increasing it without regard to the taxpayers who will have to pay for it all.

8. President Obama isn’t leading any more. Bernanke (with the help of Congress) shoved billions to Wall Street and corrupt corporations under the motto “they are too big to fail”. That statement is immoral and unethical. Once core values are sacrificed, there is no leadership or vision. As a result, Bernanke should be out of there. Meanwhile, a stimulus plan that was supposed to create jobs didn’t. Most of the money was wasted.

9. Both political parties have tried to build a social medicine plan when both of them are owned by the health industry. One of my senators has received over 1.5 million dollars from the health industry. I can’t trust him to put together a social medicine program for me.

*** THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICAL PARTIES!
IN 2010 YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO GET RID OF Up to 1/3 OF THE SENATE AND 100% OF THE HOUSE.
The election in 2010 will be a sea-change to the mindset of any member of Congress who may survive..

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. It is time for you to lead. Send ‘em home. Pass this post on to your friends. As them to stand up. Write to those representing them in Washington.

The latest TIME magazine showed the results of a survey of people on this question. Some 12% said six months. Some 53% said 1-2 years. Some 25% said more than three years or either we are in a long-term decline. I think the latter group is correct. You want to know why?

First, the guys that got us in this mess are still there. In Congress Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Roy Blunt, and Judd Gregg got over 20 million dollars in lobbyist money the last few years and made sure the bailout they created kept the Wall Street Executives wealthy and happy with lots of money, bonuses, and parachutes at the expense of using our tax payer money. GM got taxpayer money so they could buy placement ads for their Hummer on CSI:Miami. The rest of Congress has turned their backs to this and have done nothing. They keep bailing out AIG with your taxpayer money because AIG holds their pensions. Nothing has changed. As long as these people are not held responsible, no one – and I mean no one – has any faith in the system.

In all fairness, there are people in Washington investigating and plan prosecutions. Meanwhile, the bad guys enjoy your tax money. Also, do you really think it will change? Or is this another Libbygate where the real baddies go free?

And it’s not just the government. Our educational systems have failed. In my church, most families home school, use the church school, or send their kids to Christian schools. The health system, business system, and even a lot of the churches haven’t figured what is going on yet.

The paradigm the world is moving into is a major shift from where we have been. To understand this, look at a quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that he made about 1930 or 1931.

“For the Observers of the Future, the greatest event will be the sudden appearance of a collective human conscience and a human work to make.”

What does that mean? Even back then, Teilhard saw a global consciousness emerging, and now the Internet has become the tool for initiating this change. President Obama saw this and understood it when he ran for President. I’m not saying Obama is the answer. We’re on a Titanic that hit the iceberg and we are trying to turn it around and get home. President Obama is right in one thing, however. If the ship gets turned around, it won’t be President Obama that turns it. It will be our collective consciousness hearing the words that the Holy Spirit is speaking to the Church and then with us willing to take the risks necessary to make a difference.

Now here’s a tip if you are trying to get in there, change your life, make a difference, and need a job for it: If you are a professional, start with a membership in Linkedin.com and aggressively start your personal network. That doesn’t cost a dime. Then join a few groups on Linkedin.com that interest you. Make social networking work. Do all types of networking with and without the Internet. Then network with others in your church and build a network raising the consciousness in your church. Put your church group as a group on http://www.Linkedin.com. Pull the larger church into working with you. Then join Facebook, another social network. And then start publishing a blog (maybe use WordPress.com, it’s free). Remember, for this change we are in for the long haul and you need to be involved in changing things if things are going to be changed.

Last week it was Denise Richards that got the boot from DWTS; but the big question many had was why Steve Wozniak is still there. Last week, in fact, Steve wasn’t even in the bottom two contestants. His professional partner, Katarina Smimoff, let out a shocked, shrill, and piercing scream as Tom announced the couple was safe for another night. Steve had only scored 10 of 30 points for his dance, which was one of the worst scores in the shows six seasons. One judge said it was the worst Samba he had ever seen. What happened?

The judges score is only 50% of the judges score, the other 50% of the score is determined by the viewers. Seems like all the Apple geeks started a massive social networking campaign. Using Twitter, Facebook, web sites, blogs and more there were able to vote Steve up to dance another week using social networking. The phenomena for Steve, or “Woznation”, increases each week as the geeks join to push harder each time.

Want to know something? Christians can, if they are willing, stand up and change the political, entertainment, education, economic and other areas of our culture. Unlike Steve, it’s not so much the 50% vote we are looking at here. If we are willing to commit, the Holy Spirit will step in. As Jesus said in all versions of the Great Commission, “all authority is mine”. A small church in Georgia did – a their movie “Fireproof” was an incredible success

There is some major updating going on on this site. Right now we are working on the new library menu and you will find a lot of the old stuff there as we transisition. I worked on the Finding Vision option there today. We’ll be doing more stuff there – core values option should be next.

There will be more books referenced on the site, mostly in theiir specific areas of interest; i.e. books will be with “Finding vision” . There will be more quotations added. The blog will be updated.

Expect a lot more photos, quotations that change each time the page is reloaded that’s already true on the home page), and more.

Please forgive at the moment if a link doesn’t work or you are missing something temporarily.

Thanks for your patience.

Love Your Enemies
By Chuck Colson
1/30/2009
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John Rucyahana Receives Wilberforce Award

In a large open area of a Rwandan prison, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana spoke to a crowd of killers responsible for the 1994 genocide. “Close your eyes,” he instructed them. “Go back in your mind to 1994. What did you see?” he asked. “What did you smell? What did you hear?”

Many in the crowd began to weep. He told the men to see their victims’ faces. The sobs grew louder. “Now,” said Bishop John, “that which made you cry, that you must confess.”

It’s amazing enough that Bishop John, himself a Tutsi, would speak to the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide. It’s even more amazing when you consider that John’s own niece, Madu, was brutally raped and killed during the genocide. But Bishop John had a reason to reach out to these men in compassion—for he, too, had found forgiveness of his sins through Jesus Christ.

That compassion to love his would-be enemies is just one of the many reasons why we recently awarded Bishop John Rucyahana the William Wilberforce Award.

We present the award every year to a person who makes a difference in the face of formidable societal problems and injustices, no matter the opposition. Former recipients include people like Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission; Benigno Aquino, the Philippine hero; Baroness Carolyn Cox; and Senator Sam Brownback. These are men and women who, as executive director of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation Dan Van Ness says, “challenge our comfortable assumptions.”

Bishop John’s faith does indeed challenge me. He found Christ while growing up as an exile from his native Rwanda. He puts it better than I’ve ever heard before: “I did not accept Jesus. Jesus graciously met me and accepted me.” This is a man who understands how we come empty-handed to Christ.

At a time when John wanted to pursue a degree, God led him and his wife, Beatrice, to start a school for 170 refugee children in Uganda. Today, some of those grown children serve in key posts in Rwanda.

Studying in the States during the 1994 genocide, Bishop John wanted desperately to go back to the ministry he had left behind in Uganda. But instead, he responded to God’s call to face the darkness by going back to his homeland—returning to Rwanda, finding bones bleached white by the sun littering the streets, open graves fouling the air. Still, Bishop John worked with others to establish Prison Fellowship Rwanda.

He helped start the Umuvumu Tree Project, which has brought together tens of thousands of perpetrators and victims of the genocide, offering offenders the opportunity to confess their crimes and victims the chance to forgive. Many have done so.

I wish I had time to share all the ways that Bishop John’s faith challenges our own. In addition to his work in Rwanda, he played a key role in founding the Anglican Mission in America. He encourages American Christians to be unashamed missionaries to their own society, reconciling their neighbors to Christ.

Imagine, African missionaries to us—yes, we need them.

But most of all, Bishop John is a shining example of what it means to love our enemies—and to overcome evil with good.

Watching the inaugural today was a very emotional experience for me. I lived in Washington, DC from 1962 to 1968. I walked that mall back then during that March on Washington (August of 1963) at the mall when King spoke and gave his I Have a Dream speech. The emotions of that moment still flood my mind. It is still amazing what happened from that astonishing non-violent action.

Then JFK was shot (November 1963) and I was caught up in the emotions of Washington with the loss of this leader with his vision of a coming Camelot and our responsibility to make it happen . Part of that vision was to put us on the moon. And that we did. I got to be a part of that vision. After three astronauts died when their capsule caught fire, my company sent me to Houston to check out things there for ideas on how to make those flights safer.

I remember walking the streets of a poor part of Washington one day much later and not seeing not a single person. Off in the distance somewhere I heard shouts. I finally found a lonely walker and asked what was happening. One of the Kennedys’ (probably Bobby Kennedy) was moving down the street in (probably an open) car, and the people were shouting greetings with hope in a coming Camelot.

Then Martin Luther King was shot in April of 1968. Again the emotions of another leader’s death shook the city. I was working at the coffeehouse of a church in the inner city that night, and calls were coming in to us that the city was burning just a few blocks from where we were. We stayed at the coffeehouse. And not even a single window was broken there that night as we worked.

Then, a few months later (June, 1968), we saw the death of Bobby Kennedy. Camelot never came.

Today, again, at this same mall we see the visions that these leaders held in the past beginning once again to break loose of the bondage that has held them for years. The most important thing about President Obama’s inaugural speech, however, is that the President only used the word “I” about three times. What really happens here in this change is up to us. It wasn’t “A change I can believe in” but “A change we can believe in”. The responsibility for leading is with us – not President Obama. What are you going to do about it?

We have made the switch from Comcast to Verizon FIOS. Whereas Comcast is a cable network, Verizon FIOS is fiber optic. There are three reasons for this change:

1. Comcast keeps raising their price on us. Can’t they manage their system better? Verizon FIOS will be a good $40 a month cheaper if we compare apples to apples.
2. Comcast keeps chopping my video and audio. They are limiting the bandwidth to me. Also, the television is compressed, so there is some loss even with the high density picture. Verizon FIOS does not compress their picture. The Internet chopping, however, is what I can’t tolerate. I plan to do a lot more video and audio in my web sites and need that bandwith. This problem varies with different Comcast users, but it is definitely there for me.
3. My phone service is an internet service currently with Vonage. My experience when I signed up with Vonage was very bad – unethical, immoral, and even illegal. Now, when I tried to change my phone service to Verizon FIOS from Vonage, Vonage won’t release my phone number to them as they are required by law to do. The SEC should have shut them down long ago; but then Bush’s administration is a total failure. Total. We expect Vonage to go bankrupt soon. Their stock has been below $1 for several weeks now on the stock exchange. The Bush Administration with its SEC is already bankrupt.

   The ONLY change you will see is a phone number change because the the Vonage problem. The new phone number, effective immediately, is:

   (503) -691-9857

   My email addreses, cell phone number, domain names – all that stays the same.

What gifts would you like to bring to the Christ-King? Pick from the list or create your own as the Spirit leads you.