This is speaker at the Heritage Foundation speaking on Islam and its goals in the United States. I feel that she has many very valid points and encourage you to take a listen. Allow about 30 minutes for her story and another 30 minutes for the Q & A afterwards. Well worth your time.

peace to all,
prrcb

http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx

I was a new pastor at a new church, right out of seminary sitting at my desk doing my pastoral thing. The phone rang. I was the staff, so I answered it.

“Randy!” the voice almost yelled at me.
“This is Pastor Bard,” I replied using my new hard-earned title.
“Randy, this is Francis, down at the mission. I need two packages of toddler diapers.”

She said it with such assurance that I had little room to turn her down.

“OK. Who are you again? Francis?”
“Francis Bright, and I run the Bowie mission and I have a family down here who needs diapers.
How soon can you get here?”
“Aaaah, well let me run to Wal Mart and I will be right over.”

She told me where they were located and that was that.

At my next Board of Elder’s meeting I asked about Francis Bright, a 70+ women who spoke with a Texas confidence. My elders told me that she ran the mission, and that whenever she needed anything she would call. If Francis said someone needed it, then they did.

In the few short months I served those folks I grew to respect and then to love her. She had a hard, demanding exterior, but a heart for people and a love of Jesus.

Knowing that I had much to learn about how to minister to people, I asked her once how she knew when to be generous and when to turn folks away. She talked a bit about using good sense, but then quoted me this poem.

I have wept in the night
For the shortness of sight
That to somebody’s need I was blind.
But I never have yet
Felt a tinge of regret
For being a little too kind.

Proverbs 19:17 He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and HE will reward him for what he has done.

Peace to you,
prrcb

Lutheran Hour Ministries (www.lhm.org), the outreach and evangelism specialists of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (www.lcms.org) again had a beautiful float in the Rose Bowl parade.  But you would have never known. 

The float, called “Hallelujah” was a large pipe organ with choir singing.  LHM’s float was strategically placed in front of the Grand Marshall, an old bra’ed who evidently has again become famous for her appearance on “Dancing with the Washed-up Stars.”

This line placement allowed the major networks the perfect reason to break away for commercial, coming back to the Grand Marshall, and effectively skip the only overtly Christian float in the parade. 

HGTV, who promotes their coverage as all-inclusive, showed the Lutheran Hour Ministries float, but commentators spent their time, about 15 seconds, talking about the float’s co-driver who was dress as a choir member and was sitting with the Lutheran Hour Choir.  HGTV moved on to the Grand Marshall as quickly as they could.

If you are paying attention, you are watching the last vestiges of Christianity being squeezed from our culture.  We are, as Turkey and north Africa were a millennium ago, and Europe currently is, being overtaken by secularism, which will be replaced by another religion…Islam.

Kyrie Eleison!

prrcb