How Great Thou Art - Handbell Solo

It takes fast hands to do this. Enjoy, Pastor Bill.

Google Apps Exclude Churches

Google Apps is a program to help businesses with their Internet Marketing. It has some very good applications. They have a program for nonprofits, Google for nonprofits, which a friend told me about. It looked good to me so I signed up for it on behalf of the church. They rejected us. Google does not accommodate churches in their not-for-profit program. Below is from Google’s guidelines.

Restrictions
The following organizations are not eligible for Google for Nonprofits:

Commercial / Goods and Services
· Car, boat and real estate donation websites
· Websites with a primary focus on selling goods, products or services
· Consumer credit counseling

Communities and Groups
· Programs requiring membership and/or providing benefit solely to members, such as clubs, sports teams, alumni, networking and other membership organizations
· Religious content or proselytizing on website as well as organizations that use religion or sexual orientation as factor in hiring or populations served
· Groups serving a primarily political function such as lobbying, think tanks and special interests
· Schools, childcare centers, academic institutions, and universities, unless the organization’s sole (entire) purpose entails serving a disadvantaged community (e.g., the blind, hearing impaired, low-income members, etc.) or the organization is a philanthropic arm of a school (e.g. research programs)
· Places or institutions of worship (e.g., churches, ministries, temples, synagogues)
 
Any ideas on why this policy exists?

Peace,

Pastor Bill

Pray for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irene

My son Edward is living and working at a field station in El Yunque, a tropical rain forest in Puerto Rico. Below is his report after Hurricane Irene hit the island. So far, he is well, but he still has not been able to travel out of El Yunque because downed trees cover the roadway. 

Hey everyone. So my e-mail is down, and I can't get onto Facebook to let you know that we are all okay here at the field station. We lost power Sunday evening and are still without, but thanks to our generator, we are one of the only locations on the island with electricity. It got a little crazy up here, the wind, the rain (so much rain!), and the trees; it got a little crazy up here. Let's start from the beginning.

Now, I didn't know about Tropical Storm Irene until probably Saturday night, when we all started talking about how it's probably a bad idea for us to try to hike El Torro the next day with a hurricane coming. So we opted out of hiking in exchange for building a pillow/blanket fort in the conference room. We thought it was the safest thing we could do during a hurricane. Also, by mid day on Sunday, Irene was still a tropical storm and was set to make landfall here in PR late Sunday night. We literally hung out in the fort all day Sunday, we ate dinner there, and watched Gladiator there too. We still had power when we went to sleep Sunday night, but we figured that was going to change. It had been raining since early afternoon, and the wind was really picking up by then. We also knew that UPR had closed down for Monday, and told everyone to stay indoors and not to try to go to work, so we had Monday off. When we woke up Monday, there was no power, branches were down in the parking lot, debris everywhere, but it didn't look too bad. I turned on the generator so we could keep the fridges cold, and so we could see if the internet was down, which it was. I wanted to see the what happened in the night to the surrounding area, so Rachel, Seth, and I went out to see what the damage was. Well, we didn't have to walk far, nor did we want to. The storm was sill happening around us, rain and crazy wind, but we wanted to see if people could get to us if anything happened. They couldn't. There was a tree down in our driveway, but many more on the roads outside it. The Sonadora River was cresting over the bridge lower down the mountain, and there was a landslide further up the mountain near the Espiritu Santo river, and there was of course the downed trees everywhere, it was crazy. The water flow on these rivers was insane, more power then I have ever seen coming from a river. It was intense. We headed back, and hunkered down inside because the storm wasn't over. The rest of the island was still black, Fajardo was flooded, all of the traffic lights are down, and people can't get anywhere. It's Tuesday, people are still stuck, and we don't know how long we will be without power. The Hurricane was a Cat 2 by the time it left the island and looks like it will be a Cat 4 by the time it reaches the Eastern side of Florida. Pray for Florida everyone.

Salvation Army Ready for Hurricane Irene

With more than 40 canteens (mobile kitchens), shower trailers, field kitchens, and additional logistics equipment across the state, The Florida Division of The Salvation Army is taking Hurricane Irene very seriously. Currently models are showing a significant impact from Palm Beach County stretching to the Florida-Georgia border. While the forecast keeps the eye of the storm just off the coast, there is a significant possibility that as it moves north, Hurricane Irene will produce severe storms and possibly numerous tornado warnings and potential flooding.

At this time these mobile kitchens that are strategically placed around Florida are gearing up to support a response along the east coast. If Irene passes without significant damage in Florida, the units will be available to support our neighboring states from Georgia to North Carolina. This morning Director Kevin Smith spoke with the Georgia Divisional Director pledging support should they need it. “The reality is, if a storm that makes landfall from Jacksonville to Savannah, we will work together to meet the needs of Hurricane survivors and responders.” Smith said.

It has been since 1964 when Hurricane Dora made landfall in the Jacksonville-Savannah area. “We know that in cases like this many of the population tend to think they are not vulnerable to the impacts of a hurricane.” Smith reiterates, “This is the reason we see so many unprepared when the storm actually makes landfall.”

In 2004 there were many residents in St. Lucie County, Florida that felt the same way. Yet three weeks later they were reeling from the impacts of two Hurricanes. Many people found themselves needing life sustaining support because they believed they were invulnerable and did not prepare. The Salvation Army is asking residents of the entire east coast of Florida to be ready, get a plan, and know your options. Critical decisions need to be made now, not in the middle of the storm.

The Salvation Army, an evangelical part of the universal Christian church established in 1865, has been supporting those in need in His name without discrimination for 130 years in the United States. Nearly 30 million Americans receive assistance from The Salvation Army each year through the broadest array of social services that range from providing food for the hungry, relief for disaster victims, assistance for the disabled, outreach to the elderly and ill, clothing and shelter to the homeless and opportunities for underprivileged children. 82 cents of every dollar spent is used to carry out those services in 5,000 communities nationwide. For more information, go to www.salvationarmyusa.org.

Drought in East Africa

From Samaritan’s Purse

As famine spreads across the Horn of Africa, Samaritan's Purse is supplying food and other aid to thousands of hungry families and malnourished children.

More than 12 million people are in urgent need of food, water, and medical care in drought-stricken Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Experts estimate that starvation and related diseases have already claimed the lives of over 29,000 children under age five. The United Nations is calling the crisis "the world's worst humanitarian disaster.”

Samaritan’s Purse has a team based in Garissa, Kenya, along the Somalia border, where we are distributing tons of maize, beans, corn-soy blend, cooking oil, and other necessities.
Our team—which includes experts in nutrition, healthcare, water, and sanitation—is reporting that these are some of the harshest conditions they ever have encountered.

“We drove to a local cattle market, and dead animals could be seen all along the road,” a staff member said. “At the market we spoke with local residents who said this is the worst drought they have experienced in living memory. They made a point to mention that ‘even the older generation has never seen a drought this bad.’ Many of the rural residents are flocking to town because of a lack of water and their diminishing animals stocks. At the market, there were several animals writhing on the ground, left to die because they were so badly off.”

Our emergency response includes plans to implement therapeutic care and supplemental feeding programs for malnourished children. In coordination with our local partners, we have identified sites for food distributions and therapeutic nutritional interventions.

In addition, Samaritan's Purse has launched a cash-for-work program in several villages. We are paying people to build latrines, which will help with health and hygiene conditions while providing some income in these poverty-stricken communities.

"If they are in desperate need, they can use the cash for food, but they can also use it for healthcare or other necessities," said Ruco Van Der Merwe, team leader for the response.

Clean water is another dire need. In some areas, only 20 percent of the families have access to safe drinking water. Many people are now forced to walk miles to reach a water source. As populations are shifting toward areas with better access to water, community resources are being severely strained. Our team is using tanker trucks to haul water to vulnerable villages while we identify longer-term solutions such as drilling boreholes.

“Water is such an issue,” said Zeke Rhodes, program officer. “We see women in the middle of nowhere waving their jerry cans, asking for water. It’s not unusual for people to walk 10-15 miles for water.”

The crisis in the Horn of Africa was brought on by two years of drought that is the worst in 60 years. Massive crop failure and loss of livestock have led to extreme food shortages in a region straddling Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia—a region that has been labeled the “triangle of death.”

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people without food and water have fled to makeshift camps in eastern Kenya looking for emergency aid. Many of the displaced are refugees from neighboring Somalia, who left their war-torn country in hopes of finding help over the border. Much of Somalia is controlled by a militant group, affiliated with al Qaeda, that has denied that a food shortage exists and threatened to maintain their ban on food aid.

“We saw a family with a donkey cart. It was a father and mother, an infant, and two daughters,” Rhodes said. “The girls were in bad shape, emaciated, but still able to walk. It was kind of a glimpse at the journey they’ve taken over the last couple of months. They’ve come a long way, and they’re going to a camp of half-a-million people in some of the most harsh environments you could imagine. It was very sobering.”

The camps in Kenya are overcrowded, and resources are stretched beyond capacity. Conditions aren’t much better outside the camps. Samaritan’s Purse church partners are finding households facing dire shortages of food and water.

Some of the worst hit counties include Wajir and Garissa, areas considered the focal point of the Somalia refugee influx. In these areas, particularly where Samaritan’s Purse partners are involved, there is limited government assistance and little help from other agencies.

Please pray for the people impacted by malnutrition and starvation, for our staff and church partners as they respond in the Name of Christ, that the conditions that are causing this catastrophic food shortage will end, and for God's help in meeting the overwhelming needs of the region.

If you want to help…