Melva Gifford

A church yesterday, I was reminded why it is important to kneel when praying. It is an act of humility before God. This is an area I could work on. Kneeling in prayer is a token our respect to the power of God and that he is supreme. I hope the following topic can be of use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors and family home evenings.

Object Lesson: humility and lighten the burdens.

Have a family member or member of the classs sit in an armed chair. Instruct them that they cannot remove their hands/arms from the arms rests during the object lesson.  Now start piling blankets and coats, scares etc. ontop the person. Even though they might start getting hot keep adding blankets.

They can do nothing to lighten their load unless they ask for help. Now have that person ask for help in removing the blankets and coats. Have the person ask individual family / class members to remove each coat or blanket until they are no longer laden down.

Just like a person may need to ask for help to remove the blankets when they cannot, we ask God for help in all aspects of our lives. We can feel the burdens of life similar to the weight of the blankets we get hot under all those blankets.

We pray to God for intervention and we kneel on our knees to show humility. Maybe also during the lesson you might also touch upon expressing gratitude to God once a blessing has been given. Maybe discuss other ways how we might show humility to God the Father and discuss it.

Tonight our city had an emergency practice of what we should do in case of catastrophe. We put up colored cards in our home windows to indicate

Green: everyone is ok.

Yellow: there is an injury and

Red: there is a fatality.

We have block captains who are assigned to each street, who check the condition of residents of each home. Then everyone is supposed to meet at the local church.

Well in the spirt of the event I made an arm rest out of a towel and squirted barbecue sauce on the towel and my arm. It looked pretty gory. Then I limped to the church.

Hope it contributed to the mindset of the drill.

Have you ever done anything to make a standard practice fun? Please share what you did in the comment section of this blog.

Bad: simpathize

Good: sympathize

Often when You sYmpathize you are thinking and caring about the another person, so use a Y not an I. sym0athy does not thing about ourselves (so no I) but others You.

 I attended part of an emergency preparedness lecture tonight and learned some useful information. Here are some of my notes:

• Buy windup flashlight at waymark $20
• Have a compact shovel in your car, especially one that can be altered to scrape as well as dig.
• Have a list already written out of what you to gather up in immediate evacuation because when you’re in an emergency, you won’t think of the list when you stressed. Access the list and have all the packets and emergency items prepared to grab and go.
• Have an emergency packet for each member of the household and include an emergency packet for your pets as well as they are part of the family too.
• Select a twice a year designated time to replenish all your kits with water, food and batteries in your emergency kits, such as conference.
• Have a porta potty as part of your emergency kit.
• Cat litter is a good item to use in a porta potty. Also have bags to replace the waste.
• A bag of kitty litter can be purchased at Dollar tree for dollar.
• The light on the lid of the porta potty is useful so that the men can hit the target better when going to the restroom.
• Have sterile wipes to clean the toilet when target is missed.
• Often sterile wipes will dry out but moisture is better maintained if you store wipes in a zip lock bag.
• Purchase strips to buckle down your water heater in case of earthquake.
• There is a rubber grip material that will help prevent objects from sliding around on a shelf. It will not prevent items from falling over.
• Melva’s personal idea is to wrap rubber bands on the door handles of my kitchen so that if things rattle around, they will still be contained inside the door of the cupboards.
• Start glass items low on the shelves and unbreakable items higher up
• After an earthquake, use the buddy system to check each room to make sure there’s not electrical fire, smoke, or the smell of gas.
• If you smell gas in or out of the house turn the gas main, open up the Windows and exit the premises. Have the tool to turn off the gas set aside in a designated place for use if necessary
• In advance to catastrophe, get contact information of professionals who are willing to turn on the gas after an emergency.
• Obtain updated addresses, phone numbers of family members
• It would be smart to find how each family/friends plan to respond to emergency if they ever encounter it. You may want to know where their emergency location is, so you can anticipate how to contact them.
• Maybe even have a common out of state contact that all family can call to give status
• Always have whistles in multiple areas because the whistle is more efficient than crying out for help. It pierces the noise better and you have more breath to blow then to cry out for help. Keep blowing.
• Items such as Band-Aids shampoos etc. grow old and lose their effectiveness. They all need to be replaced in the emergency kits.
• Purchase straps to keep computer monitors, TVs screens, etc. secure,
• Water does not store well in the heat. It can create poisonous gases in the bottle keep your water rotated.
• Water containers during the winter can freeze breaks/cracks the container. Make sure stored in area that if compromised water won’t damage other items.
• Water stored in Mylar bags is said to last for 5 years. Have water for humans and pets as part of each kit.

Have items to add to the list? Please include them in the comment section of the blog. If you have suggestions to add that maybe some of us have not considered, please share.

Today’s object lesson is going to take a unique route. I’m going to talk about how science can be a contribution and complement to God’s creation of the body and the world. I hope this topic can be of interest and use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors and home evening groups.

I recently was in communication with the nonreligious friend who shared an article that science and religion are not complementary. I personally, can see how science can be a complement to the wonders of God’s creations. Let me give some specific examples to share with the class or family.

Present to the family/class a picture of the body with the different organs. Or maybe the operation game that has the different body parts of a fake body. Then point out different aspects of the human body performs specific and wondrous function. Discuss how those different parts united in the whole of the body enable us to move and live. We might discuss how the heart pump blood throughout the entire body or how antibodies to help fight infections. Talk about how lungs distribute air. We can also discuss how muscles help us move the body, let alone the wondrous details and abilities of sight, hearing, touch and speech.

If not the body, why not how the world works with such examples as the turn of seasons, the patterns of wind currents, and how the moon influences the tides of the earth. We can discuss the migration of animals and how each is distinctly unique. Touch upon other wondrous aspects of life in nature and give a detailed list of all the things the body can do, as provided by the wonder of God’s creations. This is a great chance to review a God created the earth. Read the relevant chapters of Genesis.

Many evolutionists feel that the creation of life was by chance circumstance. Let’s illustrate the possibility of a chance event. Get a set of dice that are numbered 1 to 10 or put masking tape on pennies and write 1-10. Then, with the family or class start rolling all of them at the same time. Test the chance circumstance is to roll up all 1-10 dice on the first row. If not, row all the dice a second time or a third to see if you can get 1-10, etc.

If you have any ideas to add this topic, please feel free to do so in the comment section this blog. Thanks

I think we all remember where we were at during the 9-11 attacks. That event shows me that America needs to be a strong nation both morally and militarily. I agree that when someone hurts us, we respond in a way that they will be motivated to never do it again.

I thank all the people who go into careers dedicated into protecting others: soldiers, fire fighters, policemen, hospitals and other people who server others.

I feel blessed to be able to live in America. May God Bless America. May we as a people become humble before God, as we have strayed away from him. That is something I can work on. May we become a better educated and informed citizenry.  May we rely upon our own efforts to be better.

Bad: Registeration

Good: Registration

My problem area for this word is I want to put an E between register and ration. It does matter if hE or hEr registers for something so take out the e.

Maybe another way to remember this is that registrations is geared to control or ration the number of people who sign up for something thus registRATION. We’ll see if that will help me remember.

These are some notes I took at financial seminar last fall. Hope they can be of use.

–          County receives their revenue to finance basic operations.

–          Property owners receive temporary relief from debt.

–          Investors receive a high rate of return.

–          Texas office 25% redemption clause. Homeowner can buy back when they pay their taxes

–          if the house is unoccupied the home owner has six months to pay. After six months. The lien owner can have the home when they pay the fees and taxes.

–           If home is occupied. They get two years to pay back their taxes.

–          An appraiser office will tell the HX code on the property.

–          Invest what you want to travel so that you can use the trip as a business expense. When you want to the property.

–          Before you buy. Make sure to do due diligence. Want to know what taxes are due.

–          For requirements for tax lien/deeds:

–          be ready to devote 2 to 3 hours a week in the beginning.

–          Want your experience will take 45 Mr. Tax lien.

–          You want to acquire knowledge on online cells.

–          The biggest challenge is getting access to the tax lien information. You need resources from coast-to-coast.

–          You need a strategy. If you are passive liens and deeds may not be the best option.

–          Osman designs: member has a residual care facility as a source of income

–          Syndication: people can invest their money pool their resources to invest their money.

–          United States printed and invested $85 billion to invest in the economy.

–          Nice day to $7 trillion in debt.

–          Nine countries are working together to bypass United States dollar.

–          You will need more than a Mormon pantry for survival.

–          When people have money they have options.

–          Money magnifies the kind of person you are.

Have something to add to the list, please do so in the comment section of this blog.