One in Fifty US Children Homeless

March 10, 2009 By nick 3 Comments

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I saw this story today…

One of every 50 American children experiences homelessness, according to a new report that says most states have inadequate plans to address the worsening and often-overlooked problem.

The report being released Tuesday by the National Center on Family Homelessness gives Connecticut the best ranking. Texas is at the bottom.

“These kids are the innocent victims, yet it seems somehow or other they get left out,” said the center’s president, Dr. Ellen Bassuk. “Why are they America’s outcasts?” [Read Entire Story Here]

[Read more...]

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Perspectives

December 11, 2008 By nick 1 Comment

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I always find myself taking things in life for granted, or overlooking how blessed I am because of minor issues that I allow to be bigger than what they really are. I think when we start looking at things in their proper perspectives, we are able to see the truth of how blessed and how good many of us have it.

For instance, this morning I am standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of tea (the kind with no sugar in it) and taking my array of daily pills. We live in a small home (especially with 5 people) so the only place we can fit our cereal boxes are on top of the refrigerator. I just happened to look at them and think, “Wow, we have a lot of cereal!” But to really put things into perspective, we probably have more food just in cereal than many children do in a year in third world countries. Yet, my children will complain if they don’t get the cereal they like, or if we are out of their favorite kind. I wonder how excited the kids who barely have anything to eat would be to get just 1 box of cereal? I then got a little downtime (finally) today to go visit some other blogs, and I was given another perspective on my life…

The reason I have not had time to visit other blogs is because our stupid website hosting company (no names, 1&1) sent my wife’s domain name to be deleted instead of for transfer to another company, I guess that’s their way of saying, “We’ll show you to leave our company!” I spent a week and a half with their tech support, whom you cannot understand ( I think they are a mix of arabic and chinese) trying to get the domain name restored and transferred to the new company. Once that was complete, I have been trying to rebuild the site for her to get her business back up and running. My bed times this week have been, 1:30 am, 2:30 am, 3:40 am, and 3:50 am before getting up between 6:30 and 7:00ish to go to work. I thought my last couple of weeks were pretty bad, but then I was reminded of what my friends Dan and Stephanie Gould deal with constantly with one of their children, Jackson. They’ve been in the hospital 5 times since September due to a cesure condition their son has. Personally, I would take a crashed website and early mornings trying to fix it, than having to see my son helplessly deal with the issues Jackson does, and to have him subjexcted to the tests and the probes from the Hospitals. Dan and Stephanie are much stronger than me, and their story helps me realize that my life is not as bad as it may seem…it could always be worst! (I’m not saying they have a bad life, just that they are having to endure more than my situation with the website).

Join the Conversation: What helps you keep your life in proper perspective? How could the world be different if we all had the right focus?

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Another Small Step to Make Huge Impacts

October 16, 2008 By nick 5 Comments

Back in June I posted about an opportunity to help a friend of mine with the adoption of her daughter and/or siblings with your purchase of an everyday item, coffee. You can check that post out HERE. Neely and Josh have recently been informed that they are 27th on the list to get a girl and 10th on the list to get siblings.

Today I come to you with a new opportunity to help them out by purchasing another everyday item. Adopting a baby from a foreign country is expensive, but with everyone taking small steps, we can help make it happen and essentially re-write a baby or potentially two babies life stories, as well as a families. Neely and Josh have had some really cool T-shirts made up to help raise money for the expenses of the adoption. I am sporting mine in the picture at the top of the post. The T-shirt reads “Adoption Rocks” in an Africa logo and comes in black with a white logo or White with a red logo. The T-shirts are $15 each, and you should buy one for yourself and everyone in your family (yes they have children’s sizes)!

Click HERE to go to Neely’s page to order your T-shirt. She has an order form on her right hand sidebar or Email her HERE to place your order.

For Coffee lovers or family and friends of Coffee lovers…Click HERE to place your Coffee order. Remember, you must order through the link for them to get credit for your purchase.

Thanks for Re-writing little children’s life stories!

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A Night For Africa

September 19, 2008 By nick Leave a Comment

This is an event hosted by The 410 Bridge. You need to be there!
Its going to be awesome!!!

Click HERE or the button above to order your tickets.

Lanny Donoho asked me personally via Twitter (ok maybe I wasn’t the only one he asked) to post this, you can see his blog HERE and his Twitter HERE.

See you there!

Nick

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A Rap Worth Listening To

July 2, 2008 By nick Leave a Comment

I watched this over at Pete’s blog yesterday and had to go back this morning to listen to it again. My favorite part is “Send Me I’ll Go” because that sums up where my heart is right now.

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What are your thoughts? Join the Conversation!

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Small Steps to Making Huge Impacts

June 28, 2008 By nick 7 Comments

My new blog friend Brad Ruggles had this post and this post on his blog for the past couple of days. The conversations have been great, a little rough at times, but honest and interesting to say the least.

I want to continue to conversation here…

My friend Neely McQueen is the PDYM Community Guru. She keeps all of the state mentors in line and coordinates our state wide network lunches. Her husband Josh is a Student Minister in Washington (the state).

They are adopting a little girl (Little Girl McQueen) from overseas and I am asking you to help them. This is one more way that we can take a small step to make a huge impact. With your coffee purchase, 40% of the proceeds go directly towards helping bring Little Girl McQueen home to the US. Most of you out there love coffee, you buy it for your house, you buy it for the office, so why not continue doing what you always do, but make an impact in the life of a little girl and an entire family?

Click Here to purchase through Neely and Josh’s Affiliate Number so they get credit. Remember, birthday’s, anniversaries, Christimas, and Just Becauses are always great time to buy your family members or friends a great fresh bag of coffee. You will love it! Thank you for being Jesus by drinking coffee! You must order from the Affiliate Link for credit. Spread the word, I’m keeping a permanent link on my right hand sidebar to make re-orders easy for you, I’m all about customer service! :)

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Conversations with a 5 Year Old

April 24, 2008 By nick 6 Comments

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Nicki was reading the Bible story of Jesus’ first miracle to Gavin out of his Bible story book. It got to the part where Mary told the disciples to do whatever her son told them to do. So I was trying to convey to Gavin that he could be a disciple of Jesus and part of that was doing whatever Jesus tells him to do…

Gavin: “I asked Jesus to come live in my heart, but I don’t know what he’s doing in there. I don’t know what he says, I won’t know what he says until I get to Heaven!”

I love the innocents of children. Everything is pure and simple to them. I was so excited that he was talking about asking Jesus into his heart…this was news to Nicki and me. Nicki talked about it with him about 6 months ago, but she did not know he asked Jesus in his heart or even remembered the conversation. We are continuing to talk to him about “asking Jesus into his heart,” as he had trouble remembering ‘why’ he did it.

We finished the night by talking about miracles. I told Gavin that a miracle would be like Jesus turning a cup of water into a cup of chocolate Milk (His favorite beverage of choice).

Gavin: “If I went to the store and bought a watch and prayed that Jesus turned it into an Omnitrix watch, that would be a miracle!” – [Yes! He understands miracles...]

Me: “Yes, that would be a miracle!”

Gavin: “Well at night and in the morning I prayed that Jesus would give me an Omnitrix watch, but I never got one!”

Me: “Well, Jesus doesn’t always give us what we want, but he promises to give us what we need. You can pray and ask Jesus for extra money so you can buy food and mosquito nets for children in Africa…” (We are trying to teach Gavin to help other people less fortunate than himself) “That would be a miracle for those little kids.”

Gavin: “Well I ‘need’ an Omnitrix watch because when mommy goes into the hospital to have Hailey, when someone comes here to watch us, I will need an Omnitrix watch to turn into an alien to beat up the bad guys if they break into the house.”

We still have a long way to go, but Gavin did agree to start sorting through his toys to give to less fortunate kids. We discussed him living outside and having to sleep in the grass. He didn’t like that, because bugs would bite him, so since he has been taught that bugs bite little boys and girls all the time who do not have a house to protect them from such things, he is going to bless them with his excess. Little by little, I hope we instill healthy lessons in our boys. It is tough!

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