Well that did not take long!

JERUSALEM - Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday, threatening to unravel a cease-fire days after it began, and Israel responded by closing vital border crossings into Gaza.
Despite what it called a "gross violation" of the truce, Israel refrained from military action and said it would send an envoy soon to Egypt to work on the next stage of a broader cease-fire agreement: a prisoner swap that would bring home an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.
Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules Gaza, promised to rein in the Iran- and Syria-backed faction that carried out the rocket attacks and pledged to remain committed to the truce that went into effect June 19 and urged restraint by all sides.
The fact that the cease-fire held up despite the severe strain was an indication that both sides had a lot at stake in the negotiations for a broader agreement. Hamas wants to show it can break the Israeli blockade and provide much-needed relief to Gaza's beleaguered residents, while Israel wants to stop the daily rocket fire that has disrupted the lives of thousands of its citizens.
The midafternoon barrage, which slightly wounded two people, capped a day of violence that presented the truce with its first serious test. Just before midnight, Palestinian militants fired a mortar shell into an empty area in southern Israel. And in a pre-dawn raid, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians, one of them an Islamic Jihad area commander, in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Islamic Jihad, a militant group backed by Syria and Iran, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Gaza. Although the West Bank is not included in the truce agreement, the group said the rockets were retaliation for the Nablus raid.
"We cannot keep our hands tied when this is happening to our brothers in the West Bank," the group said.
A neighbor said a Palestinian bystander was also shot to death by troops when he opened the door of his apartment during the raid. The Israeli military said the man was a militant killed during a gunbattle with troops.
Hamas accused Israel of provoking the rocket fire but moved quickly to lower tensions and said it would talk to Islamic Jihad to ensure quiet.
"We in Hamas are committed to the calm. We will talk and we will make sure that all of the factions are committed to the calm, too," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker called the rocket fire "a gross violation of the calm."
Israel took no military action but late Tuesday decided to shut the crossings, cutting off shipments of basic supplies that had been increased as part of the truce deal, according to defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been made public. There was no word on when the crossings would be reopened.

Thieves take Jesus statue from church cross

Now I know times are tough. I know alot of people are hurting for money. With that being said there are just some things that I KNOW I would not do. This is one of them!

Thieves who stole an 8-foot statue of Jesus Christ off a crucifix in Detroit may have been seeking copper to sell as scrap. Problem is, it's made of plaster.

The Rev. Barry Randolph said Wednesday that the statue at the Church of the Messiah is green and looks like copper, one of several metals coveted by thieves because of soaring scrap prices.
Thieves have damaged copper pipes and stolen aluminum gutters at the church over the past few months, said Donya Ray-Gregg, a member of the congregation, which over the years has dwindled from about 350 members to 50.

It's unclear when the statue was snatched. A parishioner noticed it missing Monday from its perch on the side of the church, 10 feet above the ground. A small piece of plaster was found nearby.

The church has made a public plea for help.
"It is so crazy," Randolph said. "It's been there for so long and was a symbol of hope to a lot of people in this neighborhood."

Police were investigating, but department spokesman James Tate said it was doubtful thieves had mistaken the plaster statue for copper.

"People who steal copper know what copper is and what it feels like," Tate said. "There is no way they would think a plaster statue is some type of metal."

Would you do this to your mom?

I read this article today and I thought this was so sad. It was sad for many reasons. One that she lost her job and house but most of all her kids hae not come and gotten her out of this situation. Read it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Barbara Harvey climbs into the back of her small Honda sport utility vehicle and snuggles with her two golden retrievers, her head nestled on a pillow propped against the driver's seat.

A former loan processor, the 67-year-old mother of three grown children said she never thought she'd spend her golden years sleeping in her car in a parking lot.

"This is my bed, my dogs," she said. "This is my life in this car right now."
Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.

"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them, is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."

Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament.

There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers.

The lots open at 7 p.m. and close at 7 a.m. and are run by New Beginnings Counseling Center, a homeless outreach organization.

It is illegal for people in California to sleep in their cars on streets. New Beginnings worked with the city to allow the parking lots as a safe place for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles without being harassed by people on the streets or ticketed by police.

Harvey stays at the city's only parking lot for women. "This is very safe, and that's why I feel very comfortable," she said.

Nancy Kapp, the New Beginnings parking lot coordinator, said the group began seeing a need for the lots in recent months as California's foreclosure crisis hit the city hard. She said a growing number of senior citizens, women and lower- and middle-class families live on the streets.

"You look around today, and there are so many," said Kapp, who was homeless with her young daughter two decades ago. "I see women sleeping on benches. It's heartbreaking."

She added, "The way the economy is going, it's just amazing the people that are becoming homeless. It's hit the middle class."

She and others with New Beginnings walk the streets looking for people and families sleeping in their cars. The workers inform them about the parking lot program.
New Beginnings screens people to make sure they won't cause trouble. No alcohol or drugs are allowed in the parking lots.

"What we are trying to do is we pull bad apples out, and we put good apples in the parking lots and really help people out," said Shaw Tolley, another coordinator with New Beginnings.
Most of the time, the lots are transition points. New Beginnings works with each person to try to find a more permanent housing solution.

"It saddens me when they live in their vehicles," Tolley said. "It is not the most ideal situation for senior citizens and families, but it is reality."
He added, "We need to engage this problem. This is reality."

John Quigley, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the California housing crisis has left many middle-class families temporarily homeless or forced them to go to food banks to feed their families.

"Part of the reason why it's so painful in Santa Barbara is, there's so little in the way of alternative housing," Quigley said. "If there were alternative low and moderate housing and rental accommodations that were reasonably close by, you can imagine it wouldn't have this desperate look to it as people living in their cars."

At the only lot for women in Santa Barbara, it's a tough existence. There are no showers or running water. On the night CNN visited, a half-dozen women were in the parking lot before nightfall.

Linn Labou, 54, lives in her car with four cats. She used to be in the National Guard and is on a waiting list for government housing, but the wait is a year long.

"I went looking for family, but I couldn't get them to help me," she said.
As for Harvey, she begins each day by walking her two dogs before going to her part-time job. She leaves the dogs in her car with its windows cracked while she works.

100,000 Dead?

I hear it and read about it but for some reason I can not wrap my mind around the fact that a storm could possibly kill this many people. I am a logical person. Sometimes maybe to logical I guess. I think about the hurricanes that hit the east coast of the US every year. You always hear of lots of homes that are damaged. Power will be out for a few days. You may hear of a handful of deaths.

Now you take this storm that hit Burma. In comparison it would have been a category 3 maybe 4 hurricane. This storm may at the end kill 100,000 people. Why? I can only assume that it is because of the infrastructure is so weak. The do not have homes and building that have codes like we do in the US. Maybe they have an extremely large amount of people that live close to the coast line. Regardless, that’s like a nuclear bomb hitting that country. How many children will die? You are talking about a generation or a couple of generations gone.

How to Raise a Happy Kid

Five Steps to Lifelong JoyFortunately, it’s easier than you might think to begin instilling the inner qualities that lead to a lifetime of happiness. With patience and an open mind, the following five steps can help you lay the groundwork for your child:

Connect with others. More than any other single factor we can control, connection is the key to a happy childhood, and adulthood. Connection, in the form of unconditional love from an adult, helps foster self-confidence. Try to create an atmosphere at home in which your child feels cared for, welcomed, and treated fairly. Without that feeling, kids shy away from new things and experiences.

Foster a can-do attitude. This is one of the most reliable defenses against depression and despair at any age. Children watch and learn from how you deal with disappointment, be it in your career or at an athletic event or even just in being cut off in traffic. You can encourage competition, making sure that your child experiences both victory and defeat, and help her deal with each. You can use humor to deal with the pain, or bits of philosophy, or simply let your children see that you never give up.

Pretend and play. Unstructured play hones children’s imagination, teaches critical problem-solving skills, and trains them to tolerate frustration. It also helps children learn that doing things again and again leads to improvement. In fact, play is the most important “work” your child can do. Practice, as part of structured activity, trains children how to receive help and get the most from other adults, such as good teachers and coaches.

Create opportunities for mastery. With mastery comes confidence, leadership skills, initiative, and an enduring desire for hard work. It transforms a child (or an adult) from a reluctant, fearful learner into a motivated player. One of the great goals of parents, teachers, and coaches should be to find areas in which a child might experience mastery, then, make it possible for the child to feel this potent sensation. Once there, children want to go there again and again.

Provide recognition. The feeling of being valued by others (friends, family, community) is key. You can exert a tremendous positive influence through the recognition you offer. We adults too quickly forget how much it meant to us when we were young — it meant the world to us, and to children today it still does. Recognition in turn reinforces the sense of connection that all children need.

Why did he not just wait and speak!

Today I am just so fustrated! I am upset on so many levels. I can not understand why this man would come out now and start as he states it "Defending the Black Church". If he was any type of friend to Barrack would he not have waited? We had a real chance for a black President. This is all it takes for other races to be confused and sterotype blacks in one group. I am sure Obama is red hot. This helps Hillary, it helps McCain, most of all it helps Rev. Wright! Now don't get me wrong. He does have a right to defend himself. He is right on several things he has said. He has been unfairly attacked. My point is there is a time and place to go on attack. This was not the time. What a selfish act!

Out of a tragedy comes some news that strengthens your faith.

I am sure everyone has heard about the horrible plane crash in the Congo this week. Well a story from it gave me a lot to think about. This family was in Africa doing a missionaries trip and was on the plane. They survived the crash. So many people died. Why did they survive? Could it be that they were doing God’s work and their family was blessed because of it? I like to think so.
I have a friend who is on a missionary’s trip right now in Africa. This made me think of her. I know my prayers go out to her and her team. You may know of some people who are on missionary trips. Please say a prayer for them! Please read the article below. Also if you want to read about what organization my friend works for here is a link for you. http://www.impactmovement.com/

A missionary family from Minnesota is glad to be alive and together after surviving a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the father said Wednesday.
Barry and Marybeth Mosier were on their way to visit their son Keith, 24, in Kinsangani, Congo, with two younger children when their plane crashed on takeoff Tuesday in Goma. More than 30 people died as the plane plowed through a market and burned.

April Mosier, 14, managed to escape quickly, her father said by phone from Goma.
"April raced ahead, and she got to the front of the plane as one of the first people, I think," said Barry Mosier, 53.

The girl encountered a man who was tearing through an opening in the fuselage, Mosier said.
"He was pulling parts of the plane in or pushing them out, trying to make a hole. And she told him -- she speaks Swahili well -- she said, 'We've got to get a hole in this plane or we're all going to die.' " Watch as Barry Mosier describes the chaos »
When the hole was big enough, April tried to dive through it. She made it with a push from the man, and other passengers followed, he said.

Don't MissAir Crash kills 33; one passenger among dead Meanwhile, Mosier said he and his wife were carrying their son Andrew, 3, forward in the shoving "mass of humanity" trying to escape the burning plane. They got out through the opening in the fuselage. The child's leg was broken in the crush of people, but his parents didn't realize it until later.
April became separated from her parents and was whisked away to a hospital, convinced her family was dead, her father said.

"Outside the plane she was wandering around. ... It was total chaos," he said. "People were screaming and yelling because the plane had landed on this market. All of a sudden out of the blue all of these people who were just standing there are now dead.

"So there's parts of bodies, and people burning, and people screaming and yelling, and she was out there by herself."
About 25 minutes later, the Mosiers were reunited at the hospital.

"When we saw each other at the hospital, I can tell you it was a grand reunion," he said.
The Mosiers, who have been Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in Iringa, Tanzania, for eight years, went to the church office in Goma to let Keith and other loved ones -- including two other grown children in the U.S. -- know they were all right.

While there, someone noticed Andrew's leg was swollen, and the Mosiers returned to the hospital. They learned that Andrew's femur was broken near the hip, and he is now in a cast that reaches from his toes to his rib cage, Barry Mosier said.
"He doesn't like it very well, as most 3-year-olds wouldn't," Mosier said.

The family will recuperate in Goma for a few days before deciding whether to resume the trip to Kisangani, where Keith Mosier has been a volunteer missionary for two months, Barry Mosier said.

"But flying here is not a popular thing to talk about just now," he said wryly.
Andrew has made up his mind, his father said.
"He says he doesn't want to ride in airplanes anymore," he said.
Marybeth Mosier, 51, suffered a black eye and bruised ribs, said her husband, who added that he was unhurt.

"We couldn't believe that our family of four could all escape a plane that was crashed and on fire, but by God's mercy we did," he said.
Mosier said he believes the family made it for a reason.
"I think the Lord has a plan for us, otherwise we wouldn't have survived," he said. "He still has work for us to do."

And that work just might be in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"We actually came here with the idea of seeing if we could move here to Congo, so it's been kind of a rough introduction," Mosier said.
"I think we'll keep praying about that. We know that the safest place in the world to work is where the Lord wants you to work."