Give Them All to Jesus - Candy Christmas
Monday, March 20, 2017
Texas woman changes homeless man’s life after he stood on same street corner for three years
A woman has helped to change a homeless man’s life in a matter of months by setting up a Facebook page, after discovering why he stood on the same street corner every day.
Ginger Sprouse, who runs Art of the Meal in Clear Lake, Texas, drove past 32-year-old Victor Hubbard on the corner of El Camino Real and Nasa Road 1 four times a day, no matter the weather.
The corner was the last place Mr Hubbard saw his mother and he would wait there for her to return. He was homeless and suffering from mental health issues when Ms Sprouse first started to offer him help, and had been waiting on the corner for three years.
“I began to get more and more concerned as I knew winter was coming and I thought, ‘So what’s going to happen now?’” Ms Sprouse told MyBayArea Radio, explaining that she had started visiting Mr Hubbard on her lunch break and they had struck up a friendship. “So he and I started talking about maybe how would he feel about sometimes coming to my house to get out of the bad weather, and that’s how we started.“It’s been quite the journey,” she said.
She created a Facebook page called “This is Victor” as a way for the community to get to know Mr Hubbard better and to take part in getting him the help he needed. In her first post Ms Sprouse wrote: “I drove by Victor’s corner at least four times a day. I listen to people talking around town and keep hearing, ‘Someone needs to do something about that guy’. So, I will be the organiser and hope that we as a community can be ‘someone’ together.”
Since taking action in December, Ms Sprouse has managed to get Mr Hubbard into mental health clinics, helped him off the streets and has given him a job in her business’s kitchen. A GoFundMe page raising money to help with Mr Hubbard’s living costs has seen more than $15,400 (£12,700) donated and over 200 people showed up to a recent block party to show their support for the man they had seen on the same corner every day.
“She came around and she kind of saved me. It’s like grace,” Mr Hubbard said of Ms Sprouse on KHOU.com.
The Facebook page has been liked by more than 15,000 people and has a stream of comments from locals expressing their relief that Mr Hubbard is receiving care, while updates are regularly posted by Ms Sprouse, including videos about his improvements and messages he has recorded for his friends.
The community has also responded by helping Mr Hubbard get clothes, eye tests and to be seen by doctors, and the local fire station has vowed to oversee his medication needs. Ms Sprouse and her family are currently working to get him sheltered accommodation.
Since the publicity of the Facebook page and community project, Ms Sprouse was able to get in touch with one of Mr Hubbard’s uncles and was eventually able to help him see his mother again.
“I got to talk to her and I really feel like I accomplished something,” Mr Hubbard told the TV station.
Christianity ‘exploding’ in Bangladesh, despite persecution
By Mark Ellis, GodReports, March 14, 2017
Sandwiched between India and Myanmar, Bangladesh is the third largest Muslim-majority country in the world. Often beset by floods, cyclones and tornadoes roaring through the Bengal Delta, it also has the sad distinction of ranking number one in the world for children suffering malnutrition.
Bangladesh is 89% Muslim and nearly 10% Hindu, according to the Joshua Project, with Christians numbering less than one percent.
One ministry leader, who recently completed a fact-finding trip to the country, believes Christians are being undercounted. “Christianity is much larger and growing, especially in the rural areas,” says Jim Jacobson, president of Christian Freedom International (CFI).
On his trip, Jacobson interviewed scores of indigenous Christian pastors, street evangelists, missionaries and converts to Christianity. “According to them, Christianity is on the increase and the growth is a cause of concern for the Muslim majority,” he notes.
“As a result, persecution is on the increase against the fast growing, mostly underground Christian church.”
One 60-year-old pastor, a former Muslim, reported to Jacobson that 20,000 Muslims have converted to Christianity among the hill tribes of northeast Bangladesh in the last 12 months. This pastor faces many hardships, has been beaten numerous times, and must pay bribes to police to continue his ministry.
Another pastor and Muslim convert to Christianity told Jacobson that in his district more than 6,000 have converted to Christ since 1991. This pastor has been targeted for assassination by ISIS. He told CFI, “Of course I am afraid, but when I think about my spiritual life I am not afraid. We continue to preach no matter what.”
Jacobson believes the under-reporting of believers is because most tallies only count “traditional Christians,” i.e., people born into the Christian faith who attend government-approved churches.
“But ‘converts,’ those who change their religion from Islam to Christianity are not counted and no surveys have been made,” he contends.
Jacobson says the number of Christians in Bangladesh may be as high as 10 percent of the population.
“If the 10 percent number is correct, there are at least 15,600,000 Christians in this Muslim majority nation. Evidence seems to support the claims,” he notes.
Babul, a Muslim who converted Christianity in 2013, once worked as a day laborer. After his conversion, Babul’s life was threatened and he was disowned by his family. He had to go into hiding in the jungle to survive. After eight months in the jungle, some Christian converts helped him. He is now a “street preacher” and faces many hardships to share the gospel. He has been beaten numerous times but sees it as a badge of honor.
“The young like me, are converting,” Babul told Jacobson. “Many more are interested. Especially young people, they are interested in Christ. But they think about the cost of converting and it is high because they have to leave everything. But many are interested in Christ.”
Bakar, a Christian convert told CFI, “Christianity is really growing in Bangladesh. The next generation is becoming Christian. We believe that Bangladesh will become a Christian nation one day. Islam has no mercy, no compassion, no love. It has nothing to offer. Christianity offers the assurance of eternal life, it offers hope.”
Dennis Edwards: Jesus said the Gospel would be preached in all the world, and then the end would come. As the West experiences the "falling away" predicted by Christ and the apostles, the East is embracing the truth they find in Jesus even under the atheistic regimes in China and elsewhere and in predominantly Muslim countries like Bangladesh. Please remember to pray for these dear brethren who accept Christ knowing in doing so their lives may soon end. And support missions.
The World Is Completely Unprepared for a Global Pandemic
In 2003 a doctor with SARS unknowingly infected several guests while staying at a Hong Kong hotel, and overnight the virus reached across the globe. China is currently battling a bird flu that kills nearly half of the people infected. If Ebola, which transmits through fluids, were spread by air, or if Zika, which has reached over 50 countries, were as deadly as Ebola, we would be facing an unprecedented catastrophe. An uncontrolled outbreak or bioterror attack could result in a contagion that kills over 30 million people.
We fear it is only a matter of time before we face a deadlier and more contagious pathogen, yet the threat of a deadly pandemic remains dangerously overlooked. Pandemics now occur with greater frequency, due to factors such as climate change, urbanization, and international travel. Other factors, such as a weak World Health Organization and potentially massive cuts to funding for U.S. scientific research and foreign aid, including funding for the United Nations, stand to deepen our vulnerability. We also face the specter of novel and mutated pathogens that could spread and kill faster than diseases we have seen before. With the advent of genome-editing technologies, bioterrorists could artificially engineer new plagues, a threat that Ashton Carter, the former U.S. secretary of defense, thinks could rival nuclear weapons in deadliness.
The two of us have advised the president of Guinea on stopping Ebola. In addition, we have worked on ways to contain the spread of Zika and have informally advised U.S. and international organizations on the matter. Our experiences tell us that the world is unprepared for these threats.
We urgently need to change this trajectory. There is no border wall against disease. Pandemics are an existential threat on par with climate change and nuclear conflict. We are at a critical crossroads, where we must either take the steps needed to prepare for this threat or become even more vulnerable. It is only a matter of time before we are hit by a deadlier, more contagious pandemic. Will we be ready?
Dennis Edwards: Of course the unspoken solution is some kind of "higher government" that can implement a global solution. Maybe they are implying we need to give more power to the United Nations as the USA under Trump is acting unilaterally to the world's disadvantage. We hear the call constantly for World Government, i.e., a righteous world government. Unknown to many, the Bible predicts such a government, which comes in peaceably, helps the poor, may even help solve the Middle East problem, or try to. But in the end, rather than bringing great solutions, it brings in the most horrendous period of world history, spoken of by Jesus as the Great Tribulation. Every day we move closer and closer to these shocking events. Are you ready?
