Christian Book Gives Teachers, Parents Fun, Inspiring Activities for Kids

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- A new book with audio CD by Carey Landry and Carol Jean Kinghorn-Landry is designed to bring music to life and get children moving. Now available from OCP, Hi God Gesture Book, Volume 2 clearly presents signs and gestures with photographs and detailed explanations--for familiar songs aimed at getting children excited about their faith.

"In the past few years, many people have asked us to prepare a second volume of gestures since they enjoyed the original Hi God Gesture Book and have found it so useful," said Landry. "We are so grateful for this response."

The audio CD included with the book offers engaging and fun songs like "I Know That God Loves Me" and "Peter and James and John" and quietly prayerful songs like "At the Center of My Heart," "I Believe in the Sun' and "Sing a Simple Song." The gestures, signs, mime and motions flow freely from the music and reflect not only the words but the piece's entire mood.

"In Hi God Gestures, Volume 2, we concentrated on our newer songs (from Hi God 4, 5 and 6)," said Kinghorn-Landry. "Our goal was to enable students to express themselves more fully by using their hands and feet as well as their voices. We hope the gestures we have created for the second volume will add a new dimension and sense of participation and joy as they sing these 14 songs."

Product details:

• Audio CD included (inside plastic pocket in the book)

• Two new songs ("Who Is This" and "We Receive the Lord") join 12 of the most popular selections from the Hi God series

• Gestures demonstrated by actual grade school students, not "professionals"

• Composer Notes offer a background on all of the songs

• Movements vary in level of difficulty, allowing you to adapt to the ages and abilities of your students

Hi God Gestures Book, Volume 2 provides teachers, catechists and parents with a variety of songs for different liturgical and catechetical occasions throughout the year. The songbook with CD ($28.00) is available at ocp.org/HiGodGestures2.

About OCP
OCP, a not-for-profit publisher of music and worship resources based in Portland, Oregon, has been in operation for more than 80 years. Worship materials produced by OCP are used in thousands of churches in the United States and are distributed worldwide. More information is available at 1-800-548-8749 and ocp.org.

Click to Read Article from Christian News Wire

One Womans Story of dealing with cold and poverty during these hard economic times

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JMC Ministries Response

written by Miranda Caverley

Sadly this is just one story of many who are suffering from the recession the U.S is in.  People living with no heat in their homes and nearly freezing to death. Apply for jobs everyday with nothing coming from it because they say if you have been out of work for 6 months or more you more than likely will NOT Get a job. If things don't turn around in America we will be in a depression. The news is already saying the economy hasn't been this bad since the very end of the Great Depression in the 1930's. 

While Our President is more worried about Health Care Reform people are starving and freezing in their own homes just to keep their homes and have a place to live, even if that place is as cold as an ice box. If Mr. Obama's healthcare reform goes through America still won't be able to afford it because most of the country will be getting Medical Cards and are unable to afford adequate health care anyway.  I think the President is so diluted that he only sees what he wants to see and doesn't really care about the people suffering in his own Country when we see people like this lady suffering and thousands and possibly millions of others just like her across the U.S. WAKE UP TO REALITY MR. PRESIDENT!!!!!!

Woman Who Helped Hide Anne Frank dies at the age of 100

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

 AP1998: Miep Gies displays a copy of her book 'Anne Frank Remembered' at her apartment in Amsterdam, Netherlands

AMSTERDAM  —  Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank House museum said Tuesday. She was 100.
Gies died from a neck injury sustained in a fall at her home shortly before Christmas, museum spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said.
Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.
After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.
Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."
Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.
After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.
"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.
"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in 70 languages.
For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.
Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.
"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.
"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam when she was 11 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.
In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.
As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.
"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.
Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.
In her e-mail to the AP last February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.
Touched by Anne's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought Anne books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.
"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Anne wrote.
In her own book, "Anne Frank Remembered," Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.
A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.
After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.
Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.
Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.
After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.
After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.
She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health and mentally alert.
Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 in the northern town of Hoorn reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows. She recently moved to a nursing facility, before the fall at her home.
Her husband died in 1993. She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

Click to read story from Fox News

NY Cabdriver returns 21,000 dollars to a Woman visiting from Italy

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

PATCHOGUE, New York —  A New York City cab driver is being praised for returning over $21,000 lost by a visitor from Italy.
Felicia Lettieri, who's 72, left her purse in a Manhattan taxi on Christmas Eve. It contained traveling money for her and six relatives.
Police told them not to get their hopes up about finding it.
The cabbie drove about 50 miles to a Long Island address he'd found in the purse. No one was home, so he left his phone number, and later returned with the money.
Lettieri's daughter, Maria Rosaria Falonga, told Newsday from Pompei, Italy that the cabbie also left a note.
He told her: "Don't worry, Felicia. ... I'll keep it safe."
The driver, Mukul Asaduzzaman, could not be reached for comment.
He refused a reward.

Study shows that the youth of Today suffer from Mental Health Problems More than Ever Before

CHICAGO – A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.
The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counselors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.
"It's another piece of the puzzle — that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression," says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study's lead author. "The next question is: What do we do about it?"
Though the study, released Monday, does not provide a definitive correlation, Twenge and mental health professionals speculate that a popular culture increasingly focused on the external — from wealth to looks and status — has contributed to the uptick in mental health issues.
Pulling together the data for the study was no small task. Led by Twenge, researchers at five universities analyzed the responses of 77,576 high school or college students who, from 1938 through 2007, took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI. The results will be published in a future issue of the Clinical Psychology Review.
Overall, an average of five times as many students in 2007 surpassed thresholds in one or more mental health categories, compared with those who did so in 1938. A few individual categories increased at an even greater rate — with six times as many scoring high in two areas:
• "hypomania," a measure of anxiety and unrealistic optimism (from 5 percent of students in 1938 to 31 percent in 2007)
• and depression (from 1 percent to 6 percent).
Twenge said the most current numbers may even be low given all the students taking antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, which help alleviate symptoms the survey asks about.
The study also showed increases in "psychopathic deviation," which is loosely related to psychopathic behavior in a much milder form and is defined as having trouble with authority and feeling as though the rules don't apply to you. The percentage of young people who scored high in that category increased from 5 percent in 1938 to 24 percent in 2007.
Twenge previously documented the influence of pop culture pressures on young people's mental health in her 2006 book "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before." Several studies also have captured the growing interest in being rich, with 77 percent of those questioned for UCLA's 2008 national survey of college freshmen saying it was "essential" or "very important" to be financially well off.
Experts say such high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. Meanwhile, they also note some well-meaning but overprotective parents have left their children with few real-world coping skills, whether that means doing their own budget or confronting professors on their own.
"If you don't have these skills, then it's very normal to become anxious," says Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City who hopes the new study will be a wake-up call to those parents.
Students themselves point to everything from pressure to succeed — self-imposed and otherwise — to a fast-paced world that's only sped up by the technology they love so much.
Sarah Ann Slater, a 21-year-old junior at the University of Miami, says she feels pressure to be financially successful, even when she doesn't want to.
"The unrealistic feelings that are ingrained in us from a young age — that we need to have massive amounts of money to be considered a success — not only lead us to a higher likelihood of feeling inadequate, anxious or depressed, but also make us think that the only value in getting an education is to make a lot of money, which is the wrong way to look at it," says Slater, an international studies major who plans to go to graduate school overseas.

Click to read Full Article At Yahoo

Christians Facing More Persecution in Xinjiang China in 2010

XINJIANG, China, Jan. 10 /Christian Newswire/ -- With the turn of the new year, a wave of persecution has struck Han and Uyghur Christians alike in the ethnically and religiously charged Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
On December 25, 2009, farm leaders and police broke into the home of Wang Qiyue, a 71-year-old widow, disrupting the Christmas gathering and ransacking her home. These "People's Police" burned Ms. Wang's furniture, as she was thrown against a police car by the Korla Chief of Security, Yu Fagan. Six farm leaders next barged into the home of 69-year-old hemiplegic He Cuiying, and confiscated more than 30 Bibles and spiritual books. The leaders then burned the materials in a bonfire outside her home, as a means of public humiliation. Later, five elderly Christians were arrested with no cause and fined 5,000 Yuan each.
Read more about the persecution of the elderly Christians in Korla.
On January 7, 2010, Attorney Li Baiguang sent letters of appeal on behalf of Alimujiang Yimiti to the Xinjiang Provincial Government and Chinese Central Government. In the letters, he stated that, by law, the charge of "unlawfully providing state secrets to overseas organizations" and the sentence of 15-years imprisonment were illegal and should be withdrawn. He further requested an immediate review of the case.
Read more about Li Baiguang's Appeal on behalf of Alimujiang Yimiti.
At 5:00 PM the same day, Nong Wu Shi PSB officials in the Aksu region raided a house church, arresting 14 house church members. The military PSB detained the members for over 12 hours, on charges of participating in "illegal religious activities." The next morning, 11 were released, leaving house church leaders Yang Tianlu, He Sujin, and Sujin's son, He Guangyuan, in detention.
Read more about the raid and arrest of 14 Han Chinese house church Christians.
President of ChinaAid Bob Fu believes the Xinjiang government must acknowledge these horrible acts of persecution, and root out the seeds of corruption sown by local government officials violating Chinese law. ChinaAid urges the international community to continue praying for religious freedom in Xinjiang and throughout China.

Click To Read Full Article At Christian News Wire

Homeschool Freedoms Under Fire in U.S

PURCELLVILLE, Va., Jan. 11 /Christian Newswire/ -- This week the New Hampshire House of Representatives plans to vote on whether to strictly regulate homeschooling. Opposition is mounting against the Democratic leadership who are using a legislative maneuver to override the recommendations of a bi-partisan legislative study committee who recently voted 14-6 that the proposed new homeschool law (House Bill 368) is "Inexpedient to Legislate (ITL)." 

 

Democratic Representative Barbara Shaw, a retired teacher with 45 years experience and author of the majority report recommending that H.B. 368 is Inexpedient to Legislate said, "After studying this issue for several years I've gotten to know homeschoolers, the law, and how the system works and I'm convinced that it is working fine – there are no changes needed. Some people have accused me of doing a 180 on homeschooling - and I would have to admit that's true. But that's because I've seen that homeschooling is working for children in our state and the current law is adequate."

 

Republican Minority Leader Sherman Packard said that his party supports no further changes in the state's homeschooling law. "We've always supported homeschoolers – we aggressively support ITL. Until the end of last week we weren't aware that there was a problem with this legislation since the majority report was ITL."

 

"Trying to sneak through massive changes in the New Hampshire homeschool law by manipulating the system is unacceptable. The Democratic leadership and the Chairman of the Education Committee know that if they allowed an open process the overwhelming majority would vote Inexpedient to Legislate," said HSLDA staff attorney Mike Donnelly.

 

Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a 27-year-old, 85,000 member non-profit organization and the preeminent association advocating the legal right of parents to homeschool their children.           

 

click to read article at Christian News Wire

Church set on fire for using the word "Allah"

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —  A church was set on fire in Malaysia early Friday by unidentified attackers amid a growing conflict in the country over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims, officials said.
Only the first floor office of the Metro Tabernacle Church was destroyed in the blaze that started a little after midnight Thursday, said church spokesman Kevin Ang. The worship areas on the upper two floors were undamaged, and there were no injuries.
The church is located in a three-story building on a shopping street in Desa Melawati, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, the main city of this Muslim-majority country.
The attack on the Protestant church comes days after the Kuala Lumpur High Court struck down a 3-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah" in their literature. The government has appealed against the court verdict, which allowed a Catholic publication to use the common word for God in the Malay language, and the High Court has suspended its decision from being enforced until the appeal is heard.
Muslims argue that "Allah" is exclusive to Islam, and its use by Christians would confuse Muslims and tempt them to convert to Christianity.


he court decision has resulted in a rash of angry comments and threats by Muslims on the Internet. Dozens of Muslim groups are planning a protest against the court decision on Friday after weekly prayers.
Friday's fire was the first time the controversy turned destructive.
District police chief Zakaria Pagan told the AP "we are still investigating" the fire and said he will issue a statement later.
Another church official quoted a witness as saying she saw three or four men on a motorcycle breaking the main glass front of the church and throw something inside, possibly a gasoline bomb. The account could not be independently confirmed.
About 60 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Malay Muslims, while the rest are ethnic Chinese and Indians, who follow Christianity, Hinduism and other religions.
The High Court ruling was on a petition by the Herald, the main publication of Malaysia's Roman Catholic Church. It uses the word Allah in its Malay-language edition, which is read by indigenous tribes in the remote states of Sabah and Sarawak.
The tribespeople are Malay-speaking, so Catholic officials say "Allah" is the only word they know for God.

Click to read Article from Fox News

Atheist Rapist complains about sharing a cell with a man professing to be a Christian

AN atheist rapist has complained that his human rights were breached by having to share a prison cell with a Christian lag.

Barman Steven Relf, 40, was jailed indefinitely after admitting raping two women he targeted when he served them drinks in a pub.

Police branded him a "sexual predator" and said he could have had as many as 40 victims.

In a letter to an inmates' magazine, Relf wrote: "I recently had the displeasure of sharing a cell with a Bible-thumping believer."

A source said Relf was "furious" at having to share at Manchester Prison with the Christian convict and wanted him to be "evicted".

He said: "He moaned about how the guy wouldn't shut up about God. He said he wanted to speak to a lawyer about his rights so he could be moved cells."

The other inmate was later transferred.

Click to read full article at The Sun

Many Christians Don't feel safe in their own Churches due to rise in violence against Christians in the U.S.

"These are not just numbers, they are people killed or hurt and millions of dollars in losses" states church security expert

CINCINNATI, Jan. 4 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Christian Security Network receives phone calls and e-mails from Christians across the country on a weekly basis telling them they are concerned about their safety while at church – the 2009 crime statistics report shows that there is good cause.

 

"It is disheartening to see all these incidents and loss of life in churches in 2009 and even sadder because we know 2010 isn't going to be any different unless the status-quo changes," stated Jeff Hawkins, executive director of the Christian Security Network.

 

The 2009 report published by the Christian Security Network outlines 1,237 crimes against Christian churches including 12 homicides, 38 other violent incidents including, 3 sexual assaults, 3 kidnappings, 98 arsons, and over 700 burglaries resulting in more than $24 million in property loss.

 

Hawkins goes on to state, "People want to be protected, especially at church, and as we have seen from incidents in 2009, criminals don't care that they are targeting a church – they are seen as soft targets."

 

The crime report, the first of its kind, specifically tracked incidents just against Christian organizations, mostly churches, for all of 2009.

 

"These are not just numbers, these are people who have been killed or seriously injured serving their church. The church is supposed to be a place of peace and protection. Many of these incidents just didn't have to happen. With a few precautions, changes in operations, and training of staff and volunteers, they may have been averted. The church has to start taking responsibility for the safety of their staff, volunteers, and congregation and good stewards of the gifts God has provided." Hawkins concluded.

 

Click to read article from Christian News Wire

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JMC Ministries Response

written by: Miranda Caverley

The first thought that came to my mind is what Jesus said "if they persecute me they will persecute you" and it is true.  It has been true since the beginning of Christianity, and even farther back with the Jews over and over again in the old testament of the bible and even today the Jewish people are persecuted just as Christians are.  We are hated of the world.  

But, it doesn't mean that we should just lie down and let them kill us.  We agree with the article that churches do need to take precautions to protect their congregation from those who seek to harm us.  We are in a spiritual war and those who choose ignore that are going to get a BIG wake up call.  When you are in war you put on your armor you protect yourself and all those around you from harm.  We not only fight against the flesh but of the spirit as well.  We not only need to put on the armor of God but also implement tactics that will protect us from physical harm as well.

It speaks of all these things in Revelation and we are living in the last days. We must pray and also work together in the church to protect our rights as citizens of the U.S. for our freedom of religion and our right to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus.  That is what our Forefathers fought for FREEDOM and we must continue this fight to the end.