+ <L A S T  W E E K><

+ The three of us asked that you cover Shirin's sister in fervent intercession for salvation. She had been with us since late Sunday night/early Sunday morning (22-Oct) and would be with us until Thursday (26-Oct). You asked God to draw her to Himself and continue to speak to her heart last week...I'm sad to say that she chose not to follow Jesus :-(

No one is beyond His reach, so please continue praying. I'm sure you also have family members outside of a relationship with Jesus.

<T H I S  W E E K><

<>< Scott turns 42 tomorrow and is asking for all that focused intercession from the yellow calendar, Mosaic, and other resources to be applied to the 'accounts' of Shirin's sister and mom. May they be receive eternal life.

<>< Please join Shirin and a co-worker in prayer as they go back to the Women's Center for a visit and to discuss ways to help in the center. They are continuing to wait on God to show them the "women of peace" (Lk 10) at the Center.

<>< Shirin's friend will be having her cancer surgery on November 2. Please pray that all will go well and that the surgeon does not find that the cancer has spread.

<>< Jasmine has come down ill and was quick to ask for you to pray for her health to return to "good."

<* Pray for the Lohar of India.><

Where do you stand among the world's wealthy?

The lost members of the church.

Today’s children are tomorrow’s missionaries and missions leaders in Southern Baptist churches, so Woman’s Missionary Union is taking children’s missions education to the next level, describing their new materials as “relevant, redesigned and ready-to-use.”

>WMU children’s curriculum to make missions education easier.

As U.S. tops 300 million, what about the church?

A Louisiana resident was gracious enough to share the following, and I am ever so grateful! The author had a table of figures that, unfortunately, would not translate in Plain Text. If you'd like the full table, let me know and I'll send the "whole story" (author's permission withstanding).

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I feel the need to challenge you on one part of the Wednesday Weekly. You included the following:

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It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division -

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress

for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans.

Interesting number, what does it mean?

a. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every

man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

b. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home

gets $1 ,329,787.

c. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D.C ... HELLO! Are all your calculators broken?

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This is a situation where you should be careful of things that are sent to you that you cannot verify, as much of the premise is simply untrue. Landrieu is not asking the Congress for $250 Billion. The Senate bill that she wrote is worth about $20 billion. The competing bill, authored by Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-LA) is the one worth about $250 billion. I am sure that Landrieu would not be too upset if Jindal's bill came out of conference, but she does not think it will pass, and so her bill is a "something is better than nothing" measure.

More importantly, it is not to rebuild New Orleans, but is specifically designated to provide hurricane protection for all of South Louisiana. This includes Category 5 levee protection, which the federal government has been promising and not delivering for 40 years, but also marsh restoration where oil and gas exploration has destroyed the natural protection that the region once enjoyed. This includes protecting the infrastructure that supplies about one third of the energy used in the US. The importation, drilling, refining, and transmission of energy conducted in South Louisiana supplies most of the nation's midsection with their energy needs.

The third point is that this spending is not unprecedented. Louisiana is one of the few states that does not already receive the type of oil lease revenue sharing that the bill would require. Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Alaska, and most of the other states (those that allow drilling) already receive the same percentage of lease revenue that Louisiana is requesting. Unlike those other states, we are not asking to have the money as an unrestricted revenue stream, but have a state constitutional requirement that all monies so received be used specifically for hurricane protection and coastal restoration. We are not even asking that the revenue sharing be applied to existing leases, unlike the other states. We are only asking for our fair share of new revenue, as drilling continues to increase over the next twenty or so years.

If we do the math with the actual population of South Louisiana, as opposed to the half of "New Orleans" that is technically inside the city limits, the numbers come out far differently. The New Orleans metro area was about 1.5 million before the storm. Another 1.5 million live elsewhere in South Louisiana. The real numbers, therefore, would look more like:

Our request is not unreasonable. It has been pushed to the side time and again for over 30 years. If this had been implemented 20 years ago, the devastation of Katrina would have been far less. Louisiana is not asking for a direct distribution of cash from this bill to citizens. All of the money would go to stopping or at least lessening the impact of future storms on both South Louisiana and the national economy. When you know the facts, we have set the bill up to be a no brainer.

Scott, I realize this is a long reply to something that you merely quoted. However, given the facts, I could not let it go unanswered. I feel that my mission field is too important, and this is too important an issue to my mission field.

By the way, have I mentioned recently that I am praying for you on a regular basis. I struggle with how often to e-mail a reminder of that fact. I hope that you know that we continue to pray for you.

(ST>And I do!)