Imagine having survived a severe earthquake only to discover most of your neighbors had not or cannot be accounted for. For several days, even weeks after you feel grateful for being spared and as many more weeks pass by, you come to realize that the devastation was widespread and that over 50,000 had died and you are one of 3,000,000 survivors / 550,000 families without a place to live. It is approaching November and without a tent you have nothing, sitting on the ground with the Himalayan winter approaching. You are one family in the most difficult relief operation the world has ever faced.- in total you are among three times as many people that were displaced as those affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami last December. ----------------------------You can only sit and wait for the World to help----------- The United Nations estimates that tens of thousands will be required to survive the Himalayan winter without shelter. --------------This is not because we do not have the resources. It is because each of us are not pulling our load. Let the humility sink in as you sit where you are. ------------------------------------------------------Most Christian Churches do not enforce tithing by their members, let alone teach them from their youth to take a day a month and fast. Then after the fast take that money saved and provide it for a special relief offering. The truth is if every Christian tithed (10%) of there gross income and if they refrained in obtaining a burdensome mortgage on their church building. The destitute of the world would be cared for, easily.------------------------------------The member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who tithes are the only members considered to be "in good standing". In the face of all those who would malign us, we quietly do our part.------------If you tithe in your church you know the Lord blesses you for the sacrifice----------I don't have to say "God Bless You" because you know he already has.

I am busy researching a grant for a school district in Colorado. Of course the best way to get the big bucks is to come up with a novel idea. Well, let me tell you. Geocaching is a big idea. When it comes to applying it to school age children and young adults to help is so many academic ways is where I am going with the subject. But this will be helpful to the rookie, cuz that is what I am also. This is where I will be giving you regular updates as I investigate and then perform.

"For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like THE GARDEN of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." Isaiah 51:3---------------I am determined as a result of prayer and vision to do it, beginning today. ------------------Years ago I purchased the production rights to perform a little known Christian allegorical oratorio. It is only today that I have come to know it is finally time, in this remote place in southeastern Colorado. "The Garden" (words and music by Michael McLean and Bryce Neubert) is an allegory of Christ's agony and triumph in the Garden of Gethsemane. It requires 7 skilled soloists and a predominantly female choir and optionally various musicians to supplement the sound track. This will be my hobby for the next few months. An appeal will go out to all Christian Churches in the region....that would primarily be Lamar, Colorado - I suspect. We are so rural out here.---------------I am feeling very excited about it.---------- I will not be satisfied to put it on without an absolutely representative cross section of believers performing this. If you recall the movie "The Passion of Christ" this will be the musical allegorical spiritual equivalent in the Garden instead of the crucificion. Of course we will have many expenses for costuming and stage props. But what fun!!

The Winter of 2003 took our family to Iliamna, Alaska where I served that remote eskimo village as a school principal for the school year. Check out mapquest; just don't ask for directions. The phrase "you can't get there from here" takes on an authentic meaning for Iliamna. There is no road to the coast. It is fly in, fly out only. Which provides a segway to the ping pong ball sized snow birds that perched briefly in flocks on the banister of our front porch. Pure white little puff balls, so fragile looking in the unforgiving Alaskan winter wind. We came to discover that they migrate from our native Colorado every year and apparently some of them take their sweet time beginning that journey south. They were grateful visitors in their flocks of 50 or more. As they fly south they change jackets from pure white to brown. We chuckled as memory took as back to these little fellows in the trees of eastern Colorado wearing their brown jackets. We also came to discover a bird that migrated from Hawaii to us in Alaska! Remarkable, I thought! Over all that water. Nothing could reach us in our remoteness with the ease of these little fellows. All they brought to us was a friendly disposition and a hearty appetite. We supplied both to them.

This morning's news reveals bird flu has jumped from Asia to Europe (Turkey) as a consequence of migrating birds. Remote as we were, the next flock could bring death with it.

Certain ancient libraries have been discovered. They were initially ignored but the preponderance of discoveries has forced their examination: the Dead Sea Scrolls; Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi), the earliest Christian library discovered the same year, under much the same circumstances, but a thousand miles away from the Dead Sea Scrolls; and then the Papyri Bodmer, which includes the Letters of Paul, far older than anything we have ever known about before. Then there are the Manichaean and Mandaean discoveries, and earlier than them, the Chester Beatty Papyri; and also the Odes of Solomon. We can go back to the Oxyrhynchus and the Bryennios Papyrus (the Didache), and finally to the big libraries of the nineteenth century. The cumulative impact of the hundreds and hundreds of caves could no longer be hidden under the carpet as before. In short, these sensational finds have completely changed our picture of the early Christian and Jewish world.
By early Christian, we mean those who practiced prior to the fourth century. It has become obvious now that those at the University of Alexandria made it a practice to discard what they did not understand.
The Nag Hammadi is a great Christian library, in about thirteen codices - nice, beautifully bound books in jars in their original leather bindings that hadn't been touched, from the fourth century, in perfect condition, just as if they had been written yesterday, buried by a little Christian church before the apostasy hit it, before Gnosticism hit it. They represent the earliest level, the earliest teachings of the church, a totally different picture from what anybody had imagined it would be like. And the extent of these things is remarkable.
These are not like other libraries that have been found, because these were buried for the purpose of being found in the later dispensation, the later generation. The people who sealed them up sealed them up to come forth in a later time, "when men would be more worthy to receive them," as they put it. That is remarkable. They have been preserved in their purity. As the Book of Mormon tells us, the only way to preserve a record in its purity is to bury that record. Because just as surely as you copy a document, you will make mistakes; and just as surely as the next person comes along and copies your mistakes, he will try to correct them; and just as surely as he tries to correct them, he will make new mistakes. The next person will come along and try to correct him, and before you know it, the document is a mass of corruption, whether deliberate or not. But no document can ever escape these basic distortions and corruptions, except if buried to come forth in its purity at a later time. And so now we find a library buried and sealed in jars. The Dead Sea Scrolls were first written on nice, newly prepared leather, then rolled up and wrapped carefully, and covered with linen; then the linen was covered with pitch, just as if one was laying a mummy away. Then they were put in specially made cylindrical jars, sealed with lead and pitch on top with caps that fit on tightly. Then they were arranged neatly in a cave and covered with nice, dry sand so there would be no corruption; everything was hermetically sealed. Then the cave was cemented up so you couldn't see a thing; you're not coming back next week to get them. That's not merely a guess, because the documents themselves tell us why they were buried in this way and what the owners had in mind.
This isn't be best moment to discuss the significance with any particulars. However, if you ever wondered what Christ instructed the apostles AFTER his resurrection...40 days of discussions...we know what he taught them. So much for the canon being closed.