Operation Hope Newsletter
Hot off the press!
Greetings OH Family,
Lots of exciting news to share with you! On Wednesday, by God’s grace 1,027 bags were distributed!! The grateful recipients of our labor bore mile-wide smiles, while some had looks of disbelief as we handed out winter bags to them. If you haven’t been on a distribution this (or a previous) year, please DO try as you’ll be blessed beyond measure as you come face to face with our needy brothers and sisters. You’ll never be the same after the experience ~ but don’t just take my word for it ~ come out with us to find out for yourself!
We have had a request to serve the TCN workers at Al Jahra Hospital. A date for that distribution will be forthcoming.
Rumaithiya street cleaners (all 120 of them) received a winter bag on Saturday. Today 250 street cleaners for Salmiya area received their winter bags; and tomorrow, by God’s grace the Salwa cleaners (150) will receive theirs! OH wishes to provide the same for as many neighborhood cleaning crews as possible, SO if you can find out where the buses load and unload for your area we’ll organize a distribution for them.
Thank you to the Catholic Church in Kuwait City for a donation of KD 50 from their summer library proceeds ~ also, to the BLS for their donation of toiletries, which we’ll give to the Philippine Embassy very soon.
Your patronage to the following activities will add support to OH’s fundraising efforts:
· November 10th: Harvest Festival at N.E.C.K
· November 11th: Beauty Bazaar in Salwa
· November 16th: Fall Bazaar in Mubarak Al Kabeer
· November 17th: KTAA Bazaar @ the Dar Al Cid
· December 4th: BLS Bazaar @ Al Hashemi (SAS Hotel)
· December 8th: AWL Charity Bazaar
For more details on exact location and timings, please contact Becky & Chelly on ophopevolunteer@yahoo.com
OH’s 2nd packing of 1,200 winter bags commenced last Friday. Called Student Day we were assisted by scout troops, the ASK National Honor Society, and many other students of varying ages and backgrounds. What an awesome sight to see our children knee-deep in charity work. My hope is that their experience will be remembered (and carried out) for a lifetime! Thank you to everyone who participated!
Thanks also to the New English School teachers who spent their ½ day off on Wednesday to help load vehicles for our deliveries! While they could have spent the day doing something else they chose to spend their time helping us to help others! What a blessing!!
OH needs more volunteers to pack this Friday, November 9th at 3:30 PM. A small set-up team is also needed that day to arrive at 2:30 PM. 1,200 bags must be packed that day so we’ll need a lot of hands on deck! Please RSVP your commitment to Kathleen on ophopevolunteer@yahoo.com
Thanks to Barbara R. for hosting a very fun and successful Bunco fundraising event for us today! We raised KD 125 having fun and so can you! If you are interested in helping to raise much needed funds to cover the cost of our winter bags, please contact Chelly and/or Becky on ohq8fundraiser@yahoo.com. Simply gather your circle of friends for a quiz night, talent show, Bunco, dinner party, or whatever you wish! It gives your friends something fun to do, but moreover it helps us to help others!
Someone asked me a few days ago if I ever get discouraged by the enormity of our job in helping the poor living in Kuwait. The truth is ~ yes. When I am depending upon my own abilities to get the work done I feel very discouraged.
A wise young Australian man who was born without limbs said this, “The awesome thing about the power of God, is that if we want to do something for Him, instead of focusing on our capabilities, we should concentrate on our availability. Once we make ourselves available for God’s work, guess whose capabilities we rely on? GOD”
So when discouragement comes over me I return (with humility) under the authority and leadership of the Almighty in this mission of mercy that I might become available so that His capabilities may be glorified.
Qatteri Cat Gets Restless
Most of the time I am a morning person, but not this morning. The Qatteri Cat got restless around 3 a.m. He could come in, snuggle up, then run away and YOWL. He would jump at the door. He just couldn’t settle down.
I was sleeping the sleep of the just. I would half-hear him crying and pat the bed, which is our signal for “come snuggle up” and he would – for a few minutes, and then he would get restless again. I could not rouse myself to get up. Maybe a part of me knew there was a problem, but I couldn’t get past those sleep-waves.
Finally, around five thirty, I got up, did my morning things, fixed a cup of coffee and QC is nibbling at my ankles. Uh-oh, I know what that means.
I head for the Qatteri Cat’s small room and sure enough, I forgot to check it last night before going to bed. It is bone dry, there isn’t a single nibble left in the bowl. Qatteri Cat is hungry, and it IS hard to settle down when you are hungry. I filled his bowl, he ate ravenously, and now QC is snoozing blissfully, but I am wide awake.
Where is Magical Droplets?
I had a blogging buddy, Magical Droplets, who seems to have dropped off the blogosphere. About a month ago, I checked her blog and it seemed to have gone wierd, it had some of her old content, but all these ads for things that weren’t anything like MD used to write. I checked again recently, and it has just gotten worse.
If any of you know this blogger, will you give her my regards and tell her I miss her?
Bad News Fortune Cookies
In our family, Chinese food is often a big family event. At the end of a magnificent meal, we each have to choose a cookie and read it out loud. One time, my son got such a good fortune that he refused to take another fortune cookie for about a year, saying that he wants the fortune he was saving to continue!
From The New York Times
Don’t Open this Cookie!
The messages in fortune cookies are typically vague, banal and optimistic. But some cookies are now serving up some surprisingly downbeat advice.
“Today is a disastrous day. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” reads one fortune showing up around the country.
“It’s over your head now. Time to get some professional help,” advises another.
As the messages, contained in cookies made by Wonton Food in Queens, have spread across the country, some diners have registered their reactions online. As a result, the company has a marketing challenge on its hands.
One blogger, who got the “professional help” fortune, wrote: “I shot the audacious baked item a dirty look and proceeded to eat it. And I hope it hurt.”
You can read the rest of the article at New York Times
NY Cover Giggle
I can’t help it, this just gave me such a giggle.
From The New Yorker
The cartoon refers both to an American senator, Larry Craig, caught playing footsie with the cop in the next stall in the Minneapolis airport and Ahmadinajad playing footsie with nuclear power.
YouTubers had a field day with Craig’s guilty plea, and then reversal. Here is one:
Why Skidboot?
On November 18 of last year, I published a short item, very short, four lines, on Skidboot. At the time, I was so new to blogging, I didn’t even know how to embed a YouTube video in the blog, so I just referred readers to the YouTube site.
For the last two weeks, it has been my top stat getter. I have Googled, I have tried everything I can think of to figure out why Skidboot? Why now, almost a year later?
If anyone coming here to read the Skidboot article will take a minute to tell me why, I would sure appreciate it. It’s not going to kill me not to know, but it is a mystery to me!
Here is the original video:
No E-mail Day
Productivity at the office is increasingly becoming an issue. The industry giant Intel has introduced “no e-mail days” to encourage Intel engineers to get off their behinds, move out of their cubicles and talk to one another, rather than sending an e-mail to a co-worker just a few steps away. You can read the entire story at BBC News: Technology.
With inboxes bulging with messages and many workers dreading the daily deluge of e-mail, some companies are taking drastic action.
Intel has become the latest in an increasingly long line of companies to launch a so-called ‘no e-mail day’.
On Fridays, 150 of its engineers revert to more old-fashioned means of communication.
In actual fact e-mail isn’t strictly forbidden but engineers are encouraged to talk to each other face to face or pick up the phone rather than rely on e-mail.
In Intel’s case the push to look again at the culture of e-mail followed a comment from chief executive Paul Otellini criticising engineers “who sit two cubicles apart sending an e-mail rather than get up and talk”
Paranoia: Locked Out
Yesterday was bizarre. The blog has become a part of my routine – I get up, grab a cup of coffee, pick up my e-mails, take care of any business that needs be taken care of, read my daily Lectionary readings (see blogroll) and then – I get to visit with YOU!
Imagine how I felt when I could see my blog, but couldn’t log on to it. I don’t know what the problem was.
I tried it on my computer. It kept telling me my password was wrong. Since I have worn the letters off many of the keys on my keyboard, it COULD be wrong, but you know your fingers have this kind of mechanical memory, you know how you can type and your fingers know where the letters are and you don’t even think about it, just think about what you want to say?
So I asked for a new password, thinking oh well, I could change it back to something I might be able to remember. The new password didn’t work. Three times I tried with new passwords, and nothing worked.
I went back and used Adventure Man’s computer, and still couldn’t access.
I have a life, so I went on with my life, and later in the day tried again, with the same results.
Paranoia kind of kicked in. I wondered if I was being blocked? If WordPress was being blocked?
This morning, same story, except this time I prayed and tried all the passwords, promising God if he would just help me get on, just once, I would post my problems (in case it happens again) and change my password, (in case someone has messed with me) and do all the admin work I need to get done.
I haven’t backed up the blog for a long time. I don’t really have time to do it today. Aaaarrrrgh.
But my first, paranoid though was wondering if I had annoyed someone and if I was being blocked.
Then common sense kicked in, thank God, and I figure it was just some kind of technical anomaly. . . it’s like medicine, and political “science”, and all this computer wizardry – there are a lot of black holes, information we just don’t have yet, and I am guessing that this was just one of those anomalies.
I thank you all for bearing with me, and continuing to comment and check on me!
And no, I am not blogging from Syria. The visa never came through. 😦
He’s Take-Away
This is for someone very special – hope it gives you a good laugh today.
YOU are dinner by candlelight; he’s take-away. 😉 OK, OK, he can redeem himself, but it has to be substance, not drama.
Ozymandias: Nothing beside remains
This is one of my favorite poems. I learned it as a child, and didn’t understand it, but liked the exotic loneliness it evoked. I could hear the wind whistling across the empty sands, feel the grains on my cheek – so very different from my home in Alaska, and yet – not so different. In Alaska, the wind blew cold, and the grit against my cheek was snow! The memory of these ironic words lives in my heart.
The words come back to me, now and again as we stand amidst remains of complex, abundant civilizations that are now lifeless stone and rubble.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
If you read through the entire poem, you are challenged to tell us about a poem that YOU still remember, and why. 😉
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Shampoo Ginger tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on Shampoo Ginger intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
