Can You Help Us?
WE NEED YOUR HELP! Perhaps you've read this before and are wondering, "Why am I seeing this again?" But millions of other Christians haven't seen it! So please use the "share" buttons above to share it with your social media friends. Thanks!!
Dear friend,
Please take a minute to read this important message:
In my previous message, I told how at age 15, while taking care of lawns at an apartment complex, God gave me a vision: I saw a map of the Soviet Union in the sky and a voice said: "Remember this apartment complex plan - you'll build it when you're an old man." After serving behind the Iron Curtain and in Russia for 20 years, leading a small mission support agency for 20 years, and teaching online in Russian seminaries for 10 years, I'm now in my upper-70s, so I guess I'm old enough to start this new project!
I wrote earlier about our *free* 1-year, 6-course training program "Social Ministry of the Church" in English and Russian to train people how to care for the sick and disabled. The purpose of these courses is to prepare people for "Building the ARC" - an Agape Restoration Community - a Christian housing co-op with a built-in community room/chapel. Most of the units will be wheelchair-accessible because of the aging of the "Baby Boomer" generation: 76 million people born between 1946 and 1965 have reached or are reaching retirement age (10,000/day = 3,650,000/year!), at which time 45% of these people are already disabled.
And as they continue aging, 70% of them will become disabled and require accessible housing or home healthcare before they pass away. This is a huge social concern: 70% of 3,650,000 people = 2,550,000 disabled people per year for the next 20 years = over 50 million people! About 2/3 of all retirees depend on Social Security for over half of their income, and about 1/3 of retirees depend on it for 90% to 100% of their income. But can they continue depending on it? Medicare will be insolvent by 2026 and Social Security will reach insolvency by 2034, the trustees of these funds report, so they will have to cut 'way back: they won't be able to care for all these people at current levels. We need to "Think Forward" ... starting now!
Our basic problem, however, is that like most people, we don't want to think about such things until it's too late. Psychologists call this "the normalcy bias" - our brains work in terms of past experience, so we assume that everything will simply keep on going on "just like normal" as it has in the past. As King David wrote - "Their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They name their lands after themselves. But man, despite his riches, doesn't endure. He is like the animals that perish" (Psalm 49:11-12). In everyday layman's language it's called "whistling past the graveyard." We don't want to think about unpleasant things such as growing old, disability, and death... so when it happens, we're unprepared and too feeble to respond adequately, thus we become a burden on the government. But some states are already passing laws allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide to conserve public finances. So it's imperative that we as Christians be proactive and retake our social ministry responsibilities!
Christ commanded His disciples to "Bring in the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, go into the highways and the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that My house may be full" (Luke 14:21-23). This defines our ultimate target audience and our goal, but how can we "compel them to come in" unless they can come in? Why aren't the churches full? In many cases the "maimed, the lame and blind" can hardly get out of their homes, and getting transported to church is difficult or flat-out impossible.
Also, many church buildings aren't very wheelchair-accessible. Solution: "Build the ARC": this is an 8-to-10-living-unit building that forms an accessible, affordable Christian housing co-op including a community room/chapel, with most living units being wheelchair-accessible by including a ramp from the entrance, plus there are parking spaces just outside wide enough for wheelchair use right next to the building. And our "Social Ministry of the Church" courses will train the healthier residents as "home healthcare workers" to care for those who need it.
Most homes, condo and townhouse communities in our greater Pittsburgh area, on the northern edge of the Allegheny Mountains, have at least 1/2 to 1 flight of stairs, often 2 or 3 flights, creating a nearly-insurmountable problem for people with disabilities. Our hearts go out to the 6% of children who are disabled! But 16% of working-age adults and 45% of seniors have disabilities too. 16% + 45% = 61% of disabled people are adults: only 1/10th as many (6%) are children, so shouldn't we pay a bit more attention to those ten-times-as-many disabled adults?
Why not an elevator or a stair lift? In an emergency such as a fire or when the electricity goes out or the elevator breaks, they could be trapped if depending on an elevator or a stair lift. Disabled people can't use the stairs and it's awfully hard to carry them in a wheelchair down the stairs - we've learned that the hard way! With most older couples it's the man who ages first and becomes disabled: he very likely weighs more than his wife who often injures her back or knees trying to lift or carry him. Also, we've met many older people - able-bodied and disabled - who have been trapped in an elevator so now refuse to ride them. Armed with such experiences, we aim to change the built environment for these people!
We've been functioning since 1998 as Agape Restoration Society, a donor-advised fund of WaterStone.org, a foundation through which people can channel their benevolent donations but only to other non-profits; also, they charge us a processing fee for each donation. So in 2017, we incorporated as Agape Restoration Society Inc., an IRS-recognized non-profit corporation, so that we can disburse funds to for-profit architects and builders. We are listed with Charity Navigator and GuideStar. Here are our sketches for the proposed building. Enroll in our free courses to see how YOU can do diakonia-ministry!
Can you help us? What we really need is for 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 people to Help Us Raise a Crowd of Followers, or to Chip In at one of these levels by going to our DONATE page and signing up for:
$100/month for 10 months: that's $1,000 - a huge help, or
$50/month for 10 months: that's $500 - a great gift, or
$25/month for 10 months: that's $250 - a big boost, or
$10/month for 10 months: that's $100 - practically painless!
Will you be praying for and pulling for us in this project? Thanks for your time and attention, if you've read this far!
Yours sincerely,
"Dr. Bob"
Robert D. Hosken, M.Min., D.Min.
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NEXT, THE NEWS:
BECAUSE HIS MOM REFUSED ABORTION, THIS LOS ANGELES RAMS PLAYER WENT TO THE SUPER BOWL
from: LiveAction News
(11 Feb.) A player in this year’s Super Bowl LVI got a chance at every football player's dream – and it's all because his mother chose life despite intense pressure to have an abortion more than two decades ago.
Bradley Mattes of the Life Issues Institute wrote about the previously unknown story of Marquise Copeland, a defensive lineman for the Los Angeles Rams. According to Mattes, Marquise's mother Tenisha Copeland faced immense pressure to have an abortion while pregnant with him – but thanks to the help and support of a pro-life ministry, she was empowered to give birth to her son and raise him.
"The pressure she endured from family and friends to abort was so intense, it put her in a state of clinical depression, requiring hospitalization," Mattes wrote. "When Tenisha came to Open Door, she did so directly from the hospital."
Open Door is a maternity home in Ohio, founded by Greg and Annie Miller. The Millers created it as a "residential ministry," with Annie specifically viewing each mother who stayed with them as a spiritual daughter, and the children born to them as her grandchildren. The ministry continued to support the mothers and babies after birth.
"[Copeland] flourished in the positive and nurturing environment of Open Door," Mattes said. "She learned to trust Jesus and drew close to Him, as well as the staff. In 1997 Annie was there for the delivery of Tenisha's son, Marquise, and even given the honor of cutting the umbilical cord." Years later, Marquise graduated high school with a full scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. There, he excelled at both football and academics.
"He was the first true freshman to start on the varsity squad in 15 years. Of all the schools he could have selected, Marquise wanted to play for a university close enough to his mother so she could drive to games," Mattes said. "This young man was also a very good student, earning a bachelor's degree in accounting in less than four years." [read more...]
COMMENTARY:How many millions of top athletes, scholars, doctors, nurses, and teachers who could serve the next generations have been lost to us due to the genocide called abortion? In the U.S. alone, the number is over 60,000,000 – that's sixty million – one-fifth of our current population has gone missing. This is equal to Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and New York City being destroyed.
NEW IMPLANT FROM SWITZERLAND OFFERS PROMISE FOR THE PARALYZED
from: BioEdge.org
(12 Feb) On a cold, snowy day last December, Michel Roccati – an Italian man who became paralyzed after a motorcycle accident four years earlier – took a walk in central Lausanne. His steps were halting and awkward and he was using a walker – but he was walking again.
Together with two other paraplegic patients, Roccati was demonstrating the success of a new system of nerve stimulation after paralysis developed by Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
The details were published in the journal Nature Medicine. The device worked well enough that all three men were able to stand up and take a few steps almost immediately after they had recovered from their surgery.
While the progress achievable in a single day was astonishing, the gains after several months were even more impressive. The three patients followed a training regimen based on the stimulation programs and were able to regain muscle mass, move around more independently, and take part in social activities like having a drink standing at a bar. Because the technology is miniaturized, the patients can perform their training exercises outdoors and not only inside a lab.
"The first few steps were incredible – a dream come true!" Rocatti says. "I've been through some pretty intense training in the past few months, and I've set myself a series of goals. For instance, I can now go up and down stairs, and I hope to be able to walk one kilometer by this spring." [read more...]
COMMENTARY: All truth is God's truth. All good gifts come from above, from the Father of lights. Scientific knowledge, while it is not absolute, is a gift from our all-loving and all-merciful God Who wants all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Thank Him for this scientific breakthrough!
DONBAS: LUHANSK: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SURVEY, FEBRUARY 2022
from: Forum 18 News Service
(23 Feb.) Freedom of religion and belief is severely restricted in the rebel Luhansk People's Republic occupying currently (as of 23 February 2022) about a third of Ukraine's Luhansk Region. Forum 18's survey analysis documents violations including: rendering illegal all Protestant and non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox communities; a climate of fear about discussing human rights violations; repeated denials of permission to a Roman Catholic priest to live in the region; and increasing numbers of banned allegedly "extremist" books, including an edition of the Gospel of John published in 1820.
All human rights including the freedom of religion and belief are severely restricted in the rebel self-declared Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), which currently (February 2022) controls about a third of Ukraine's Luhansk Region. Among the rebels' violations documented by Forum 18 are:
- a restrictive 2018 LPR Religion Law which imposed re-registration of religious communities which were already registered under Ukrainian law, as well as making illegal any religious community which did not gain rebel permission to exist. This resulted in all Protestant and non-Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox communities being denied rebel permission to exist;
- punishments for meeting for worship without rebel permission;
- the banning by the State Security Ministry (SSM) secret police of all Ukrainian Baptist Union communities, despite this being illegal under LPR law as no court order was apparently made;
- repeated raids on places of worship and unregistered religious communities being denied access to any buildings they own;
- social welfare activities carried out by unregistered religious communities being stopped;
- surveillance of local religious communities, and the encouragement by LPR rebels of a climate of fear about discussing human rights violations;
- cutting off gas, water, and electricity supplies to all places of worship owned by unregistered communities...[read more...]
COMMENTARY: How things have changed in just a few days! Presently, 150,000 Russian troops along with tanks, airplanes, missiles, and internet hackers are invading Ukraine, destroying military facilities, and disrupting the flow of information. But Ukrainian regular armed forces, reservists, and civilian volunteer fighters who number in the millions are fighting back. Pray for peace with justice!
A PANDEMIC SHORTAGE OF HOME HEALTH WORKERS HAS LEFT FAMILIES STRUGGLING TO FIND CARE
from: Disability Scoop
[photo: Jessica Berger feeds dinner to her daughter, Zoe Potack, who has autism, at their home in Downingtown, Pa. Families are finding it difficult to find home care for older relatives and those with disabilities because such workers are in short supply due to the pandemic. (Tom Gralish/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)]
(9 Feb.) "I'm having to give her 110% of myself," said Jessica Berger, whose daughter Zoe Potack, 11, has severe autism, "but I have a husband and I have my (other) daughter. It doesn't feel good to not be able to give my time and attention to all those other things and people that matter."
An illness struck Lisa Parladé's father in September swiftly and without warning. A serious intestinal condition, it required surgery and a long, painful recovery. In its wake, he has experienced cognitive decline. Santiago Parladé, 77, who used to cook his own meals and drive his own car could no longer care for himself. He suddenly relied on his daughter for everything, even bathing.
"This is a person who's raised me and taken care of me and you want to do the same thing for them in their time of need," said the 34-year-old student adviser at the University of Pennsylvania, "but I don't have the training, I don't have the expertise, I don't have the time." Finding a home health aide became another long ordeal.
The pandemic has made home health staffing nationwide even scarcer than it already was. The Parladés are among an untold number of Americans who had no option but to become caregivers, potentially damaging careers and straining relationships with the people they love the most.
Even before the pandemic, turnover rates in home health ranged from 40% to 60%. In Pennsylvania, which as of 2020 had the fourth most home health and personal aides in the country, median pay is a little less than $13 an hour. Then COVID-19 compelled people on lockdown to cancel their home health aides, some fearing that would bring the virus into their homes. Hospitals canceled non-urgent surgeries, reducing the number of people who typically would need home care.
A survey in January of 122 members of the Pennsylvania Home Care Association found that their non-medical care worker staffs have declined by a quarter since the beginning of 2020 and skilled medical care workers by 20%. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: There aren't enough home health workers. Christians need to be trained, the saints need to be equipped to do the work of ministry (diakonia – service) to build up the Body of Christ, the Church (Ephesians 4:13). This is our calling and our task: to minister to "the poor, the lame, the maimed, and the blind." This is why we teach our "Social Ministry of th Church" courses.
APPEAL OF HIS BEATITUDE SVIATOSLAV TO THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE IN UKRAINE AND ABROAD, AND TO ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(23 Feb.) The recognition by the president of the Russian Federation of the "independence and sovereignty" of the self-proclaimed LNR and DNR creates serious challenges and threats for the entire international community and for international law, on the basis of which today people and their nations exist and cooperate. Irreparable damage has been done to the very logic of international relations, which are called to safeguard peace and the just order of societies, the supremacy of law, the accountability of state powers, the defense of the human being, human life and natural rights. Today all of humanity has been placed in danger – that the powerful have a right to impose themselves on whomever they wish, with no regard for the rule of law.
In its decision the government of the Russian Federation unilaterally withdrew from a lengthy peace process, tasked with ensuring the restoration of dignified conditions for life on the territories controlled by Russia in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, for those impacted by Russian military aggression. The war, initiated against our people in 2014, has inflicted deep wounds on many of our fellow citizens: thousands killed, wounded, left in solitude. Yesterday’s step taken by the president of the Russian Federation destroyed foundational principles for a long-term process of restoring peace in Ukraine, created the path for a new wave of military aggression against our state, opened the doors for a full scale military operation against the Ukrainian people.
We consider the defense of our native land, our historical memory and our hope, our God-given right to exist to be the personal responsibility and sacred duty of the citizens of Ukraine. The defense of our Fatherland is our natural right and civic duty. We are strong when we are together. Now has come the time to unite our efforts in order to defend the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Ukrainian state. The duty and responsibility of all of humanity – to actively work to avert war and protect a just peace.
We are convinced that the world cannot develop and find answers for the challenges of today by resorting to might and violence, by showing disdain for shared human values and the truth of the Gospel. I call upon all people of good will to not ignore the suffering of the Ukrainian people, brought on by Russian military aggression. We are a people who love peace. And precisely for that reason we are ready to defend it and fight for it.
Today we call out in prayer to the Almighty Creator, with a special appeal for wisdom for those entrusted with making important decisions for society, in whose hands lies the fate of humanity. We ask the Heavenly Father for assistance in restoring a just peace on Ukrainian land.
We pray especially for those who defend Ukraine, who in these days are for us an example of loving sacrifice and dedicated service to their people. May the merciful Lord protect them from every danger and crown their efforts with the victory of truth and good. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: The ongoing invasion of Ukraine sickens me to the point of almost disabling me from thinking or doing anything: what can we do about this horrible situation? The first thing we can and must do is to pray, then to give aid to the wounded and displaced. We, who live in peace and prosperity and have so much, must do what we're able to do: "I can do something. I can't do everything, but that is not an excuse for doing nothing."
50% OF U.S. HOUSEHOLDS MAY PAY SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TAX THIS YEAR
from: Disabled World
(22 Feb.) Nearly 50% of U.S. households receiving Social Security benefits may pay taxes this year on a portion of their benefits retired making disabled taxpayers uncertain about their tax liability this year. In 2020, the Congressional Research Service estimated that the average amount of federal income taxes owed on Social Security benefits would be about 6.6 percent of Social Security benefits. While the tax varies by income, households affected were expected to pay, on average, an estimated $3,211.
Almost half of all households that receive Social Security benefits might pay taxes this year on a portion of their benefits, according to a national survey by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL). "Making matters worse, the survey indicates that retired and disabled taxpayers are more uncertain than ever about their tax liability this year," says Mary Johnson, a Social Security analyst for The Senior Citizens League.
About half of survey participants (51 percent) said they did not expect to pay taxes on their benefits. "That's pretty much in line with what we expected," Johnson notes. The other half, however, were much more conflicted than usual about whether their benefits would be taxable or not. [read more...]
COMMENTARY: This may seem like a rather mundane, worldly topic for a Christian e-newsletter: an increase in taxes taking a bigger bite out of elderly people's income. But for the one-third of Social Security recipients for whom it is at least 90% of their income, it's a matter of survival: do we buy groceries this month, or do we pay for our medicines and eat dog food? For another one-third, Social Security is at least 50% of their income. Only for the highest one-third is it simply "a little something extra to enjoy life" – those who can afford thousands of dollars per month to live in a nice retirement community in Arizona or Florida and play golf every day. For the lowest two-thirds of retired people, we ought to provide decent, accessible, low-cost housing communities, such as our ARC (Agape Restoration Communities) project.
NOW, OUR VIEWS:
Where Do Our Highest Loyalties Lie?
Our fleshly human nature reacts against the turmoil of war and the injustice of human suffering that results from it. We are strongly tempted to react viscerally, to take one side or the other of this current mili(dola)tary and ideological conflict – that's just human nature. But how should we respond rather than react? How to be proactive instead of reactive?
This requires forethought and spiritual preparation: our minds and our hearts must be filled with the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). The Living Word of God should "pierce even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12), enabling us to see our own motives. We must let the Holy Spirit transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). All this describes the way we Christians who are all "called to be saints" (Romans 1:7 and 1 Corinthians 1:2) ought to respond.
We need to spend much time in prayer, confessing our own sins and our human nature distorted by sin: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Only then will we be able to respond in love and think fairly, not having our minds and hearts distorted by our old, fleshly, and sin-stained human nature.
(Get this as a separate page at ARC-News-blog.blogspot.com).
After 20+ years of coding my websites and e-newsletters by hand in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, I've decided it's time to start learning and using WordPress. It is used by 65.3% of all the websites whose CMS (Content Management System) were recently surveyed. This is 43.3% of all websites in the world. So it's something that I should learn. Look for changes in the near future!
