A Parable of the Fishermen

Now it came to pass that a group existed who called themselves fishermen. And lo, there were many fish in the waters all around. In fact, the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes filled with fish. And the fish were hungry.

Year after year these who called themselves fishermen met in meetings and talked about their call to fish, the abundance of fish, and how they might go about fishing. Continually they searched for new and better definitions of fishing. They sponsored costly nationwide and worldwide congresses to discuss fishing and promote fishing and hear about all the ways of fishing.

These fishermen built large, beautiful buildings called "Fishing Headquarters." The plea was that everyone should be a fisherman and every fisherman should fish. One thing they didn't do, however; they didn't fish.

They organized a board to send out fishermen to other places where there were many fish. The board was formed by those who had the great vision and courage to speak about fishing, to define fishing, and to promote the idea of fishing in faraway streams and lakes where many other fish of different colors lived. Also the board hired staffs and appointed committees and held many meetings to define fishing, to defend fishing, and to decide what new streams should be thought about. But the staff and committee members did not fish.

Expensive training centers were built to teach fishermen how to fish. Those who taught had doctorates in fishology, but the teachers did not fish. They only taught fishing. Year after year, graduates were sent to do full-time fishing, some to distant waters filled with fish.

Further, the fishermen built large printing houses to publish fishing guides. A speaker's bureau was also provided to schedule special speakers on the subject of fishing.

Many who felt the call to be fishermen responded, and were sent to fish. But, like the fishermen back home they never fished.

Some also said they wanted to be part of the fishing party, but they felt called to furnish fishing equipment. Others felt their job was to relate to the fish in a good way so the fish would know the difference between good and bad fishermen.

After one stirring meeting on "The Necessity for Fishing," a young fellow left the meeting and went fishing. The next day he reported he had caught two outstanding fish. He was honored for his excellent catch and scheduled to visit all the big meetings possible to tell how he did it.

So he quit his fishing in order to have time to tell about the experience to the other fishermen. He was also placed on the Fishermen's General Board as a person having considerable experience.

Now it's true that many of the fishermen sacrificed and put up with all kinds of difficulties. Some lived near the water and bore the smell of dead fish every day.

They received the ridicule of some who made fun of their fishermen's clubs and the fact that they claimed to be fishermen yet never fished.

They wondered about those who felt it was of little use to attend the weekly meetings to talk about fishing. After all, were they not following the Master who said, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men?"

Imagine how hurt some were when one day a person suggested that those who didn't catch fish were really not fishermen, no matter how much they claimed to be. Yet it did sound correct. Is a person a fisherman if year after year he never catches a fish?

How to Catch Burglars?

It was late and Charlie was about to climb into bed when his wife informed him that there was a light on in their garden shed. Charlie started to go outside to turn off the light but noticed some people in the shed who were busy stealing his things.

He ran back inside right away and called the cops, who asked him "Are there any intruders in your house?" to which Charlie replied no and explained his circumstances. The cops told Charlie that all patrol cars were otherwise occupied, and that he should just lock his door and a uniformed cop would be at his house when one was free.

Charlie answered, "Alright," hung up, waited 30 seconds, and then called the cops again.

"Hello, I just called a short while ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. I want to let you know that they're not a problem anymore because I've just shot every one of them."

Charlie then hung up the phone. In five short minutes, three patrol cars, a SWAT team, and an ambulance arrived, and Of course, the cops caught the burglars in the act.

One of the cops snapped at Charlie: "I thought you said that you shot every one of them!"

"I thought you said there were no patrol cars free!" Charlie answered.

Everlasting Friendship

How would you describe friendship? This video will show you how long should a friendship last. Watch the video after the jump.

Red Marbles

I was at the corner grocery store buying some early potatoes.

I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily apprizing a basket of freshly picked green peas.

I paid for my potatoes, but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas.

I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes. Pondering the peas, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller (the store owner) and the ragged boy next to me.

'Hello Barry, how are you today?'

'H'lo, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus' admirin' them peas. They sure look good.'

'They are good, Barry. How's your Ma?'
'Fine. Gittin' stronger alla' time.'

'Good. Anything I can help you with?'

'No, Sir. Jus' admirin' them peas.'

'Would you like take some home?' asked Mr. Miller.

'No, Sir Got nuthin' to pay for 'em with.'

'Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?'

'All I got's my prize marble here.'

'Is that right? Let me see it' said Miller.

'Here 'tis. She's a dandy.'
'I can see that. Hmmmmm, only thing is, this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?' the store owner asked.

'Not zackley but almost.'
'Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble', Mr. Miller told the boy.

'Sure will. Thanks Mr. Miller.'

Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me.

With a smile said, 'There are two other boys like him in our community, all three are in very poor circumstances.
Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes, or whatever. When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn't like
red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, when they come on their next trip to the store.'
I left the store smiling to myself, impressed with this man.

A short time later I moved to Colorado ,but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys, and their bartering for marbles.

Several years went by, each more rapid than the previous one.

Just recently I had occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died.

They were having his visitation that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go,
I agreed to accompany them.

Upon arrival at the mortuary we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could.
Ahead of us in line were three young men.

One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts ... all very professional looking.

They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband's casket.

Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket.

Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one, each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket.
Each left the mortuary awkwardly, wiping his eyes.
Our turn came to meet Mrs.
Miller. I told her who I was and reminded her of the story from those many years ago and
what she had told me about her husband's bartering for marbles.
With her eyes glistening, she took my hand and led me to the casket.

'Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you abouts Jim 'traded' them.
Now, at last, when Jim could not change his mind about color or size....they came to pay their debt.'

'We've never had a great deal of the wealth of this world,' she confided, 'but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho.

With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband. Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.

The Moral : We will not be remembered by our words, but by our
kind deeds. Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath.

A News About NAPKINS

Check the labels of the sanitary pads or tampons that you are going to buy the next time and see whether you spot any of the familiar signs stated in this email.

No wonder so many women in the world suffer from cervical cancer and womb tumors. Have you heard that tampon makers include asbestos in tampons? Why would they do this?

Because asbestos makes you bleed more, if you bleed more, you're going to need to use more. Why isn't this against the law since asbestos is so dangerous? Because the powers that be, in all their wisdom (not), did not consider tampons as being ingested, and, therefore, didn't consider them illegal or dangerous.
This month's Essence magazine has small article about this and they mentioned two manufacturers of a cotton tampon alternative. The companies are: Organic Essentials @1-800) 765-6491 and Terra Femme @ (800)755-0212.

A woman getting her Ph.D. at University of Colorado at Boulder sent the following: 'I am writing this because women are not being informed about the dangers of something most of us use: tampons. I am taking a class this month and I have been learning a lot about biology and women, including much about feminine hygiene. Recently we have learned that tampons are actually dangerous (for other reasons than TSS). I'll tell you this - after learning about this in our class, most of the females wound up feeling angry and upset with the tampon industry, and I for
one, am going to do something about it To start, I want to inform everyone I can, and email is the fastest way that I know how
HERE ! IS THE SCOOP:
Tampons contain two things that are potentially harmful: Rayon (for absorbency), and dioxin (a chemical used in bleaching the products). The tampon industry is convinced that we, as women, need bleached white products in order to view the product as pure and clean. The problem here is that the dioxin, which is produced in this bleaching process, can lead to very harmful problems for a woman. Dioxin is potentially carcinogenic cancer-associated) and is toxic to the immune and reproductive systems. It has also been linked to endometriosis and lower
sperm counts for men. For both sexes, it breaks down the immune system.

Last September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that there really is no set 'acceptable' level of exposure to dioxin given that it is cumulative and slow to disintegrate. The real danger comes from repeated contact Karen Couppert 'Pulling the Plug on the Tampon Industry'). I'd say using about 4-5 tampons a day, five days a month, for 38 menstruating years is 'repeated contact', wouldn't you? Rayon
contributes to the danger of tampons and dioxin because it is a highly absorbent substance. Therefore, when fibers from the tampons are left behind in the vagina (as usually occurs), it creates a breeding ground for the dioxin. It also stays in a lot longer than it would with just cotton tampons. This is also the reason why TSS (toxic shock syndrome) occurs.

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

Using feminine hygiene products that aren't bleached and that are all cotton. Other feminine hygiene products (pads/napkins) contain dioxin as well, but they are not nearly as dangerous since they are not in direct contact with the vagina. The
pads/napkins need to stop being bleached, but, obviously, tampons are the most dangerous.

So, what can you do if you can't give up using tampons? Use tampons that are made from 100% cotton, and that are UNBLEACHED. Unfortunately, there are very few companies that make these safe tampons. They are usually only found in health food stores.

Countries all over the world ( Sweden , Germany , British Columbia , etc.) have demanded a switch to this safer tampon, while the U..S. has decided to keep us in the dark about it. In 1989, activists in England mounted a campaign against chlorine bleaching. Six weeks and 50,000 letters later, the makers of sanitary products switched to oxygen bleaching (one of the
green methods available) (MS magazine, May/June 1995)..

WHAT TO DO NOW:
Tell people. Everyone. Inform them. We are being manipulated by this industry and the government, let's do something about it! Please write to the companies: Tampax(Tambrands) , Playtex, O.B., Kotex. Call the 800 numbers listed on the boxes. Let them know that we demand a safe product ALL COTTON UNBLEACHED TAMPONS.

AND FOR THOSE OF US WHO USE SANITARY NAPKINS/PADS:

IF u ever wondered what were the ingredients that made popular brands so 'free! and light and carefree', well here's the bit:

The material that makes the pad so paper THIN, is cellulose gel. YEap, it's not even cotton!!!!!!

DO NOT wear the same pad for more than 3 hours of a maximum!!! After this duration, the genital area is prone to bacterial action and may result in cervical cancer or other complications! !!!!!!!!!

REMEMBER! NEVER NEVER NEVER WEAR THE SAME PAD FOR MORE THAN 3 HOURS!!!!

References:
1 Women Health Issues - Thrush

Banned Medicine

Ministry of Health ( Saudi Arabia ) has stopped the following medicines because it has a dangerous effect on Heart and Brain.

PANADOL COLD & FLU
ADVIL COLD & SINUS
CLARINASE
RINOFED EXPECTORANT
ACTIFIED EXPECTORANT
FLUTAB

Electricity!

Today's question: What in the world is electricity and where does it go after it leaves the toaster?

Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches one that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important lesson about electricity.

It also illustrates how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpet so that they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travel down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.

AMAZING ELECTRONIC FACT:
If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting.

Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers, etc. for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lightning storm and received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lightning was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as, "A penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.

After Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. Among them, Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond. However, water is a great conductor of electricity and the frog is immediately electrocuted.

But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877 was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879 when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact, the last year any new electricity was generated was 1937.

Today, thanks to men like Edison and Franklin, and frogs like Galvani's, we receive almost unlimited benefits from electricity. For example, in the past decade scientists have developed the laser, an electronic appliance so powerful that it can vaporize a bulldozer 2000 yards away, yet so precise that doctors can use it to perform delicate operations to the human eyeball, provided they remember to change the power setting from "Bulldozer" to "Eyeball."

Calorie-burning activities...

Proper weight control cannot be attained by dieting alone; however, many people who are engaged in sedentary occupations do not realize that calories can be burned by the hundreds by engaging in strenuous activities that do not require much (or any) physical exercise.

Here's the guide to calorie-burning activities and the number of calories per hour they consume.

Beating around the bush ------------------ 75
Jumping to conclusions ------------------- 100
Climbing the walls ------------------------ 150
Swallowing your pride -------------------- 50
Passing the buck ------------------------- 25
Making mountains out of molehills ------- 500
Hitting the nail on the head -------------- 50
Bending over backwards ----------------- 75
Running around in circles ---------------- 350
Climbing the ladder of success ----------- 650

the COOKIES...

This is an another story I found on my mailbox...

:)

A full glass of MILK...

You might be familiar with this story...

One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay,
for his hungry stomach, decided he would ask for a meal at the next
house.


On the way through school, he found he had only one thin dime left
and he was very hungry.

However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the
door.Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water.

The woman thought he looked hungry, so brought him a large glass of
milk.

He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?" "You
don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us,never to
accept pay for a kindness."

He said..."Then I thank you from my heart."

Year's later that young woman became critically ill.
The local doctors were baffled.They finally sent her to the big
city,where they called in specialists to study her rare disease.

Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light
filled his eyes.

Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her
room.Dressed in his doctor's gown he went in to see her.He
recognized her at once.

He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to
save her life,from that day he gave special attention to the case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the
business office to pass the final bill to him
for approval.

He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was
sent to her room.

The woman feared opening it, for she was sure it would take the
rest of her life to pay for it all.

Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side
of the bill. She read these words..."Paid in full with one glass of milk."
Signed,
Dr.Howard Kelly.

Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: Thank You,
God,that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and
hands."


A SIMPLE INSPIRATION
"To fix a broken life, use the tools of the heart."

:)

what LOVE means...

Here are some comments and answers to that QUESTION from a group of 4 to 8-year old children...


"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend

over and paint her toenails anymore.

So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even
when his hands got arthritis too. That's love."

Rebecca- age 8
---

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is
different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."

Billy - age 4
---

"Love is when a girl
puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne
and they go out and smell each other."

Karl - age 5
---

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most
of your French fries without making them give you any
of theirs."

Chrissy - age 6
---

"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."

Terri - age 4
---

"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and
she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure
the taste is OK."

Danny - age 7
---

"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get
tired of kissing, you still want to be together and
you talk more.
My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when
they kiss"

Emily - age 8
---

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start
with a friend who you hate,"

Nikka - age 6

(WOW! we need a few million more NIKKAs on this planet)
---

"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then
he wears it everyday."

Noelle - age 7
---

"Love is like a little old woman
and a little old man who are still friends even after
they know each other so well."

Tommy - age 6
---

"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was
scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw
my daddy waving and smiling.

He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared
anymore."

Cindy - age 8
---

"My mommy loves me more than anybody

You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at
night."

Clare - age 6
---

"Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of
chicken."

Elaine-age 5
---

"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after
you left him alone all day."

Mary Ann - age 4
---

"I know my older sister loves me because she gives
me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new
ones."

Lauren - age 4
---


So inspiring..

(T_T)...