Partners 335: How to Tell Real Census Workers in 2010 Census when they come to your door.

Some very good information below.

Short quick read.

This information is being distributed by the Dallas / Ft. Worth IBMer Organization to warn it's thousands of members of fraud associated with the 2010 Census (some pre-census activity is already underway). However, this warning is for ALL citizens so you may want to pass it on to everyone you know.


2010 Census Cautions
by Susan Johnson - August 3, 2009 12:07 pm

Be Cautious About Giving Info to Census Workers
With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the country. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data. The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:

** If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have:

1. A badge

2. A handheld device

3. A Census Bureau canvas bag

4. A confidentiality notice

Be sure and ask to see:

1. Their identification and

2. Their badge before answering their questions.

NEVER invite anyone you don't know into your home.

** Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census.

While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, it will not ask for Social Security, bank account, or credit card numbers nor will employees solicit donations.

Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, they will not contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census.

Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For more advice on avoiding identity theft and fraud, visit www.bbb.org.

Proven Hope Focused Program of Couples Counseling offered Free to couples from Regent University

Proven Hope Focused Program of Couples Counseling offered Free to couples from Regent University

The Hope Focused program of couples counseling is now open for new couples to participate. www.mmatecenter.com

Who is this for? Couples are welcome to join who are struggling with everyday problems or more difficult problems as well. It is a short term (8-12 weeks) counseling program so those with severe or specific issues requiring more time and attention (infidelity, violence, untreated substance abuse) will be referred for longer term treatment outside of the study.

What is the Hope Project? The Hope project is an outreach and research project supported by Regent University therefore we are able to offer this program at No cost for couples in the community. It is a brief hope-focused approach focusing on increasing the positives in the relationship. It includes personalized assessment and feedback, communication skills, conflict resolution skills, exploring the influence of the past, apologies, forgiveness and other tailored interventions. It is completely private within our clinic.

What has research on the Hope Project shown? The research on the Hope approach has shown for over 10 years that this approach works well with couples. It increases satisfaction, commitment, positive communication skills, closeness and forgiving significantly after treatment and in follow-up data as well. The local Hope project has been going on for 3 years now with strong data support

Is it a religious program? It can be. The project follows ethical guidelines for all therapists where we tailor the approach to the couple. There is a Christian version of the Hope approach that can be used including scripture reference, prayer and discussion of spiritual growth if both members of the couple would prefer that approach. There is also the standard approach which does not include spiritual things but supports the good goal of a healthy relationship.

How should I communicate this to my congregation/friends/colleagues? You can send the information above through an email which is easiest, or we can send you flyers and further information about the approach as needed. You are welcome to sign up yourself to “check it out” and see if it’s something that would be helpful to couples. For any questions about the project please call our project office at 757-352-4896 or call me (Dr. Ripley) directly at 757-352-4296.


Jennifer Ripley, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Regent University
1000 Regent Drive, CRB 161
Virginia Beach VA 23464
757-352-4296
jennrip@regent.edu

Pastor's Breakfast to Defend Chesapeake Prayer at City Council

Pastors For Family Values invites you to a Complimentary Pastor Breakfast
Spring Hill Suites by Marriott, 6350 Newtown Road. Norfolk, VA 23502
8:00 – 10:00 AM To RSVP call Vanessa 804-343-0010

Recently a Wisconsin-based anti-Christian group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation in association with the ACLU, demanded that Chesapeake City Council cease it’s time honored tradition of opening council session with an uncensored prayer.

These organizations threatened legal action for “the unlawful act” despite the fact the US Supreme Court has consistently affirmed the right to this type of prayer and that invocations in no way violate the First Amendment of The US Constitution.

The Family Foundation (TFF) immediately offered our support and encouragement to Mayor Krasnoff and the members of council. Additionally, our partner organization, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has offered to represent the City of Chesapeake pro-bono should a lawsuit arise from the adoption of an “invocations policy” that supports uncensored prayer.

This Thursday morning, August 20th, The Family Foundation in association with our clergy partners, Pastors For Family Values, will be hosting a breakfast meeting for our local pastors and church leaders. I know that the time demands of your ministry are significant and that your schedule is void of too many free moments. But I pray that you will consider attending this very important event. It will be a wonderful time of fellowship, prayer and instruction.

Bishop Earl Jackson from Exodus Faith Ministries will serve as emcee and Dr. Rick Scarborough from Vision America will be our keynote speaker. Senior Pastor of Rock Church Anne Gimenez will be offering the invocation. We will be discussing ways to “confront the culture” that is seeking to stifle religious freedom and addressing specific threats that we face in our very own community. This event is open to all area pastors so please feel free to pass this information on to anyone who would be interested in joining us.

Pastors For Family Values invites you to

Confront the Culture

A Special Presentation for Pastors

August 20th, 2009

Complimentary Pastor Breakfast

Spring Hill Suites by Marriott

6350 Newtown Road

Norfolk, VA 23502

8:00 – 10:00 AM

To RSVP call Vanessa 804-343-0010

Partners: 10 KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR CONGRESSPERSON ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE BILL. ASK IN AUGUST WHILE THEY ARE HOME!!

Here is a list of very sensible and important quesitons about the proposed health care reform that could radically change our nation for better or for worse. Now is the time to discuss it!

Questions to ask your Senators and Representative about ObamaCare Before the October Vote onthis critical Bill. Ask your reps while they are home on August break!

ASK YOUR CHURCH TO HOST A MEETING WITH YOUR REPS TO ANSWER THESE QUESITONS! CHURCHES CAN DISCUSS AND DEBATE PROPOSED LEGISLATION!!


1. ABORTION
Pro-choice groups, like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, are demanding that abortion be covered in any healthcare reform bill. In a recent interview with Politico, Laurie Rubiner, vice president for public policy and advocacy at Planned Parenthood, defends this demand by saying, "the alternative would be slashing benefits for millions of women who currently have [private] coverage for abortions..." In addition, key administration officials refuse to rule out abortion coverage. When asked on Fox News Sunday whether taxpayer money would go to pay for abortions, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag replied, "I am not prepared to say explicitly that right now. It's obviously a controversial issue, and it's one of the questions that is playing out in this debate."

Pro-life senators on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee forced a roll call vote on the issue when Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) attempted to add an amendment to the healthcare bill that would, in her words, "include women's health clinics that provide comprehensive services...deemed medically necessary or appropriate." She admitted that such "health clinics" would include Planned Parenthood. The pro-life amendment to prohibit funding of abortion lost 11-to-12.

Question for your Congressmen: Will you oppose any healthcare reform bill that uses my tax dollars to pay for abortions?

2. EUTHANASIA
In a recent New York Post column, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and health care expert, wrote:

"One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and 'the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.' This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care."

Question for your Congressmen: Will you oppose any healthcare reform bill that in any way promotes euthanasia?

3. COST
The United States faces a debt crisis. According to many analysts, including Senator Judd Gregg (who is so respected by President Obama that he offered Gregg the post of Secretary of Commerce), the Obama budget will give us $11 trillion of debt at the end of five years and $17 trillion of debt at the end of ten years. (Source: PolitiFact.com)

Question for your Congressmen: Why is Congress and the president pushing through a healthcare bill that would cost another trillion dollars over the next ten years? Shouldn't we concentrate on getting the debt under control first?

4. RATIONING CARE
According to a July 15th report by The Hill, "The House bill would be paid for by roughly $500 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts..." These "cuts" would come as millions of Americans are retiring. Logic suggests that if we are "cutting" hundreds of billions of dollars healthcare would have to be limited or rationed in someway to accommodate more people. And seniors would be most affected by Medicare cuts.
In addition, advisors to President Obama, such as Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have suggested that healthcare should be rationed to certain individuals. Dr. Emanuel once wrote that "services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens...should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

(Source: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf)

Question for your Congressmen: How can government promise to do more with less? Will you oppose any healthcare reform bill that in any way limits my access to healthcare or medicines recommended by my doctor?

5. MORE BURDENS ON SMALL BUSINESSES
Despite a 9.5% (and rising) unemployment rate, the healthcare bill in the House imposes a new 8% payroll tax on small businesses with payrolls of $400,000 or more that don't provide health insurance for their employees. This is in addition to the current 15% payroll tax. What this means is that any employer with a payroll of $400,000 dollars or higher will have to pay at least 25% above the salary just to hire someone. Common sense tells you that any struggling small business will likely lay off workers to avoid this additional tax. On the other hand, if the tax is cheaper than the cost of health insurance, larger businesses may opt to cancel their health insurance, forcing employees into the government's "public option," and simply pay the 8% fine. (Source: Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2009)

Question for your Congressmen: Why are you imposing additional mandates and taxes on small businesses, which create the overwhelming majority of new jobs, in the middle of a severe recession?

6. QUALITY CARE
American healthcare is better than that in European countries with socialized medicine. The German breast cancer mortality rate is 52% higher than in the United States. Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the United Kingdom and 457% higher in Norway than in the United States. Canadian healthcare lags behind the United States too. Canadian patients wait twice as long to see a specialist for hip surgery or cancer than we do in the United States. Most Americans say they are satisfied with the U.S. health care system, but more than 70% of Germans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Britons say that their systems need "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding." (Source: National Center for Policy Analysis.)

In an editorial on July 26th, the Washington Post criticized President Obama for not "leveling about the consequences of change" when it comes to healthcare costs versus quality. Here's what the Post wrote: "The Congressional Budget Office estimates that new technology accounts for about half the increase in health-care costs over the past several decades. This, for the most part, is a good thing. Adjusted for inflation, health-care spending per person is six times what it was 40 years ago. But no one today would settle for 1960s-style medicine."

Question for your Congressmen: Why are you trying to force us in the direction of more government involvement in healthcare when everywhere government-run healthcare has been tried, quality declines and care is rationed?

7. THE PEOPLE ARE BEING IGNORED
According to a recent poll, just 23% of voters believe healthcare reform legislation will lower costs, while 53% believe it will lead to more expensive care. By a margin of 50% to 23%, voters believe that "reform" legislation will make the quality of care decline. And while voters believe they will get worse care at higher costs, 78% also believe that healthcare reform will result in middle class tax hikes. In addition, a recent Fox News poll found that 91% of those surveyed have health insurance, 84% said that the quality of their health insurance was either excellent or good and 83% said the quality of health care they receive from their private insurance is either good or excellent. And only 12% of those surveyed said reforming health care was the most important issue Congress should be working on right now. (Source: Rasmussen Reports, July 28, 2009 and Fox News poll July 23, 2009.)

Question for your Congressmen: Why are you and the White House rushing this bill through Congress and ignoring the concerns of the American people?

8. LOSS OF FREEDOM
The healthcare reform legislation under consideration in the House will eventually force all Americans into a government-approved plan. After a five-year grace period, every new insurance policy will have to comply with government mandates, and any policy changes - "altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug" - invalidates your previous coverage and forces you to choose a government "qualified" plan. In addition, the House plan mandates coverage for every individual. If you are self-employed or choose not buy insurance for whatever reason, the bill imposes a "healthcare tax" of 2.5% of your income. (Source: CNNMoney.com, July 24, 2009 and Bloomberg.com, July 15, 2009)

Question for your Congressmen: Why do you believe bureaucrats can make better decisions than me about what kind of health insurance I should have? And will you guarantee that any healthcare reform bill passed by Congress will always allow me to choose my own doctor?

9. RACIAL PREFERENCES
Do you care about the race of a doctor who is getting ready to operate on you? Of course not. Most Americans want their doctor to be the best professional available regardless of race or ethnic background. But congressional liberals have a different idea. On page 909 of the House bill, grants to medical schools will be awarded "to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following...training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds." (Source: Investors Business Daily, July 27, 2009)

Question for your Congressmen: Why are you throwing affirmative action/racial set asides into a healthcare reform bill?

10. PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS
President Obama has repeatedly said that "no insurance company will be allowed to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition." That sounds wonderful until you apply common sense, which is in short supply in Washington. What if we made a law that allowed you to buy car insurance after you got into an accident and that required the insurance company to pay for the damage? Wouldn't many people just wait for an accident before buying insurance? Why wouldn't many Americans wait until they were sick to buy health insurance?

Question for your Congressmen: Isn't it clear that this provision would drive up the cost of health insurance for everyone?


Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon,
Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

British And Virginian Abuse of Native Americans

These first Christian settlers in Jamestown got off to a terrible start with the Indians. Contrary to the gentleness that the English showed the Indians in the earlier Roanoke Colony in North Carolina, the Jamestown settlers saw themselves as superior to the Indians and treated them with much deceit and often with violence.

These abusive and deceitful attitudes towards our Native Americans have carried down to modern Virginians—as spiritual DNA often does!

In the August 11, 2003 edition of the Virginian-Pilot on page A10, there was a story outlining the continued legal fight of Virginia’s remaining eight tribes to get federal recognition. It was only in 1983 that the state of Virginia officially recognized them as Native American tribes. Unlike other states with Native American populations, Virginia has tricked and deprived its Native Americans over and over. The article states that Virginia:

…long denied education and employment opportunities to Indians. Later, the Virginia General Assembly tried bureaucratically to eliminate Indians by passing the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The law mandated that only two races be recorded on state birth records: White and Negro. It was zealously enforced by Walter A. Plecker, Virginia’s first Registrar of the Bureau of Vital Statistics.

Plecker, an outspoken proponent of eugenics, systematically changed the race recorded on many birth, death and marriage certificates from “Indian” to “Negro” until his retirement in 1967 when it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But by then, it was too late for thousands of Native Americans to recover their real identity and the benefits that went with it. The State of Virginia committed ethnic cleansing of Native Americans by systematic massive identity theft.

The newspaper article goes on to tell of the “devastating impact” this law had on the Indians who could now not prove who they were. They were, consequently, not able to get the federal assistance that all the other tribes in America do for food and shelter and school scholarships.

1. First, we break our treaties with them and steal their land.
2. Then we steal their identity to deprive them of the very benefits we gave them hundreds of years later for taking their land away from them.

"We were victims of statistical genocide,” said William P. Miles, chief of the Pamunkey.
What angers me even more about this story is that many other Virginia politicians knew of it…for over 40 years! Some of those politicians called themselves Christians. Shame on them!

There has been a mean spirit in Virginia government against Indians and real Christians must act differently! Indians are our neighbor whom we are to love as ourselves. Anything else is sin. Sins like these have probably brought God’s curses on Virginia.

Revival Life Church 2009 Vision Statement ( Working Paper)

Vision for Revival Life Church
July 23, 2009

Keep the Main Things the Main Things
The Great Commandments and the Great Commission

1.Love God with all of our heart and with all of our resources
2.Love one another as Jesus loves us
3.Love our neighbor in practical ways that meet their felt-needs
4.Make disciples of lost people locally and globally.


Family, Hospital, School and Army: Four Pictures of Who We Are

Family: Real love, real relationships, loving honesty that builds trust, serving one another
Hospital: Committed and equipped to help others find spiritual, emotional and physical health and growth.
School: Equipping Christians to minister to others. Developing leaders.
Army: Recruiting, training, deploying and monitoring believers to seek lost and hurting people, especially children and youth.


RLC is a Place Where:

1.People come to experience and enjoy God as Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
2.God's word is taught and lived with integrity and balance.
3. All nationalities, all ethnic groups and all sinners feel welcome and safe as they seek to know God and grow as believers. A “come-as-you-are” church.
4.People can get food, clothing, shelter and medical help through us and other ministries.
5.Every gift of the Spirit is honored and can be expressed by members of the church in every gathering.
6.People can be set free from the oppression and bondage of demons.
7.We network with other churches and ministries to build the Kingdom of God.
8.People are trained to coach each other to greater maturity and success.
9.People have a heart for Hampton Roads, for America and for other nations, especially for China and for Muslims.

My wife, Beth, and I are committed to seeing God glorified in this fellowship. We come primarily to build the Kingdom of God in Hampton Roads and beyond, not just to build a local fellowship. We hope to be an Is. 61:1 place where Jesus can heal people's hearts and set the captives free so they can be equipped to help others in similar ways. We want to be a place where Kingdom life is demonstrated more than talked about. We will seek the Presence of God in all our gatherings more than anything. We hope to serve other local churches and encourage collaboration among them to serve the rapidly increasing needs of Hampton Roads for body, soul and spirit. We welcome those who want to see God glorified in similar ways.

Our church now meets in homes, currently at our home at 5208 Canoe Landing, Virginia Beach, VA. 23464. My cell number is 757-802-1423. Sunday services are at 10:30 AM and Wed night Bible Study is at 7 PM. Some childcare is available.

Blessings,

Bob & Beth Fox

Partners 329 Links: Prayer Resources for Muslims

Ramadan is from 22 August to 20 September this year. It is a strategic time for the body of Christ to pray for the Muslim people of the world. "30 Days Muslim Prayer Focus" booklets have been prepared to provide guidelines for prayer for specific issues related to Muslims for each of the days of Ramadan. These booklets can be ordered online at http://www.30daysprayer.com/muslim/ (note the special edition for children available at http://www.worldchristian.com/booksearch.asp?BkID=30DMPF4kids09). A daily e-mail version, which is an extract from the prayer guide booklets, will also be available. To receive it, enter your email address in the form at http://www.30-days.net/resources/email/. Also note the list of resources in http://www.30-days.net/shop/download.htm and at http://www.30-days.net/