Well, we made it to Orange Beach finally this evening. I was just trying to take a little vacation and take the kids to the beach while I was between jobs. Our trip today, which should have taken about 8 hours took closer to 11 hours. As it worked out our truck broke down on us outside of Tupelo, MS. Thank God for the timing and the place. It worked out such that we were close to a decent sized city where a wrecker could pick us up rather quickly. Fortunately there was a car rental agency that was open till noon and HAPPENED to have a vehicle large enough to carry our gang of 6 and most of the luggage and food items we were bringing to the beach (trust me, we had to SQUEZE it all in). Unfortunately in all of this there were no mechanics working in the Tupelo area on a Saturday, so we had the wrecker take me to the rental car place and then to drop our vehicle at the dealership. One thing I haven’t mentioned so far was the the wrecker, the one who came to pick up our vehicle, well, he didn’t have enough room for the six of us to fit into his truck, he only had room for two. So now what do we do. We are stuck on the side of the highway without enough room for everyone and under time pressure to get to the rental place to get the only vehicle that would fit us all. I had no choice. I had to go secure the rental and direct the wrecker on what to do with our car, so, yes, that’s right, I left my family on the side of the highway. Am I proud of it? Absolutely not, but this was the situation we faced today. The only comforts I had were my faith and my boys (Hunter, 14, and Fisher, 13). I figured they could put up a good fight to protect my girls if faced with the challenge. So, the wrecker and I trucked it as quick as we could to the rental place and secured the rental vehicle. Honestly, I was going to pick up a 15 passenger van because I really didn’t think that a Tahoe would fit the six of us and all of our stuff. As God had it planned for us, they couldn’t find the keys to the 15 passenger van, so the Tahoe was the ONLY choice we had. Afterwards I met the wrecker at the dealership, got the truck dropped off there and then I rushed to pick up my family. As I took off from the dealership I realized that I didn’t know how to get back to the highway. After fretting about it a few minutes I remembered my iPhone and the GPS-like feature it had. I whipped that dude out and got to looking at where I was and how to get to the highway we were on. It took me less than a minute to find the UNMARKED left turn I needed to take to get back to the highway. I was really counting my blessings at this point because things seemed to be moving along much better than I could have ever orchestrated. It was just a few more minutes before I reached my family, who were still sitting there on the side of the road. They were OK. Fortunately we broke down at a place on the highway where there was an overpass. This allowed them to hang out in the shade and far off the highway on a concrete surface. If this had happened just another couple miles down the road we would have been in the sticks (that is a southern term that means the backwoods country)!! My family was doing fine and ready to be picked up!! They were excited to see the Tahoe and NOT the 15 passenger van too. Well, the wrecker told me that I might want to check the fuel filter and see if that might be our problem. We drove back to our vehicle and then to the auto parts store and bought a new fuel filter and a wrench to change it out. After a little handy work I was able to get the new filter installed, but unfortunately the truck was still dead. The dealership was very helpful and let us use their battery booster to continue to try and crank the truck, but to no avail. So at this point we proceeded to unpack the truck and pack the Tahoe. My wife and kids got pretty creative and consolidated some things and sacrificed a few things and we were able to get it in the Tahoe. We arrived in Orange Beach around 8:00. My Mom and Dad were already here and checked in so they met us at the gate and helped us get up to the room. We have already ventured out to the beach and caught a few sand crabs in the dark. So, we made it, and we are all safe, and we are looking forward to having a few days of fun.

  I amlooking for opportunities for me and my family to minister to others. Below are a couple of good options. Do you know of others?

• Life Choices
• Tennessee Baptist Children's Home
  • West TN Wishlist
  • Bartlett Campus Volunteer Opportunities
  • Boys Ranch VolunteerOpportunities
• Volunteer Mid-South - interesting site that seems to be a portal for volunteer opportunitiesin the Memphis area
  
• 
  
• Looking for more...

This is the name of a short film that tells the true and tragic story of a young woman whose abortion goes horribly wrong. Beware, this a rough read. 
Read a post about it here.

The official film site: 22 Weeks 

The original Post can be found here. Author: John Ensor, Vice President of Heartbeat International and author of Answering the Call: Saving Innocent Lives, One Woman At a Time.

Today I join hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., in the annual March for Life to publicly lament the death of 50 million preborn children and to pray for the day when abortion becomes unthinkable.

In doing so, I acknowledge the resistance, even offense, taken by many by asserting that abortion is the moral issue of our day. I am familiar with the claim that asserts equal concern for poverty, global warming, aids prevention, war, and more. All of these appear to me worth researching and debating, as iron sharpens iron, as to the various causes and possible solutions.

But abortion is not on par. I remember how and when I came to this conclusion. It was the week of February 12, 1990, as marked on the Newsweek magazine I was reading. Kim Flodin, in an article on why she did not counter-march for abortion rights, wrote, "I was pregnant, I carried two unborn children and I chose, for completely selfish reasons, to deny them life so that I could better my own" (My Turn).

There it was: a momentary lapse into honest concrete language about abortion from an advocate. No ancient Baal worshiper could have described the reasons for their child sacrifice better. I was stunned that it had to be stated so plainly for me to grasp the preeminent evil of it. It is not one issue among equal concerns. Abortion is our postmodern version of child sacrifice for the Me Generation. As such, it is an incomprehensible and unthinkable evil.

Unthinkable is the best word to describe it because that is the way God describes it. "The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah saying, . . . "They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination" (Jeremiah 32:35; cf. 7:31, 19:5).

Among the many ways we offend God, the greatest offense are the shedding of innocent blood and idolatry. These two come together in child sacrifice. At the outset, God taught Israel to be shocked and repulsed by its practice among other cultures. "You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods" (Deuteronomy 12:31). The word even here rings remarkably close in meaning to unthinkable or something that "did not enter into my mind."

Some years ago, a woman named Suzanne came to me while I was setting up a pregnancy-help clinic in Boston. She said, "If I have the abortion, I will have more money to spend on my other two children." I asked, "What do you think your children would say if they knew you were doing this so that they could have cable TV and other stuff?" She said, "Well, I'll ask them." Then and there I knew the baby would live. Abortion is unthinkable to children--incomprehensible, horrific, something that would never enter their minds to do. Sure enough, the children were aghast at the thought. "We want the baby," they reassured her. Some months later, after the baby arrived, I heard her share her story. She said she was embarrassed to think back on her earlier state of mind. She had joined the circle of those who think abortion unthinkable.

Sanctity of Human Life Week is like Good Friday--a sobering time to stare unflinchingly past the ho-hum of abortion as a common practice; to grieve, lament, and morn; then to take up our cross and humbly obey God's call to "prosper" the cause of the fatherless and "defend the rights of the needy" (Jeremiah 5:28). In this context, that means becoming cross-bearers for child-bearers.