Back to School and Your Budget

Back to School on a Budget

Tawra Kellam
www.LivingOnADime.com

Back to school is a time when many moms witness their money sprout wings and take flight, finding their homes at retail stores across America. I know that consumer spending is good for the economy, but I don’t take it upon myself to keep the entire US economy propped up, so when my first-grade son announced that he wanted a backpack with rollers, I saw this as a wonderful financial teaching moment. His school is small, and he doesn't walk to or from school. He didn't need rollers.

Finish the article at:
http://www.crosswalk.com/finances/11579363/

Val In Uganda Update

Valerie was scheduled to return to the US on July 24. However, she has decided to stay for two more weeks and will return on August 7.

Thanks for your prayers and other support.

I am spending the coming week at Green Lake. This is my annual time for planning and renewal. I welcome your prayers.

I invite you to worship, this week. Jim Stinespring will be preaching in both services.

Big Talker

With exaggerations, we stretch the truth to fit our purposes. With over-commitments, we either lie and say we will accomplish what we cannot accomplish, or we neglect our other God-given priorities in order to make our word good. So both exaggeration and over-commitment are distortions of the truth.

Read the article at:

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001791.cfm

Worship

What evidence will future generations have of your existence? What mark will you leave on the earth? Only a few things in life are really important, but they are often neglected in our busy lives.

Worship with us, this Sunday, as we conclude our Life Is Short series with "I Was Here."

Could You Pass the Latest Citizenship Test?

In October 2008 a new version of the U.S. citizenship test will be taken by all applicants. Could you pass it? The questions are usually selected from a list of 100 samples that prospective citizens can look at ahead of the interview. Some are easy, some are not. We have picked some of the more difficult ones.

NOTES: Candidates are not given multiple choices in the naturalization interview. The following questions have been adapted from the immigration service’s sample questions.

Take the test at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25461301/

Valerie In Africa

Following are some excerpts from some of Valerie's emails about the work she is doing in Uganda:

5 days a week I'm at the babies' home. I usually work with the kids that are 2-4 months and feed them and play with them and all that fun stuff. Sometimes I hang out with the toddler group. The kids at the home are newborn-about 2 then they go to the villages to live. But there's some special needs kids so they're still at the babies home. One of the kids I've been spending a lot of time with is 3 and his name is Abdul. He was abused a lot by his parents and has a lot of scars all over his body. His parents tried to kill him on a few occasions and the last time they poured acid down his throat. So now he can't take solid food and they're looking into having some sort of surgery to try to repair this. I'll try to post some pictures of him soon. He's an awesome kid. If you look on Watoto's website under the babies home section you can see a picture of him. I've been spending a lot of time with the toddlers the last few days and it's been fun. I'll try to get more pictures up on my blog soon for people to see.

...another thing that I'm doing is going to the Watoto villages 2 days a week with people from Watoto and KPC to talk to students in their schools. We do a life skills program and have talked about things like Godly values and peer pressure. The youth pastor from KPC spoke last week so we got to hang around and talk to students after. It's been fun so far.