Jim Daly

Author Dave Willis witnessed the life-changing power of love on a visit to an orphanage in Guatemala called Casa Shalom, which means “house of peace.” The privately run Christian orphanage serves about a hundred kids at a time in a place where most orphanages are government-run and fraught with corruption. Some of the children served by Casa Shalom have been sex-trafficked, exploited by the very people who should have been protecting them.

On his first visit there, Dave was introduced to a young Guatemalan girl named Margarita.

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When I was 14 years old, a small airplane crashed across the street from where I lived. I called 911 then ran to the plane and helped two 20-somethings out of the burning wreckage. I thought they were the only two in the plane at first. I soon realized that their fathers had also been aboard. They were dead.

I also experienced tragedy in my personal life. My mother died of cancer when I was nine.

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My wife Jean and I did devotions with our boys throughout their childhoods. “What kind of devotions?” was the issue we always had to resolve.

Jean preferred formal times of Scripture reading and devotion. Her degree is in biochemistry, so it fit her personality to whip up a lesson with the creativity and skill of a schoolteacher.

As for me, I’m spontaneous and loose. I chatted with my boys about the Bible when we were engaged in routine activities, like driving back and forth to school.

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Sooner or later, we all face circumstances that are beyond our control. The question in those moments is what do we do when there’s nothing we can do?

Future astronaut Jim Lovell faced that situation in 1954 as a navy pilot. He was on a routine training mission over the Sea of Japan one moonless night when his instruments failed. Without warning, his whole world became darkness. To make matters worse, he had no way to visually spot his carrier because the lights had been turned off to avoid enemy detection.

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It’s called “Natural Decrease” – the term used to describe what happens when more people die than are born.

Since European settlers arrived in Jamestown in 1610, the population of North America has seen a meteoric climb. From the 300 or so people who first settled in Virginia, the United States Census Bureau currently projects our population at just over 341 million people.

But all is not well when it comes to fertility and mortality across the country.

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