Senseless Ramblings of the Mindless

Our household has changed a bit because of pets.

We were told by the city that we can only have 2 dogs. We had three. We had Patsy our Boxer, Jasper our Pug and Parker our Pug/Pekingnese. Since we live in a duplex and have a smaller back yard, my good friend Lisa took Patsy over to her house. Which is working out great. Patsy needed more room and I have the two smaller dogs are over zealous when it comes to the wanting to hump anything in sight. So, Patsy has been getting more exercise and she hasn’t had the other two trying to do what boy dogs do best. Even though I thought if they were fixed, they would loose that urge. Parker didn’t get the memo.

But today, we added a cat to the mixture. It is actually a little kitten. We have a family of mice that thinks it needs to be in the wall and run amuck. We haven’t named the kitten yet, but we will be doing that.

He should be called Love Bug because he is super cute and you don’t even have to pet him for him to start purring and he has the foot action going. He gets super excited. Now, I have to figure out how to train him to catch mice. Some cats are better at it than others. I think this little guy is going to be good. As soon as I brought him in and I put him in our bathroom, he went to check out a mouse hole. That’s a good sign.

He has been treated for a cold and is on medications for that. And we have to introduce him to the dogs. He showed no interest in our bird and my bearded dragon. Which is awesome. Since he is young, he will be having to get use to them. Even though I’m not going to totally trust him with Fred my bearded dragon. Fred’s top will have to be locked and secured. But it should be interesting around here while kitty is being trained.

I’m glad I got the little guy. We haven’t had a cat in a long time. It’s been about 13 yrs. I just hope and pray the kitty gets the idea that the bird and Fred are not for eating, lol. This weekend my hubby will have a honey do list to make sure all is safe and secure for all involved, except the mouse.

I would like to add that if anyone that reads this and is looking for a pet to add to the family. We got our little guy at the Ivin’s Animal Shelter in Ivin’s Utah. Please don’t buy a kitten or dog. There are so many animals that are in need of a good home. Ivin’s Animal Shelter is a no kill shelter. But most aren’t. When we picked up our new family member, there had to have been 25-30 cats that are in need of a home. It is sad to see how many are in need. I also want to say that you can save lives by spaying or nuetering your pets. Animals are put down all the time because there is no room at the shelters.

I have been rescuing dogs for a long time. Some shelters only give animals a few days to find a place. Most dogs are sweet and need someone to love them. If people would get their pets fixed, that means that there are less homeless animals being put down. One of the shelters in Phoenix on the average puts down a couple hundred pets a month. Most of the time they are out down because the owners can no longer take care of them or they have to move to a place where pets aren’t allowed. For me, if we move, we move where they can go. I don’t understand why people have to turn their pets into high kill shelters. Most never make it out alive. So,please be responsible pet owners.

With Christmas coming up, many will want to buy their children or loved ones a cute little puppy or kitten. Please remember that they grow up. They won’t be puppies forever. If you want to get a pet, do some research and make sure they are a good match. The newness wears off fast and the one that has to pay the price is the pet.

October and November are my favorite months of the year. The weather is cooling down, leaves are changing and the air is fresh and crisp.

Thanksgiving is in November and I personally get a tad bit upset that it is passed over so easily. In many ways, Thanksgiving is the beginning of the Christmas season, at-least from the business world. I know many that have no problem shopping early, but I do. If people want to shop on Thanksgiving, that is up to them and they can choose for themselves I guess. For me, Thanksgiving is important in so many ways.

It seems over the past number of years that Thanksgiving Day has become the lost or forgotten holiday. We are already hearing about how stores will be open on Thanksgiving and lists are being made. Of course if you have one of those lists and you go to Black Friday that actually begins on Thanksgiving, you risk life and limb. I guess it is the forgotten holiday because we don’t put an importance on being thankful and giving thanks to God. The almighty dollar is taking over the day of thanks. Don’t ya think that if it is Thanksgiving, we should be offering thanks?

One of the things I enjoyed when I went to church at the Nazarene Church is that on Wednesday evening, we would have church and we would give thanks. We would sing songs, offer prayers and share what we are thankful for. It seemed very appropriate to be at church to offer our thanks and thank God for our blessings. Now days that doesn’t happen. Instead people are lined up at Wal-Mart, Kmart, Kohl’s and whatever other store that may be offering the prized gift. Giving thanks must not a big money-maker.

There are many things we can be thankful for. We have freedoms that many countries doesn’t. We have the freedom to gather together and hear Pastor Ray preach freely. I’m pretty sure that my pastor is thankful that he can share his faith and what the Bible says without being persecuted or have to have it approved.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing in the world. I’m thankful that God loved me so much that He sent His son to die for me and everyone else. We are told in John 3:16 that God loves us and that even means He loves Americans and those from any other country, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”

This year I hope that we can focus on the blessings we have. There is so many horrible things going on in the world. I think of Pastor Saeed that is still in prison for sharing his faith. Asia Bibi is on death row for drinking from a cup in Pakistan. I’m thankful that I have the freedom to pray for those who are persecuted and on death row. I’m thankful that I can pray for our president and our government. I don’t have to agree with what they do, but I do think that no matter what, prayer is the only way to make a difference.

I do want to touch on Christmas though on this post. Thanksgiving is very important to me because it comes before Christmas. I am thankful that Jesus Christ was born. I’m thankful that Jesus died for my sins on the cross so I could live. He paid the penalty for my sins and for the sins of the world. As a Christian, I would say that Thanksgiving and Christmas goes hand in hand.

My students need a document camera to help view document and an interactive board to help display information/documents for all students to view.

 

I have done a couple blogs on Facebook status’s. But, I have decided to do another one. I will make it short though.

I don’t get why people feel they have to put every little detail of their life on Facebook. There are some things that are better kept to themselves.

Some people on my Facebook have the idea that it is OK to talk about every detail from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. They talk about other peoples life history and are nothing but busy bodies. We have enough of them in this world, I don’t like hearing the gossip and discussions that go on. I went to yahoo to get the definition of a busy body and thought I would share what and who they are;

bus•y•bod•y (ˈbɪz iˌbɒd i)

n., pl. -bod•ies.
a person who pries into or meddles in the affairs of others.

busybody
noun nosy parker (informal), gossip, troublemaker, snoop, intriguer, intruder, pry, eavesdropper, snooper, stirrer (informal), meddler, scandalmonger or Some busybody tipped off the police.

It has been some time since I cleaned out my friends list. I think I will be doing that though. It’s pretty sad that some people think it is OK to share every little thing with complete strangers. There are some things I share on Facebook, but I categorize people and family. Not everyone see’s everything I post. Even with my church family, I have grouped. If it is church oriented or a prayer need, then I will make the post visible.

I would prefer my life not being an open book. I also prefer to share information or updates with only those I choose to share with. I have to say it does tick me off when someone will update others about me without me giving permission to do that.

I’m just going to leave this post with this thought. Why is it that some people need to be into everyone else’s business? And why do they think they need to share their sex life and bathroom duties on Facebook.  TMI TMI

Recently, I was watching the show Ragamuffins. It is a story about Rich Mullins. I never realized his life was full of pain, anger, depression and reckless. I always thought of Rich Mullins as a person who was a singer and artist. His songs are awesome and I have loved his songs for many years. Rich Mullins was what many would call a rebel in the Christian world. He wrote Doubly Good to You for Amy Grant and that helped him become a name as a Christian Artist.

Here are some of the songs that Rich Mullins is best known for;

• Awesome God
• Hold Me Jesus
• Elijah
• Sing Your Praise to the Lord
• Calling Out Your Name

Rich wrestled all of his life with the brokenness and inner demons from his childhood. His father was very hard on him and he carried that with him throughout his life. One of the things in this movie that stood out to me is that he didn’t like the fame and all the stuff that comes along with it.  He would came on stage barefoot, shaggy hair and jeans full of holes and tattered. At the time of Rich Mullins death he gave away most of the money he ever made. He told his accountant to give him only 24,000 a year since that was what an average person would be making in a year.

Rich Mullins band was called the Ragamuffin’s. He wasn’t out to impress anyone, other than God. He was brutally honest and gave up fame and fortune to live on a Native American Reservation teaching kids music and the hope of the gospel of Jesus.

There was a part in the movie where Rich Mullins and a friend of his was driving down the road in his jeep. They popped in a cassette tape of this pastor that was taking about how Jesus loves the sinner. And that each of us has a war within ourselves that we are waging. God knows us inside and out.

He knows our darkest moments and our hurts. He knows our pains and He loves us anyhow. I think in the world we live in, we let Satan convince us that we are good enough to be loved. But God sent us His son and shows us we all are loved. Even through all the mess and ugliness of our lives.

By the end of the movie, I came to the conclusion that we don’t know what others are really going through. We may think they have it all together, but that is a lie. We see masks that people put on for different people in our lives.

Before Rich Mullins passed away he is quoted as saying; “Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken-hearted…”

Rich Mullins died in a car accident when he lost control of the Jeep he was driving. RIP “Rich” Mullins (October 21, 1955 – September 19, 1997) Click here to listen to a tribute from Amy Grant at the Dove Awards.

When I was reading up on Rich Mullins, I loved what someone had to say about him. He was a prophet and a poet and a beggar, more comfortable with the homeless than the wealthy, more in love with Jesus than religion, more interested in the music than the song. He felt too much, and held too much. He searched desperately his whole life for a way to belong down here, but he never did. He was just passing through.
Rich Mullins & A Ragamuffin Band – Live From Studio B, South Bend, Indiana, 1997

I posted my testimony on my old blog and wanted to make sure to transfer it onto this blog since I moved all my posts and such to this page,

For me the first time I knew that Jesus was real was when I was little and living in Grovertown Indiana where my grandparents lived… I would go to a little Nazarene Church in Knox, that was just over the bridge from Grovertown… But us kids would get picked up from the pastor each Sunday and then he would pick us up for church on Weds… I don’t remember his name, but I guess that doesn’t really matter… But my Grandma Grace was a Sunday School teacher and I would learn a lot from her about what the Bible said and the fun stories in the Bible… I believe that the Nazarene Church in Knox was the first church and the first church camp I went too… I was only in 2nd grade I believe… I was young, so I am remembering as a child on this one… I asked the pastor about being baptized when we still lived there… In the Nazarene Church, you didn’t get baptized till we were at-least 14 and we had to make sure we understood what it meant to be baptized… There was one on one meetings with the pastors and such… Let’s say I didn’t get to be baptized… Remember I was only in the 2nd grade… My Grandma Grace passed away when I was 10 and we moved to AZ…

I will skip all the little stupid drawn out stuff… But eventually we moved to a place called Hyder AZ… It was between Gila Bend and Yuma… You had to go what seemed like an eternity to get to where it was located at in the middle of the desert. Not sure what got my parents to think this was a good idea… I think my parents thought hole in the wall places was the place to be… It was all cotton farms and close to hell temperatures… But I happen to make some friends there and found a little church that had maybe 25 people in it… They came from the areas around Hyder like Dateland, Sentinel, Ajo and other hole in the wall places… Hyder now is a ghost town… Should have been then too… I think peoples brains had to be fried to live there… But back to my topic… My friends and I would swim in the irrigation ditches there… That was really the only way to cool off there… It would be 125 plus during the summer time… But my friends went to church with me and we would act like we were baptizing each other… We would take turns and we did this every time we went swimming, which was every day unless they put sulfur in the water for the farms… We would do the whole thing like we seen in church… We dunked each other in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit… We wanted or I wanted to make sure that I got baptized… So I must have really wanted this… It was the first thing we did when swimming…

If anyone has ever been to Hyder AZ, you would know there was bad things lurking around there. We would have to be bussed about 30 miles to go to school in a little town called Sentinel AZ… Our school had about 25 or so kids and it went from 1st grade to 8th grade… It was two trailers and two teachers… I tell ya, there was evil stuff on the drive to that school and all around us… Protection is what we all needed from my point of view… There was this one group called Children of Light where we would go swimming. As little kids, we didn’t realize that we were already protected by God…I count those baptisms that we did every day as my first time and many times I got baptized…

Our family moved to Willcox AZ… For me this was the first real sign of civilization… It has a population of 2000 or so… But I went to the Willcox Church of the Nazarene… My best friend was the pastors daughter… Her father retired by the time I was able to be baptized… But I remember when some missionaries came to our church… Pastor Harry was still there as the pastor… But they asked a question about what would be the one question that God would ask when you get to heaven that you feared… My friend’s sister stood up and said that she would be afraid to stand before God and asked her why she didn’t talk to her friends about Him… And she would say that she thought they already know… She was a pastors kid, so they knew that… And then come to find out that nobody talked to her friend and they lost their place in eternity because of it… This stuck with me all the way through my life… I guess that’s why I’m not really afraid talk to others about Christ and what He can mean to them…

I got baptized on my 14th birthday and the 1st Baptist Church in Willcox, AZ and I wasn’t going to wait till I was 14 yrs old 1 day… I was waiting for years for this to happen and the day was finally here… I am sure my pastor was tired of me hounding him about it, lol… Pastor Randy Tipton was my pastor at the time and he did my official baptism… I don’t know if the Nazarene Church is still that way… If they lowered the age, it is probably because of me and giving them a hard time… But it finally happened and I was happy… Now the hundreds of baptisms in the water in Hyder and this one made it complete…

I really like the Nazarene Church… It seemed to be where we were always doing something to reach out to those around us… We had prayer meetings every Weds… There was a sermon, but it always ended in prayer at the alters at the front of the church… Those who were too old or unable to, would move to the front pews to pray and everyone took turns to pray… Whatever was on your heart… There was invitations to accept Christ… I think I compare a lot of churches to the Church of the Nazarene… I will always be a Nazarene at heart. I also liked that there was a lot of focus on Missions and Outreach… We were always doing something in our community or for someone else… Or at-least the ones I went too… I think society is laxed in wanting to conform to the ways of the world rather than God… I know I would love to have God conform to my way of thinking at times… But then again, the world would be even more messed up and dysfunctional… I guess everyone has their thing and how a Christian should or shouldn’t be… I think though that a lot of churches through out the world and my area are more as a social event than worshiping… Maybe I think that because of how I grew up and my own way of thinking… Who am I to say…I love the people where I go to church at now… It isn’t a Nazarene Church, but they are awesome… I guess each person chooses to worship the way that they do and they all have their own normal… But should we have our normal or God’s normal? Maybe I am wrong, which I probably am…

Nazarene’s Believe: Nazarene’s believe that Christians can experience a deeper level of life in which there is victory over sin, power to witness and serve, and a richer fellowship with God, all through the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

There has been a lot of things throughout the years that has happened and I have made good and unfortunately bad choices… Accepting Christ was the smartest choice I ever made. But I know that God knows that no matter what that He is first in my life, even when I forget that and do my stupid things…

I would like to thank my friend who edited this post and she helped it sound like it should… 🙂 I have been working on this post for a month or more now and it is finally done… Good thing I can save my drafts on here, lol…

If you want to read a little article about the Children of Light from Dateland, AZ… You go here... I remember this group because when we wanted to go swimming in a real pool, they had the only one… They lived only a few miles from where we lived… Or at-least in my mind it was a few miles…This link to the Children of the Light has a number of pictures from this group and I remember most of them…

I have been in this heated debate with this guy on Yahoo this past week. The debate is all over those little devices that lenders put on cars for those who have a bad history of paying their bills.

This little device will keep the car from starting if the borrower doesn’t pay the payments.  It doesn’t turn the car off as you are driving it, but it will keep it from starting if the payment isn’t made on time.

My friends had one of these devices on their car and I had no clue what it was until I seen it in action. I have to say I would never buy a car from a place that has one of these because you can get stranded if you don’t pay up. Not only does it not let you start your car, it makes this horrible sound the closer it gets to your payment being past due.

Yahoo – Beyond the ability to disable a vehicle, the devices have tracking capabilities that allow lenders and others to know the movements of borrowers, a major concern for privacy advocates. And the warnings the devices emit — beeps that become more persistent as the due date for the loan payment approaches — are seen by some borrowers as more degrading than helpful.

I can see why lenders would use these because they make it easier to locate the vehicle and repo it in case the loan isn’t paid. And unfortunately some people have to go through these places because they have no place else to go.  These little devices are great for that. I would hate to have to pay the interest rate at one of these places. By the time you get it financed and the insurance it can easily reach over $1000.00 a month. I guess for me, I would just spend that amount on a cheap car and not have to pay that much. But that is me, everyone has to decide for themselves and these places knows that.

I do wonder if I would have gone with my friend in the first place if I had known she had one of those on her car. I got stuck and we had to call someone. That was the last time I went with her in that car though. After that she got stuck a number of other times and needed someone to come and get her. After the payment is made, then they give you a code to punch in and it resets the device.  Like I said, I never went with her again in that car.

The conversation with this guy got out of hand really fast. I was going to loose my cool, because on my comment I stated that they are inconvenient to those who ride along somewhere and they don’t know before you go with. It isn’t like I was going to have them give me their credit history, loan information and so on if I needed a ride somewhere. And with Myasthenia Gravis and my other medical problems, there are times I can’t drive.  It isn’t like too many people are available at 2:00 am to take someone to the ER or other places.

He went on to say that people who have problems like this are deadbeats and a waste of time. They are like the scum of the earth and not to be trusted. He then said there was no excuse for people not being able to pay a bill. If they can’t pay, they are leaches on society and so on. Well, that ticked me off big time.

I had to wait and pray over if I should comment back or just forget about him and the topic. And I basically decided it wasn’t worth my energy, but I did have to throw a couple punches comment style.  I couldn’t help myself.

I explained to him that he must have a very lonely life or full of rich people that never had a problem in their lives. Not all people who have problems paying bills choose not too. They would pay if they could or had the resources. There are times when things change in life and they have to choose what they can pay or not pay.  My friend that had one of these devices has a heart of gold and would do anything for anyone.  I don’t base my friendships on people’s wealth. I base them on people.  I then told this guy that I would hope he never needed a ride anywhere or needed help, because the help he may need may be from someone that doesn’t have a big bank roll.  I left it at that and I then told him that I will pray for people like him to really see the love of God and those who may be beneath him. And if he is a Christian, he should re-evaluate who he is putting his faith in and what. Because if he understood the Bible, he wouldn’t be the way he was and treating people with such hatred because they have little.

A guy named Joe made this comment:  LOL so I’d hate to see u in a pickle. Hope u never get sued. Hope your kid never gets in trouble. Maybe your life will be peachy. But once you walk a mile in their shoes and struggle, may the person whose in your shoes now not say the same to you.

I guess you just can’t fix stupid people and then you have those who have a holier than thou attitude and I don’t like to waste my time or energy on stupid.  I will leave it at that because history has proven that the world is full of stupidity and hate minded people. I will take a poor friend  any day that is sincere over a rich friend who has no heart.

I’m pretty sure that almost everyone has heard the saying or reassuring quote of, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” If you haven’t heard of it, you may be living under a rock or someone who doesn’t believe in God. This is a subject that I struggle with and would love to do a home Bible study on.

There have been times in my life that I have had to really question this saying and I wanted to see what the Bible had to say on this. For some when they are told this, it is almost like saying that if you can’t- you must not have enough faith or you are not worthy enough to make it through the circumstances in life that are overwhelming. For many years this was a touchy topic for me, mainly because of the misconception that as a Christian, you shouldn’t have problems dealing with life or bad news. I know many would assume it is encouraging and a way of giving someone hope. But, I can say for myself, it hasn’t and isn’t always encouraging to me. The words that are meant for encouragement can often serve to only create discouragement. When things are falling apart and health issues are getting worse and there is no cure, knowing that God will never give me something I couldn’t handle wasn’t doing it for me.

At times, this encouraging verse, or saying, was making me angrier at God and I wanted to deck the person that would say it to me. What it says to me is, “If I am supposed to handle this, then why can’t I handle it?” And, as a Christian, we are supposed to take God at His word and trust that things will work out. So, for a long time I felt like I was failing at something, because I wasn’t handling things all too well and was thinking my name should be Job not Sandie.

Since I was very much feeling like I have failed at this test of endurance and strength, I wanted to see where the Bible verse was for this. The truth is, God never said He wouldn’t give you more than you can handle. What I did find out is that God never said He wouldn’t give you more than you can handle.

There will be times in life when you will feel like you are never going to make it through whatever it is that you are going through and there is no one to help you. I think that this is one of those phrases much like “God helps them who help themselves” that people repeat so often that they assume it is in the Bible but it actually is not!

In 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 Paul wrote: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9 Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, Paul’s warning is tied to the reality of temptation and sin that meets us every day.

OK, so the exact wording isn’t in the Bible. Whew on that one. I do feel better about that because I felt like I was failing the test of trusting and thinking I was doing something wrong-so, I was being Job.

I would have to say that I think God allows us to be in situations where we can’t handle it and when it is beyond our strength so that we might depend on Him more!

I actually think this phrase can be dangerous and hurtful in some ways. It can also lead us to believe the lie that we can do it ourselves- that we can handle it. Which raises the question, “If we can handle anything that comes our way, then why do we need God at all?”

We need to realize that sometimes we can’t make it on our own. In my life, if it wasn’t for God, I would never have made it through the things I have and I would have no desire to. The reality is that sin and hardships happen every day of our lives.

Paul was talking about temptation- not suffering. With temptation, we have a choice, but with suffering we often don’t have a choice. When Paul pointed out that we have choices, we can run from them or we can give in and sin. I believe that God will provide a way out of those temptations and a way to escape.

When I hear about how God will never give us more than we can handle. I know for certain that God is faithful! In 1 Corinthians 10:13 it says that, “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

In moments when I feel like I can go on no longer and I get tired of fighting medical issues and problems living in this world, I have to remember that as a Christian, I should be imitating Jesus Christ and putting my faith in Him.

My dear friend Lisa has been having some difficult moments emotionally and because of her faith, we can sit, talk, cry and realize that God will never forsake her. Instead of standing up and proclaim that we can handle it alone, we need to call on Jesus. The night before Jesus was executed, He cried out in the garden, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). Jesus told His father, “This is too much for me!”

What I have learned from some of these verses and this saying is that it is OK not to be able to handle it. We can cry out to the Lord “My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death.” And when we do this, we find God—the one who, in the person of Jesus, suffers with us.

When I think of my life and all the medical diagnosis’s and life’s challenges I become aware that most definitely life will give me more than I can handle. But, I also know that God is faithful and He will be there through the pain and the problems that living in the world can bring.

A friend of mine told me a long time ago that we need to constantly depend on God. I have to remember that I need/have to depend on God and let Him have control of my life. It took me a long time to come around to this way of thinking.

When I realized a long time ago that I was giving him only 90% of my trust, things got better. I guess it is like tithing when we are told to give 10%. I was keeping that 10% instead and I needed to increase my tithing to the Lord by 90%. I needed to give 100% of my everything. There is no greater investment than investing in God. I wasn’t fully trusting God- I am now though. Peter instructed the Church to cast our fears, worries, suffering and pain on God. God loves us more than anyone or anything ever could. So why not trust Him fully? When life deals us more than we can handle, we can rest in the reality that God can handle it. I want to end this post with this simple thought or promise. When it comes to pain, depression, grief, temptations, trials, heartache and burdens, it doesn’t say it won’t be more than we can bear. Instead the Bible says it best:

“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me…for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11: 28-30)