I just got off the phone with my brother David. He was laid off from his job in December and has been without since. He has been able to keep his small part time job at Domino's Pizza ( delivery) but due to the Unemployment Laws, he can only work there so much before they dock his unemployment $$$. ( seems Uncle Sam likes to promote people not working for a living). David has put out over 200 resumes out and only got 2 responses back. For those 2 the pay was not enough to provide for his family. His wife was a stay at home mom but now has a part time job.
He is very discouraged in the situation but his faith still seems strong. My brother is a very kind and caring man and I care deeply for him.
I know there are alot of saints who are struggling this way. Lets pray for them.

So as said in my previous post Jim Cantore along will Mike Slidell from the Weather Channel are in town due to the on-going blizzard hitting Duluth. Michaela and I decide to go down to the lake to see Jim Cantore and watch them film (we are such nerds). We got down to where they were filming and Slidell was doing the live 5 p.m. broadcast. We were standing 10 feet away, I called my grandmother in Liberty, TX to tell her to turn on the weather channel due to it being live and then told her I would all her back. THEN, OUT OF THE BLUE a 300 lbs man with no shirt and a huge MULLET ran out of no where and started dancing and singing " yeaaa snow!!!!!....yeaaaa snow!!!!!!" in front of the camera and behind Slidell and then ZOOOOOOP there went the pants!!! I looked at Michaela and she had a look of disbelief like I can't even describe! Now remember its a BLIZZARD,,,yeah,,,sub-freezing , wind gusts off Lake Superior and the snow is coming down like crazy! He quickly disappeared, I called my grandmother back and she exclaimed " what was that!?!?!?!?!?" I said "YES IT WAS DULUTH, AND NO IT WAS NOT ME!!!" I am learning that the Yankee is a strange BEAST! So all evening folks have been calling us because it seems tons of them got to see the Blizzard Streeker of the Northland.

Weather Channel sends team to Duluth to cover storm!


On Monday, Jim Cantore was in Atlanta, where the temperature was 80-plus degrees.

As he finished work he was told that a blizzard was bearing down on Duluth.

“It was, ‘Get to Duluth,’ ” said Cantore, who has become the face of the Weather Channel. “We got here [Monday night] and settled in about 9:30.”

Cantore, Mike Seidel, another on-air personality, a satellite truck from Chicago and a cameraman for Minneapolis will give live weather updates from Duluth throughout the storm. Early this morning, Cantore already was at work — looking at weather maps in a warm satellite truck before venturing out into the cold to do a live standup on the Lakewalk by Canal Park Lodge.

“We came just for you,” Cantore said. “We wanted to put Duluth on the map. It looked like a good spot.”

Actually, he said, the timing of the storm works out perfectly for the Weather Channel, with the storm predicted to hit this afternoon.

“Mike will be in the worst of it,” Cantore said. “I’ll be catching up on some much-needed sleep.”

This won’t be Cantore’s first blizzard.

“I was in Chicago earlier this year — that was pretty brutal,” he said.

After doing his live standup at 7:30 a.m., Seidel went to find a sheltered area where they can shoot later today as the wind and snow picks up. The need for shelter is driven so much by the comfort of the weathermen as by the need to protect the camera gear. If the weather knocks that out, they’re done, Cantore said.

“Like with a hurricane, there is strategy involved,” he said. “Except here there’s no jockeying for space. At a hurricane there are 4,000 TV trucks.”

Last Saturday I went ice fishing for the second time in my life. I know people back home think of ice fishing as catching these massive pike or Muskie through a large hole in the ice. The truth is ice fishing is the equivalent of sitting on a pier jigging for small crappie or bluegill but you do it with a tiny fishing pole and you look down a hole in ice and its colder than you ever wanted to be . You can use a little hut that looks some what like an outhouse or just sit on a 5 gallon bucket on the ice with no shelter. There is usually a little propane heater in the ice house it but you sitting on ice so it never really gets warm. I was using minnows that are stored in a thermal minnow bucket( foam ice chest) so they don’t freeze. After sitting on the ice for six hours …bored out of my mind and not catching a thing…I got up to get out of the ice house to tell the guy I was with that I was ready to go. When I stood up …now remember the floor is solid ice…my feet kicked out from under me I fell and hit the minnow bucket ( full of minnows) and destroyed the bucket. IT WAS RAINING MINNOWS. I was flat on my back out of breath. Now the best part was when I tried to get up. I went to put my arm behind me to prop me up and my had slipped and my arm went down the ice hole. So my coat was soaked to the shoulder. I had frozen minnow all over me and I looked more pathetic than I usually do. Yeah…ice fishing is not for me.
Lets just say I got ice induced homesickness. Oh and continue to post on the topic below if you would like! Thanks

Michaela and I working on a new study together and would like some of your thoughts. We both work in the mental health field and have often wondered how does a Church deal with members of the Lords body who suffer with mild to sever mental illness. We know there are a lot of opinions out there but we are trying to focus or study on the ones who may suffer from Schizophrenia or have bi-polar disorders where sometimes they are unable to control their behaviors without the aid of medicine. I'm not really talking about depression or anxiety disorders (which are very hard struggles don't get me wrong) , our focus is more on a larger scale of illness. I know this is not an issue that is spoken much of in the Lords work that I know of but I firmly believe these issues are among the Lords people.
So let me know your thoughts and as always scriptures will be greatly apprecitated.