Traveling Mercies Ministry

Amongst all the yakking about assault rifles is the media implication that assault rifles are extremely powerful guns that make huge holes in people. That is not the case. The AR-15 rifles fire a 22 caliber round that was designed to be small and lightweight so a soldier could carry more ammo. Hunting rifles fire larger, more powerful cartridges that are intended to drop a moose or bear with one s hot. I wouldn't try to bear hunt with an AR-15 - it's too small. From the time of the Civil War through the Korean war, soldiers carried rifles that fired really big cartridges which were lethal beyond 200 yards (one shot, one kill). Beginning with the Vietnam war the AR-15/M-16 weapons were used for close combat, spraying lots of lead quickly. Most of our Congressmen know this, but our president, who has never been in the military apparently does not. The reason the original assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, was that is was ineffective. Be informed - do not su...

Monday, and I am packing up to leave Detroit and head for Minnesota. After spending a week in the Detroit area, my impression is considerably more favorable than you might expect. Suburban Detroit is upscale with large green areas. Downtown is cleaner and better looking than you may have heard. The city is suffering a serious lack of money, and is close to bankrupt. Nevertheless, they have great museums and summer activities. People who come here temporarily, tend to stay permanently. Many people questioned why I wanted to visit Detroit when I announced my plans to come here. I am a car buff, and I wanted to visit the auto museums. You will find pictures of my travels on Facebook here - http://www.facebook.com/james.houchens.

In February, I went on my third trip to Israel with a group of Pastors, sponsored by NET Travel (Near East Travel - www.netours.com ). Net is owned by Palestinian Christians, and has been in business since 1964. They did a great job of showing many more things than I saw on my previous two trips. We traveled from Galilee through Samaria, stopping to drink water from Jacob’s well. Our Palestinian hosts were gracious and friendly, and we had no problems in our several passages through security checkpoints. At this time, I see no issues for Americans to travel within the Palestinian territories. Unlike most tour groups, we spent an entire day in Bethlehem. Again, we enjoyed eating lunch in Arab restaurants, who serve very tasty food. NET also offers an itinerary through the NEGEV desert which gives you the opportunity to see the light show at Masada in the evening. NET owns 8 hotels and 30 tour buses. They coordinated our itinerary through MTS travel here in the United States – www.mtstra...

On Saturday, I attended the annual meeting of the University of Minnesota Alumni Association in Naples, FL. Every year the University brings some of the brightest and best researchers to report on their technology. The keynote speaker was Dr. John Wagner, Professor of Pediatrics, Director of the Division of Hematology-Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Co-Director of the Center for Translational Medicine, School of Medicine. As a pediatrician, Dr. Wagner has specialized in debilitating diseases of children. His work with adult stem cells has produced spectacular results in curing Leukemia and some other diseases that I can't pronounce. He then turned his efforts to diseases that are either incurable or existing treatments are inadequate. He showed pictures of children with these diseases that were revolting. Conventional treatment would call for strong chemotherapy, which would destroy the immune system, then bone marrow transplant to rebuild the immune system - ofte...

Saturday (1/8/11), I attended the Mona Vie RVL (Reveal) launch meeting in Orlando. The conference was fun. Brig Hart, who is the poster boy for Mona Vie, preached for quite a while. He said what he knows he learned from Oral Roberts, so maybe he went to ORU. Brig and his wife have made millions from Mona Vie, so spend all of their time helping others to get started in home-based business. See http://www.brighart.com/. He said there has been 150 millionaires made by Mona Vie since the company started 6 years ago. The 4 patents they applied for were issued in September, so now anybody processing and selling Acai berry juice will have to pay Mona Vie a royalty. Acai fruit comes from Brazil, so they set up a charitable foundation in Brazil called the MORE Project. The head of it spoke for a while, and had a 16 year old girl with him who was saved from abject poverty through MORE. She has a great singing voice, and has received a recording contract through a Mona Vie Distributor who is a pr...

I tried to put together a report on the Global Celebration Conference I have been attending the last two week, and it is hard to condense so much down to something manageable. Sponsor of this conference series is Georgian Banov (http://www.globalcelebration.com/). He was a communist in Bulgaria 30 years ago. He fled Bulgaria, and landed in the U.S., where he got saved. He is an accomplished musician, and has won a Dove award for his music. He married an American woman, who was a Lutheran from Minneapolis. She got filled with the Holy Ghost at John Arnott's Church in 1995, and has never been the same since. She went from being a wimpy Christian to super bold. Georgian claims she is a prophet. She spoke at one of the conference sessions (day session are mostly women attendees) and her style is over the top. I have the DVD if you want to see what I mean. Anyway, since 1995, they have traveled all over the world, ministering in places "where they were not invited" as they put...

I just attended the "Love and Respect" conference at Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale - not to fix my marriage (I am a widower), but to gather information for marriage counseling. The conference is based on Dr. Emerson Eggerich's book by the same title see his website for more information - http://www.loveandrespect.com His teaching is founded on the Scripture in Ephesians 5:25-33. Why does God command men to love their wives, but command wives to respect their husbands? Why bot tell both to both love and respect? Because God is not into redundancy. Women were designed by God to love, that's what they do. Their most fundamental need is for love. God commands them to respect, because it is not in their nature. Men, on the other hand, were designed to provide and protect. Their most fundamental need is for respect, so God commands them to love, because it is not in their nature. Women want love, and when they don't get it, they respond with disrespect - nagging, compla...