Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 10, 2015
SYNOD OF THE LINCOLN TRAILS, ILLINOIS/INDIANA - he Synod of Lincoln Trails is committed to the development, nurture, and support of leaders. In 2014–15, we are doing this by ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 10, 2015
SYNOD OF THE LINCOLN TRAILS, ILLINOIS/INDIANA - he Synod of Lincoln Trails is committed to the development, nurture, and support of leaders. In 2014–15, we are doing this by ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
"Stuff the Bus" at FPC-Midland
Please pack something from the items on the list below into a backpack, and drop the backpack off at the "bus" in the church library, next to the elevator and gymnasium entrance.
• Boxes of Kleenex • Crayons
• Bottle of Hand Sanitizer • Colored Pencils
• Composition Notebooks • Pencil-Top Erasers
• Glue (Bottles and/or Sticks) • Scissors
• 3" x 5" Index Cards • No. 2 Pencils
• Folders with Pockets and Brads • Binders (1", 1.5", 2")
• Pink Erasers • Watercolors
• Highlighters • Plastic Pencil Boxes
• Wide-Ruled Spiral Notebooks • Pens (Black, Blue and Red)
• Wide-Ruled Notebook Paper • Pencil Bags
• Dividers • Markers
• Plastic Rulers
Thanks!
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
“Lucy,” [Aslan] said, “we must not lie here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.”
“Yes, wasn’t it a shame?” said Lucy. “I saw you all right. They wouldn’t believe me. They’re all so —” From somewhere deep inside Aslan’s body there came the faintest suggestion of a growl.
“I’m sorry,” said Lucy, who understood some of his moods. “I didn’t mean to start slanging the others. But it wasn’t my fault anyway, was it?” The Lion looked straight into her eyes.
“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “You don’t mean it was? How could I — I couldn’t have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don’t look at me like that . . . oh well, I suppose I could. Yes, and I wouldn’t have been alone, I know, not if I was with you. But what would have been the good?”
Aslan said nothing.
“You mean,” said Lucy rather faintly, “that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?”
“To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
“Oh dear,” said Lucy.
“But anyone can find out what will happen,” said Aslan. “If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.”
• From Prince Caspian
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 9, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF WINNEBAGO, WISCONSIN - “This training is providing me with ways to lead and prod in a more prophetic and challenging way.” So said Rev. Tom Willadsen at the conclusion of three full days of stewardship training. Yep, stewardship! Willadsen, pastor of First Presbyterian in Oshkosh, went on to say that the training—Creating Congregational Cultures of Generosity, a program of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving—“has helped the congregation I serve see the connection between what they put in the offering plate and how the church is present in the world as the body of Christ. And it has helped us be less timid about sharing the good news!” ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
In the News ... "Macedonia Baptist Church celebrates 85 years"
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| Courtesy Photo |
Meagan Lee Buck, Reporter
Midland Reporter-Telegram
MIDLAND, TEXAS - After visiting with several longtime members of Macedonia Baptist Church, one word comes to mind: family.
“I think that is one of the greatest compliments that can be paid to Macedonia is the family that we are,” said the Rev. Woodrow Bailey III. “It’s not anything that we’re so intentional about; it’s just who we are" ...
• read the rest of this MRT story
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the difficulties of moving and on the lessons moving teaches us — “We must ‘sit light’ not only to life itself but to all its phases. The useless word is ‘Encore!”
21 November 1962
I think I share, to excess, your feeling about a move. By nature I demand from the arrangements of this world just that permanence which God has expressly refused to give them. It is not merely the nuisance and expense of any big change in one’s way of life that I dread. It is also the psychological uprooting and the feeling—to me, as to you, intensely unwelcome—of having ended a chapter. One more portion of oneself slipping away into the past! I would like everything to be immemorial—to have the same old horizons, the same garden, the same smells and sounds, always there, changeless. The old wine is to me always better. That is, I desire the ‘abiding city’ [Hebrews 13:14] where I well know it is not and ought not to be found. I suppose all these changes should prepare us for the far greater change which has drawn nearer ever since I began this letter. We must ‘sit light’ not only to life itself but to all its phases. The useless word is ‘Encore!’
• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 8, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF THE TWIN-CITIES AREA, WISCONSIN/MINNESOTA - On a Sunday afternoon in August 2002—just a few hours after morning worship services—the walls of Andrew-Riverside Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis crumbled to the ground. It was not totally unexpected; architects had warned the session that the structure was deteriorating.
The small congregation was determined to carry on and find a way to survive. With the church property just a few blocks away from the University of Minnesota, Andrew-Riverside began worshiping at a YMCA on campus ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
"Stuff the Bus" at FPC-Midland
Please pack something from the items on the list below into a backpack, and drop the backpack off at the "bus" in the church library, next to the elevator and gymnasium entrance.
• Boxes of Kleenex • Crayons
• Bottle of Hand Sanitizer • Colored Pencils
• Composition Notebooks • Pencil-Top Erasers
• Glue (Bottles and/or Sticks) • Scissors
• 3" x 5" Index Cards • No. 2 Pencils
• Folders with Pockets and Brads • Binders (1", 1.5", 2")
• Pink Erasers • Watercolors
• Highlighters • Plastic Pencil Boxes
• Wide-Ruled Spiral Notebooks • Pens (Black, Blue and Red)
• Wide-Ruled Notebook Paper • Pencil Bags
• Dividers • Markers
• Plastic Rulers
Thanks!
In the News ... "Church leader speaks out about unity"
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| MRT Photo by James Durbin |
Staff Report
Midland Reporter-Telegram
MIDLAND, TEXAS - Members of the community gathered Wednesday at True-Lite Christian Fellowship to pray for victims of the Charleston shooting and discuss ways to unite the city.
Rev. Roy Smith of True-Lite provided his thoughts about the event, which attracted around 300 people, in a special question-and-answer ...
• read the rest of this MRT report ...
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:
What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?
• From A Grief Observed
• Compiled in A year with C.S. Lewis
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 7, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF SOUTH DAKOTA - His Way, a grassroots social media ministry developed by young adults of the Presbytery of South Dakota, offers faith community to young adults. Using social media and monthly gatherings, participants share opportunities for celebration, prayer, pursuing God’s Spirit, and mission work.
Young adults, as they transition from home and familiar church environments to new school, work, or social settings, maintain contact with others in similar situations who share a common commitment to compassionate and prophetic discipleship. The His Way community has actually extended to people of all ages from all over the world ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Monday, July 6, 2015
From ChinaAid: "Special armed police raid Guizhou house church, round up dozens gathered for Sunday worship"
The China Aid Association is a non-profit Christian organization - based in Midland, Texas - with a mission to uncover and reveal the truth about religious persecution in China, focusing especially on the unofficial church. They do this, they explain in their website, by exposing the abuses, encouraging the abused and equipping the saints to advance the kingdom of God throughout China.Special armed police raid Guizhou house church, round up dozens gathered for Sunday worship
Distributed by ChinaAid, May, 2015 ...
DAGUAN, GUIZHOU, CHINA – Dozens of special armed police and police dogs raided a Sunday worship service in southwest China’s Guizhou province last week, taking into custody dozens of the 70-80 who had gathered for the house church service, 11 of whom remained in detention days after the raid ...
• more on this story from China Aid
In the News ... "FBC cuts personnel due to budget constraints"
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| MRT File Photo |
By Rye Druzin, Reporter
Midland Reporter-Telegram
MIDLAND, TEXAS - The First Baptist Church council, in a meeting with members in a nearly full church hall Wednesday night, cited low oil prices, falling tithes and dropping membership as the main reasons for cutting $1.3 million from the current year’s fiscal budget. Thirteen positions were cut, and 10 positions have been left vacant.
The budget cuts came as the church faced a deficit of at least $925,000, according to the council’s presentation and minutes obtained from FBC’s website. Art Hobbs, vice chairman of the church council, made the hour-long presentation about the fiscal situation, saying that the staff reductions, along with other cuts, shed more than $1.3 million in costs ...
• read the rest of this MRT report ...
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
On Love
There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.
• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Words to Live By
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 6, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF PROSPECT HILLS, IOWA/NEBRASKA - W hat does compassionate and intentionally connected discipleship look like? Envision four congregations across 1,300 miles working together to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy to rebuild their homes.
In a mission partnership extending from the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast, two congregations in northwest Iowa teamed up with two in New York City to discern the best way to serve families still recovering from the storm ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the resolution to her question about joining a religious order; on the impermanence of feelings, good and bad; and on the need for the natural love in marriage to die into divine love.
23 July 1953
I think your decision ‘a rule of life, without membership’ is a good one. It is a great joy to be able to ‘feel’ God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: and these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present.
It sounds to me as if Genia had a pretty good husband on the whole. So much matrimonial misery comes to me in my mail that I feel those whose partner has no worse fault than being stupider than themselves may be said to have drawn a prize! It hardly amounts to a Problem. I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or a low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving. But no doubt Genia knows all this. It’s all quite in the ordinary run of Christian life. See I Peter iv, 12 ‘Think it not strange et cetera.’
• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 5, 2015
In 2013 Keith and his wife, Jennifer, began to wonder if God was preparing them, again, for a new challenge ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
“Please, what task, Sir?” said Jill.
“The task for which I called you and him here out of your own world.”
This puzzled Jill very much. “It’s mistaking me for someone else,” she thought. She didn’t dare to tell the Lion this, though she felt things would get into a dreadful muddle unless she did.
“Speak your thought, Human Child,” said the Lion.
“I was wondering—I mean—could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to—to Somebody—it was a name I wouldn’t know—and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open.”
“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,” said the Lion.
“Then you are Somebody, Sir?” said Jill.
“I am.”
• From The Silver Chair
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 4, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF NORTHERN WATERS, MINNESOTA/WISCONSIN/MICHIGAN - In 2010, our congregation made a momentous decision. In order to be good stewards of our downtown location and adapt to a changing ministry landscape, we tore down a beloved 118-year-old historical landmark to make way for a new facility on the same site ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Friday, July 3, 2015
From ServLife International: "167,000 People, 2 Churches"
ServLife International is a movement defined by values of God’s kingdom, not programs built around human efforts and activities. The reign and rule of God should be made apparent to every person on the planet, despite their religion, race or socioeconomic status. We believe that issues of justice are inseparable from the good news that Jesus Christ came to proclaim. ServLife exists to take the gospel of Christ and the hope of a better, more just, world to the lives of people we touch. This happens through individual contributions of time, creativity, resources and dreams.Jesus spoke often of seeds and harvest ...
Read the rest of this story ...
Find out more on our Planting Churches and Pastor Sponsorship pages.
Thank you,
From Adam Nevins
Executive Director
ServLife International Inc.
ServLife International propels reconciliation and justice by building global community to plant churches, care for children and fight poverty. Compelled by the message, life and love of Jesus Christ, we seek to care for the spiritual, physical, social, and economic areas of life in northern India and Nepal. Learn more about our latest news, featured stories, and how to get involved at servlife.org
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| Support a Pastor Our church planters spread the love of Christ in some of the most difficult environments in the world. • Support Them ... |
Sponsor a Child For only $30 per month you can help give a child food, education, care and, most importantly, hope. • Sponsor Now ... |
Fight Poverty The HOPE Fund, our micro-finance program, provides start-up funds for a small business, paving a way out of poverty for families in need. • Learn More ... |
From @FWMission ... Friday Story: "Living in the Dust"
Founded in 2001, Free Wheelchair MissionFriday Story: "Living in the Dust"
Greetings, and Happy Friday!
Many of our recipients live life on the ground, and only dream of the day that they might receive a wheelchair of their own. Gaetan’s story was very similar ...
• read the rest of this story ...
Want to take one of these wheelchairs for a test drive? During normal business hours, visit the lobby at the Texas Street entrance of First Presbyterian Church-Midland, at the northwest corner of Texas and A streets, on the west side of downtown Midland. You can give the gift of mobility. The cost of $72.00 is a bargain to us ... but it is a life-changing gift to impoverished and disabled recipients ... and there are times when your contribution will be matched, reaching not one - but TWO, and sometimes FOUR recipients. Please note on your check "Wheelchair Gift."
In the News ... "St. John’s Episcopal plans to add middle school"
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| OA Photo by Mark Sterkel |
By Ruth Campbell, Reporter
Odessa American
ODESSA, TEXAS - If all goes as planned, St. John’s Episcopal School in Odessa will add seventh and eighth grade in fall 2016, Head of School Emily McDoniel said.
In preparation, the private school is adding an extra class of fourth and fifth grade to build up the student body that will transition to middle school ...
• read the rest of this OA report ...
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
On freedom (and predestination)
It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.
Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in Words to Live By
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 3, 2015
For 14 years this comfortable pattern held. But last year, on World Communion Sunday, the two congregations worshiped together for the first time ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: A letter of correction: On spouses marrying to improve or manage one another; and on mothers-in-law interfering in the marriages of their children.
14 September 1953
I am just back from Donegal (which was heavenly) and find as usual a ghastly pile of unanswered letters, so I must be brief. The important idea of a Christian sanatorium is worth a whole letter, but I want to use this one for another subject. I hope you won’t be angry at what I’m going to say—
I think that idea of Genia’s job being to concentrate on ‘bringing out the best of Eddie’ is really rather dangerous. Wouldn’t you yourself think it sounded—well, to put it bluntly, a bit priggish, if applied to any other couple? It sounds as if the poor chap were somehow infinitely inferior.
Are you giving full weight to the very raw deal he has had in marrying a girl who has nearly always been ill? Men haven’t got your maternal instinct, you know. To find a patient where one hoped for a helpmeet is much more frustrating for the husband than for the wife. And by all I hear he has come through the test very well. But if just as she is ceasing to be a patient she were to become the self-appointed Governess or Improver—well, would any camel’s back stand that last straw? I don’t think Genia is at present inclined (or not much) to start ‘educating’ her husband. I am sure you will take care not to influence her in that direction. Because, really, you know, it would be so easy, without in the least intending it, to glide into the rôle (I shudder to write it) of the traditional home-breaking mother-in-law. All those old jokes have something behind them.
I do hope I haven’t made you an enemy for life. If I have taken too great a liberty, you have rather led me into it. And I did feel signs of danger. And don’t you think in general that a girl who has a faithful, kind, sober husband (there are so many of the other kind) whom she has promised to love, honour, and obey, had better just get on with the job? Do forgive me if I misunderstand and put the point too crudely. At any rate, my prayers will not cease.
• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 2, 2015
In 2014, however, we deviated from our normal pattern and traveled to New Jersey to help with the rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
WAW Wednesday: "Water Project Improving Life for Our Belize Friends"
Water Project Improving Life for Our Belize Friends
Hi Friends -
Last week we shared the flurry of activity going on in Belize. But, I failed to share with you one of the most important things that happened!
We received a notification from the Rural Health Educator in Southern Belize about a cholera outbreak. Some of the villagers in a Mayan Village called Crique Jute (Snail Creek) were sick ... water pumped out of the ground was discolored ... some villagers were getting their water out of the creek ... So, part of the mission team from FPC LaJolla grabbed a supply of Sawyer water filters from our warehouse and headed south to assist.
Our clean water project began as the dream of Jack Maxwell, a friend and Rotarian from Oklahoma, to see Belize as the first country - perhaps in history of the world - where everyone has access to potable water.
The Sawyer filter is amazing. It's about as big as your fist, No parts to ever replace, and can provide clean water for a family for a lifetime for less than $35. Thousands of filters were purchased due to the fundraising efforts of Rotary international.
Here's what you can do:
• Donate $35 and give an entire family clean water for a lifetime.
• Donate $3500 and rescue an entire village.
• Get your church to send a team to Belize to help with this project ... Distribute filters and Preach the good news.
Prayers for this Week:
• Praise for the groups who served in Belize in June ... may their experience continue to strengthen their local church and bring them closer to God and His call to be the hands and feet of Christ.
• Seven teams serving in Belize in the month of July! We praise God for His people...we ask for stamina, strength, and patience for our staff serving these teams!
• New churches to join us in our work in Belize and increased financial support to keep us up and running.
Blessings
TT (Tim Tam) The Word at Work
ps: Our Ministry Associate team gathers school supplies, toys, and stuffed animals through out the year ... we've discovered blankets are an ongoing need as well, so please be saving them, too. Click here to learn more about becoming a TW@W Ministry Associate, or get in touch with Tim Hagen for more information!
EDITOR'S NOTE: Speaking from my own first-hand experience - working side-by-side with Tim, Kenny and our brothers and sisters in Belize - won't you give thoughtful, prayerful consideration to supporting the efforts of Tim, the Word At Work staff and their partners? Please please fill out this Commitment Card and return it to their office!
Also, remember that you can follow The Word At Work on their Facebook page!
Invitation to Prayer: TONIGHT at True Lite
In light of the tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina, please joins us for a Community Prayer Service and Communion at True-Lite Christian Fellowship, 3001 N. A Street in Midland, on Wednesday, July 1st at 6:00 p.m. Pastor Ray Smith and Judge Rob Junnell will lead the service.
In the News ... "Minister counters complacency"
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| OA Photo by Edyta Blaszczyk |
By Bob Campbell, Reporter
Odessa American
ODESSA, TEXAS - Working as a postal carrier for 14 years, the Rev. Marcos Zuniga became interested in the ministry from meeting people on his routes and helping with their problems.
Also a homebuilder with his own company, he often returned to work, free of charge, on various tasks in their homes; and in March 2002 he and his wife Letticia started New Life Chapel in a store front at 3609 Dixie Boulevard ...
• read the rest of this OA report ...
C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading
[One of the most unpopular of the Christian virtues] is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.
Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick,’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’
So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms.
• From Mere Christianity
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook
Today in the Mission Yearbook: July 1, 2015
PRESBYTERY OF MISSOURI RIVER VALLEY, IOWA/NEBRASKA - After being brutalized, beaten, repeatedly raped, and forced to do slave labor, Naw Wah (name changed) became pregnant, but her child died. In the mountains of Burma, death is no stranger.
This 25-year-old Karen (kuh-RIN) woman is one of several hundred who have been forced into slavery by Burmese soldiers who roam the mountains. Women who refuse are killed. A Christian, Naw Wah suffered persecution because of her belief ...
• CLICK HERE to read more.
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