Satyanandam ‘Sathish’ Perumalla has baptized, as of this writing, 212 pastors in Jesus name, and the total keeps on climbing…

Photos at:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14158&id=100000109972221&op=6

Head & Heart Ministers’ Meeting-Bangalore just ended successfully, people learning baptism and how to teach Scripture overviews.

India, Orissa state:
During 2008, persecutors murdered more than 500 Christians, injured thousands more, burned down homes of thousands more.

In recent months, herds of wild elephants started storming villages home to some of the worst persecutors. In one village where in 2008 August rioters looted and then destroyed Christians’ homes, while Christians fled for their lives, now, exactly one year later, at the same time of day, a herd of wild elephants emerged from surrounding jungle, and the persecutors now ran for their lives.

The elephants kicked off festivities by first smashing up a rock-crushing machine owned by a persecution leader. Then, in a kind of progressive dinner, then destroyed his house and farms. This felt so good that, not wanting to stop while they were ahead, they demolished other non-Christian homes and gardens, leaving Christian homes untouched.

People ran to the police station to report. Policemen in a jeep trying to drive the herd away were attacked and the police barely escaped.

The elephants have, as of 2009 September, destroyed more than 700 houses in 30 villages, killed five people. Nobody in this area ever saw or imagined a wild elephant herd doing this. These elephants behave unusually: smaller elephants enter a village first, scout the community, rejoin the larger herd, then larger elephants follow and do the heavy work.

Restoration India Mission says, ‘We think that it might have something to do with avenging the blood of martyrs. In fact, the fear of God has fallen on the local people, who have labeled these elephants, “Christian elephants”.’

Morale: ‘Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

From:  Stanley Scism

Washington: President Barack Obama has hit the road to push a new $4.35 billion grant programme to encourage American schools to develop internationally competitive standards to let its students take on “folks in Beijing and Bangalore.”

The “Race to the Top” fund is one of the largest federal investments in school reform in US history, Obama said on a trip to Wisconsin Wednesday. It is being financed with money made available through the economic stimulus plan enacted in February.

“We’re putting over $4 billion on the table … but we’re not just handing it out to states because they want it,” Obama told an audience at a Wisconsin public charter school making it clear that the grants will go to only those “committed to real change in the way you educate your kids.”

“So, a race to the top has begun in our schools, but the real competition will begin when states apply for the actual Race to the Top grants,” he said outlining four key reform measures that will be used to help determine a state’s eligibility for grant money.

“The first measure is whether a state is committed to setting higher standards and better assessments that prepare our children to succeed in the 21st century,” Obama said noting that 48 US states are now working to develop internationally competitive standards.

“…Internationally competitive standards because these young people are going to be growing up in an international environment where they’re competing not just against kids in Chicago or Los Angeles for jobs, but they’re competing against folks in Beijing and Bangalore,” he said.

Second, the state will need to demonstrate a commitment to policies designed to encourage the recruitment and retention of effective teachers and principals. Conversely, teachers that fail to adequately perform need to be removed, he said.

Third, it will need to design systems to measure student success. Finally, federal officials will examine whether a state is taking steps to overhaul its lowest-performing schools.

“We’ll look at whether they’re willing to remake a school from top to bottom, with new leaders and a new way of teaching,” Obama said. The process of doing so may include replacing a school’s staff or even closing a school and sending its students to a better one nearby, he noted.

Bush legacy remains Obama’s biggest problem

A year after his historic election, President Barack Obama sought to remind Americans on Wednesday the biggest problems he is grappling with — from the economy to the war in Afghanistan — are the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

With his approval ratings down from once-lofty levels and Tuesday’s Democratic election losses raising questions about his political clout, Obama held no special ceremony to mark the anniversary of his election as America’s first black president.

He instead traveled to Wisconsin to appear before a friendly audience in a school gymnasium and promote education as a pillar of his economic recovery efforts.

Promise of sweeping change

Obama was elected on a promise of sweeping change after eight years under Bush, but many Americans are increasingly expressing impatience that his pledge has yet to bear fruit.

He used the preamble of his speech to insist his administration had indeed had important successes and also to remind Americans of the litany of daunting challenges he inherited when he took office in January.

“One year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see,” Obama said.

But he said his administration was also confronted with a “financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a Great Depression, the worst that we’ve seen in generations.”

“We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world,” Obama added.

He said his administration had acted swiftly to save the economy from “imminent collapse.”

“While we still have a long way to go, we have made meaningful progress toward achieving that goal,” he said.

Is he over playing the blame card?

Nine months into his term, Obama’s Republican critics have accused him of overplaying the “blame card” against Bush, a Republican who left office with one of the lowest poll ratings of any modern president.

Obama has seen his own approval numbers fall to the 50 percent range from above 70 percent as he struggles to push through a healthcare overhaul, reverse massive job losses and decide whether to send more troops to an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.

He took another hit to his political standing on Tuesday when voters elected Republicans in state governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey despite his personal campaigning for the Democratic candidates. The White House denied the election losses were in any way a referendum on the president.

Agencies

Thomas Edison, asked how he felt about over 4,000 filaments tried in unsuccessful experiments to perfect the lightbulb, said, “they were not failures. They were substances that I now know would not work.”

Ronald Knox, wit, priest, detective-story writer and translator of the Bible, wrote:
There was a young man who said, “God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”

The anonymous answer came:
“Dear Sir, Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad,
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.”