GOALS - what are they?

 

I was listening to something on YouTube about business / goals today, and this was one of the points made.  I think it was one of the Brian Tracy videos, about his work but not by him, it was on some kind of channel about Motivation.

It has been the only thing keeping me going since my children were very young and I was struggling to survive on Welfare.  It was all I could do.

It was, however, strange to hear on a video about Brian Tracy (a compilation of some kind).

Years ago, I requested some materials from him.  Somewhere along the way, I received a CD that I believe I still have.  It became one of the treasures of my life.  The title was, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.  I listen to it when I feel the need to remind myself of what it shares.

Other books important through my life were:

Acres of Diamonds, by Russell Conwell, I believe.  This is a very short booklet that is so worth your time.  I think you can find copies to print out.  I have given this to many people over my lifetime.  I hope I still have my personal copy.

As A Man Thinketh, by James Allen.  You can find a lot of YouTube videos about this short book.   There are audiobooks on YouTube and in libraries.  I also found an updated version at a Barnes and Noble bookstore, which I sent to one of my sons.  I like the smaller classic edition.

I will have to look for my special collection of these kinds of books.  I have most of my belongings/books in storage boxes because of my downsizing efforts.

I have been slowly collecting notes I have about making goals and the goals I have had over time.  I am going to create a Master List again... or try to.  I have quite a lot of goals, small and large.

In some of the materials I have read or listened to, the idea of deciding on an amount of money has been important.  I have never been able to settle on any kind of amount because of my poverty and knowing there was little I could do without a decent amount of start-up funds.  I am trying to decide on an amount this time.  That will take time.  It will be beyond anything I would ever expect to receive, which is not part of the faith equation.  It could be I handicap my efforts before they begin.  I will have to think about this as I try to decide on a realistic amount to begin developing Working Together.  For my own goals, the amount would be smaller.  :-)

That is the content of my life right now.

I have also considered re-doing a challenge I did many years ago... deciding what I would do with a million dollars (I say tax-free!).  I am wondering what I would say this time.  Would it be enough?  

The government would take a lot of it for taxes and my school loans, so that is why I have to decide if it is really a whole million dollars.  (This is why I only buy lottery tickets when the prizes are very huge... there would be money left over for everything else.)

What would you buy with a million dollars?

I say most regular people will buy a new house, new car, and share with their kids and other loved ones.  After that, it becomes a personal focus... what charities they like, etc.

It's hard to separate money from all the things we want in our lives.

That why GOD tells us the choice is always between GOD and Mammon (money).

Well, that's about it for today.  Talking about the effects money has on us is depressing for me.  It reminds me of all the good things I wanted to do.

Until next time,

Deborah Martin 

Praying for specific things. Seeing what GOD does.

Gathering online is more of a challenge now.  It was my plan in the beginning to start there and organize each country's resources.  Now, I am not sure.  The internet has become the battleground for everything.  It is not a safe place.

I have thought it might be better to be our own host, not part of Yahoo or Google or any other major hosting platform.  I thought we might be able to protect ourselves better.  I'm not sure that is true.  I would need to find out.

These are things I still think about, in case GOD provides the funding for Working Together (WT) while I am still alive.

And I pray about my replacement -- someone who will protect the people of GOD through Working Together.

It seems like my life has been wasted because I haven't been able to build anything.  Then my Faith kicks in because I know GOD can do anything that He needs done, and I don't know what His Plan is.  I KNOW He wouldn't have started Working Together unless it was part of His Plan for our time.

Recently, I have been listening to a lot of Joel Osteen YouTube videos (sermons).  I think he reminds us that GOD is the One in charge.  He helps us remember GOD works in very mysterious ways to accomplish His Will in our lives and in the world.

When I started trying to build something to help Christians, we didn't face the technology we face now.  The microchip wasn't in anyone's body.  We didn't know about digital currency.  The problems we faced were not so global and frightening.  Spiritual warfare was not something I thought about.

It's hard to think about all the things that have happened in my life.  I guess I expected GOD to just provide what was needed to slowly build the places of refuge I envisioned... and felt were His leading.  It didn't work out that way.

I am now trying to make a new set of notes about all the things involved in building Working Together.  I am calling it my Prayer List.  I hope to check things off as GOD provides for them.

I have heard of others doing this.  I have attempted to start lists before.  This time is more important.  I am at the natural age for death and I am seeking GOD for what to do with Working Together.

I watched an animated story about George Muller by Torchlighters at the Vision Video channel ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7jUlzZtyEQ  ).  Muller is the man who trusted GOD for every detail of saving the orphans forced to live on the streets of his city.  

He made lists.  He recorded the dates when GOD answered prayers.  I think he also recorded what they prayed for but, right now, I don't recall all those details.  What I have always remembered about George Muller was his faith.  I don't know that my faith is that strong.

My plans for Working Together were different.  My faith was that GOD would provide the funds and I would use those to build what we would need to survive without money.  I expected to build everything using Membership funds and then other products and income sources.

Membership funds created the Tithe (10%) as a Benevolence Fund, a Reserve Fund (10%) as savings for emergencies and costs in the future year, WT financial needs (about 20%) , and various Program Funds (about 40%) for their operating expenses, and the last 20% for taxes and unexpected needs.  I have it all in my notes.  This may not be the exact percentages, but it is the general framework.  

Each program has its own breakdown.  Every part of Working Together was planned to create its own products and services to create more income to build itself.

All Working Together wages would be equal, paid by the hour.  In other countries, wages would be figured on the area housing and food costs.  Either 30% housing or 20%food using full-time wages as the base.  

People would keep their own incomes outside of Working Together.  WT wages are meant to support the individuals and families that are part of its workforce, members and non-members, equally.

We would build the houses and other spaces for each community, we would grow our food, and these would be part of the wages we paid. 

An example: the charge for housing and utilities would be 30% of full-time wages, food is figured at 20% of full-time wages.  This is as far as I could plan.  The work would be all the tasks we need to survive as a community.

There are a lot more details in my planning notes.  It wasn't meant to be a commune, more like a regular community.  People keep their own incomes, if they have any, and WT wages are equal because we are One Body but have different tasks within the Body of Christ.

Someone in Washington state set the equal wages by a yearly amount.  I felt it was important to set it at an hourly amount. 

Everything would not belong to everyone, but everything would be used to help as many as GOD allowed.

I wonder if we have time to build anything.

Memorial Day

Sunshine today.

I think I will write this tomorrow.

Enjoy your life.  Do good things.  

Deb

Who is the Body of Christ?

 

This has been a difficult week.  I am seeking GOD for direction about WT and my senior years.

Today I listened to a LOT of videos about Christian business.  Faith Driven Entrepreneur (.org) is one organization I get emails from, C12 (joinc12.com) is another.  C12 is a peer group organization for very successful (wealthy) Christian businesspeople.  I think Faith Driven Entrepreneur is for start-ups and beyond.  

Faith Driven Entrepreneur has a lot of short videos and series of videos on YouTube about different topics.  I was watching them today.  I wanted to hear what the Christian view sounded like.  I was looking for information that might help me find the answers to my prayers.

I have been waiting on GOD to provide the funding for Working Together (WT) for many years.  Watching these videos was hard.  I went through a lot of difficult experiences in the early years as I searched for GOD's source for financing.  I can't even remember all the things I tried in my efforts to make enough money to start WT.  I finally stopped pushing myself into the process and decided that GOD would have to provide it for me to know what I could do.  It has always been His Ministry, and my only purpose was to help other Christians survive life without money.  

I still kept trying to increase my income - for my own life and for WT start-up costs - but not aggressively, like the people I watched in the videos.  Today I was trying to decide why GOD would put this important effort into my heart and life.  I am not like them.  I guess I always thought of myself as the budget person. Because of my poverty, I saw my work as taking  what GOD provided and making it stretch as far as it possibly could.  That was what my life was about.  Trying to survive on very little money.  I assumed that was what the struggle would be like when the End Times and the Antichrist were a reality. 

I knew Missions.  Homelessness.  Food boxes.  Meal outreaches.  Clothing programs.  Housing programs.  Government programs.  Church programs.  Anything that was related to poverty and surviving.

I learned about business options.  

I remember thinking, while watching these videos, about how different our world will be if the economy collapses.  Many references were made to the verse or verses that say GOD will provide in hard times. I think the speakers said "famines."  I wondered what that would look like for all the Christians and Jews in the world.  

We are heading into serious food issues.  We already have drought issues.  Wars are increasing.  Families and ministries are struggling to survive.  Governments are struggling to survive.  GOD doesn't promise we won't suffer.

I recently responded to a major ministry that GOD has only promised food and clothes, not shelter.  I am wondering what that will look like.  The shock of being a Christian and being homeless in my own life was part of my effort to create Working Together.  We think GOD will provide the things we think are basic, but our expectations are not the same as GOD's view of providing.

I don't remember really suffering a need for food, so I think my willingness to reach out to charities I discovered was part of GOD's provision for us (myself and my children).  I know there are many Christians who will avoid this path.  Is that pride?  I am not sure.  I just know it was the only way we were able to eat, to reach the next allotment of cash and food benefits.  

We always had clothes, too.  We got free clothes at many places when we really needed them.  Christian ministries and other places.  GOD was faithful.

But we didn't always have shelter.

This is important.

In my efforts for Working Together, I prayed and prayed and prayed over what the needs would be in our future.  

As the years passed, I have kept praying and looking for GOD's answers about the hard times ahead, before the Antichrist rises and decides to kill us.  I am not sure what GOD will do now.  I am just doing my best to seek answers from Him and keep Working Together alive as a possible force to help us.

I thought every Christian would become a member of Working Together.  Then I realized that Working Together is just another Christian organization in the fight for dollars.  I have still been waiting for GOD to provide.  It seems important, as long as I am still alive, to do that.

I wish I could be better at selling, making money, building a place for Christians to find help when persecution rises and money goes away.  I am what I am.  There must be a reason why GOD gave me this vision.  I just don't know what it is.

We are ALL the Body of Christ... together.  I hope we find a way to help protect and care for each other in all of our communities before it is too late.

Thinking about the future again... where are we heading?

I am getting ready to return some of the DVDs I checked out ot the local library so I watched two of them again today.  WHAT THE HEATLTH and NO SAFE SPACES.  It was hard to view all those details again.  I may watch them again tomorrow to make sure I remember them.

I also watched another DVD for the first time.  It was called DEFINING US.  I thought it was about New York City education systems, but I later realized some of the stories were about Los Angeles.  I don't know if there were other locations included.  I won't watch it over again so you will have to watch it to find out.  :-)  

The copyright year was 2022.  It included some of the recent social unrest over the murders of black men by police (George Floyd), and general references to the effects of poverty and inner cities on the people who have to live in them.  It also shared some of the efforts schools in these difficult areas are making to change the futures of the kids who go to their schools.  Many school officials were featured, giving comments on what their kids need and how their efforts were reaching them.  It was good to see their success stories.

Education is so essential to building a better life.  Our economy is struggling and priorities in government spending are going to get even more difficult.  Criminals tend to take the most funding and get prioritized over other important programs because they represent a safety issue.  I think education will need to get more parent involved, but that is also something poor neighborhoods can't always do.

I wondered how all our government spending would change if we went to just ONE TAX, my view on the tax subject.  

If property taxes went away, how would it change the issue of funding...

The main issue in education is that school funding is attached to neighborhood property taxes.  Rich neighborhoods have better schools because of that fact.  Poor neighborhoods have little funding because of this property tax connection.

Per child statewide is my view.

Taxes are a huge problem in our country now.  The government misspends them and then raises the amounts or creates new taxes.  People and businesses are being crushed by the burdens taxes bring to them.  It's really a mess.

I wonder what will happen in the near and far future.  Socialism isn't going to solve the problem.

I better stop here or I will go on and on about this issue.

I watched a YouTube sermon by John MacArthur on the Antichrist over the weekend.  It was interesting to hear what was included.  It has inspired me to try to study the topic in my Bible again.  I hope to share the differences I see and how our world is becoming what the Bible warns us about. 

The hardest issue is the Rapture idea that seems to have taken over.  I don't know how it happened, it just seems like people want it to be true.  The Antichrist is how we will be missing from the wrath of GOD, not the Rapture.

I hope I can find a way to explain what I discovered so long ago and built Working Together for us to survive together as long as possible.

I really wish I was a better person to do this job, but it is what my life is about.  Whatever happens, I am trying my best with the resources I have... which is little.  Pray that GOD will help us.  Thank you for any prayers you lift up for Working Together, me, and all the Christians who need help.

In Christ,

Deborah Martin

https://work2gather.us

Getting to the next day.

Sorry I'm late posting again.  

I'm working on it.  :-)  Time just gets away from me.  I get tired, finish something, and then just go to bed as fast as I can.  This is how my journaling mode goes.  I have been debating whether to get more organized and write out my posts before the deadline.  (Mon/Thurs right now)  I don't seem to be able to do that.  I tend to share what is happening at the moment.  If I ever get to travel, I was going to share my daily adventures.  With photos.  :-)  We will have to see what GOD provides for the future.

I watched one of my library DVDs last night.  One about the land of Israel.  It was only about one hour long and mostly showed overhead shots of various locations in Israel, with a narrator describing some of them.  I have never been to Israel so it was nice to see.  It was filmed a long time ago so nothing about all the conflicts/war.  It did show the difference between holy sites of Israel, Christians, and Muslims.  I would be afraid to travel there right now, but it would be nice to have someone show you around all the important biblical spaces.

Tonight, I will watch a DVD about Africa, the Serengeti.  I love the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya.  I also want to visit some other places I have discovered exist around Africa - waterfalls, the lake that once looked like a heart on a map, and more.  I would need a great guide for that trip also.

New York City is on my USA list.  And more of Washington, DC.  Houston, TX.  Maine coastline.  I hope I stay healthy enough to travel for a while.

I have been thinking about obituaries.  I see them whenever I go through my local paper.  I don't know what would be said about me.  I can't even think of what I would say about me.  I may have to try writing one and see what I come up with.

Thinking about the life we have lived, in the world's terms, is pretty sad if you haven't conquered the goals that count to the world.  Major achievements, wealth, education, and things you might read in a newspaper.  

I can't even cite Working Together as a success.  It is still in limbo.

I guess I could say, "She trusted God."  Will that be enough?

I will end here.  What would your obituary be like?

In Christ,

Deborah Martin

work2gather.us

How do we disagree without violence?

I got a new library card last week and came home with 12 DVDs to watch.  They were mostly documentaries.  

One was from Prager U - called SAFE SPACES.  It came out in 2020 but I was never able to see it.  I grabbed it up when I found it at the library.

I plan to watch it again to see more of the details, but I have to say I was shocked by the examples they shared about reactions to simply speaking on college campuses.  

I wanted to go to college since I was a teen.  It took me many years to start the process, and I never made it to an official graduation.  I kept trying, but never found my way to the end.  I have about three of the four years done.  I'm not sure I could remember what I learned in all those classes after all this time.  I think it was around 1980 that I left the University of Oregon, but I did try again in about 2004 at Portland State University - one term.

I wanted to share that to let you know I have seen college and university campuses as an older person...and liberal climates.

It seems our "conversations" are getting more and more violent.  I think violence is a way to silence people, keep anyone from speaking, controlling the topic, etc.  I suppose it is Domestic Violence in community form.

Some of the examples in that DVD (I hope it isn't something I remember from one of the other videos I watched, but I don't think so because of the topic in my memory.) was the violent LGBT group forcing a college girl to make a statement from a paper on video.  The girl was frightened.  I hate to think what was done to make her do this.  It doesn't seem much different than a prisoner of war being forced to make a statement for publication to news agencies.

I would not call this winning anything.

We are becoming a police state, a dictatorship, a country ruled by violence.  All the damage that is done hurts all of us.  It costs money to repair.  Some of the damage can never be fixed.  People are hurt or killed.  None of this says we are a free country.

I wish I understood the motives behind all this force.  I don't think it is about LGBT rights.  I think it is something bigger, more hidden.  Young people are so easy to manipulate.  They don't have the ability to understand the deeper issues behind those "leading" them into actions they think are helping others.

I see the prophecies of the Bible becoming our reality.  

I cringe at all these issues because they say a lot about us, about where our nation is heading, about what the future will become.  Violence controls people.  Fear controls people. Freedom is about everyone's rights, not just those who use violence to force themselves on the rights of others.

I also think about all the strains our nation is under.  Economic pressures are making it hard to keep living as if we are the richest nation.  It is costing jobs, houses, cars, education, fun.  We are becoming afraid.  Fear doesn't create good solutions.

Saving America is on my mind too.  

I don't see many real solutions being created.  Actions that will keep us from bankruptcy.  We can't seem to find solutions that are for America - they are all about the political parties and what they want.

The government is looking for income.  Taxes, fees, tolls, fines, and whatever else it can get.  The government needs money to survive as much as we do, the people who pay the charges they create for us to help them survive.  I doubt Obamacare was about us.  It was a way to help reduce the medical costs the government might have to pay, and a way to move toward government control of medical services.

The Great Depression is all we have as a historical perspective of economic collapse.  I can't imagine living through that kind of event, especially now, in my senior years.  How can we find a way to avoid it?  Some say it's too late to fix this economic collapse.  What will we do then?  

Violence doesn't help.  People who are afraid try to find someone to blame and someone to fix the problem.  People who are afraid get violent - or are easier to move in that direction.  I don't want to live in the kind of country that I saw in SAFE SPACES.  How can we stop this way of "solving problems?"

PLEASE, let me know what you think is a better way.

The Future.

 

I guess prayer is on my mind.

This is a statement I made designs for many years ago. This design is from my Canva account.  I want to make more designs for this statement because it is an important thought.

It is about how GOD knows what we will be in the future, our value in His eyes, our place in His Plan, our meaning in this life.

Poverty and homelessness seem to make people into "less than" human beings.  Addictions, too.  I suppose a lot of things lead us to be judged as less than society would like us to be.  They don't tell what we might become one day. 

Money is a big reason some are not considered as good as others.  The Bible tells us we must choose between GOD and Money.  And I can see how all of our choices end up at this fork in the road.  As our survival needs get more serious, the value of money will rise in our minds.  

I listened to a State of the County speech tonight.  Where I live is one of the over 50 cities in the US that is living beyond its means.  I shared that in my last post, I think.  So, I made a point to listen to it. 

I didn't hear anything about the dangerous money issues we face, only about all the programs that are desired and in progress. Lots of general thoughts and praises for those involved.  None of these things tell me if the government is going to survive, or how.  And what will happen to all the people who live here? 

I digress. 

I guess the idea is that GOD knows our value before we do.  

My life has been involved in so many of the issues we hear are less than, but I am glad that I have lived.  Even though it has been a hard life, that others think I have no value, that my life was a mistake.

In GOD's eyes, I have a purpose.  

I pray for the souls of others.  This is another place where what we see now is not what we could become in the future.

Unborn children are also painted in words that give them no meaning, no purpose, no right to live.  We don't know what their future could become, but GOD does.

I filled my garden containers with soil today, and then planted the veggies I want to grow.  I hope I will have a good harvest, but I don't know if I will.

Life is filled with a lot of plans, goals, struggles, happiness, misery and joy.  I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but God does.  

America - Election 2024

This week I have been thinking about all the money issues we face as individuals, as a nation, and as a global economy now.  

Today I decided to go shopping to get out of the house and then watched my budget get destroyed for this month.  It was a reminder for me about government budgets.  I have to do without for the rest of the month when I make a mistake with my money, the government seems to print more money when they overspend - which is like using a credit card and causes inflation.  

This is the crisis we face.  It seems to be the same cycle major civilizations in history have faced and lost over and over again.  We don't seem to learn not to do this path.

I have been watching a lot of videos at YouTube on government budgets, spending, and survival.  

• One highlighted how the government manipulates the statistics they use to make us think everything is just fine.  I have known this was happening but had no way to prove it.  Unemployment and jobs is just one example.  (Noted below.)
• One video was on how the government manipulated new job creation and unemployment.  It seems that when an unemployed person gets a part-time job of any kind they are removed from the public statistic on unemployment and may be moved to the list of underemployed people who never get counted for the public statistic.  People who have been unemployed for five years are also dropped from the counting process.  These people are considered not looking for work.  --  This means many people are not counted so we don't really know how bad the situation is.  
• One video was on how over fifty major US cities spend more than they take in through taxes.  This puts them in danger of bankruptcy, but on the way to bankruptcy are all the social problems not having money creates.  (Like trash pick-up and police/courts/jails and transportation and libraries and public healthcare and any other services provided by the government.)  The list of cities included the city where I live, Los Angeles and San Franciso areas, Chicago, New York, and Houston.
• One video was about the gold standard.  I did discover one interesting perspective from this one.  I always thought people were promoting gold and silver purchases as a simple way of prepping.  This video said governments all over the world are buying up gold to prepare for a new financial system after the collapse of what exists now... to have funds when they start over, when gold returns as the foundation of money. 

There were more videos than this, but it would take too long to share every important detail.  The main idea was our nation, and other nations, are in trouble.

===========

Who we elect as President this year will be the man behind saving our country from financial collapse, or leading us through it.  We have to choose, either Trump or Biden, unless something changes our options between now and then. 

Every election will matter.

I keep wondering what GOD is trying to tell us.

If you know, please share it with me in the comments.

In Christ,

Deborah Martin

https://work2gather.us

What the government does.

We seem to believe the government is really interested in our lives, but are they?  Everything changes when the government is the one trying to survive.

I watched a video titled TOXIC FARMING tonight.  It was from last year, I think YouTube said it was a year old, but the person I am thinking of from the video (Jason Grostic) said his farm/ranch destruction by the government started the previous November.  I assume that meant 2022.  

By the end of the Vice News report, Mr. Grostic's five-year effort to create a successful healthy meat business was gone and his cattle were going to be destroyed by the government.

The Grostic property was the only one the government decided to test - both land and animals - for PFAS contamination even though the government knew many other agricultural properties had the same problem.  They all used EPA approved, free, wastewater treatment discards as fertilizer.  Some properties are still using the treatment plant waste as fertilizer.  All the other farms/ranches are still able to sell their food products because they were not tested for the same contamination.  

I am assuming the government is protecting itself.  This is what the government does.

We will not know why this was done to one family.  

If the government tested all of the affected properties, it would have deeply affected the entire State's income at many levels.  There are a lot of associated costs to any government action of this kind.  

It could have been a personal attack by a government employee, or someone associated with any government representative.  Mr. Grostic was a rising business and had worked very hard to reach that level.

There is just no way to know.

I tried to find out what happened after the video first aired but the website for Gostic Cattle Company was gone, it had a Hotmail address (which I will try to see if it is still valid), and the last post at the Facebook link was when the video aired.  I imagine their lives were devastated by the loss of their property and everything they had built.  I was hoping to find they moved to a better property and started again.  That would require a lot of money.  I don't think the government pays for the things it destroys.

I wanted to share this because our lives are not the same as they were in the past.  We cannot depend on the government.  And we have to realize that everything in our lives depends on the morality of the people in it. 

This is just one story.  I have seen and read about many others.  I have experienced devastation in my own life.  We have to find a way through things like this.  Together.  As Christians. 

I don't know if the Grostics are Christians, but they seemed like a good family.  I hope they found a way to a new future.

In Christ,

Deborah Martin

work2gather.us