Glory to God in Miss U 2011

Have you caught the Miss Universe fever? :)  I barely saw the replay but like the rest of my countrymen, I'm so proud of how Miss Philippines honored God above all, even her heart.

"If I had to change my religious beliefs, I would not marry the person that I love because the first person that I love is God who created me and I have my faith and my principles and this is what makes me who I am. And if that person loves me, he should love my God too."
- Shamcey Supsup, Philippines


And... she didn't win. It seemed like a repeat of last year when Miss Jamaica gave, in my humble opinion, the best answer in the final round.

But it's great that Miss Angola's answer also honored her Creator:


"Thank God I'm very satisfied with the way God created me and I wouldn't change a thing. I consider myself a woman endowed with inner beauty. I have acquired many wonderful principles from my family and I intend to follow these for the rest of my life."
- Leila Lopes, Angola (and Ms. Universe 2011!)


'Til next year! Indeed, the Gospel is being shared to all nations... including through international beauty pageants  ;)

When vision is given, action will follow

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "Wisdom of the Sands"

Stress makes His flowers bloom

A typical conversation nowadays:

Person-I-haven't-seen-for-some-time: You're blooming.
Teci: Oh really? But I've been under a lot of stress lately.


All glory to the God who gives us everything we need... plus plus. :)

what they hate the most

"It is the image of God reflected in you that so enrages hell,
it is this at which the demons hurl their mightiest weapons."

- William Gurnall

Top 5 Thoughts on the Miss U Top 5 :)

http://teampilipinas.info/2010/08/rps-venus-raj-4th-runner-up-in-miss.html

(Four of the five finalists in the 2010 Miss Universe pageant.
Not shown: Miss Australia, who was also voted Miss Congeniality.)

#1. Our (Philippine) candidate for Miss Universe, Maria Venus Raj, was the frontrunner in the days before the pageant! Aaaah! (Look how "far" behind eventual winner Miss Mexico Jimena Navarrete was...!

http://www.missuniverse.com/members/contestants/sortBy:rating

I'm sad yet still very proud to have been represented by Miss Raj. I'm particularly proud of the fact that she is morena --- dark-skinned --- since (as far as I know), her complexion represents that of most Filipinos. There is nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of being a dark, yes, even black, beauty. (I live in a country that glorifies whiteness, to the point that a common putdown is "she's not pretty, she's just white".) I was also pleasantly suprised to learn that, according to her mom, Miss Raj was previously called different terms of "ugly". Cheers to the late bloomers! ^_^


#2. The 2010 Miss Universe, Miss Jimena Navarrete of Mexico, looks like a grown-up version of High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella Montez). I love her red outfit! So sultry yet so classy. :) As soon as I saw her in the evening gown portion, I silently wondered how to get that "look" using my "7-in-1" red dress. :D And I love the fact that she chose red to symbolize her nation's anniversary. Well done and congratulations! :)


#3. Miss Australia, Jesinta Campbell, is full of the smiles and perkiness of youth; a fine representative of the Aussie spirit. :) loved how she unabashedly raised her arms up high when she was called to be in the Top 5. (No studied poise lessons for her!) And she simply clapped when a fellow contestant gave a great answer, even when the rest (the other "rivals"!) didn't. It's no surprise she won Miss Congeniality. I would have also wanted to give her the Miss Little Sister of the Miss Universe award. :D


#4. Miss Ukraine, Anna Poslavska, made me think of a European Ally McBeal - slash - porcelain doll. She's so fine and delicate. She said she wants to promote Ukraine as a great place to visit; I think that her presence in the Top 5 has successfully earned her country plus points already.


#5. Miss Jamaica, Yendi Phillipps, gave an excellent answer when asked about her views on the death penalty. I'm trying to look for her verbatim reply. In summary, she said she believes that there is only one Giver of Life, and that we humans do not have the right to take that gift away. Her statements were very clear, full of conviction, and truly gave glory to her God.

http://www.missuniverse.com/members/profile/468709

To honor Ms. Phillipps' honoring God, here's my Facebook status for today:

Ms. JAMAICA didn't win
because she cannot represent those who do not believe
in a Supreme Creator,
but she represented Him and the rest of the world quite well.
What will *you* do when you are given one minute to speak? :)

All glory to the Giver of Life. (And Beauty.)

real love in "artificial beauty"

There was an ordinary guy who loved an ugly girl.

Ugly-girl had complete makeover: plastic surgery, wardrobe upgrade, the works.

Ordinary-guy was willing to let former-ugly-girl marry the man of her dreams until he learned that dream-guy doesn't like artificial beauty.

Eventually, former-ugly-girl does marry dream guy. Even identical twin of former-ugly-girl also undergoes plastic surgery to be ugly no more.

As for ordinary-guy who's always loved the girl, ugly or not?

Never to be seen or heard of again.

...

...

...

...


AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!


Ugly story, artificial wisdom. (At least the ending parts...)

My fellow women: Whatever we see on the outside, and whatever we do on the outside, please please please consider the inside first. And value the inside please. Honami's (the lead character) insecurities did not disappear when she had her makeover; in fact, they were amplified, and she realized that ultimately it did not matter what she looked like on the outside.

Official character description from FujiTV:

She struggles with her ugly personality that just won't wash away. Though Honami has the inner strength of never giving up, her arrogance of doing anything for her own happiness is just too much.

And for the dream guy, also from FujiTV:

He's actually tired of high society where relationships are just superficial. Ryusui is a man who values essence more than appearance, whether it's flowers or people. Thus, he is attracted not to Honami's looks, but to her tough and bold personality: like a wild flower growing between rocks.

*cough, cough!* Alrighty then, whatever you say...Maybe Honami (and the writers?!) forgot that dream-guy only noticed her when she was already beautiful, and he initially rejected her because, in his own words, he doesn't like artificial beauty.

When dream-guy finally grew up and accepted Honami for who she is, that's well and good. But i still choose ordinary guy who's loved Honami all along. His love is the real thing.

Answering the Atheists: Why I am a Christian

ANSWERING THE ATHEISTS
A Reader's Digest version of why I am a Christian.
by Stan Guthrie
posted 11/13/2007 08:33AM
Christianity Today



[EXCERPTS:]

Remembering Bertrand Russell's famous essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian," here is a Reader's Digest version of why I am.


Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. Tinker with any one of scores of fundamental physical laws or the initial conditions of the universe — such as gravity or the cosmological constant — and we would not be here. As physicist Paul Davies has admitted, "I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact."

[teci --- (1) In fairness, this might also lead people to think that we are just accidents --- the opposite of a purpose-driven Creator! But looking at the universe's size and using math and statistics: shouldn't there be more life (outside earth)? And if life was just a random occurrence, shouldn't there be more variation to life (on earth)? So now we lean again towards concluding that life is more special than accidental.

(2) There are common bio-physico-chemical traits in living things: vertebrates all have backbones for example. Evolution reasons that this is because they have the same ancestor. Creation reasons that this is because they have the same Creator. :)

(3) If the universe just accidentally popped up, how come there are even fundamental scientific laws and constants in the first place? Did they exist before the Big Bang? Scientists and others who do not bow to the absolute God must still bow down to these absolute laws, and therein lies the opportunity for dialog. :)

(4) Even if i could now explain how water turns to clouds and snow and back again...i can't create water, in any of its forms, from scratch. Even if we could see backwards to when the universe began, we do not have the ability to do it ourselves. Should scientists lose wonder as they comprehend how the world works, or should they have greater awe over what they did not create and could barely recreate?]


Beauty: Beethoven's Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn't it interesting that we have the capacity—unlike mere animals—to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them? Truly did David say, "What is man, that you are mindful of him?"

[teci --- To elaborate: we may give scores to beauty pageant contestants but we cannot quantify beauty in the same way that we can simply count the contestants onstage. Beauty is universal and transcendent: like goodness, truth, peace. If there is a God who is universal and transcendent with characteristics like these, then it all makes sense. But if the universe "just happened", then values lose their meaning: bad is as acceptable as good, and beauty is just in the eye of the beholder. But please show me one person who chooses to eat human waste over candy!]


New Testament reliability: Compared with the handful of existing copies of seminal ancient works such as Homer's Iliad, the New Testament's provenance is far better attested. There are thousands of NT manuscripts in existence, some made within mere decades of the events they report. Scholar F. F. Bruce said, " The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar."


The trilemma: C.S. Lewis, commenting on Christ's claim to divinity, said: "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being [only] a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Jesus: Napoleon reportedly said, "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity."

====================================

Mr. Guthrie went on to elaborate on the accuracy and reliability of Scripture, the Resurrection as concluded from Jesus' missing body and the courage of those who were willing to die to proclaim it, and entire institutions and societies that have progressed when motivated by love and obedience to God. Of course, there are the individual lives that have been undeniably changed and transformed for the better, and the proof in various ways of His existence and love every day. :)

There are different strokes for different folks, so my main reasons for believing and continuing to trust God (you can tell by what i excerpted and elaborated on!) may be quite different from someone else's. But, since i know that God as He revealed Himself in the Bible is TRUE, then it is just a matter of time before "every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord of All." (Philippians 2:10)

worth the wait (and thank God, NEVER too late :) )

DADS HELP DAUGHTERS PLEDGE 'SEXUAL PURITY'
Dance this week will help drive home message about abstinence
by Stephanie Innes
Arizona Daily Star
Published: 10.07.2007

At the event, daughters sign this pledge to remain faithful to
"a lifestyle of purity that will honor God, myself, my family and my future husband."
PHOTOS BY Mamta Popat / arizona daily star

When they were 10 years old, twins Jessica and Jennifer Worcester received a gift from their dad — silver rings that they slipped on their fingers with a promise: They would remain sexually pure until marriage.

The Worcester twins, now 13, have made their abstinence vows an annual celebration. Along with their dad and other fathers and daughters, they will attend the annual Purity Ball in Tucson Friday night.

Proponents view Purity Balls as fostering healthy bonding between fathers and daughters and teaching girls and young women that they are valuable and worth waiting for.

They've heard what critics say, that the Purity Ball concept puts a girl's virginity in a metaphorical lockbox to which Daddy holds the key. But they say that's a misinterpretation of the event's purpose.

"It's not about a bunch of rules, about bolting a chastity belt on them," said the twins' father, Tom Worcester, 47, a Raytheon engineer. "That would really not be a successful approach. It's about a choice a young lady can make and stick with."

Jennifer Worcester, 13, shows the price tag on a dress to her father, Tom,
during a shopping trip to find something to wear to the Fifth Annual Purity Ball.
"It's not about a bunch of rules, about bolting a chastity belt on them.
That would really not be a successful approach," Tom Worcester says of the ball concept.

The Tucson Purity Ball, a Baptist-based event, began in 2003 and has inspired similar balls in Phoenix and Yuma. The Tucson event typically attracts 200 girls and their fathers, who wear their best dress-up clothes and sign "integrity and purity" covenants with one another.

They will each receive a white rose to place under a Christian cross, and the girls will receive silver-and-pink necklaces that say, "Worth Waiting For."

Daughters attending the Purity Ball receive a "Worth Waiting For" necklace.

"It's making a commitment, and they make it like a prom," said Jennifer, a student at Mountain Vista School.

"You are saving yourself until marriage — waiting for the right man to give yourself to," added Jessica, who attends Pusch Ridge Christian Academy.

Girls pledge sexual purity to themselves, God, their families and their future husbands. Dads vow to be men of accountability and God as they "lead, guide, protect and pray" over their daughters.

Though she can recall abstinence-only dances going back to the '80s, Abstinence Clearinghouse president Leslee Unruh traces the beginnings of the current Purity Ball movement to Colorado Springs, Colo., where parents Lisa and Randy Wilson first held a ball in 1999.

Unruh estimates 1,300 Purity Ball events have been held in the United States during the past year, and she says enthusiasm is growing. While Wilson's event, like the Tucson Purity Ball, is faith-based, most around the country are secular and funded with federal abstinence-only dollars, she said.

Some boys are getting their own events. Unruh says more and more "Knight to Remember" purity events for moms and sons are taking place.

"Where in our culture is the father exalted? The father is a buffoon. He's ridiculed, mocked, made the fool in the media," said Randy Wilson, a former pastor now with the Family Research Council.

"(But) girls whose fathers are in their lives are less likely to be promiscuous, get depressed, have thoughts of suicide. We believe a girl's identity and self-worth comes from the father.

"If the father is not there," Wilson added, "she will wander outside the home and look for the answer to whether she is beautiful and worthy of being pursued. She will be devoured."

Girls must be at least 10 to attend Tucson's Purity Ball. Most attendees are in their teens, but some young women in their 20s also take part.

Tucson native Jennifer Robison, a 24-year-old graphic designer in Phoenix, will drive to Tucson Friday to attend the ball with her father, Rod, who is a vice president of Family Life Radio in Tucson.

"Being 24 and an unmarried virgin is obviously rare," said Jennifer. "I'm guarding my heart and my body, and I want to be a role model for the younger girls."

From that standpoint, said Rod Robison, "she's pretty countercultural. But we've never put pressure on her in that way."
He and Jennifer, who is the eldest of five, have always had a close relationship, one that has been strengthened by "date nights" when the two of them go to dinner or a movie together.

When Jennifer was younger, the pair talked about subjects like how to be friends with boys.

"I have no qualms about my daughter understanding all options when it comes to sexual education, as long as it's within the context of knowing that the best option for not having her heart torn apart is abstinence," Rod Robison said.

Jennifer said her Christian faith has fueled her commitment, and she's not shy about her chastity. She sometimes wears a T-shirt that says "Virgins are Hot."

As she's grown older her decision has been reinforced by what she's learned from friends and acquaintances. Young women who didn't feel loved by their fathers will often seek attention from other men in their lives, and that can lead to problems, she said.

"Dads have a kind of practical wisdom. They can provide us with that sense of male protectiveness and leadership we need, versus trying to find it somewhere else," she said.

The first time Christie Raaum's dad invited her to the local Purity Ball she was 12 years old and still into Barbies and princesses. She loved the idea of a ball and bought a floor-length dress. Now a 14-year-old eighth-grader at Tucson Country Day School, Christie is about to attend her third event.

"I want her to pick the kind of man who treats her the way I did," said her father, Randy Raaum, 40, who is pastor of Pima Street Baptist Church.

Christie and her dad also go on date nights. Often they will go to dinner and a movie. Other times they just go to the grocery store or the hardware store.

Staying pure until marriage doesn't seem like it will be difficult, says Christie, though she's not even sure she'll get married at all.

"I have too many things I want to do — NASCAR driver, author, oceanographer, Egyptologist — I'm pretty independent," she said.

She added one more thought: "Without my dad, I don't know where I'd be."

Jennifer Worcester, 13, left, holds up a gown that might be just the one for the Purity Ball
she plans to attend this week with her twin sister, Jessica, at right.
Kim Worcester, the girls' mom, helps with dress selection at Macy's in the Tucson Mall.

Gospel Supplies in Tucson, where the Worcester girls found their purity rings, has several items related to purity, one of the most popular being a book titled "The Princess and the Kiss: A Story of God's Gift of Purity." In the book, God gives a young girl the gift of a kiss, which her parents keep in a safe. The girl learns that the kiss is a valuable gift, and she must decide whether to keep it or give it away.

The Worcester twins don't watch much mainstream television, though they enjoy reruns of "Gilmore Girls" and "Seventh Heaven." They like contemporary Christian singer Rebecca St. James, who is passionate about sexual purity. Recently the twins have become involved in "Secret Keeper Girl," a Bible-based program that teaches girls not only about purity, but the power of modest dressing and inner beauty.

The Worcester twins' eldest sister, Ashley Ellingson, is organizing this year's Purity Ball, part of her job as development coordinator for Arizona Baptist Children's Services, which is hosting the event.

Ellingson, who is 22, says she remained pure until her wedding three years ago.

During the past year she's had media calls about the ball from all over the world.

"It's obviously not something our society is used to," she said. "It's so abnormal that I get calls about it all the time. I think people are curious. But what does that say about our culture?"

New Life Pregnancy Center, a ministry of Arizona Baptist Children's Services that advocates adoption over abortion, sees girls as young as 12 and 13 for pregnancy testing, and sometimes the tests are positive, she said, explaining why 10 is not too young to understand the Purity Ball.

Ellingson said she believes premarital sex leads to a whole host of problems for young women, among them poor self-esteem, a risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.

But she added that girls who have had sex can always start anew and make purity pledges.

"To me, it's not about how many girls kept the commitment. This is important no matter what. It's still worth it to try," she said. "We are encouraging people to make healthy choices. STDs, teen pregnancies, those things are not good."

Tom Worcester jokes that any guy responsible for his daughters' breaking their purity promise will be buried in his backyard. Speaking more seriously, he said people make mistakes, and nothing would change his love or commitment to his children.

Randy Raaum, who has five daughters, puts it this way: "Even if they do break the promise, how could there possibly be a downside to having a close relationship with family members?"

On StarNet: Watch a slide show about the dance at http://www.azstarnet.com/slideshows.

● Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at 573-4134 or at sinnes@azstarnet.com.

not just a pop song, 11: borrowed heaven

"Borrowed Heaven"
by The Corrs

(see concert video with Andrea's explanation)

All beauty all fade away, borrowed
All moonlight, return today, borrowed
All sunrise all shooting stars, borrowed
All earth bound bare feet in day
You know we're standing on

Borrowed borrowed heaven
Borrowed borrowed heaven

All heartache all rivers cried, borrowed
Don't stay out too late tonight, borrowed
I love You don't wanna die, borrowed
You taste like paradise, I know I'm breathing in

Borrowed borrowed heaven
Borrowed borrowed heaven
Borrowed borrowed heaven
Borrowed borrowed heaven

You have my life and I will give it back
But before I do, I'm gonna hold it tight
This is my prayer

All body, All skin all bone, borrowed
All silky, all smooth and warm, borrowed
Almighty I stand alone I know I'm living in

Borrowed borrowed heaven ...
All beauty will fade away