It seems like there is never a dull moment here in the sleepy town of Copan Ruinas, Honduras. Sadly to say, there was a major fire in the business district. Several businesses were destroyed tonight by fire. It broke my heart because some of the owners were present crying out. I highly doubt that they had any type of insurance and seeing their entire livelihood get burnt up is devastating!

The most touching part of this was seeing the entire community come together to help each other through this devastating time.  100's were risking their lives trying to remove items from the stores and putting the merchandise out in the street to keep it from getting burned up.  Then others were using buckets of water to snuff out the fire.  You might be asking, "Where was the fire dept.?"  They don't have one.

Please lift these families and businesses up in prayer.

Parents, I highly recommend you read this whole article.  As a parent of a teenager, I was alarmed to find out the original intent of this application.  It was never designed for the purposes of what they are advertising it to be!!  It totally gives a false pretense and comfort for the user all the while their photos can be used for all the wrong reasons, potentially haunting the individual in their future.

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Reason #1 – SnapChat is built on a lieIn my book, A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media, I share three rules about social media which lead me to the conclusion that SnapChat isn’t to be trusted:

Rule #1 – Everything posted online is publicI wrote about this in depth here.

The central premise of SnapChat is that what you are sending is private.That’s a lie. There is a very real risk that everything you share with any app or on any website will become public. One day, every image you post online may  become associated with your name. When you post something online you give up the ability to control where that image goes. So even if you aren’t using your real name to post with SnapChat, that “private image” may one day pop up in a Google Search of your name.

The same is true of anywhere you post something online. You always must know that what you are posting could become public.

Rule #2 – There’s no such thing as anonymity online, only perceived anonymity.Any time your device connects to the internet it associates 100% of your activity with your device. (Every device has a unique identifier, like a finger print. When you buy it and register it that transaction is linked to you and everything you do with it is ultimately pointing back to you.)

Every site, every image you upload/download, every search, every call… everything is associated with that device. E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. Even if you delete it. Even if you use a proxy server. Even if… E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.

The content isn’t always saved, but the activity itself most definitely is.

With SnapChat, the perception that your account is anonymous… meaning it is using a pseudonym [An account name] and not your real name, makes it easy to think that you are disassociating what you send on SnapChat from “the real you.”

Pure and simple. Perceived anonymity is dangerous. And SnapChat uses that to their advantage to get you to trust it. Over time you’ll begin to think that if you’re using a fake name, what you send can’t be tracked back to you.

But that’s not how the internet works at all.

SnapChat knows who you are, where you are, and they store it all. (They are legally bound to.) Even though their marketing copy says they don’t… their terms of service say that they do store it AND they have the right to sell that information as an asset to the company which they can sell. (See Usage Data on their terms of service. Also look at the language in their privacy policy: “We cannot guarantee that deletion always occurs within a particular timeframe.” This is important because when you create an account you are legally agreeing to these terms even though it’s exactly opposite of the marketing.)


Rule #3 There’s no such thing as online privacy, only perceived online privacyThe biggest lie is that the images go away. In fact, because they are transferred between users of the app, that image actually touches several servers between your phone and your friends phone. The image goes from your device, to your phone carriers servers, to SnapChats servers, to your friends phone carriers servers, to their phone. That message is logged all of those places, that image is stored on SnapChats servers, that image is stored on your phone, and that image is stored on your friends phone. (Not to mention a ton of servers and switches who pass that data across the web.)

All the SnapChat app actually does to make it so you see if for just a few seconds is change the name of the file so that you can’t see it. But it’s still there. [Read this article: Forensic Expert Pokes Holes in SnapChat and Facebook]

Bottom line: Perceived privacy is dangerous. It convinces you that something is private, when at it’s very core it isn’t private at all. Combine that with the lie that what you share on SnapChat is anonymous and you’ll see why I think SnapChat is so dangerous, especially for teenagers.

Sidenote: Ironically, a text message is more private than something sent with SnapChat. The FCC guarantees that a text is a private exchange between two devices and it takes a search warrant to access your texts. With SnapChat you are willingly sharing something over a network that is not secure and you are not protected, legally, from them revealing all of your messages down the road. When you agree to the terms of service you agree that all of the data is theirs and they can do with it whatever they want.

I mean, why do you  think the app is free? Because they are collecting data about you and selling it to marketing companies. Duh.

You are the product they are selling!


TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE:  CLICK HERE
SOURCE:  Adam McLane Blog  www.adammclane.com

This is such a beautiful story and the most unusual way to meet.  You can say that they truly are ONE!

(CNN) — Eight-year-old Laney Brown will never see Christmas again. Her doctors say leukemia will take her soon.

Laney loves music. Loves to dance, loves Taylor Swift, loves Christmas carols.

As her dying wishes, she asked to meet the country superstar and for some people to come by her house for a night of caroling, CNN affiliate WFMZ reported.

On Friday — her birthday — Laney and Swift video chatted through FaceTime, a software application that allows callers to see each other on Apple products.

Saturday night the singers came. At first it was hundreds of people, then thousands. Then it was 10,000.

They came to her home in West Reading, Pennsylvania, and even though she was too weak to go to the window, she heard the wonderful music.

“I can hear you now!!! Love you!” she said through a photo her family posted to a Team Laney Facebook page showing the girl, two thumbs up despite a breathing mask, lying in bed.

To Read More:  CLICK HERE
Source:  Fox 8 Cleveland

Imagine your child makes a card to cheer up a bedridden veteran, but due to policy it's refused because it says "Merry Christmas"!!  That is exactly what was done at this local VA Hospital!!

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They thought it was a kind holiday gesture, but dozens of Prosper students didn't get to deliver the Christmas cards they made for local veterans because of a VA policy against specific religious cards and phrasing.

The cards are still in North Texas, and the writers are disappointed their thank you's won't be seen by the people they were intended for.

"I'm hoping that it might make their day because their family might live far away, and they might not have somebody to celebrate Christmas with and I'd like them to know they've not been forgotten and somebody wanted to say thank you," said fourth grader Gracie Brown.

Gracie and her brother, Luke, put a lot of thought and effort into their Christmas cards.

"It includes ‘Merry Christmas,' and when you open it up, it says 'Thank you for your service' and the American flag," said Luke.

Fifty-two students at Grace Academy in Prosper spent Friday making the cards they planned to hand deliver to bedridden veterans at the VA hospital in Dallas Monday morning.

When Gracie and Luke's mom, Andrea, found out they wouldn't be able to, she was outraged.

"This wasn't the country I grew up in, when you couldn't say ‘Merry Christmas,' you couldn't say ‘God bless you' or reference any scripture," she said.

The cards were the idea of Susan Chapman, a math teacher at Grace Academy. She's married to a veteran and volunteers with the American Legion and other veterans' organizations.

READ MORE:  CLICK HERE
Source:  KDFW Fox News

Simon Beck is a snow artist and by looking at his creations, you would agree that he has an amazing talent!  Think of the miles and hours that it takes to create one of these designs, then to have it all blown away by the winds or a coming snowfall.

If you’d like to see more of Simon’s art (which is genius bordering on insanity), visit this Facebook page dedicated to it.

CHECK OUT THE REST OF OUR BLOG:  CLICK HERE

The headline reads: “A&E declares war on ‘Duck Dynasty’s’ Christian values.”  It seems the patriarch of the Robertson family made some “offensive” comments in an interview with GQ Magazine.  Before we go any further, mull that over for a moment.  A camo-wearing, bearded, red-kneck duck hunter being interviewed in a magazine called “Gentlemen’s Quarterly”?  Is the world as we know it coming to an end.  I’d say it is, but I digress.

For the uninitiated, Duck Dynasty is the saga of the Robertson family of West Monroe, LA.  The patriarch of the family, Phil, invented a duck call that sounds very much like a real duck.  (Several ducks actually.)  This duck call has made the family and their company, Duck Commander, very successful.  Phil’s son Willy has parlayed the success of Duck Commander and the unique lifestyle of the family into quite an empire, including the hugely successful TV show.

In spite of their newfound wealth, the Robertson men continue to do the things that they’ve always done, primarily hunting and fishing and making duck calls. The hook is that these multimillionaires still look and dress like red necks (their words, not mine) and wear very long hair and beards..  It doesn’t hurt that each of the sons has married a beautiful “yuppy” woman.  There’s also the mom, Miss Kay, and Uncle Si, the family philosopher.  They are unabashedly Christian.  Phil is a reformed drunk and womanizer who found Jesus and doesn’t hesitate to talk and preach about it.  In fact, Phil and all of his sons are ordained ministers.  There’s the rub.


CLICK HERE TO READ THE REMAINING ARTICLE

Here is a short video of Alexis showing her classroom at "Abba Bi-Lingual School."  We are so proud her.  She loves what she is doing while expressing the love of Jesus to her students.