Everyday Prayer

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

If I surrender to His Will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with Him

Forever and ever in the next.

Memo from God

To:             You
Date:          Today
From:          God
Subject:      Yourself
Reference:   Life

This is God.  Today I will be handling all of your problems for you.  I do not need your help.  So, have a nice day. I love you. 

P.S.  

If life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do not attempt to resolve it yourself!  Kindly put it in the SFGTD (Something For God To Do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME.  All situations will be resolved, but in My time, not yours.

Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it.  Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now.

 Should you have a bad day at work; think of the man who has been out of work for years.

 Should you despair over a relationship gone bad; think of the person who has never known what it’s like to love and be loved in return.

 Should you grieve the passing of another weekend; think of the woman in dire straits, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week to feed her children.

 Should your car break down, leaving you miles away from assistance; think of the paraplegic who would love the opportunity to take that walk.

Should you notice a new gray hair in the mirror; think of the cancer patient in chemo who wishes she had hair to examine. 

Should you find yourself at a loss and pondering what is life all about, asking what is my purpose? Be thankful. There are those who didn’t live long enough to get the opportunity.

Should you find yourself the victim of other people’s bitterness, ignorance, smallness or insecurities; remember, things could be worse. You could be one of them!

The Greatest Last Place Ever

In our darkest hours, we simply fail to believe in the power of God and we fail to stay true to His Words. O God, may you forgive us for our complacency. May we strive hard to strengthen our faith in You. And in the bleakest, loneliest and hardest days of our lives may you always be with us to finish our life’s race.

 Here is a story of a man who truly symbolizes the finest in human spirit….

 A Great Olympic Moment.    
John Stephen Akhwari

One of the most memorable Olympic Athletes of the 1968 Mexico City Games was a marathon runner from
Tanzania. John Stephen Akhwari.  He doesn’t get a mention in the record books.  But that’s not the point.

 In fact, it’s fair to say more people remember John Akhwari than the guy who won gold.  Even though
 John Akhwari came in last!  Half way through the race Akhwari fell and badly gashed his calf, and injured his knee.  
Most runners at that  point would give up.  But after a few minutes John Akhwari picked himself up,
strapped up his leg and kept running.

  A little more than an hour after the winner had finished, with just a few thousand spectators left in the stands,
whistles, motorcycle sounds and flashing red and green lights gave a macabre effect to the cold, dark Mexico City
evening.  The word was passed to the press box and filtered to the few thousand faithful spectators who remained
in the stadium.

 Into the stadium came John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania.  His leg was bloody and bandaged.  Wincing with pain
at every step, he pressed on and the thousands, a few minutes before in silence, began a slow, steady clapping.
Akhwari made his painful way around the track and the cheering grew louder.  The trek around the track
seemed interminable.  But finally he hobbled across the finish an d the crowd roared as if he had been the winner.

 Afterward Akhwari was asked why he endured the pain and why, since there was no chance of winning, he did
not retire from the race. Akwari appeared perplexed at the question.
Then he simply said,

 ”I don’t think you understand.  My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race.
  They sent me to finish the race.”

    ARTICLE SOURCE: external.barker.nsw.edu.au

The Life of A True Salesman: Bill Porter

Yesterday, I was blessed to have come across the name Bill Porter. At first, it sounded to me like an ordinary name, thus I expected him to be… just an ordinary person. But as it turns out, his life is something out of the extraordinary.  I would like to sure with you his story and hopefully touch your lives the way he has touched mine. Bill Porter’s story, all the more convinces me to push on with my life. So many times I have wanted to give up on my life’s journey and take the path of comfort… the path of isolation. Now I am left to reflect on just one word which I sometimes, am tempted to let go… PERSISTENCE! 

Article Source: http://www.people.com

Life of a Salesman

By Susan Horsburgh

Despite Slammed Doors and a Lifelong Disability, Bill Porter, Ever Optimistic, Became a Door-to-Door Phenomenon

How dedicated is Bill Porter? This dedicated: Once, during an ice storm, the door-to-door salesman, who suffers from cerebral palsy, crawled the last part of his seven-mile route on his hands and knees. How positive and upbeat is Porter? This positive and upbeat: He describes that day—during which he also dragged his briefcase full of catalogs and order forms up his iced-over driveway—as “one of the best I ever had selling. More people were home because of the storm.”

Porter’s is one of those jaw-dropping, grit-and-gumption stories that could be a TV movie, and is: Door to Door, which will air July 14 on TNT, tells a very personal tale of quiet heroism and private victories. “Bill’s whole attitude is ‘I never did anything heroic. I had to pay the rent,’ ” says actor William H. Macy, the Fargo star who plays Porter and cowrote the script (with director Steven Schachter) after seeing a 20/20 piece on Porter. “It’s because of this stoical, can-do attitude, this indomitable spirit, that we’re allowed to cry.”

Porter would probably prefer you didn’t. Born in San Francisco in 1932, the only child of a housewife and a salesclerk, he says he wasn’t allowed to dwell on his disability, which left his right side twisted and his speech slurred. His mother, Irene, “was always very positive,” says Porter, “and she insisted that I be the same way.” When he was 17, she enrolled him in public high school, and upon graduation his father, Ernest, insisted that he get a job—a task easier said than done. After four months of daily rejections, Porter’s employment agency told him to go home and collect welfare. So he combed the want ads himself, eventually applying for a job with Watkins, the nation’s oldest door-to-door sales company. “I had to convince them,” recalls Porter. “They gave me the worst territory, and I worked strictly on commission.” His mother would write out the word “persistence” on a slip of paper and hide it in his lunch bag.

After a year Porter began winning sales awards. Nothing could dampen his enthusiasm. When people refused to open the door or slammed it in his face, he would silently repeat the mantra “The next customer will say yes.” Many did—even if Porter had to work on them for years. “He just never takes rejection personally,” says Watkins president Mark Jacobs. “He’s relentless. He’s irresistible.”

And indomitable. Each day Porter—who lived with his mother—would wake at 4:45 a.m. and spend 90 minutes dressing himself before catching a 7:30 bus, the first of two that would take him to his west Portland, Ore., sales territory by 9. Often he wouldn’t return home until after 7 p.m. When his mother went into a nursing home in the mid-1980s (his father had died in 1962), Porter had to ask the bellhops at a downtown hotel to take over one of her tasks—buttoning his collar and attaching his clip-on tie each morning.

But Porter kept working. In 1985 he hired a young mother, Shelly Brady, to be his delivery driver and housekeeper. They soon progressed from “employer and employee to just great friends,” she says. She helped Porter cope with the loss of his mother to Alzheimer’s in 1989. Then, in 1993, after a five-month recovery from back surgery left him without any income and unable to make his mortgage payments, Brady and her husband, John, scraped together enough cash to buy his house and rent it back to him for next to nothing.

In 1998, after the 20/20 piece ran, Porter was barraged by invitations from corporations like Amway and Nike eager to have him visit as a motivational speaker. At Brady’s urging he agreed and would stand beside her while she did most of the talking. “You meet him and realize that what’s important is what’s inside of us,” says Brady, 39, whose book Ten Things I Learned from Bill Porter came out in June. “Once you hear his story it just puts everything in perspective.”

Porter says he’s happy to inspire, but selling will always be his main game. Hit by a car in 1997, he hasn’t been able to walk his beat, so he now phones his 500 regular customers from a tiny desk in his bedroom. “I can’t imagine ever retiring,” he says. “My customers are like family.” He never married (”There was a time I had a crush on someone,” he says, “but nothing ever came of it”) and still lives in his mother’s home, spending his free time watching Matlock reruns or listening to sports on the radio. Asked if he’s surprised by what he has achieved, he looks nonplussed, then replies, “It never entered my mind that I couldn’t.”

Susan Horsburgh
Johnny Dodd in Portland

More Bill Porter stories:

lifechallenges.org: Bill Porter

bradbobo.wordpress.com: Door to Door