Bread Company Exercises Religious Liberties

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For 75 years Sunbeam bread, a product of the Quality Bakers Of America, has changed it’s bags just after Thanksgiving to add a picture of a little girl praying. The caption beside the girl says “Not By Bread Alone.” This caption is a quote from Jesus Christ in Matthew 4:4.  

These bread makers are bravely stating their religious view that people need more than the physical, they need the spiritual to truely live.  Jesus Christ has often been refered to as the “bread of life.” These humble bakers take His name upon them as they provide physical bread in His name.  

WOW respects and supports this kind of expression of religious liberty.  This type of faith is what the United States of America was founded upon and should be respected.  

Since it is becoming increasingly more rare for businesses to vocally support God and religion this brave action is worthy of praise.  Take a few minutes to send Quality Bakers of America a kind email thanking them for their courage and principles.  And, when you are at the store, look for Sunbeam bread and fill your home with more than just bread; with faith in God. 

Email:  [email protected] 

Christmas Angels

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Tis the season to be grateful!  Universally, gratitude is an expression of love.  It is the sign of a person who acknowledges that there is a greater power than herself.  Acknowledging God brings peace and joy and offers an explaination for the goodness that surrounds us all.  This time of year people give to others.  This is a wonderful Christmas story about a mother who gave all she had and some angels who gave more than words could express.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.  Merry Christmas!  God bless us every one.  

Angels, Once in a While
By Barb Irwin

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone.

The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave 15 dollars a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.

I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand-new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old ’51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store, and restaurant in our small town. No luck. The kids stayed, crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job. Still no luck.

The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called “The Big Wheel.” An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.

I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal. That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job.

And so I started at the Big Wheel. When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money–fully half of what I averaged every night.
As the weeks went by, heating bills added another strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.

One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand-new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.

I made a deal with the owner of the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.

I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn’t enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry, too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys’ pants, and soon they would be too far gone to repair.

On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the &&&Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up. When it was time for me to go home at seven o’clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn’t wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.)

It was still dark and I couldn’t see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car–or was that just a trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car, I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was full–full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.

I quickly opened the driver’s side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.

As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.

Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

Video: In Honor of Human Rights Day – 10 December

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December 10, 1948 the leaders of different nations, religions, cultures and political points of view came together to form the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  These rights state that every person of the world, dispite their differences, are entitled to fundamental rights that are their’s simply because of being human.

These rights protect people from tyranny and offer principles meant to defy the abuse of power over others.  The rights declare responsibilities and help preserve dignity for the human race. 

One of the human rights that should be most celebrated is the right to believe and worship in public as well as in private.  It also gives us the right to stand up publically for our beliefs and change our beliefs if we want to.  The Worldwide Organization For Women celebrates the right to believe and publically stand up for beliefs.  If this important right is ever infringed upon the oppressor must stop.

In recent years there have been distrubing abuses of this most basic of human rights.  We call upon citizens and government officals of the world to continue to respect religious freedoms and human rights around the world.  This basic respect for humans is neccessary for world peace and brotherly love the world over.

Please take a few minutes and watch this video honoring article 18 or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that shows how this important human right effects us all.  

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