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{HeartTouchers.com}   *Take in the View* 

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If you enjoy this email service, I encourage
you to spread the word to family and friends that we
may bring inspiration the lives of many!  If you
are not on the list and this has been passed along
to you, join us by visiting:

http://www.HeartTouchers.com

Be sure to check out our inspirational list just for teenagers!

http://www.Heart4Teens.com


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Good morning HeartTouchers.com readers!

Thank you for praying for me as I prepared the message: "Breathing Life into Others"  this past weekend at our church.  For those of you who would like to hear me speak you can visit: http://www.HeartTouchers.com and listen to the message as a windows media streaming audio file.  It is the first link on our main page.  I would love to hear from you if you do take the time to listen! 

If you have trouble getting it to play on your computer, our church will be making the message available on cassette tape, CD, VHS, and DVD some time in the next couple of weeks.

And lastly, this is the last week for the sale on our book and our E-book!  From now until April 30, 2005 you can purchase our HeartTouchers book for just $12 (regularly $13.95) and we pay the shipping!  You can also get our E-book for just $3.25! (regularly $6.50) If you have been thinking about getting one for yourself or as a gift for Mother's or Father's Day, now is the time to get it!  Just visit:
http://www.HeartTouchers.com/books

From my family to yours,

Michael


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Take in the View

By Ken Pierpont


When I was about fourteen we took a family vacation through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  When you drive through the Smokies there are winding roads all through the mountains. It is, in places, beautiful beyond description.  I mean to return someday and share the beauty with my family.

Along the way there are places to pull off to enjoy the view.  The pull-outs are lined with low walls constructed from native stone.  I think many of them were the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps.  They are a quiet and valuable attraction, beautiful and understated.  There is no admission charge to enjoy them.  They would be easy to miss. 

You could go whizzing past to get to the nearest trinket shop filled with things made many oceans and continents distant but that would be a mistake.  The kinds of things they sell at those shops are made cheap and quick somewhere else and stamped with the name of the nearest attraction.  They are not mountain crafts created by local artists, who have the hills in their own hearts.  They are just cheap trinkets.  They won't last and they won't satisfy.   

The mountains, the valleys, the wild birds, the wildlife, the wildflowers, the native timber, they are real.  The beauty of the mountains is there for the taking, free-of-charge the bounty of rich and poor, wise and simple.  Just to stand there and take in the autumn color is the kind of thing that will still hang in your memory many decades from now like the mist over the mountains in the early morning.  The beauty and order of creation will never be out-of-style.

In this journey we call living there are beautiful things to see and there are places along the way to pull quietly over.  I don't want to be the kind of person who is obsessed with gathering things that I cannot keep, when there are beauties and wonders all around me.  When I am long gone and my children and grandchildren think of me I want them to remember me as the kind of guy that pulled over and took in the scenery whenever possible.  I want them to know that I saw beauty in each of them.  I want them to learn from watching me how to see the hand of God in all the world around them. 

Along the path of living maybe they will say, "Dad would have pulled off to take in the scenery here."  "Do you remember how Grandpa's eyes would cloud with tears at a sight like this?"


Ken Pierpont
ken@kenpierpont.com

Write Ken and let him know your thoughts on his story!

Ken Pierpont is the Director of the Riverfront Character Inn and International Conference Center in Flint, Michgian.  He and his wife Lois have four sons and four daughters.  Ken sends the Stonebridge Newsletter, a free weekly electronic newsletter, to almost 5,000 subscribers every Monday morning.  You can visit his site http://www.kenpierpont.com or e-mail Ken at ken@kenpierpont.com.


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Thought For The Day:

"Here is the test to see if your mission here on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't." --Richard Bach


Verse for the Day:

"For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands."


Kid's Thought For The Day:

"Sometimes you need a little push to go down the big slide."


Parent's Thought For The Day

"If your baby is 'beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the time', you're the grandma." --Theresa Bloomingdale


Coach's Thought For The Day

"We're never as good as we think we are, nor as bad as we think we are." --Adolph Rupp, former college basketball coach


Writer's Thought For The Day:

"When I was a younger, and I was getting my first reviews, a good one would make my day, a bad one would blight it. And then I started to realize that reviewers said such different (and directly opposite) things, I could safely ignore them all." --Neil Gaiman


Deep Thought For The Day:

"Drive-in banking was invented so cars could go in and see
their real owners."



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REQUEST:

Can anyone help this young mom out?



Hi there,
 
I have just recently been receiving your e-mails, which have really been wonderful to get.  I have been wondering if there is a site or address which one can communicate with other stay at home moms (although I seem to spend much of that time in the car taking my two children to activities). I would love to communicate with other christian moms. Many thanks!
Diana
diswart@mweb.co.za   

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Have you been to the HeartTouchers.com website lately?  If you like what you see and would like to have your own professional looking website, visit the link below.  Bizstudio has been a wonderful service for HeartTouchers.com and with 662,500 visitors and over 1,311,877 page views in the past three years, the website has been a tremendous tool in helping us to "Touch Lives, One Email at a Time." Although I had no prior experience building a website, I was able to create and build the HeartTouchers.com site easily utilizing Bizstudio's online editor.  It includes an Online Site Editor, Unlimited Updates, Unlimited Pages, Professional Themes, Pre-Programmed Features, E-mail Accounts, and free Search Engine Submission.  If I could do it with no prior experience you can too! Check it out at this link:

http://www.bizstudio.com/main/home.htm?bpn=A16435



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Video Imagery --Michael's Video Production Business

Dear Michael,

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the beautiful video you made for me! It was so special to see both of my parents in tears as they watched their children grow up in pictures before their eyes! I loved the way you made Estania's part set aside from the rest--that was the part that really got them! The music was beautiful. My mom kept blubbering, "What song is that?" I don't know how you did such a beautiful job with the video in such a short time. I really appreciate your doing it so quickly. You have a wonderful gift, and I thank God that you are using it to create such sentimental memories. I hope that I can find my niche like that in an area that I love. Your video gave us one of our most lasting Christmas memories! I hope yours was filled with moments to be treasured forever!
Love,
Trisha
Silverhill, AL

Let me make you a video from your photos!
Check out my video production business
by visiting: http://www.hearttouchers.com/video_imagery

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Do you feel as if life has no meaning for you?
http://www.greatcom.org/english/four.htm

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Reading Books, Changing Lives!

For those of you who would like to purchase the books from the HeartTouchers.com bookstore via your credit card, you can now do so!

You can now order a number of different autographed best-selling inspirational books for the same price you would get them in the store, the shipping to you is paid for, and you are helping change the lives of teenagers and those they come in contact with!

http://www.HeartTouchers.com/books


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A number of people have written to us asking what an EBook is, since our book is being offered in both print and EBook versions.  An EBook is a book that can be downloaded and read right on your computer. The advantage of ordering the EBook is that is costs less, $6.95 (No other charges), as compared to $13.95 for the print book. Plus your EBook will arrive the same day you order it and you can begin reading the stories right away!

EBooks are read via Acrobat Reader, which is software that is already on your computer. So for those of you who don't want to wait for the print book to be delivered, check out this link to order the EBook version of Heart Touchers "Life-Changing Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter."

http://www.hearttouchers.com/books