KHaynes888@aol.com
To : KHaynes888@aol.com
Subject : On our President
Date : Mon, 3 Jun 2002 11:28:49 EDT

On our President
The e-mail below was written by Lindsey Yeskoo, the wife of Paul Yeskoo, a
Christian Foreign Service Officer serving in Shanghai, and details her
experience of meeting the President when he was in China a month or two ago.
It underlines why we need to be faithful in praying for the President in
particular and all our national leaders.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Family!

It is a dull, polluted Monday morning here in Shanghai and we await news of
President Bush's safe arrival back in Washington D.C. He just left here less
than twelve hours ago. Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief that no
terrorist incidents occurred here over the past days.

Security was tight, as you will have seen on TV. On Friday afternoon, a
crowd of 600 consulate/embassy staff + families were invited to a reception
in the Atrium of the Shanghai/Portman complex, at 3:15pm, to meet both GW
and Colin Powell. We waited a LONG time (due to all the security we had to
go through), but our anticipation outweighed our tired bodies and sore feet.
[We had left the house just after 10:30am in order to do all this!].
Finally, Bush was announced, and it was SO INCREDIBLE to see him walk in
with Powell and take the podium before us, especially with all the recent
events. Quite emotional for us all, actually.

He gave a tremendous, candid yet heartening speech, and then was escorted
down to the floor to meet the crowds. Everyone was of course behind a tight
rope, and there were Secret Service men and security everywhere. There was
no way he could meet all, but he sure did a great job of shaking hands with
as many as possible. Colin Powell followed immediately behind him; he did
not seem so engaging, surprisingly. Maybe the Secretary was (understandably)
tired and distracted after his previous trips to Pakistan and India.

Anyway, the three kids and I were in the very front row, and had an
extraordinary experience with President Bush. Bush came along and shook
Chris's hand first, noticing that he was all dressed up, and said,
"You're
looking sharp today, boy!"

Chris was SO PROUD and SO PLEASED at the recognition (if only GW had known
what a struggle I'd had to get him to wear a jacket and a tie!). Then he
shook my hand and I told him how much we value his strong leadership at this
time, that we are 100% behind him. He went on, took the girls' hands, and
talked to them.

Then I leaned over and mentioned that we pray for him every day. He stopped
dead in his tracks (a definite security NO-NO... the SS men got REALLY
antsy). He searched my eyes as if to see how much I really meant what I was
saying. Then he gave me the most amazing and unexpected personal response,
Paul said for a good 20-30 seconds.

He told me what the effect has been on him, waking up every day of the
crisis and knowing within himself that he is being faithfully prayed for.
He almost pleaded with me not to give up, but to persist with it, for this
is only the beginning. Then he looked me even more squarely in my eyes, and
gave me a very personal and specific series of instructions about the very
things he most needs prayer for, on behalf of himself and of the nation. He
urged me that the threat against America is very great, and that one of our
focuses in prayer to God needs to be "the shielding of America"...
and
wisdom for him as he leads the country through this time.

I don't know why, but as I looked straight back at him directly into his
face, he let me see for those brief moments a tiny part of the agony he
himself is going through, and the weariness. He finished the conversation by
putting his hand on my right shoulder, almost as if it were the close of a
commissioning, but affectionate too in a brotherly sort of way. People were
pressing in at this point and almost knocking the four of us right into
Bush.

Many of them were the Chinese staff who work for Paul, who would not have
understood ANY of that conversation; but others caught snippets and came
afterwards to ask me WHAT we had been talking about. The President moved on.

Needless to say, the whole experience was unforgettable. I cannot begin to
tell you how deeply it has affected me. Certainly, I do not think I have
ever prayed for a leader or government or nation (or world!) so extensively
as I have done since then. It was really quite an unusual and unexpected and
powerful encounter."

What a blessing to have a professing Christian as President.
Please take a moment after you read this to pray for him.
He truly does have the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Pray that God will sustain him and give him wisdom and discernment in his
decisions. Pray for his protection and that of his family.

After you have prayed, send this to everyone on your e-mail list.
Our President needs Christians around the world to be praying for him. As
this makes the e-mail rounds, eventually there could literally be people
praying for him 24/7.

From :
"Michael Matteson" <mattmike@infi.net>
To : <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject : Fw:
Date : Sun, 2 Jun 2002 15:49:05 -0400
A friend sent me this and I thought it to be
incredibly wise. May we all live to be so wise and
make the right choices.


A 92-year-old lady was moved to a nursing home today.
Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making
the move necessary. After many hours of waiting
patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled
sweetly when told her room was ready. As she
maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a
visual description of her tiny room, including the
eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.

"I love it," she stated.

"Mrs. Jones, you haven't seen the room ... just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," she
replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead
of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend
on how the furniture is arranged ... it's how I
arrange my mind. I already decided to love it....It 's
a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have
a choice. I can spend the day in bed recounting the
difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no
longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the
ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my
eyes open I'll focus on the new day and all the happy
memories I've stored away ... just for this time in my
life. Old age is like a bank account ... you withdraw
from what you've put in. So, my advice to you would
be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account
of memories."

THE FOUNDATION

"A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of
the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest.
The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country
when in danger, are of higher obligation." --Thomas Jefferson

Mike Matteson submits the following.........

How To Simulate Life In The Navy

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.

2. Run all of the piping and wires in your house on the outside
of the walls.

3. Pump 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then
pump it out, clean up, and paint the basement "deck gray".

4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the
scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you
can, pay $10 per beer until you're hammered, then walk home in the
freezing cold.

5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up
to 190 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 50
degrees. On Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family
that they used too much water during the week, so all showering
is " secured. "

7. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.

8. Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 5 am, and blow
a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout "Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave to and trice up".

9. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do
the following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard
at 6 am and read it to you.

10. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days
straight, then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours,
and hang a sign on the door that reads "Secured-contact OA
division at X-3053".

11. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's ok
for you to leave your house before 3 pm.

12. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then
board up all the windows and doors to your house for 6 months.
After the 6 months is up, take down the boards, wave at your
friends and family through the front window of your home...you can't leave until the next day. You have duty.

13. Shower with above-mentioned friends.

14. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your
home (i.e. Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.).

15. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every
10 minutes.

16. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere.
This is to ensure your engine is properly "lighted off".

17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway
3 times a day, whether they need it or not. ( "Sweepers
sweepers, man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweepdown fore
and aft, empty all shitcans in receptacle provided for on the fantail. Now sweepers." )

18. Repaint your entire house once a month.

19. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and
seasoning you can get your hands on.

20. Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot, and allow
each pot to sit 5 hours before drinking.

21. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your
magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item.

22. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch
CNN and the Weather Channel.

23. Avoid watching TV with the exception of movies which are played
in the middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to
watch and then show a different one.

24. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.

25. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.

26. Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it
"world travel".

27. Attempt to spend 5 years working at McDonalds, and NOT get
promoted.

28. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the
dead bodies of your co-workers.

29. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors
have gone to bed.

30. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a
megaphone, and shout at the
top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and order them to
close the windows and man their battle stations. ("General quarters,
general quarters, all hands man your battle stations. Set material
condition zebra throughout the ship.")

31. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without
checking the pantry and refrigerator.

32. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that
you are having steak for dinner. M ake them wait in line for
at least an hour, when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them
that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs.
Repeat daily until they don't pay attention to the menu any more so they just ask for hot dogs.

33. When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it is in
the oven. Spread icing on real thick to level it off.

34. In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your
driveway. Have you family stand watches at the podium, rotating
at 4-hour intervals.

35. Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. Then
tell them that at the end of the 6th week you're going to take
them to Disneyland for "weekend liberty". When the end of the
6th week rolls around, inform them that Disneyland has been
canceled due to the fact that they need to get ready for
Engineering-certification, and that it will be another week
before they can leave the house.

36. In your grim, gray dumpster (refer to #1), with 200 of
your not-so-closest friends (cite para.12) regardless of gender,
suffer through PMS!

37. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with
a curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours
after you go to sleep. She should then shine a flashlight in
your eyes and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."

38. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your
bathtub, move the shower head to chest level. When you take
showers, make sure you shut off the water while you soap down.

39. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, find a wobbly rocking
chair and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous.
Have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

40. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high .

41. For ex-engineering types: leave the lawn mower running in your
living room eight hours a day.

42. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

43. Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the
wind carries the soot onto your neighbors house. Ignore his
complaints.

44. Every other month buy green or red marine primer and put it in a
paint sprayer. Spray it over the roof of your house onto your
neighbor's car. Ignore his complaints.

45. Lock-wire the lug nuts on your car.

46. Buy a trash compactor, but use it only once a week. Store the
garbage on the other side of your bathtub.

47. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and
jelly sandwich on stale bread.

48. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night, jump
up and get dressed as fast as you can making sure you button up
the top button on your shirt, stuff you pants into your socks.
Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.

49. Once a month, take every major appliance apart and put them back
together again.

50. Install a fluorescent lamp under the coffee table and then get
under it and read books.

51. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and
back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time
you pass through one of them.

52. Every so often, throw the cat in the pool and shout "Man
overboard, starboard side" Then run into the house and sweep all
the pots and dishes off the counter. Yell at the wife and kids
for not having the kitchen "stowed for sea."

53. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don't plug them
in. Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go stand in
front of your stove. Say ... to no one in particular "Stove
manned and ready." Stand there for three or four hours. And say
again to no one in particular "stove secured." Roll up your
headphones and paper cup and place them in a box.

Does this sound like anybody you know?????

A letter to men......... It is important for men to remember that as women
grow older it becomes harder for them to maintain the same quality of
housekeeping they did when they were younger. When men notice this, they
should try not to yell. Let me relate how I handle the situation. When I
chucked my job and took early retirement a year ago, it became necessary
for Nancy (my wife) to get a full-time job both for extra income and for
health insurance benefits that we need. She was a trained lab tech when
we
met thirty some years ago and was fortunate to land a job at the local
medical center as a phlebotomist. It was shortly after she started working
at this job that I noticed that she was beginning to show her age. I
usually get home from fishing or hunting about the same time she gets
home from work.

Although she knows how hungry I am, she almost always says
that she has to rest for half an hour or so before she starts supper. I
try not to yell at her when this happens. Instead, I tell her to take
her time.

I understand that she is not as young as she used to be. I just tell
her to wake me when she finally does get supper on the table. She used to
wash and dry the dishes as soon as we finished eating. It is now not
unusual for them to sit on the table for several hours after supper. I do
what I can by reminding her several times each evening that they aren't
cleaning themselves. I know she appreciates this, as it does seem to help
her get them done before she goes to bed. Our washer and dryer are in the
basement. When she was younger, Nancy used to be able to go up and down
the stairs all day and not get tired. Now that she is older she seems to
get tired so much more quickly. Sometimes she says she just can't make
another trip down those steps. I don't make a big issue of this. As long
as she finishes up the laundry the next evening I am willing to overlook
it. Not only that, but unless I need something ironed to wear to the
Monday's lodge meeting or to Wednesday's or Saturday's poker club or to
Tuesday's or Thursday's bowling or something like that, I will tell her to
wait until the next evening to do the ironing.

This gives her a little more
time to do some of those odds and ends things like shampooing the dog,
vacuuming, or dusting. Also, if I have had a really good day fishing,
this allows her to gut and scale the fish at a more leisurely pace.
Nancy is starting to complain a little occasionally. Not often, mind you,
but
just enough for me to notice. For example, she will say that it is
difficult for her to find time to pay the monthly bills during her lunch
hour. In spite of her complaining, I continue to try to offer
encouragement. I tell her to stretch it out over two or even three days.
That way she won't have to rush so much. I also remind her that missing
lunch completely now and then wouldn't hurt her any, if you know what I
mean. When doing simple jobs she seems to think she needs more rest periods
than she used to have to take. A couple of weeks ago she said she had to
take a break when she was only half finished mowing the yard. I overlook
comments like these because I realize it's just her age "talking." In
fact, I try to not embarrass her when she needs these little extra rest
breaks. I tell her to fix herself a nice, big, cold glass of freshly
squeezed lemonade and just sit for a while. I tell her that as long as
she is making one for herself, she may as well make one for me and take her
break by the hammock so she can talk with me until I fall asleep. I could
go on and on, but I think you know where I'm coming from. I know that I
probably look like a saint in the way I support Nancy on a daily basis.
I'm not saying that the ability to show this much consideration is easy.
Many men will find it difficult. Some will find it impossible. No one
knows better than I do how frustrating women can become as they get older.
My purpose in writing this is simply to suggest that you make the
effort.
I realize that achieving the exemplary level of showing consideration I
have attained is out of reach for the average man. However guys, even if
you just yell at your wife a little less often because of this article, I
will consider that writing it was worthwhile.

Letter written to advice column for men.

No one knows where the writer is - he has not been heard
from since the letter was written.
MM

Return to SeaStories Menu