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If you look on the backside of an American nickel, you'll see a picture of it. It's that domed mansion of President Thomas Jefferson, known as Monticello. It's a living monument, really, to the genius of one of America's great minds - the author of America's Declaration of Independence.
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A lot of my writing, including for these visits we have together, takes place while I'm on the road. There was a time my wife did a chunk of driving to some ministry events, and she did that often. So me and my little friend laptop could do some work. Now, I had about 12 hours of writing work to do and my computer battery lasted for maybe two or three hours. No problemo! Power strip that I can plug into the cigarette lighter, and when I plug Laptop into that, he's running on the power in the car, not just the power in himself. Which means there's basically no limit to what we can do together!
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My friend, Ian, is unexplainable. He may very well have been at that time the best known Christian leader in all of New Zealand. A powerful, popular speaker and he had a great Christian TV program. If you heard him speak in any public setting, you'd have been very impressed. I was, and you'd want to meet him when he came off the stage. And he would extend his hand, and probably begin to stutter. You might kinda laugh and go, "Come on, you're kidding." And then you'd realize he's not; this is serious. See, Ian had a noticeable stutter when he spoke to other people anywhere but in a large meeting. But when he got up to speak about his Lord in front of a crowd, it's just amazing. Something happened, but not necessarily something unique to him.
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Our friend Mark grew up on the farm; actually on an Ozark Mountain farm. And that means rocks in your fields! One local grandfather used to say, "Every time it rains I grow rocks in my field." Mark knows all about that. Over a period of time, his mother made him clear hundreds of rocks out of one of their fields when he was just a little guy. Well then, Mark bought some land from his mother as an adult. And as he started to work one of those fields, he was really pleasantly surprised by how amazingly rock-free it is. Then it dawned on him, this was the field he had made rock-free when he was a boy!
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They were very exciting years; those days when God launched our radio outreach to young people. The Lord used that youth program to present Jesus to young people in almost 400 areas of this country and about 60 countries of the world. And the early ones; the first ones we did, they were especially exciting because it was like a new kind of Christian program in the country. We were living in New Jersey. The program originated from Chicago, and it was neat to have two or three children with me for those pioneer broadcasts. We kind of shared the excitement.
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Our family actually attended a movie premier together! Uh-huh! Well, it was actually in our living room. I don't think it will ever win an Oscar. But it was the premier of the Hutchcraft family movies transferred to DVD! What a breakthrough! Now we can watch them with the benefit of modern technology. We watched this one movie of our oldest son learning to walk. He started out by holding onto things like the coffee table, and then he'd move from there and reach over so he could hold onto the couch. And the next thing you see, he's holding his sister's hand. Here's this little guy toddling around with his big sister trying to help him. And now he was walking!
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After terrorism on American soil became a reality, there was increased talk about students who are in the United States on temporary visas. Now, the vast majority are simply here to study in the country. I've traveled with one of those temporary visas in other countries, so I know a little bit about it. And it lets officials know that you're in their country for a specific and limited amount of time. And in my case, that's always been just fine. My passport is what tells you where my home really is. If I got knocked out and couldn't remember what country I'm from, my passport would save me. That temporary visa would only tell you where I'm visiting, not where I live.
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It's probably one of the most memorable, most identifiable advertising campaigns in advertising history. And, you know what, it's hard to do that when what you're selling is something as boring as batteries. But Energizer did it. Right? Now, what are you thinking right now? You can probably imagine their rabbit in your mind right now: he's got sunglasses on, drumsticks in his hand, and a big bass drum in front of him. And he moves across the landscape, seemingly unstoppable, beating his drum all the way because he's powered by Energizer batteries, of course.
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As I was "remoting" my way across our TV channels, I came to a quick stop when I saw that one particular movie was on - "Chariots of Fire." You know, years ago, it won the Oscar for "Best Movie," but that's not why I stopped to watch it. It was because of how that movie impacted me the first time I saw it. It's the story of Eric Liddell, a famous Scottish Olympic runner. He had reached his dream of representing the United Kingdom as a 100-meter runner in the 1924 Olympics. Then, en route to the Games, he learned his event would be on Sunday - the day that Eric Liddell believed was reserved for God; a day on which his deep convictions would not allow him to participate.
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Cindy got off to a great fast start spiritually. Well, in a way she did, because it took about two years of her coming to my Campus Life Club before she finally chose Christ as her Savior. But after that she really took off. In fact, she came over to my house not long after she made her commitment and said, "Ron, could you give me an argument to convince my big sister, Megan, that this is real?" What had happened was that Cindy came home talking about Jesus, and Megan said, "Oh, right! Sure, of course! Last week it was a drug, next week it will be a boyfriend. This week it's Jesus. You'll get over it, Cindy."
