Lolo Mado

kagagaling lang namin sa bacood, punta
kami birthday ni lolo, 89 na sya :D!
mahal ako ng lolo kong ito, ako nga
ang gustong kasama sa australia sa
pag-attend ng wedding ni tito willy..
mahal nya rin ang mommy ko... syempre
mahal ko rin sya... malakas pa sya!
nakikita pa ang butil ng kanin sa lamesa..
nagliligpit pa sa canteen namin :) super!
nagsasabi pa o di pa nagbayad sa telepono..
o lagyan ng tissue to.. at pag naglalakad
halos di ko alalayan.. kayang kaya pa e.. :)

kasama naming pumunta si mommy, axl, shaun,
rap, mga titas.. joan, rose and lorna, aling
lucing... enjoy ko super kasama sila! :)

5/3 sabi ni lolo kanina "pagkain mo candy!"
iniwan ko kasi at nagluto ng tapsilog :)

anthony (ama)

nakabalita ako, may anak at asawa na si Anthony…
grabe na to… reminder na talagang napag-iiwanan ako…
pero shucks.. kagulat din kahit expected ko na rin
dahil lumipas na ang panahon… nalungkot din ako, as in,
naalala ko lang kasi nung bata pa kami.. sya ang
childhood sweetheart ko nung elementary... best memories
ko during elementary ay nung maging magkakaibigan kami...
a very dear friend.... :)

Ka Butch (FPB)

maingat at matiyagang nagbantay, nagturo na kami'y
tumatag, masinop na nangalaga, naging mabuting
halimbawa, isa sa pinakamamahal na pastor :-)

The greatness of love

Published in God's Message (Pasugo) magazine, Feb 2007

WHEN THE PHARISEES asked our Lord Jesus Christ which the great commandment in the law is, He answered that the first and great commandment is that man shall love the Lord God and the second is that he shall love his neighbor as himself (Matt. 22:36-39).

This is clear proof of the greatness of love. In fact, in the absence of love, anything that man does for his neighbor, and especially for the Lord God and Lord Jesus Christ is in vain – however great the deed may be. The Apostle Paul says, “… And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (I Cor. 13:13, New King James Version)

The emphasis placed on the superiority of love over faith and hope is not meant to diminish the importance of faith or of great works. According to the Apostle Paul, faith is important and valuable to our Lord Jesus Christ – if it is “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6, Ibid.).

Thus a person who does not have love is nothing even if by all his faith he is able to remove mountains. The Bible explicitly states: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (I Cor. 13:1-3, Ibid.).

Therefore, the person who is worthy in the sight of God is he who genuinely loves Him. If anyone wishes his service and worship to be valued and accepted by God, he must make sure that he does it out of love, and not on account of selfish motive.

The Bible teaches that we, human beings, have been the ones chosen by God since the beginning to accord Him everlasting love. Even before the foundation of the world God had already chosen man to be holy and without blame before Him in love (Eph. 1:4).

The Bible also teaches how man will be able to accomplish this or how he should love God who created him. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (I John 5:3, NKJV). Hence, man need not invent ways to express and manifest his love for God, for He has already made known through His words written in the Bible what He wants: We should prove our love for Him by keeping His commandments. Whoever refuses to obey God’s commands does not truly love Him.

“Let love be without hypocrisy,” says the Apostle Paul (Rom. 12:9, Ibid.) The love that is without hypocrisy is “love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith” (I Tim. 1:5, Ibid.). A person whose love is hypocritical, pretentious or insincere may be able to cheat his fellowman but he will never be able to deceive God, for He knows everything, even what is in man’s heart and mind. He thus knows well whether our love for Him comes from a pure heart or is hypocritical.

For this reason, those who purport to serve God but actually only pursue their own gain, those whose service does not stem from sincere love but merely seeks to satisfy themselves, do not please God but commit a terrible sin. And they will not be able to hide this from Him. God says through the prophet Ezekiel: “So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain” (Ezek. 33:31, Ibid.)

Here God reproves people who come to Him, but whose purported love for Him does not come form their heart, because they are obviously only after their own gain. Such people in our time are those whose only and real motive in joining a religion is so that God will help them succeed in their business, make progress in their profession, recover from illness, and other similar gains. And although apparently they desire to serve God, they nevertheless refuse to do His bidding, reasoning out that man will not be justified by works for, allegedly, faith alone is what really matters.

The proof that man who merely professes faith but does not demonstrate it by works will not become acceptable to God is Christ’s warning on what will happen on Judgment Day to those who do not do the will of God in heaven: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matt. 7:21:23, Ibid.)

Obedience to God’s command is an essential characteristics of a man who truly loves Him. But man whom God created is weak (Matt. 26:41) such that even though he aspires to do good, which is God’s command, yet he finds that by himself he is incapable of doing it, and instead what he does is the contrary – the evil that he does not wish to do (Rom. 7:12, 18-20).

Thus, before God created man, He predestined him to adoption as a son by the Lord Jesus Christ to Himself (Eph. 1:5) so that through man’s relationship with Christ His purpose can be achieved: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10, NKJV). Therefore, on his own, man will not be able to live up to God’s purpose that he be holy and without blame before Him in love because he sins. Man needs to be created in Christ and this is by means of being part of the one new man, which Christ created in Himself, as recorded in the Scripture: “having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace” (Eph. 2:15, Ibid.). The one new man is composed of one head and one body. Christ is the head and the Church is His body (Col. 1:18).

Therefore, in order for man to fulfill God’s purpose in creating him he needs to join the true Church whom Christ recognizes as His own body. It is in this Church where man can prove his genuine love for God, which is manifested by his obedience to His commands.

Moreover, inside the true Church man will receive God’s perfect love, as taught in the Bible: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10, NKJV). Because of God’s great love for us, “ even when we were dead in trespasses, [He] made us alive together with Christ …” (Eph. 2:4-5, Ibid.). How was it that we were considered dead and because of that we need to be made alive? When we sinned we were placed under God’s judgment, the second death in the lake of fire, and hence we were then counted as dead. But on account of God’s great love, we were made alive, The Bible says: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:8-9, Ibid.).

God sent His only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to die for our sins. It is by this that God’s great love for man was made manifest because through this we have been justified and as a consequence we shall be saved from His wrath on Christ’s Second Advent.

We are certain that it is the Church of Christ which received God’s perfect love since it is the one justified by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Take heed therefore to yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, to feed the church of Christ which he has purchased with his blood” (Acts 20:28, Lamsa Translation).

What was also proven to us when the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself up to us? He says, “Greater love has no one than this, that to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13, NKJV). Did not Christ do the greatest deed for the Church by making the supreme sacrifice for it? Thus, it is only just that we love the Lord God above all and the Lord Jesus Christ by being faithfully obedient to them for they accorded us the greatest love of all.

ka michael of atd

sa maikling panahon na ipinagsama namin ay napalapit
talaga sa puso ko si ka michael... isa sa mga nagbantay
at nagpalakas sa amin! laging lakas at inspirasyon...
isa sa pinakamamahal na ministro.

climate watch

from BBC "Are we ready?After the Asian tsunami and hurricane Katrina, scientists are beginning to look seriously at those areas of the planet most under threat from climate change catastrophe. From lethal floods and storms in coastal cities, to disappearing permafrost, unusual heat waves and rising sea levels, urban dwellers and remote communities alike feel they are becoming ever more vulnerable to violent natural disasters."

saw a feature of BBC in its climate watch season where world's big business leaders debate
on how to go about the current threat of drastic climate change in our world... how sincere
their concern on this matter... and how little time we have left...

saw manila bay this afternoon with dad, mom, kim, axl, shaun, pau, pat and camille...
di kami natuloy sa destination... next time na lang....

Sumatra quake shook planet — every bit of it

By Randolph E. Schmid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 20, 2005

December's tsunami-triggering earthquake shook the ground everywhere on Earth's surface -- leaving the planet trembling for weeks -- and displaced so much water from the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea that the sea level worldwide was raised 0.004 inches.

"No point on Earth remained undisturbed," wrote Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado in one of the first research papers on the largest quake measured by a growing array of digital seismic instruments worldwide.

The Sumatra-Andaman quake caused the planet to oscillate like a bell, which was measurable for weeks afterward, and ground movement of as much as 0.4 inches occurred everywhere on Earth's surface -- though it was too small to be felt in most areas, teams of researchers have concluded.

Data show the Dec. 26 quake resulted from the longest fault rupture ever observed -- 720 miles to 780 miles, which spread for 10 minutes, also a record. A typical earthquake's duration would be 30 seconds.

"This is really a watershed event. We've never had such comprehensive data for a great earthquake because we didn't have the instrumentation to gather it 40 years ago," said Thorne Lay, professor of earth sciences and director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

"It is nature at its most formidable," Mr. Lay said.

Six research teams have written papers on the quake and resulting Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 176,000 people in 11 countries, that will appear in a special section of today's issue of the journal Science. About 50,000 people are still missing and hundreds of thousands homeless.

The quake, second strongest ever recorded and the third most deadly in human history, occurred where two of the giant plates that form the surface of the Earth grind together, releasing energy equivalent to the amount consumed by the entire United States for six months.

At that spot the Eurasian plate was being pulled downward by the descending Indo-Australian plate. The quake released the edge of the Eurasian plate, which sprang up, lifting the ocean floor and sending the sea water off in the giant wave and raised the sea level worldwide, the researchers reported.

The temblor "delivered a blow to our planet" that was felt for weeks, noted a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Park of Yale University.

His group, which measured the oscillations, said a similar phenomenon was first noted in the 1960 quake in Chile.

The initial Sumatra quake is estimated to have had a magnitude of 9.1 to 9.3 and a second quake to the south on March 28 registered 8.6.

By comparison, the 1960 Chile earthquake was magnitude 9.5 and the 1964 Alaska earthquake was magnitude 9.2. The worldwide network of digital seismic instruments did not exist then. California's 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had a magnitude of 6.9.

Among the other findings reported in the various papers:
• In Sri Lanka, more than 1,000 miles from the epicenter, the ground moved nearly 4 inches.
• The rupture spread from south to north, resulting in a Doppler effect in instruments measuring it. Seismometers in Russia recorded the quake at a higher frequency because it was moving toward them, while those in Australia measured a lower frequency as it moved away.
• When the surface waves from the Sumatra quake reached Alaska they triggered a swarm of 14 local earthquakes in the Mount Wrangell area.

In addition to Mr. Lay, Mr. Bilham and Mr. Park, the lead authors of the articles were Charles J. Ammon of Pennsylvania State University, Michael West of the University of Alaska and Roland Burgmann of the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Burgmann's article was published in Science Express, the journal's online edition.

[Schmid, Randolph E. "Sumatra quake shook planet - every bit of it." The Washington Times.
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050520-121229-5376r.htm> (30 May 2005)

NASA Details Earthquake's Earth Effects

By Discovery News

The tsunami-spawning earthquake in Indonesia affected Earth's rotation and shape, shaved the length of a day and shifted the North Pole, NASA scientists said.

Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Benjamin Fong Chao, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., said in a press release that all earthquakes have some effect on Earth's rotation, though their effect is usually minuscule.

"Any worldly event that involves the movement of mass effects the Earth's rotation, from seasonal weather down to driving a car," Chao said.

The recent earthquake, which struck the west coast of Indonesia on Dec. 26, registered a magnitude 9.3 the fourth-largest quake in a century, according to NASA.

The so-called mega-thrust earthquake happened when the India tectonic plate slid beneath the Burma plate beneath the Indian Ocean. The net effect of that movement was a slightly more compact Earth, the scientist said.

Because the shape of the Earth was changed slightly - it became minutely more elliptical - the earthquake also affected the way it spins on its axis, and the length of a day, the scientist said. The length of day was shortened by 2.68 microseconds.

Gross and Chao routinely calculate earthquakes' effects on polar motion. The North Pole was shifted by about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in the direction of 145 degrees East Longitude, they said, continuing a long-term seismic trend.

[____, "NASA" Details Earthquake's Earth Effects." Discovery News. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050110/tsunamieffects.html (13 January 2005)]

Scientists: Sumatra quake longest ever recorded

Temblor big enough to 'vibrate the whole planet '
By Marsha WaltonCNN
Friday, May 20, 2005 Posted: 11:39 AM EDT (1539 GMT)


(CNN) -- Dramatic new data from the December 26, 2004, Sumatran-Andaman earthquake that generated deadly tsunamis show the event created the longest fault rupture and the longest duration of faulting ever observed, according to three reports by an international group of seismologists published Thursday in the journal "Science."

"Normally, a small earthquake might last less than a second; a moderate sized earthquake might last a few seconds. This earthquake lasted between 500 and 600 seconds," said Charles Ammon, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State University.

The quake released an amount of energy equal to a 100 gigaton bomb, according to Roger Bilham, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado.

And that power lasted longer than any quake ever recorded.

The quake, centered in the Indian Ocean, also created the biggest gash in the Earth's seabed ever observed, nearly 800 miles. That's as long as a drive from Los Angeles, California, to Portland, Oregon.

Scientists estimated the average slippage (ground movement up and down) along the entire length of the fault was at least 5 meters (16.5 feet) -- with some places being moved nearly 20 meters (50 feet).

Scientists have also upgraded the magnitude of the quake from 9.0 to between 9.1 and 9.3, a dramatically more powerful event. As a comparison: the ground shook 100 times harder during December's earthquake than what was felt in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in California. That 6.9 magnitude quake caused extensive damage from Santa Cruz to San Francisco.

Monster quake
The stunning power of Asia's earthquake and tsunamis last December has left even veteran scientists in awe.

"I think it was humbling for everyone that analyzed the earthquake," said Thorne Lay, professor of earth sciences and director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"We're sitting in our laboratories working on the signals from this earthquake, trying to understand what happened scientifically, and then watching TV at night and seeing the death toll rising for weeks," he said.

The enormous human toll from the natural disasters spurred Lay to organize dozens of scientists from all over the world to share their data and analysis of the quake. The long-term goal is to try to get more, and more accurate tsunami warning systems in place.

Whole planet vibrated
A wide array of instruments were used for the first time to study the earthquake, and its many aftershocks.

Global broadband seismometers recorded the ground in Sri Lanka, a thousand miles from the epicenter, moved up and down by more than 9 centimeters (3.6 inches), according to the report.

But no place on Earth escaped movement.

"Globally, this earthquake was large enough to basically vibrate the whole planet as much as half an inch, or a centimeter. Everywhere we had instruments, we could see motions," Ammon said.

Much of that information came from digital broadband seismometers, a new era of instruments that the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey began deploying around the world several years ago.

Lay says the equipment is sensitive enough to pick up the motion of wind blowing through trees, or cows walking in a field, or the massive motions produced by this earthquake.

"We'd never seen signals from an earthquake of this size, and the availability of this instrumentation was a real breakthrough in being able to see the complete rupture process of one of these truly monstrous events," Lay said.

Other tools added to the scientists' understanding. Underwater cameras documented the huge crack in the ocean floor. Tsunami buoys, and sonar from the British Navy helped with the analysis.

And a fortunate bit of timing enabled researchers to get a view of the tsunami they have never seen before.

"Two hours after the earthquake has occurred, the wave is spreading out from the Bay of Bengal," Lay said. "Two satellites went over, with the capability of measuring the elevation of the ocean surface. The satellites saw the south-going wave and the north-going part of the wave. "It was just good luck that the passage of the satellites caught the tsunami in motion," he said.

Crunching numbers, and creating maps and models is taking on a new urgency for some of the scientists involved in this research.

"There will be more earthquakes of this type, and with more humans exposed to the hazard there will be more devastating losses of life. What we hope to do is develop technologies that can minimize that loss," Lay said.

[Walton, Marsha. "Scientists: Sumatra quake longest ever recorded." CNN. Science & Space.
<http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/19/sumatra.quake/index.html> (20 May 2005)]

Second woe

"At that moment a violent earthquake took place, a tenth of the city fell, and 7,000 people were killed in the earthquake. The survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven."
- Rev. 11:13, Holman

me: just want to share iyong itinuro sa amin... it is like a newsflash pieced together
because ang mga paunang balita sa tsunami last dec 26, 2004 ay 7,000 dead... in the
newspapers... in the web..etc..., there is even a cnn news update na 10% of total land area of the
whole world affected... it is the second woe and the third woe is the Judgment Day at ang
sabi the third woe quickly follows...

sky celebrating

saw fireworks... looks like the sky is celebrating with me...
just like the other instances when i feel celebrating
and the sky accompanies me...

heavens still....

heaven parin ang pinagkainan namin ni
tle, jen and sherlz, sa "heaven and eggs" in
glorietta, at syempre sandamukal na chikahan
to.. saya... minsan nalang kami kasi magkita
at very remarkable ang aming mga pinag-usapan...
nice to talk to them... : )

3 heavens

i met with rob and john this monday, a very rare
and meaningful event, i decided to wear this shirt
with "heavenly" print, coincidentally i bought this
book "Tikman ang langit" an anthology on the
eraserheads where my classmate melvin's name
is printed on the front cover (congratz melvs :)).
and when i went to the rest room i noticed i
brought "heaven scent" cologne... wishing heaven
for all of us!

Why is the existence of different races not an evidence for evolution?

(Yahna, H. (2003). The Collapse of the Theory of Evolution in 20 Questions. New Delhi, India: IDARA ISHAAT-E-DINIYAT (P) LTD. )

Some evolutionists try to put the existence of different races forward as evidence for evolution. In fact, this claim is more frequently expressed by amateur evolutionists who have a less than sufficient knowledge of the theory they defend. The thesis proposed by those who defend this claim is based on the question, “If, as divine sources say, life began with one man and one woman, how could different races emerged?” Another way of putting it is: “Since Adam and Eve’s height, color and other features were those of only two people, how could races with entirely different features have emerged?”

In fact, the problem lying beneath all these questions or objections is an insufficient knowledge of the laws of genetics, or the ignoring of them. In order to understand the reason for the differences between the races in today’s world, it will be necessary to have some idea of the subject of “variation” which is closely linked to this question.

Variation, a term used in genetics, refers to a genetic event that causes the individuals or groups of a certain type or species to possess different characteristics from one another. The source of this variation is the genetic information possessed by the individuals within that species. As a result of breeding between those individuals, that genetic information comes together in later generations in different combinations. There is an exchange of genetic material between the mother’s and father’s chromosomes. Genes thus get mixed up with one another. The result of this is a wide variety of individual features.

The different physical features between human races are due to variations within the human race. All the people on Earth carry basically the same genetic information, yet some have slanted eyes, some have red hair, some have long noses, and others are short of stature, all depending on the extent of the variation potential of this genetic information.

In order to understand the variation potential, let us consider a society in which brunette, brown-eyed people predominate over blond, blue-eyed individuals. As a result of the two communities intermingling and marrying over time, new generations which are brunette but blue-eyed will be seen. In other words, the physical characteristics of both groups will come together in subsequent generations and produce new appearances. When one imagines other physical characteristics mixing in the same way, it is clear that a great variety will emerge.

The important point that must be understood here is this: There are two genes that rule every physical feature. One may dominate the other, or they may both influence matters to an equal extent. For instance, two genes determine the color of a person’s eyes. One comes from the mother the other from the father. Whichever gene is the dominant one, the individual’s eye color will be determined by that gene. In general, dark colors dominate lighter ones. In this way, if a person possesses genes for brown and for green eyes, his eyes will be brown because the brown eye gene is dominant. However, the recessive green color can be passed down the generations and emerge at a later time. In other words, parents with brown eyes can have green-eyed child. That is because that color gene is recessive in both parents.

This law applies to all other physical features and the genes which govern them. Hundreds, or even thousands, of physical features, such as the ears, nose, the shape of the mouth, height, bone structure, and organ structure, shape, and characteristics, are all controlled in the same way. Thanks to this, all the limitless information in the genetic structure can be passed on to subsequent generations without becoming outwardly visible. Adam, the first human being, and Eve, were able to pass the rich information in their genetic structure on to subsequent generations even though only a part of it was reflected in their physical appearance. Geographical isolation that had happened over human history has led to an atmosphere where different physical features came together in different groups. Over a long period of time, this led to different groups having different bone structures, skin color, height, and skull volumes. This eventually led to the different races.

However, this long period did not change one thing, of course. No matter what their height, skin color and skull volume, all races are part of the human species.