Sibling rivalry, puppy-dog style. Nico is the family dog, and happy to be the loved and pampered little fellow that he is. When his people bring home another puppy, Nico is at first thrilled to have a new toy–even if it squirms and yips. But the bloom is soon off the dogwood, as Tugger keeps Nico up all night with his crying. He steals Nico’s toys, and, it seems, the hearts of the people Nico used to call his own.

Tugger always dreamed of having a brother who would play with him and be a friend. When he is dropped into Nico’s home, he is soon perplexed by Nico’s attitude towards him. Why doesn’t his big brother like him? Why doesn’t he like it when Tugger helps himself to Nico’s toys, and gets first place with the people of the house?

The problem is resolved in a very surprising way, considering who takes the initiative to make everyone happy.

This is a terrific little lesson, geared to the youngest of hearts, on how to adapt to new environments and new personalities. The dogs are perfect role models on how to handle (and how NOT to handle) jealousy and sibling rivalry.

The illustrations, by Eumir Carlo Fernandez, are absolutely perfect. They catch the nuances and emotions in the faces of the dogs so well that it is very easy to see what they are feeling.

I highly recommend this story, both as a new reader book, and as a story to read to preschoolers. All would get a lot of satisfaction from it. Nice job, Ms. Sentek!!

We are fortunate that some personality types are drawn toward law enforcement and rule-keeping just as we are fortunate others are drawn completely toward out-of-the box, adventurous, and whacked-out behaviors.

The trouble comes when any of us, however gifted and passionate we are about our calling, become obnoxiously intolerant or intolerable.

The only thing that takes the intolerance out of enforcement is mercy, which isn’t natural to  “enforcers” unless they call themselves out first and remember their own humanity and short-comings.

The obnoxious edge comes off a “creative’s” behavior when they are willing to consider the impact they are having upon others and treat others’ needs as important as their own. Otherwise, they become totally intolerable to the sensible, conservative types.

In either case, the sure cure for arrogance is kindness.

1. Excessive individualism – the desire to do it “my way”. “I like to pray on my own”.Can 2 walk together, unless they agree?
2. The rebellious nature of fallen man – an unwillingness to submit. Submit one to another.
3. Judging other people – especially leaders.  Accept one another.
4. An excessive focus on one’s own problems, and priorities. Too busy to pray with other people.  Fix your eyes on Jesus – and his priorities, namely prayer and unity.
5. Personality clashes. Live in peace, for the sake of prayer
6. Bitterness. Pray without anger or dissent, (although both these are justifiable). Forgive.
7. Laziness. Watch and pray.

Can you think of any others?

unity + prayer = revival

It all seemed quite inevitable, didn’t it?  From the squabbles over the who should be the leader of the boys’ team to the ‘does anyone actually know how to make soup?’ question, it appeared that the finely tuned Team Venture had it in the bag.  And they did, despite a few wobbly moments over the unappetising Veggie Pasta.

One couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for Edward, so keen was he to not fit the stereotype of an accountant, that he ignored even the basic principles of margins (for which an accountancy background is surely not needed) to ‘roll with the punches’ and embark on a task without even a basic plan in place (I’m sure he managed, too, to insult a few accountants along the way.  As Lord Sugar said, it’s not something to ashamed of, is it?!).  At the same time, we must applaud those who do take the lead and put themselves out on a limb at their own risk.  Edward’s lack of strategic planning seemed to apply here, too.  While others had to endure his chaotic and sometimes aggressive approach, they benefited by allowing his need for glory and misguided illusions of his own skills to lead to his swift and catastrophic downfall.

Overall we seem set for a good series this year.  A nice twist on the ultimate prize – there’s so much more to prove in playing for a chance to start up a successful venture with capital funding from Lord Sugar himself.  What also, thankfully, seems inevitable are the eventual personality clashes that the contestants (particularly the girls this week) are so keen to ignore in the early days of the competition.  Because let’s face it, they’re all part of the fun.  There are glimmers bubbling under the surface already, starting with the upbeat and smiling Susan Ma’s disclosure that she didn’t think Melody was such a great team leader after all,  for example.  The talons are slowly coming out…

So here’s my question. Are the ladies putting on an act for the sake of ratings, or are they really that mean and petty? Somebody tell me, please? Because I have to admit, these ladies are the kind of ladies that you just love to hate. They’re great!!!

Today, after church, a group of us trooped down to the Fellowship Hall to volunteer to stuff 5,000 bags with brochures that will be hung on doors around our community soon in an outreach campaign.  We listened to the instructions which consisted of….1.  Find a partner and 2.  One of you put the brochures into a specific order and the other hold open the bag for the brochures to be stuffed in.  The bagger was supposed to keep count and when there were ten filled bags, the bagger was supposed to tie the bags together with a ribbon so there would be groups of ten filled bags.

A friend and I grabbed the brochures and empty bags and we started our assembly line going.  She assembled the brochures and I handled the bags.  After we’d been doing this for awhile, the Commander showed up.  I told him we’d be done in a bit but he sat down and started grabbing brochures and stuffing them in bags and then throwing the bags on my pile.

“Honey, how many bags did you just put on there?  I’m trying to keep count,” I said.

“I don’t know”, he replied and kept on stuffing and slinging them.

“Well, hold on.  I have to have just ten bags in a group.  Don’t keep putting them on here.  Start your own pile,”  I suggested.

He switched gears and began a pile of his own but when he came up short and needed another bundle of brochures, he reached over and grabbed a set from a neighboring team.  Now I happened to have observed the other team carefully arranging these brochures in groups of ten.

“Honey,  you can’t do that.  You just messed up their piles.”

“What difference does it make which pile it comes from?  They’re all the same brochures,”  he answered.

“But now they have a pile that is going to come out short,” I replied.

He looked at me and then reached over, grabbed some of our brochures and plopped them back on the other team’s pile.  I looked at his pile of filled bags.

“You have some bags with the brochures facing down and some with them facing up.  They should all be facing up, don’t you think?”  I suggested.

“Why”, he challenged.

“Because it looks neater that way,” I countered.

It was a stalemate.

I glanced over at the other team, who were giving me the old fish eye.  “And that’s why you never have two leaders on the same team,” I told them.

“Look, Honey.  I’m the bag lady.  Why don’t you go around and collect the filled bags or something?  We’ll be done here shortly.”

Once he’d gone, I turned to my partner and said, “We just don’t work well together.  We both have really strong ideas of how things should be done.”

“But your marriage has worked well,” she said.

“That’s because we learned a long time ago that we just can’t work together on anything,” I laughed.  “It’s even uglier when you get us both in the same canoe.  Lord have mercy!”