Helping Hearts with FBCO's

My family is back home and it's good. I miss them when they are gone, even though silence sometimes is very golden, silence sometimes can grow so loud it drowns out all the happiness it brought right at the beginning and then it just turns into loneliness. Happily so, for my husband likes me to miss him when he goes away. (Picture:Lexie, Ashlee, Calvin, Tucker, AJ & in front Gunner.)

Faith-Based and Community Initiatives or Faith-based and community organizations (FBCO). My knowledge of this program is very vague so I wanted to learn more about it today. I heard it mentioned during the Presidential Press Conference today. I have attended a FBCO conference that was a result of Faith-Based funds to Southcentral Alaska's - Family Wellness Warrior's Initiative.

Faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) have a long tradition of helping Americans in need and together represent an integral part of our nation’s social service network. Yet, all too often, the Federal government has put in place complicated rules and regulations preventing FBCOs from competing for funds on an equal footing with other organizations. President Bush believes that besides being inherently unfair, such an approach can waste tax-payer dollars and cut off the poor from successful programs. Federal funds should be awarded to the most effective organizations—whether public or private, large or small, faith-based or secular—and all must be allowed to compete on a level playing field.

"Beauty for Ashes" - was created, in part, through the heart desire of Linda Ross (who has already publicly shared her own personal struggles) to help other sexually abused women. BFA is a program designed to address the results that domestic violence, rape, spousal abuse, child abuse and other abuses create in the hearts and lives of so many Alaskan people. Hidden abuses that have wounded hearts, causing many to live long lives hiding in the shadows of those hurts. Shadows that have darkened every aspect of life and many times left untreated gets passed down to their own families.

Women and men were helped during these sessions though, sadly so, the power of evil permeates even those missions and organizations that were created to prevent abuse. A reminder to us all, that none of us are ever immune to falling into the enticements of the evil one. He is a crafty adversary and our bodies, so weak.

The FBCO program makes it easier than it has been in the past for not only secular programs but even private and religious organizations to receive government funding in order to run community social services, such as Beauty For Ashes. It is a good thing, President Bush.

Alan and Linda Ross began a similar program in Kodiak designed to help women, men and children to overcome the power of wounded hearts. It has an Alutiiq name (I cannot even pronounce): "Unguwatet Asiyturtut - "Hearts Going Towards Wellness." That is a beautiful name. Read more of it at Alan's blog.

I am watching Alaska According To Marie's blog for pictures from the trip to Kodiak and words about their visit with Alan and Linda Ross and the others at Kodiak Native New Life.

From this end and listening to their stories, "Destination" enjoyed the people, the meetings and the singing!

God bless Kodiak!

A Quote I Found:
Speech may sometimes do harm; but so may silence and a worse harm at that. No insult ever caused so deep a wound as a tenderness expected and withheld; and no spoken indiscretion was ever so bitterly regretted as the word that one did not speak. As read in Apples of Gold, Wings of Silver, Treasures of Silver - Jo Petty