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Willow Springs Boys Ranch is mentioned in the cover story on Bob Stoops in the Distinctly Oklahoma Magazine. Click on the link to read the article. We are proud to have The Bob Stoops Champions Foundation invest in the mission of WSBR.

There is no quick fix to raising children. There are not often immediate results. However, in the long-term, the investment pays off. There is a national credit crisis because we want things now and don't want to pay until later. There is also a national family crisis. Often, our society parents with a credit card mentality. The funny thing about a credit card is... you pay later and you pay with interest. It is always more cost effective to do things right the first time. I think that I have heard my parents say that once or twice while I was growing up. Unfortunately, the bill has come due and we are paying with interest!

WSBR's mission is the proverb that states that if you train up the child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it. WSBR is committed to paying on the front end the cost of parenting, so that our communities are not paying later with interest and bankrupting our society. The product is responsible leadership by young men, husbands and fathers in our communities and families. Thank you Bob Stoops Champions Foundation for investing on the front end. Oklahoma will appreciate your investment!

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The OU Baseball Team came out for the fourth year to serve others at Willow Springs Boys Ranch. The team did a service project in the afternoon. Work included weedeating around ponds, and the boys homes, cleared trees, mowing, hauling off trash, setting railroad ties along trails, and cleaning up around some new construction. The Sooners ate dinner with the boys and staff of WSBR out at Jacob's Ladder in the evening. The baseball team and coaching staff ended the day doing some team-building on the ropes course.

I am grateful for all that the OU Baseball Team does for WSBR. Sunny Golloway serves on the board of the ranch and is a close friend of mine. I have known Sunny since he coached at Whittier Elementary in Norman back in the early 90's. WSBR has been blessed to have two OU Baseball players volunteer at the ranch. PJ Sandivol is a former player who has served as a relief house parent with his wife, Jacqi, before moving back to California. This year, Stephan Pourlier has volunteered the entire summer at Willow Springs and Jacob's Ladder doing whatever needed to be done. He also spent one week volunteering to spend some one on one time with a young man at the ranch. I appreciate the impact that the Sooners have on WSBR! Thank you players and coaches for another great day today! I appreciate your help, your hearts, and your character!

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Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.
~Matthew 9:38

The key to the missionary problem is in the hand of God, and that key
is prayer not work, that is, not work as the word is popularly
understood to-day because that may mean the evasion of concentration
on God. The key to the missionary problem is not the key of common
sense, nor the medical key, nor the key of civilization or education
or even evangelization. The key is prayer. "Pray ye therefore the
Lord of the harvest." Naturally, prayer is not practical, it is
absurd; we have to realize that prayer is stupid from the ordinary
common-sense point of view.

There are no nations in Jesus Christ's outlook, but the world. How
many of us pray with out respect of persons, and with respect to only
one Person, Jesus Christ? He owns the harvest that is produced by
distress and conviction of sin, and this is the harvest we have to
pray that labourers may be thrust out to reap. We are taken up with
active work while people all round are ripe to harvest, and we do not
reap one of them, but waste our Lord's time in over-energized
activities. Suppose the crisis comes in your father's life, in your
brother's life, are you there as a labourer to reap the harvest for
Jesus Christ? "Oh, but I have a special work to do!" No Christian has
a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ's own,
one who is not above his Master, one who does not dictate to Jesus
Christ what he intends to do. Our Lord calls to no special work: He
calls to Himself. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest," and He
will engineer circumstances and thrust you out.

~ October 16 Reading from My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

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Willow Springs Boys Ranch Fall Newsletter 2008
Download file

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The first response to any crisis is prayer; urgent and honest prayer. Before we turn to money managers and governments, let's turn to the Maker of the Universe. ~Max Lucado

You Have Our Attention, Lord
A prayer by Max Lucado - October 2008

Our friends lost their house
The co-worker lost her job
The couple next door lost their retirement
It seems that everyone is losing their footing

This scares us. This bailout with billions.
These rumblings of depression.
These headlines: ominous, thunderous -
"Going Broke!" "Going Down!" "Going Under!" "What's Next?"

What is next?

We're listening. And we're admitting: You were right.

You told us this would happen.
You shot straight about loving stuff and worshipping money.
Greed will break your heart, You warned.
Money will love you and leave you.
Don't put your hope in riches that are so uncertain.

You were right. Money is a fickle lover and we just got dumped.

We were wrong to spend what we didn't have.
Wrong to neglect prayer and ignore the poor.
Wrong to think we ever earned a dime. We didn't. You gave it. And now, tell us Father, are You taking it?

We're listening. And we're praying.
Could you make something good out of this mess?

Of course You can. You always have.
You led slaves out of slavery,
Built temples out of ruins,
Turned stormy waves into a glassy pond and water into sweet wine.
This disorder awaits your order. So do we.

Through Christ,
Amen

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For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin;
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:21

Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong
being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian
religion bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin.
Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The
first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it
is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel
that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting
power.

The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon
Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity
of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He
might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed
that Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by
sympathy. He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in
His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race - "He hath
made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin," and by so doing He put
the whole human race on the basis of Redemption. Jesus Christ
rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it
to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what
Our Lord has done on the Cross.

A man cannot redeem himself; Redemption is God's "bit," it is
absolutely finished and complete; its reference to individual men is
a question of their individual action. A distinction must always be
made between the revelation of Redemption and the conscious
experience of salvation in a man's life.

Daily Reading of My Upmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers

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I am excited about Jeff Woods new release: RAW WOOD. Jeff has started his own record label and also has a worship album and a Christmas Album.

Jeff is a good friend of mine and a friend of Willow Springs Boys Ranch. One of the highlights at the ranch each year is Jeff showing up with his guitar at the WSBR Christmas Celebration. His song, You're Never Too Old For Santa Claus is a ranch favorite.

Jeff Wood Records has designated a portion of the proceeds from sales to two charities: Willow Springs Boys Ranch and Wes Welker's 83 Foundation. Not only will you purchasing some of your new favorite music, you will be investing in two worthwhile charities. Where else can you do that? Click below to read the press release from Jeff Wood Records and get Jeff Wood's three new cd's.

I am excited to share with you that my favorite country music artist, Jeff Wood, has re-surfaced with an incredible new CD entitled, "RAW WOOD" - by far his greatest work to-date.

For purchasing CD's and/or merchandise go to: JeffWoodRecords.com

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