Roy Exum
In the course of my day, I read different websites, am sent all kinds of neat videos and I love the jokes I get. But when I logged onto my ever-bulging email account Thursday morning, I happened across the scariest, most terrifying video I have ever watched. There is a website I check called “Atchuup” that boasts “cool stories daily.” Some are pretty good but this one nearly knocked tough-old-me to my knees after I saw what could happen if an innocent child meets a complete stranger online.
I am not alone; according to YouTube there have now been 37.2 million who have also seen what is politely called “A Child Predator Social Experiment” in just the past three weeks.
A brilliant guy named Coby Persin has come up with what is probably the best example of the very-real dangers of social media that has ever been produced.
Before the “experiment” Persin created a fake Facebook page, which posed him to be a 15-year-old kid who has just moved to town. Then, after obtaining full permission from the parents involved, he started texting three young girls, ages 14, 13, and 12. Don’t you see? Our kids believe Facebook is like Disney World – nothing bad could ever happen there, right? Everything is real and true and honest when somebody is savvy enough to text, don’t you know?
But the fact is that right now there are 750,000 “registered” sex offenders in the United States. This video shows exactly what some of them will do to lure our obviously very naïve children into their grasp. If you have any compassion and responsibility at all as a parent, aunt, grandfather or one who cares about children, you’ll gather your kids and watch this video with them. I hope it is shown in every one of our schools, our Sunday School departments, our recreation centers and anywhere else that one or more kids gather.
Let’s face it; no 12-year-old child that I know has the common sense to cope with evil so deep it makes me nauseated. We protect our kids. One of the girls in the video isn’t even allowed to have boys come in the house but – bingo – she gets on Facebook and then her folks give her a cell phone “to keep tabs on her.” That’s a good thing, but pedophiles are not nice and none play by society’s rules. This video blatantly illustrates what can and, far worse, does go wrong.
Unbelievably, every child who Coby chatted up with his cell phone fell for the scheme, and notice that every parent was certain their daughters would not dare do anything so stupid. Don’t think a pedophile wouldn’t try to attract young boys in this exact same way -- they just use different bait to create a real-life nightmare that, to be brutally honest, could be the last time they are ever seen again.
Please send this video to your out-of-town friends and relatives, urging them to pass it along to others. That is how horrifying this “social experiment” is to this grandfather and I pray that children everywhere will be every bit as terrified as I am. You can see the video here.
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GOD BREWS THE COFFEE
My dear friend Sandy Pohfal sends this tale from Dallas. No one knows the author:
“A group of alumni, well established in their careers, got together to visit their former university professor at his home. Conversation soon turned into stress in work and life.
“Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups that were porcelain, glass, some plain looking, some expensive. He then invited them to help themselves to the coffee. When each of them had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress."
"Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee."
"What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other's cups."
"Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live."
"Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."
"God brews the coffee. Enjoy your coffee!"
royexum@aol.com