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1. WELL, PTL! ON THE INSISTENCE OF MY LITTLE FAMILY HERE AND PARTICULARLY MARIA, I'M GOING TO TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT I DO EVERY DAY all day long and half the night, as they thought you might learn a few little things that would be beneficial as we cover my daily habits and duties and actions and schedule. I hope you will enjoy it as well as profit by it and learn by it and maybe even hear a few new things you haven't heard before. PTL! So here we go: Dad's Day! GBY!

2. FOR SOME REASON OR OTHER THEY THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE GOOD FOR THE NEW FAMILY HISTORY BOOK, called the "Book of Remembrance" or "Family Tree," and I guess it is somewhat historical to tell you about the kind of a day I live day in and day out almost every day of every year, and all the various things I do all day long. Well, this may not be very inspirational but at least it might be edifying and educational and informative and full of little tips and nuggets on things which may be helpful to you in how to apply these different little things in your own daily lives throughout your day.

WAKE UP!

3. FIRST OF ALL‚ I USUALLY WAKE UP EVERY MORNING ANYWHERE FROM 5 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING UNTIL NOON, depending on what kind of a night I've had the night before. But normally and on the average I usually am awake at dawn and love to watch the sunrise. If I miss that I really feel cheated and have an almost guilt complex about sleeping any longer and wasting the morning away in sleep.

4. HOWEVER, I WOULD SAY THAT ON THE AVERAGE I EITHER WAKE AND/OR ARISE ABOUT 7 OR 8 O'CLOCK each day, and Mom and I love to watch the view through our window as the daylight dawns or the sun rises or the sun shines brightly already on the scenes of God's beautiful creation below and beyond. We have our bed arranged so that we can see out our window and view the beauties of God's inspiring creation. To me there's hardly anything more inspiring than His Word, than His beautiful gorgeous loving handiwork that He has made for us to enjoy and for our benefit and health and pleasure, His beautiful lovely creations, including you! PTL! GBY!

5. I HAVE YOUR PICTURES USUALLY HANGING BY MY BED AND/OR ON MY DESK scattered about me so that I can look at you too for inspiration and see your lovely graceful beautiful forms just the way God made you, and your sweet smiles and shining faces which truly spur me and inspire me to spout the Word for your benefit, as well as sometimes spurt some seed as well, when looking at you gets me excited enough! Well, anyhow, Mom and I usually wake up fairly early. I often wake a few minutes before her and am quiet, just thinking and praying about the day, and she wakes whenever I stir.

6. NO MATTER HOW QUIETLY I SIT UP AS THOUGH I'M GOING TO GET OUT OF BED, MARIA POPS UP TO ASK ME WHERE I'M GOING! And no matter how quiet I try to be to let her sleep, she right away wants to know if I need any help, what do I want, what do I need, where am I going! It's just almost like she's tied to me with a string or a wire or a radio beam! She always seems to know when I'm going to get up. Even if she's sound asleep, she just hops right out of it and bounces up to help me! GBH! I have to then kiss her and reassure her that I'm fine‚ "I'm just getting up‚ I'm going to the toilet, go back to sleep please, Dear; don't bother me!" And finally she relaxes and gives up and goes back to sleep. PTL!—Sometimes!

7. YES, I DO NEED QUIET IN THE MORNING. I LIKE MORNINGS TO BE VERY QUIET AND ALONE WITH THE LORD. I like to go into my closet and shut the door where I can pray in secret so that my Father which seeth in secret shall reward me with an answer, I trust, whether openly or not. My closet happens to be the bathroom, the water closet! Also while I'm making my breakfast I like to be quiet and thinking and praying about the day and its needs, and since I'm very sensitive to noises, I have very sensitive ears, and particularly to strange noises‚ they'll immediately attract my attention.

8. YOUR EARS ARE CONSTANT WATCHMEN THAT NEVER SLEEP‚ believe it or not! Night and day they're always listening, and they will automatically wake you up in case they hear any strange or unusual noises! You can sleep through all kinds of noise which is common and customary and usual, the usual noises of the day or night; no matter how loud, you can usually sleep right through them if they're normal and usual. But your ears have a remarkable ability to suddenly wake you up in case they hear any strange or unusual noises that do not fit the usual pattern of sounds! So they are your faithful watchmen who never sleep! Not the watchmen on the wall, but the watchmen on your dome. Two of your most important holes, holey holes, are your ears! PTL!

9. THE FIRST PHYSICAL SIGN that she gets that I'm getting ready to get up is that I give a big long stretch and yawn and I put my arms up over my head and stretch out my arms in a position that she knows is an invitation for her to come over and see me. So she quickly snuggles over into my left arm, as I usually sleep on her right side since I'm right-handed and she can use her left hand, which makes a nice combination for a lot of things, particularly things you do in bed. So then I close my left arm about her lovely little head and neck and shoulders and usually it stretches all the way down her graceful curved side and pats her beautiful bottom while we pray and thank the Lord for a good night and His safekeeping and a good night's rest and another beautiful day and opportunity of life and service for the Lord and His children.

10. WE PRAY FOR THE FAMILY AND FOR THE CHILDREN AND FOR YOU FOLKS the world around and that the Lord will have His will this day and give us strength for it and wisdom and love and faith and all that we need to perform today's task‚ which is usually feeding you, His sheep, in some way or another. Then having had our little CP‚ as I put it down in my diary, cuddle and prayer, I sleepily arise and pick up my watch that I have left on the bedside table, spray myself with a little cologne and slip in whatever clothing is suitable for the weather.

WASH AND WEAR!

11. ALTHOUGH I HAVE MY FLEEBAG SITTING BESIDE MY BED with everything in it that I own or need or would need should I flee, I really seldom ever even open it! Actually it simply contains a few spare items of street clothes‚ if I should want to go out on the street in the neighborhood and take a walk, which we sometimes do. And it's got extra pairs of underwear, even a pair of swimming shorts which I never use anymore since we have a fairly private place to swim which I'll also tell you about later. I did get myself some real lightweight cotton sleeveless undershirts instead of the T-shirts I used to wear in the cold North.

12. ACTUALLY, IN GETTING UP AND JUST MOVING AROUND OUR PRIVATE QUARTERS AND OUR OWN ROOM, AT FIRST I DIDN'T WEAR ANYTHING! But then to spare my roommate the awful sight as well as finding that no shorts meant increased friction on my bottom when sitting in my study chair, therefore I found that I needed something between me and the outside world to make sure that I wasn't rubbing myself raw sliding in and out and squirming about in my chair as I do most of the day, since most of my work is sedentary and mental work, a great deal of reading and dictating and proofreading and editing, etc., etc‚ etc.

13. SO I FOUND THAT IN HOT WEATHER WEARING AT LEAST A PAIR OF VERY LIGHTWEIGHT COTTON SHORTS around the house as well as in my chair was very comfortable and saved wear and tear on both my bottom and the chair and on the nerves of the people who had to look at me all day. PTL! Hallelujah! Maria's over there protesting that she doesn't mind looking at me. Ahem! (Discovers microphone has automatic volume control.)

14. SO I'M STILL LEARNING HOW TO RECORD using the cute little M-80 micro-radio tape recorder. And we've discovered, by the way, since it didn't have its own built-in mike, that you can buy very cute little stereo mikes that plug directly into the microphone socket, a cordless mike that just plugs right in there and very small and just like part of your tape recorder. We just leave ours plugged in and so we now have a complete microcassette, not only player and radio but also a recorder, and that's what I'm using right now. PTL!

15. ABOUT MY ROBES? WELL, I HAD ELASTIC PUT INTO THE CUFFS OF THE LONG SLEEVES of the robes, because I had a problem that when I am sitting in my chair and usually holding up the book or papers, my forearm is in more or less a vertical position and the sleeves would slide down to my elbows, exposing my bare forearms‚ and when it's cool or cold, that would be a bit chilling, and of course you only wear a robe when it is cool or cold. So therefore I didn't like this annoying sliding of my sleeves down my arm to my elbow‚ leaving my bare arms exposed.

16. SO I HAD ONE OF OUR DEAR ANGELIC SEAMSTRESSES ON THE STAFF HERE, GOD BLESS'R, PUT SOME ELASTIC IN THE CUFFS, just small little elastic ribbons sewn into the hem of the cuff, so that it keeps my robe cuffs snug, not too tight but snugly around my wrists so they'll stay right there no matter what position my arm is in. I've found that even when eating this is very handy‚ because my long full sleeves of a robe were frequently dipping into the food as I reached across the table for this or that. But now with these elastics in the cuff they stay put and nice and close to my arm and are not always sagging into the food on a boarding house reach across the table!—Ha!

17. ON COOLER WINTER MORNINGS I SLIP ON A ROBE‚ just enough to keep me comfortable while I get up and go to the bathroom in the cool morning air, which I do, heading directly straight for the toilet where I have my morning meditations on the world news, the newspaper, while I'm having my daily function of elimination commonly known as a BM or a bowel movement, which with me is just as regular as clockwork every morning as soon as I get up, with very rare exceptions.

REGULARITY!

18. I BELIEVE THAT'S ONE REASON FOR MY GOOD HEALTH—I TAKE CARE OF MY BODY that the Lord has given me, the temple of His Spirit, and try to be good to it and not abuse it. As even the apostle said, "No man ever yet hated his own body" (Eph.5:29), and most of us treat it with a lot of tender loving care. You may not love it and some of you may not even like yours or the way it looks, but at least you're usually pretty good to it‚ and at least for the Lord's sake and His work's sake we certainly need to take care of it and be good to it and make sure we live with fairly regular habits and schedule.

19. REGULARITY IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ASSETS OF GOOD HEALTH, as dear Dr. Koger used to teach me from the time I was a lad. To have a regular time of sleep and a fairly regular get up time and a regular time of elimination, regular meal time, etc. is very necessary for good health. Now mine vary occasionally but, as you're going to see as I outline my day for you, my normal schedule is fairly regular, usually the same hours. Oddly enough, if the schedule starts a bit earlier or even later, the schedule is still the same in length and in timing and distance between meals and length of sleep, etc.

20. I'VE FOUND‚ FOR EXAMPLE, THAT NO MATTER WHAT MY SLEEP SCHEDULE MAY BE, whether I only get three or four hours a night or I get ten or eleven on some rare occasions, or I get a nap or a couple of naps during the day, a ten–minute nap to a two-hour nap, whatever it happens to be, if any nap at all, when averaging up my average day and night's total length of sleep, it averages out almost invariably over a period of days to almost exactly seven or eight hours of sleep per day. So PTL!

21. REGULARITY IS A GREAT BLESSING AND ASSET TO YOUR HEALTH, to follow a fairly regular schedule all day long, do the same usual things at the same usual times, and then your body clock (No.1310) just becomes accustomed to that and you usually wake up at the same time and you have your BM at the same time, whenever that may be. Now Maria has hers at a different time, usually after breakfast, sometimes other times, but it's rarely that either one of us vary from our usual schedule of regularity and habit times. Which is very good for you, and your body becomes accustomed to it, and just like a computer it even prompts you by certain feelings that it's time for this or it's time for that.—A time to get sleepy and go to bed and a time to sleep and a time to wake and a time to go to the toilet and a time to eat and "a time for every thing" (Ecc.3:1-8). PTL!

22. SO YOU SHOULD HAVE A TIME FOR EVERYTHING AND USUALLY A REGULAR TIME, a fairly regular daily habitual schedule. This, as my father–in-law used to say, saves you an awful lot of decisions when you do pretty much the same thing every day and follow the same schedule every day. You don't have to make a lot of different frustrating, confusing and disconcerting annoying choices. You just do pretty much the same thing every day, and so you don't have to decide when you're going to do it or how you're going to do it, but you just do it until it becomes so automatic you can almost do it in your sleep, just by habit.

23. I'VE FOUND THAT I DO CERTAIN LITTLE THINGS, mannerisms, moves, characteristics of bodily motion through preprogrammed habit, even the way I lie in bed. I almost always go to sleep on my left side and later on in the night turn over on my right side and then often wind up flat on my back in the morning. Your body needs to sleep in different positions during the night in order to rest different sets of muscles and not become rigid, so that motion in your sleep is not a sign of lack of restfulness but it is a sign of necessity for movement and flexing and resting of different muscles even while you sleep. Because some muscles are always working‚ even in your sleep.

24. I ALSO NOTICE THAT I ALMOST ALWAYS HOLD MY COVERS IN A CERTAIN WAY. I must've developed that when I was a baby, how I grab the top of the covers in a kind of a roll or a ball and cuddle'm up to my chest like I'm hugging them, and it just seems like that's the natural way I go to sleep‚ like my little security blanket. I still do it and it seems automatic, and I seem to kind of miss it if I don't have that little roll of sheet clutched to my bosom like some children clutch a doll or a blanket or something like that, and I probably learned that in my cradle in babyhood and it's stuck with me all these years. Just another bit of regularity and habit-forming custom which is good for you and to which your body has become adjusted and accustomed, and therefore it can go through those operations without even thinking about it, just making decisions automatically.

25. HOW I LIKE OUR BED MADE. Well‚ I don't know‚ I suppose everybody has their own preference about how to do the bed, but I sure do like the covers and/or sheets tucked in well at the bottom. I don't like to be able to pull them out and have my feet sticking out when I want to be covered. Neither do I like the covers up so far that they get wrapped up around my head and there's too much covers.

26. IN COOLER WINTER WEATHER you may find out the sheet may be insufficient, and yet the spread pulled up on top of the sheet might be too much. So we have gotten to using the system of using two sheets instead of one for a little cooler weather, and it seems to work out just right, praise the Lord!—And if it does get quite cool sometimes, as it does at night, we have a light spread there also that we can pull up over us if need be. Some of these little tips might be helpful to you as well, so I'm telling you about them. In the morning we peel the sheets completely down for several hours before making the bed, so it'll have time to air well.

TOE CURE!

27. DURING THE WARMER MONTHS I SELDOM EVER WEAR SLIPPERS OR EVEN THONGS inside the room, where we keep our floors clean and it's a pleasure to walk around in your bare feet, and I have made a phenomenal discovery! For years I have been plagued with ingrown toenails on both big toes, which began with those cheap too-small too–tight 2-pound shoes that I bought in Cyprus which I thought were a bargain, nice loafers that I could easily slip off and on and good for walking, but they were too small. Several women have complimented me on my feet even though my feet are large, and said they're quite beautiful. And I haven't denied it, because the Bible says‚

28. "HOW BEAUTIFUL UPON THE MOUNTAINS ARE THE FEET OF HIM THAT BEARETH GLAD TIDINGS" (Isa.52:7). PTL! So I hadn't really noticed it before, but when they called my attention to the fact, I decided, "Well‚ the Lord did make the foot to be a rather beautiful thing." It certainly is a useful thing, and it's about the first one of my members that I use first thing in the morning when I get out of bed to get up on my feet, and as I say, we go barefooted about the room here because it's certainly more comfortable.

29. BUT THE MOST AMAZING THING HAS OCCURRED! For years I had this severe trouble with ingrown toenails and had to very carefully trim them and was often tempted to go to the doctor or chiropodist to try to get them taken care of, as most of my family had the same problem. My brother and my mother particularly were plagued with it and had to go to the doctor to get'm taken care of and virtually operated on. I had never had any trouble with my toes or toenails at all until I wore those tight shoes too long. I kept them for a couple of years, and that did it!

30. THAT STARTED IT, AND THEN I BEGAN USING THESE STRETCH SOCKS, TIGHT SOCKS that supposedly stretched any size, but since mine are such long big-size socks that said that they were from 9-11 or 9–12, I was stretching them to the limit, and I found that this pressure on my toenails, big toes in particular, apparently aggravated it. I noticed it constantly irritated me, and frequently I would even cut out the toes of my socks in order to relieve that pressure so that they wouldn't press on my sensitive sore big toes, and even though I bought shoes and boots of larger sizes which did not press on my toes, I found even the socks were doing the dirty work, and it seemed like there just was no cure and I was never going to get rid of those ingrown toenails, which really irritated both big toes until they were actually red and sore and very sensitive to the touch! So that as soon as I got home in my room I'd always take off my shoes and socks and wear some kind of loose slippers on my feet to keep them comfortable and warm.

31. IN THE TROPICS I FOUND THE SOLUTION; in fact, the tropics themselves were the solution! Because there I found this was one of the fringe benefits of going South, and if you are plagued with ingrown toenails, this is where you need to be! Because in going around barefooted the way God intended for you to go originally and the way God created Adam and Eve to walk about, you'll find that most of your foot troubles will straighten out, as did my toenails!

32. WE WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZED that within just a few months after going to the tropics, I can almost say a few weeks‚ we suddenly began to notice the difference! My toenails, instead of curling around to almost a tube, had begun to flatten out perfectly normal‚ no longer cutting into the flesh of my toe on both sides of the bone until I could almost scream if I stubbed my toe! My toes became completely normal and my toenails flattened out normally, no longer cutting into the flesh of my toes and no more pain, no more soreness, everything normal again just like they used to be most of my life until I bought those tight shoes and my toenails started being ingrown.

33. SO IF YOU HAVE A REAL SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH INGROWN TOENAILS, BELOVED, THE SOLUTION IS GO SOUTH! Go South, young man or young woman‚ and let'm grow flat with the country! Because it has actually cured my ingrown toenails, and that has been one of the greatest blessings of our moving South, because they were always so sore and so sensitive and giving me trouble and having to trim them so gingerly!

34. MARIA'S VERY EAGER TO GET THIS PARTICULAR CHAPTER DONE FOR HER NEW HISTORY BOOK, which is her birthday present to me and to you. All her own idea, GBH! It was her pet project, and she has kept us all busy with it ever since she got this brilliant idea of cooking up this history book of the whole Family, including me, for our birthday in February! So she's kept me busy cooking up my own birthday present‚ since this Book of Remembrance is to be her birthday present to me and to you and our mutual birthday present to each other for all of us. PTL! I think it's a great idea, and it's going very well and I believe you'll enjoy it, 'cause here it is! You've got it right in your hand right now, or you wouldn't be reading this. PG! Hallelujah! TYL! So, so much for my once-ingrown toenails which are now all straightened out and perfectly normal and no more painful. TTL!

35. SO IF IT'S WARM I DON'T EVEN WEAR SLIPPERS OR ANY KIND OF SHOES AROUND THE HOUSE. When we go outdoors we usually put on sandals or something loose-fitting to protect our feet from the ground and any bugs or varmints or little parasites that can collect on your feet, and some of them even bore holes through your soles and give you fungus and athlete's foot and worse if you don't wear some kind of protection on the bottom of your feet walking around on the ground in some of these countries.

36. OTHERWISE, IF WE GO OUT INTO THE TOWN WE DO OF COURSE USUALLY HAVE TO WEAR SHOES AND SOCKS, but normally I wear socks that are not so tight-fitting anymore.

SPEX!

37. WELL‚ NOW I'M IN THE BATHROOM SITTING ON THE TOILET READING THE NEWSPAPER, and I have a little stand set up right here in the toilet corner to hold all my necessary equipment for that task, including a little high–intensity lamp for good light on the paper, and my reading glasses.

38. I KEEP A PAIR OF READING GLASSES IN EACH ROOM and almost in each place in every room in the house! I have one pair I keep in the bathroom so I won't have to go chasing around after them and remember to take them there‚ especially if I'm in a hurry. I have another pair at my bedside and another pair on my desk, another pair at the eating table, etc. So I have several pairs around.

39. I GOT THE BRILLIANT INSPIRATION ONE DAY, when we were in one place recently where they do such excellent efficient expert work, to have my eyes tested again and check out what kind of reading glasses I needed now. So I dug out about half-a-dozen pairs of old frames, and when he got the right lenses from the tests, etc. and I tried out the first pair, I brought him in all the other old frames, some of them with broken lenses and some with useless lenses that no longer fitted my eyesight, and I simply had him make lenses to fit every old pair of frames I had, so that I've got about a half–a-dozen different pairs of reading glasses now, and I got'm extra cheap because I only had to pay a small nominal sum for each lens as long as I had the frames.

40. AS YOU'VE PROBABLY FOUND OUT IN BUYING GLASSES‚ THEY CHARGE YOU MORE FOR THE FRAMES nowadays than they do for the lenses and you have a harder choice and more difficulty making a choice of frames than the lenses that the doctor chooses for you. So I thought, "Well‚ I've got all these old frames, I might as well put'm to use and work!" So I brought them in to his astonishment and I said, "Here, okay‚ for several days I've tried these lenses out that you made for me and they feel good, read good‚ work well, and so here, put the same kind of lenses in all these other frames." And it just so happened that he was able to get lenses to fit nearly all the frames that I had on hand. So now I have plenty of reading glasses all over the place, and I leave a pair here, there and everywhere to make sure there is a pair within reach.

41. BECAUSE AT MY OLD AGE THE LENSES OF YOUR EYES HAVE KIND OF HARDENED AND THEY DON'T FOCUS SO FLEXIBLY ANYMORE AND YOU BECOME NORMALLY MORE FARSIGHTED and you have to read your reading material almost at arm's length with your natural eyes, and that's when I first decided I needed glasses, when my arm was not long enough! Ha! Or I had to stand outside the phone booth to see the number on the telephone! I decided it was time to buy a pair of glasses. That was my first pair, way back yonder when I was about 45. But I think that was pretty good for 45 years of constant hard usage of my normal lenses and normal eyes that I got 45 good years out of them without glasses before I had to buy my first pair of glasses! So PTL!

42. WELL, SOME OF YOU CAN'T HELP IT. YOU WERE BORN WITH POOR EYES and poor eyesight and even some little children have had to be fitted for glasses, sad to say. But anyway, I finally had to break down and buy glasses, and it has been a help to my reading, which I have a lot to do, usually 6 or 8 hours a day or more, which is quite a strain on the eyes, and it's good to have good glasses that are comfortable and easy readers.

43. IF YOU BUY GLASSES, be sure you don't select frames that are so big and heavy and monstrous that they're quite a weight on the bridge of your nose, or you'll find that they will get uncomfortable through hours of use. Don't buy the popular large owl-shaped glasses and their big heavy frames and big heavy lenses which are going to be uncomfortable after some length of use, but buy glasses which are small, small frames with small lenses‚ of very light thin construction and lightweight, that you can wear for hours or nearly all day, as I do, and not even notice them or feel them there.

44. BE SURE THAT THEY'RE WELL FITTED AND VERY COMFORTABLE and make sure the optometrist fits them exactly. Make sure first of all in your test that you tell him the truth and you get your signals straight and you call the letters right and make sure that you really can see that particular letter very clearly with that particular eye, and don't just be in a hurry or embarrassed that you're taking too long. I've often told the optometrist, "Now go back to that other one. Now try that other lens again. No‚ back to the other one. Yes, yes yes, that's it, that's the one! That's the one right there! That's the best one!"—as he tests each eye. And they will test them under different kinds of light, like red light or green light‚ because your eye has a different capacity to focus under these different lighting conditions, as well as normal light.

45. SO DON'T BE AFRAID TO TRY THE OPTOMETRIST'S PATIENCE AND TEST HIS SKILL BY INSISTING ON GETTING EXACTLY THE RIGHT LENS for exactly your most comfortable focus, whatever that may be. And then when he has finally come up with your lenses in your either new or old pair of frames, be sure you try'm out right there at the counter and you hold your reading matter at the usual normal focal length at which you normally read and test them on the spot to make sure they're exactly right, including holding a hand over one eye to see how well you're seeing with that eye, and then put your hand over the other eye and see how you're seeing with the other eye, and make sure you're getting a good pair of lenses that are exactly right for each eye.

46. OFTEN YOUR EYES DIFFER IN FOCAL LENGTH, so be sure you're testing at the right focal length for which they're designed, and be sure you tell the optometrist when he's deciding on the prescription for your glasses, that this is the focal length at which you normally read. Now almost normally they will try to pawn off on you a prescription for a focal length of about one foot or 12 inches (30.5 cm). This is not the distance at which I normally read. I normally, through years of habit in sitting and reading books, have laid the book on my lap‚ which, from my eye to the book, is close to 18 inches or a cubit or a foot-and-a-half, and therefore that is 50 cm. I measured it time and again with a ruler, and that's what I told the sweet little boy optometrist.

47. I SAID‚ "50 CMS!" He said, "Oh no no, that's so far‚ so long! Usually only about 30 cms!" I said, "No sir, you make'm for 50 cms. I've measured it time and again and I do a lot of reading, and the distance at which I usually hold my paper, book or clipboard is 50 cms. from my eyeballs‚ and you make'm for 50 cms. or else! When I come back and test the glasses, if they don't read right at 50 cms. when I'm sitting here and I put the reading thing down on my lap and not on the counter, but down on my lap at my usual reading distance," I said, "if they don't read right, then I'm going to make you take'm back and do it over again!"

48. I'VE DONE THAT WITH A FEW OPTOMETRISTS. In London once they did such sloppy work‚ those lazy Londoners, that I had to have them sent back three times before they got'm right, and they never did get them right! I still couldn't wear those glasses and finally, right there at that place where I got my last glasses, I had to throw the £50 London lenses away when he took them out of the old frames and put in my new reading lenses. I just said, "Here, have you got anything you can do with these old lenses?" and I gave him all my old lenses! I figured maybe if nothing else he could give them to the poor or someone, anybody they fitted. But they sure didn't fit me! Now that's for reading.

49. BUT NOW IN MY OLD AGE I'VE FOUND I CAN SEE BETTER AT A DISTANCE WITHOUT ANY GLASSES! I can't see as well at a distance with any of my glasses as I can see with my natural naked eye, believe it or not! So really all I need is my reading glasses for reading at the normal reading distance, my normal reading distance of 50 cms. Your normal reading distance is the focal length of the glasses that you should buy. Your eyes can adapt themselves to any distance slightly closer or slightly further away than that. So you'll find that with glasses of a focal length exact and sharp at your normal reading distance‚ you will be able to read very clearly even if the distance is slightly more or less than that, because the lens of your eye still is flexible enough even at my age and still is able to adapt and focus at various distances within limits.

50. FOR EXAMPLE‚ I CAN LOOK OUT MY WINDOW RIGHT NOW AND SEE THOSE LOVELY BEAUTIFUL GREEN TREES just sharply as can be, just as sharp as I ever saw with or without glasses, and my eyes seem to be almost as good at a distance as they were when I was young. But the reason you need reading glasses as you get old is because the lens of your eye becomes a little harder and the close distances require the greatest contraction of the lens, the greatest lens squeeze by the muscles that squeeze the lens into a more convex shape‚ a rounder, more oval shape for short distances, and this is more and more difficult for your eye muscles to do as the lens becomes a little stiffer in your old age. Therefore your eye muscles get tired very quickly if you try to do it on your own without glasses.

51. EVENTUALLY, AS OLD AS I AM, THE LENSES BECOME SO HARDENED THAT THEY WILL NOT CONTRACT to a sufficient thickness of convexity to focus sharply on objects very close at hand, such as reading. So you need a pair of glasses with correctional lenses which will help to bring your focal length within easy reading distance.

52. WELL, I DIDN'T INTEND THIS TO BE A WHOLE LECTURE ON OPTICS and OPTOMETRISTS AND OPTICIANS AND GETTING READING GLASSES, but maybe this will be of benefit to some of you who do have eye problems. Some of you may claim you've developed eye problems from reading our Letters and magazines in such fine print! Ha! Well, we've tried to make the print in as comfortable a size as possible, at least the size of newsprint, and this is considered the usual normal minimum of small print in order to get as much material in a small space as we can, as we do. And I'm very sorry if it seems too small for you, and once in a while in our experimenting we have gotten our print a little bit too small.

53. RECENTLY WE MADE A MISTAKE OF TRYING TO SQUEEZE with our computers our print into 20-characters-per–inch instead of the normal 17, and we found out our characters were bumping into each other and almost overrunning each other, so that you couldn't really tell sometimes whether it was a C or an O or whatever. But we have corrected that now, so please just forgive us and pardon us if even some of the articles in this book they ran by mistake at the tighter squeeze of 20 cpi. instead of 17. We found that the 17 cpi. is the smallest we can go and still be able to read the characters clearly, and also about 61 lines to the page is as far as we can squash'm without the lines bumping into each other, and even then we can no longer underline by machine; we have to underline by hand in order to keep the underlinings from running over the tops of the lower letters.

54. SO THERE ARE A LOT OF LITTLE TECHNICALITIES WE HAVE TO REALLY WORK ON WHEN WE'RE DECIDING ON THE PROPER TYPE and printing space for your publications and your easy reading. We have to try to keep them down to a minimum in order to get as much on the page as possible so we don't have too many pages and too much expense and extravagance in our printing. Otherwise we would be happy to make them in larger-size letters, but we have to pack'm in tight and make them as small as possible.

55. THE PRINTING AND THE MATERIALS FOR PRINTING, ETC., ARE NOT OUR GREATEST EXPENSE; IT'S THE POSTAGE, THE WEIGHT! So the number of pages and the amount of space the printing occupies on a page does count and it does mean something. So therefore we have to keep our printing to the absolute minimum, the size of the characters and lines‚ etc., so that we can keep our pages at a minimum so we can afford to pay the postage to mail you these publications. So if you feel that some of the print's too small, I'm sorry. We can't help it‚ we couldn't afford to publish it, especially some of these lengthy books like this one, if we didn't scrunch and squeeze and squash our print down to the absolute minimum size that is still easily readable.

56. BUT IF YOU STILL FIND THAT PRINT IS DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO READ, PERHAPS YOU NEED GLASSES, even at your age, and if even the glasses don't do it, maybe you just need an old-fashioned reading glass, as my grandmother used to call it: "Where's my reading glass?" In those days it was a big round magnifying glass about four or five inches across with a handle. And she could just hold it there and run it along the lines of the page and read it as she went. If the page wasn't too wide she could hold it in one position and almost read the whole line. Later on they developed square or rectangular ones which have a nice little handle at one corner and you can read very well with that if you don't get tired of holding the glass.

57. BUT PERSONALLY I PREFER READING GLASSES, and I think you'll find them much more comfortable and easy to wear and read by‚ if you do seem to have an eye problem resulting in eye strain, tired eyes, headaches, etc. Perhaps you need some good reading glasses. I suggest you go to the nearest optometrist, find a good one that does good recommended work, and get him to give you a good eye test and insist on getting exactly the right focal length and lens, etc., by going back and forth trying different lenses on the different characters that he shows you on the chart, till you get it exactly right: The most comfortable, the sharpest and the best for each eye.

58. THEN MAKE SURE THAT WHEN HE PUTS THEM ON YOU‚ TEST THEM YOURSELF at your normal reading length and make sure that each eye is reading beautifully and sharply and clearly without strain. Put your hand over one eye and read with one eye and then put it over the other eye and read with the other to make sure. Because sometimes if you just put them on without testing each eye, one eye is doing all the work and you think, "Well, I can see fine." But then later you get home and you find out by testing each lens that one is out of focus but the other's in focus, and that's the only one that's really doing the work, and it's an eye strain on that eye.

59. YOU TEST THEM RIGHT THERE AT THE COUNTER at your usual focal length of reading before you walk out, and insist on getting them right. Don't let'm pawn off some thing on you that is not exactly right. You're paying for it and usually plenty, so make sure you get the right kind of lenses for reading. Well, there's one of the little lessons you're going to learn as we go through Dad's Day—how to buy glasses and take your eye test and test the glasses yourself, etc., until you get'm right. And if they're not right, listen, he's in the business, he's got lots of lenses! Just insist that he change the lens of either eye or both eyes if they're not exactly right, and make sure you get them right, because you're going to read for hours and thousands of pages if you're going to read all of our books and Letters and get your proper education, information and inspiration.

60. EYES ARE ALMOST YOUR MOST PRICELESS POSSESSION outside of your own soul and the Word of God‚ and you must read the Word of God‚ but it's not going to do you much good if you can't read it comfortably and for hours at a time! So if you do need glasses, go out and get'm, and I'm sure the Lord will provide if it's a need. So be sure you get the right ones that are exactly fitted for your particular eyes at your exact focal length of normal reading. When after trying them for several days, if they still don't seem to be quite right and you're having any problem, be sure you go back and get them adjusted and fitted right or the right lens.

61. ALSO, IT'S IMPORTANT TO GET THE BRIDGE AND THE BOWS ADJUSTED properly to fit your nose and your ears. Don't take a pair of glasses that are uncomfortable on the bridge of your nose. Take a pair of lightweight glasses that are comfortable and sit in the right place at the right height for your normal reading or whatever you're using them for, so that you're not looking across the frame of the glasses one way or the other, they're not too high or low on your nose‚ and then make sure they're just right on your ears. Be sure they're not too tight so that they hurt your ears, or they're not too loose so they fall off when you nod your head. So all those things are important about buying glasses.

62. WE MIGHT MENTION THE MATTER OF TINTING IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET TINTED GLASSES, which sometimes are necessary. Normally I do, ever since I was a young teenager in Miami. In brilliant sunshine you almost always need some kind of sunglasses when you go outdoors, to relieve the eye strain of squinting in brilliant abnormal glare of the tropical sun.

63. NOW WHEN GOD FIRST CREATED THE EARTH AND IT HAD THAT CLOUD COVER or that moisture cover, then you didn't need sunglasses. But nowadays with that upper layer of moisture removed, "the waters above the firmament" (Gen.1:7), the brilliant sun rays are shining right straight through into your eyes. Almost always you'll find in super-brilliant sunshine you're going to need some kind of sunglasses! If you don't need reading glasses or distance glasses at all, you can probably go down and buy a cheap pair of ordinary sunglasses of some kind.

64. BUT YOUR EYES ARE PRECIOUS AND VALUABLE AND IT'S BETTER TO BUY NOT JUST TINTED GLASSES ONLY BUT POLAROID GLASSES, or the type of sunglasses which have polarized lenses, which means two layers of either glass or plastic with different polarity, so that they literally filter out completely the glares of either the sun or other objects by changing the direction of the rays as they pass through the lenses‚ and therefore are not glaring you straight in the eye. These are the best sunglasses to buy, good polarized lenses, and prescription it necessary.

65. THE FIRST TO MAKE THE TRADE NAME POPULAR WAS POLAROID, also the most expensive U.S.-made! But there're a number of other brands, they may not be exactly as good and they're certainly not as expensive, of polarized lenses which are also slightly tinted to your favorite shade to help eliminate the glare, whether it's amber‚ like looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, or gray-green that emphasizes the greenery and beautiful color of God's creation. You can almost adjust the color of His creation like you do the color of your TV‚ by getting the right tint.

66. BUT BY ALL MEANS, IF YOU'RE GOING TO BUY TINTED GLASSES OR SUNGLASSES OF ANY KIND, GET THE POLARIZED TYPE OF LENSES‚ whether they be plastic or glass, in order to get glasses which are really good for your eyes and don't cause eye strain. Because mere cheap tinted sunglasses do not always eliminate glare and merely darken your view and the light without actually eliminating glare. Polarized lenses have two different polarized planes of filtration, and this changes the direction of the rays as they go through the lenses, so that they don't hit directly into your eyes and glare.

67. BUT YOU'LL FIND THAT HAS A STRANGE EFFECT SOMETIMES ON WINDSHIELDS! In looking out car windows that are tinted windows, you don't even notice that there's any difference in the windows until you put on your polarized lenses, and all of a sudden all kinds of strange spots show up in the windshield! Well‚ there's nothing wrong with your windshield, it's just the interreaction between those polarized lenses and the tinted windshield which causes that. Once after I'd gotten tinted polarized sunglasses I climbed into my car and I thought, "Oh my God, sitting out here in the hot sun something terrible has happened to my windshield and it's all gotten spotty and probably ruined!" I jumped out and took off my glasses to check it out and all of a sudden the spots all disappeared!

68. WELL, YOU'RE GOING TO LEARN A LOT OF THINGS JUST FROM DAD'S DAY! HA! I don't know how long this is going to be Dad's Day, but it's gonna be pretty long if I'm going to give you this many lessons on everything as we go along! Well, PTL! But that is very important to us who do a lot of reading; it's extremely important to spare your eyes so that you can absorb as much of the Word as possible without wearing yourself out and ruining your eyes and getting migraine headaches and whatnot!

69. IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO HAVE GOOD EYESIGHT, and if you don't have good eyesight‚ to have good glasses to correct them to make for easy and enjoyable reading of all of our publications, your spiritual food and inspiration and instruction and/or just sometimes plain amusement. Amen? So I hope you won't mind too much that I spent so much time talking to you about glasses‚ because particularly we of an older age find glasses are absolutely essential and very important to our work and easy reading, and it's almost impossible to get along without them. Thank God for the invention of glasses, which occurred some years ago, but I won't go into their history now—you can read that for yourself in the encyclopedia.

LIGHT!

70. WELL, SO I'M NOW SITTING ON THE TOILET READING THE NEWSPAPER with my reading glasses under a good bright light, which should not be reflecting on your paper so that it glares straight into your eyes, but at an angle over one shoulder or the other, whichever is convenient, so that when the light strikes your reading it bounces off in another direction and not directly into your eyes. All you have to do is tilt your reading matter one way or the other, and you can see how in a certain position the light strikes it in such a way that it actually reflects directly straight into your eyes and glares. So tilt your reading matter one way or the other until you eliminate that glare, and then you've got nice good light which does not glare right into your eyes.

71. ALWAYS TRY TO GET YOUR LIGHT SOURCE PREFERABLY OVER YOUR SHOULDER FROM BEHIND. If you're right-handed, the best source is over your left shoulder. If you're left–handed, the best source is from behind your right shoulder, coming at an angle of about 45 degrees over your shoulder onto your reading matter‚ and this way it not only gives you plenty of light and eliminates the glare, but also the shadow of your hand in writing or holding your paper or whatever. If you're left-handed you write with your left hand‚ and if you have the light over your left shoulder then you're going to have the shadow of your left hand right on your work. Whereas if you're right-handed‚ vice versa. So if you're right-handed have a left-hand light source, and if you're left–handed have a right hand light source, and preferably from behind you so that it strikes your reading matter and bounces off away from you and doesn't hit you smack in the face and doesn't glare.

72. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU WHO DO A LOT OF PAPERWORK AND A LOT OF READING, A LOT OF TYPING, COMPUTER WORK OR WHATEVER IT MAY BE, THAT YOU HAVE PROPER LIGHTING. Of course with your computers you have a screen like a television screen with the lighted letters on it. But we have found even there it's important to have the proper light source, because you're often doing copy work from some kind of copy‚ rough draft, or you're doing transcribing. So you should have the light certainly not directly in front of you nor directly behind you, if you're a computer operator, but from either one side or the other, and preferably so that it does not strike the screen of the computer; otherwise it dims the image, for the same reason that you don't face your television toward a window. Because then you get not only light on the screen of the TV, which lessens the brightness of the image, but you also get a bad reflection of the window on the screen of the television.

73. SO WITH COMPUTERS BE SURE THAT YOUR LIGHT IS COMING FROM AN ANGLE, preferably such an angle with your TV or your computer that it does not strike directly into the screen nor reflect off the screen into your eyes so that you see the lamp on the screen of the TV or you see the image of the window on the screen of the TV. Always have your television or video or your computer screen facing away from the source of light‚ just the opposite from reading.

74. YOU NEED THE LIGHT FROM BEHIND YOU IN YOUR READING, BUT IN YOUR TELEVISION AND VIDEO AND COMPUTER VIEWING YOU NEED THE LIGHT FROM YOUR EXTREME RIGHT OR LEFT SIDE, so that it does not strike directly into the screen. It's not good to have the light source straight in front of you either, because then that glares in your eyes when you're trying to see the screen. But have it off to the right or off to the left about 90 degrees, and perhaps even less or more, whichever way you're counting your degrees. The reflection of the window that you're using or the light source or the lamp or whatever you're using, move it around or move your screen around until that light source reflection that's reflecting on your screen, goes just off the edge of your screen, then you've got it just about right. 'Cause then you'll also have light on your copy work that you're reading from as you're typing, and also your keyboard that you have to keep your eye on if you're not a touch typist, and even in these modern computers, until you really know all your keys‚ you can hardly find them all by touch type.

75. SO WATCH YOUR LIGHT SOURCE—THAT'S ALL VERY, VERY IMPORTANT! Well, PTL! There's one subject covered by Dad's Day and I hope that's going to be a help to you, because if it saves your eyes and saves your reading, it may save your soul, or at least certainly save your spirit and inspiration and spiritual food and make it comfortable for you and tasty and appetizing and not just a pain in the eye and a pain in the neck!

76. SPEAKING OF PAINS IN THE NECK, IT'S IMPORTANT ALSO TO CONSTANTLY CHANGE YOUR POSITION so that you don't strain the same muscles all the time in your back or your bottom or even your legs or arms. Frequently change your position, frequently get up and walk around. If you have a sedentary desk job, reading job or chair job like mine, you need to move about frequently in order to rest your muscles and relax them and flex them and keep them in good working order. PTL! OK? Hope you learned something from that little lecture on optics and reading and light sources, glasses‚ etc.

77. SO BACK TO THE TOILET AND READING THE MORNING PAPER, or some places it's afternoon paper, and I usually go through it as rapidly as I can. I at least try to read the front page while I'm there, and sometimes a little more, and I mark the articles that I think would be of interest to you and important for you to know, and I put the numbers of the pages where they're found on the front page so that our World News editor will know where they are and not have to look through the whole paper to find them and clip them out for his World News pages of your FN and sometimes GN.

BMs!

78. WELL, NOW COMES THE TIME TO WIPE! You really want me to tell all these things? Maria's grinning and nodding her head! Ha! Well, I used to have a rule at TSC when the toilet paper began disappearing so rapidly, that no more than two or three sheets were allowed per BM‚ and sometimes we would ration it out and when they headed for the toilet they were just given three sheets and that was it! But if you will use it judiciously, you don't have to just use one sheet at a time.

79. IF YOU'LL TAKE THREE SHEETS AND FOLD IT so that there are three layers, then you can wipe yourself once, with a pinching action, fold it again wipe yourself again, fold it again (by this time it's a small square, a fourth the size of the original) and even wipe yourself a third time if necessary, and usually that does the trick, at least it does with me. So that's one way to save money.

80. SO THEN I USUALLY ARISE AND INSPECT THE RESULTS. A doctor in Hollywood once taught me that that's very important, to inspect your BMs and see what they look like, to see if there are any worms or unusual appearances of blood or excessive mucous—check the color, etc. Pinworms will not necessarily be visible in the BM. The test for pinworms is taken just by wrapping a piece of scotch tape around your finger, sticky side out, and touching it to the opening of your anus. If there are any eggs there, they will adhere to the tape. Put the two sticky sides of the tape together and take it to a laboratory for examination.

81. A NORMAL BM IS FAIRLY ODORLESS AND SORT OF BROWN, and it's sort of, what shall I say, marbly or like little marbles sometimes and/or like little marbles all squashed together and has some sort of air cracks. It looks like the convolutions of your brain sometimes. But I hope you've got more brains than that. But anyway, to be normal it should be fairly hard and sometimes dry enough to float if you've really gotten all the goody out of it. Your intestinal tract and absorption system has really absorbed all the nourishment possible.

82. DEAR MAMA MARIA, SHE PARTICULARLY HAS AN ESPECIALLY GOOD ABSORPTION SYSTEM apparently‚ because hers usually float‚ lighter than water, and we have a hard time gettin'm to go down when we flush. Mine very rarely ever float, usually they sink to the bottom‚ but are fairly solid and substantial‚ and my normal turd, as they are crudely called, looks like the size of a fair-sized sausage—one of those sausages that are about an inch-and-a-half in diameter and about six or eight inches long, with a lot of little cracks and crannies and ridges and this is fairly normal. Sometimes if I have maybe drunk too much milk or too many liquids or I'm slightly loose or I'm sick in some other way, it'll come through rather yellow and pasty-looking and soft and smooth without convolutions, and then I know I'm not really getting quite as much benefit out of my food as I should.

83. THANK GOD I HAVE YET TO EVER FIND A WORM OR ANY OTHER EXTRANEOUS MATERIAL! Although once in a great while I have found a bean hull or a corn hull in the doo-doo‚ which are a little difficult to digest. If you are passing a lot of bad-smelling gas‚ try adding yogurt or acidophilus milk to your diet. Most people have one or two BM's a day. Loose watery bowels are never normal, nor are hard rocky stools that irritate or tear the rectal outlet. Neither constipation nor diarrhea are normal.

84. ANY SUDDEN CHANGE IN BOWEL HABITS FROM THE NORMAL PATTERN OF MANY YEARS COULD MEAN SOMETHING IS WRONG, and you should check your BM carefully for blood, worms or excessive mucous. And it's wise particularly for you mothers to inspect your baby's doo-doos to see if there's any abnormality and if they are the right color, consistency and content and whether there is any undigested food, blood, mucous or bad odor. That's very important in diagnosing a number of problems. Do remember, though‚ that it is normal for the character of an infant's stool to change when you change the baby's diet. Color fed to a child is likely to turn up in the stools—red from beets, a greenish tinge from green vegetables, etc. In general if the child feels and acts perfectly well, there is nothing to be concerned about.

85. WELL, I NEVER DREAMED WE'D BE GETTING INTO SO MANY IMPORTANT SUBJECTS JUST IN DEALING WITH MY DAY! But these are really very important to your health and well-being and your daily happy living. So check out that BM and make sure it's normal and contains no extraneous matter, and certainly you should be concerned if there're any signs of blood which could indicate either a mild piles or hemorrhoids.

86. HEMORRHOIDS ARE EVEN MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE, only they leave off the "H" there in the Old Testament. "Emerods" (1Sam.5 and 6). God afflicted the Philistines with hemorrhoids because they stole the Ark of the Covenant! They finally had to make special peace offerings to the Lord and the Jews and give it back to them before they were delivered from this plague of hemorrhoids, which means a slight little swelling of your anus area, the sphincter area of the anus or, to put it in very crude course common language‚ your ass hole out of which your BM comes!

87. IF YOU HAVE STRAINED YOURSELF OR WEAKENED THOSE MUSCLES OR TISSUES in any way, particularly through improper sexual practices, or sometimes just too-long seating periods, like truck drivers (it's common with truck drivers, pregnants, homos, women and people who sit at desks all day, as well as being actual afflictions of disease, etc.)—It will weaken the tissues there and cause them to be slightly swollen sometimes, like varicose veins. The first sign is a sort of an itching, and finally if they continue, it'll become even painful and even to the point of rupturing and bleeding slightly, and you may discover some flecks of blood on your bowel movement or when wiping.

88. SO A NORMAL CURE FOR PILES OR HEMORRHOIDS IS TO OF COURSE PRAY AND CORRECT WHATEVER THE CAUSE MAY BE, such as strain. Maybe you've been lifting things that were too heavy, this will sometimes cause it, or sitting too long in a strained position, or some other kind of weakness or disease that attacks those tissues and causes weakness there which causes them to bulge. Sometimes just straining on the toilet, if you have a tendency to be constipated, will cause some of those tissues to bulge a little bit, and you've got an actual hemorrhoid caused by a hernial condition of the anal area.

89. THIS OF COURSE IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU AND IS SOMETIMES ANNOYINGLY ITCHY OR ACTUALLY PAINFUL, and of course could be serious if it persists too long. Which means you should never lift things that are too heavy for you and you should never strain too hard when you're on the toilet if you're a bit constipated. Frankly, you won't have that problem of constipation normally if you eat the proper unrefined foods with plenty of liquids and fruits and vegetables and juices.

90. EVEN A GOOD STRONG CUP OF COFFEE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING BEFORE YOU GO TO THE TOILET WILL USUALLY HELP TO CURE CONSTIPATION, because this stimulates the adrenalin in your blood, and the adrenalin stimulates both the heartbeat and the pulse of your veins and arteries and expands the openings and even stimulates the peristaltic action of your bowels and helps to stimulate your whole body so that you'll not have so much difficulty in having a BM.

91. OF COURSE‚ IF YOU'RE NOT ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING A REGULAR BM TIME, or you go too long without having a BM, or you don't get much regular exercise‚ or you eat too many dry and refined foods and don't drink enough liquids or eat enough fruits, vegetables, juices, etc., you're apt to have constipation. Also, if you don't heed the call of nature‚ you'll find that it stops calling after a while! So you really do need to‚ when you first get up in the morning, drink some kind of a liquid. What I usually do is drink a whole glass of water right away first thing in the morning, and if that doesn't do it, I wait till I've had my coffee and that almost always does it.

92. SO IF YOU ARE HAVING ANY PROBLEM WITH CONSTIPATION, which means very hard dry BMs that are hard to eliminate, I suggest you start off the day with a good stiff drink of water, coffee, fruit juice or whatever you prefer, and as soon as you get that whole glassful or cupful down, you'll find it normally will stimulate you to have your BM. First thing in the morning when you get up is actually the normal time. If your normal time is after breakfast, it's probably because you needed the extra bulk and liquid and juice in you in order to stimulate the BM and help you to stimulate that peristaltic action, that rhythmic action of your bowels which is a constant moving stricture of the bowels that travels along the bowel muscles in waves which causes the material within the bowel to move.

93. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE LEARNED ALL THAT IN SCHOOL, but I've found a lot of you guys never learned much if anything of a practical nature in school. But I suggest first thing in the morning, if you're having trouble with constipation or anything like that, besides having a diet of a lot of good fresh vegetables and fruits and fruit juices and liquids, drink a good glass of water. Usually water at least is available, if not a cup of coffee, or better still fruit juice‚ to stimulate that bowel action by the injection of fluid and a little fuel sometimes too‚ and this will get you going, and wait then till you feel like it.

94. NOW YOU CAN'T ALWAYS WAIT TILL YOU FEEL LIKE IT! I suggest if the morning juice, water or coffee doesn't do it first thing and you don't normally go right away, then wait till after breakfast and that should move things along. But at least try! Don't strain but relax with something to read and stay on the toilet for at least 15 minutes no matter what happens. If you didn't have one before breakfast, by all means try to have one after breakfast, and then get on the toilet and think about it, concentrate on it.

95. IT'S AN AMAZING THING HOW GOD HAS MADE YOUR BODY! Many things are automatic and involuntary, and you have many muscles which are involuntary and have an involuntary or automatic reaction. But with certain bodily functions such as going to the toilet, you have to actually think about it and you have to concentrate upon that particular function, whether it's urinating or having a bowel movement, in order to stimulate yourself and cause your body to release the fluid or release the solid matter. You actually have to sit there awhile and think about it, believe it or not, and get yourself in the mood if you have any problem.

96. MAMA MIA SHAKES HER HEAD AND SAYS SHE DOESN'T! She doesn't even have to think about it, it's just automatic with her. Well, that's one reason she's very well regulated and very regular, no problem, and she just goes real quick‚ boom-boom, and that's it! She's often on and off in less than two minutes! Me at my age and so sedentary and most older folk are known to be somewhat prone to constipation. It usually takes me a little longer and it's not at all infrequent for me to sit there for half an hour while I'm reading the paper and encouraging it to come and with usual success, as well as absorbing some important information from the newspaper while I'm eliminating unnecessary waste matter from my body.

97. MARIA HAS TO SLEEP OR BE VERY QUIET DURING THIS EARLY MORNING TIME, as it's my time to not only read the paper but to meditate and pray and wake up. So, so much for the BM and inspecting it and making sure that all is well. Don't get too concerned about your BMs, however, but it's wise to take a look at it. If you'll notice, even animals will get up and look at it and sniff it. Almost all cats will cover it up, bury it, and some dogs will dig a little hole and bury it, and you'd better get that kind of a cat or dog if you have children in the home, so that you'll have a fairly sanitary yard.

98. EVEN IN GOD'S WORD IT'S COMMANDED that if you're in the field, like out camping‚ you're to take your paddle or shovel and dig a hole and "ease yourself therein" and then cover it up! (Deut.23:13). And if you want to drop your apple core or some seeds in with it, you may have an apple tree next time you come back, all planted and fertilized! That's what Johnny Appleseed did. OK?

99. MY GOODNESS, HERE WE'VE GONE NEARLY AN HOUR ALREADY AND THE DAY'S ONLY GOT STARTED! It may have to turn out to be a serial, dear Maria! (Maria: We might have to make it a separate book.) Yes, we may have to make this a separate book for sure! Well, having arisen and inspected the results‚ I then flush the toilet and rid the scene of such unwanted elements, and proceed from there to the washbowl where I wash my face and hands and ears very thoroughly.

WASH UP!

100. IN FACT, IT'S VERY IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY IN WARM COUNTRIES, TO WASH not only your hands and face, but your ears and your neck and other parts of your body frequently, to keep them clean and to keep other little denizens of the deep and microbes and parasites, etc., from choosing you as their host and hostage! Yes‚ you often become a hostage of them while you're their host. You need to keep your skin very clean, so it's well to wash frequently.

101. I WASH MY FACE AND HANDS AND NECK AND EARS MANY TIMES A DAY. Since I'm usually up about 16 hours of the day and I usually go to the toilet about every couple of hours or so, that makes at least 8 or 10 times a day that I wash my face and hands, and frequently my ears, as well as taking a daily bath or swim. I prefer swimming for my daily clean-up as well as my daily exercise. But I'll tell you more about that later. But first thing in the morning I just usually freshen up enough to wash my face and hands so they'll be clean for fixing my breakfast, and to wake me up and freshen me up.

ROUGH UP!

102. I PERFORM ANOTHER LITTLE OPERATION WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT which Maria sometimes laughs at as I'm rubbing my scalp. Actually I'm rubbing my scalp vigorously with a coarse–nap towel, massaging my scalp‚ beginning at the rear roots of the neck in the back, up through which part of your neck most of the main blood vessels flow up onto your scalp, if you've ever seen one of those diagrams or charts in a barber's shop.

103. THERE ARE TWO MAIN BLOOD VESSELS WHICH SUPPLY THE BLOOD TO YOUR SCALP, and they run up the backside of your neck on both sides, one on each side, and then they branch out and spread into a whole network of little blood vessels all over your scalp.—And it's very important to get this blood flowing vigorously! It not only helps wake you up and make you feel good and give you some brisk morning exercise, but it stimulates the blood circulation in your scalp, and if you keep it properly flowing and stimulated you won't lose so much hair, like some of these billiard balls you see walking around! You'll find that your scalp and your hair and hair follicles, the little holes the hair is planted in, need good circulation of blood, just like any other part of your body, to stay healthy and wholesome and vigorous and growing.

104. SO YOU NEED TO GET THAT CIRCULATION IN YOUR SCALP REALLY MOVING! It also helps to get your whole body blood circulating with a vigorous motion of your hands and arms, and I shake all over when I'm doing it and almost do a jig and Maria laughs at me, for after I'm done my hair's all standing straight on end and I look like the Hottentots or the bushy–haired wild men of Borneo until I finally get it laid out with a comb. But comb your hair vigorously too. Kind of scrape your scalp with the teeth of the comb or brush to really scratch it and make it feel good and make it awake and alive‚ so that your whole scalp is stimulated and you've stimulated the blood circulating in not only your scalp but even your brain and you'll think more clearly.

105. BY THAT TIME I AM REALLY WAKED UP, by the time I'm finished washing and vigorously massaging my scalp. You do it with both hands with the tips of your fingers.—Not the palms of your hand but the tips of your fingers planted in the towel, and you rub it real hard like the old-fashioned Dutch rub. Begin at the back of the neck and work forward on both sides, and then you do it again and work toward the middle, and then work all around on the top and everywhere—you'll figure out whatever pattern is best suited to your motion and movement and feeling, until you've got your scalp and head and brain really going!

106. (MARIA: TELL'M ABOUT THE TOWELS.) Well, I start out with a brand clean face and hand towel Maria hangs by the bowl. Then when I've used that several days and it begins to be a little bit unfresh, I rotate that to a body–towel-bath-towel. When I'm feeling like that bath-towel-body-towel needs changing, I rotate that again, down to a bidet towel hanging by the bidet‚ or in this case, a toilet with a little portable bidet that we use. Then finally if I think the towel's had enough use as a bidet towel, I lay it on the floor for a nice little bathmat beside the tub!

107. SO THAT OUR TOWELS, BY THE TIME THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THIS PROCESS OF ROTATION OF FACE-TOWEL, HAND-TOWEL, BODY-TOWEL, BIDET-TOWEL‚ FLOORMAT, are well on their way to the laundry and have lasted as much as two weeks in the bathroom!—There's one way to save on laundry‚ folks! Try to really make your towels useful and go around and recycle them and give them as much use as possible. Actually, normally I take a fresh face-and-hand towel at least once a week, so that they go through this rotation every few days. Each towel winds up fully used and ready for the wash in about two weeks time. Also my towel by the pool I leave out there almost permanently for several weeks, and it keeps getting washed and dried in the sun and the breeze and smells nice and fresh every day! But finally it gets a little bit soiled with just the smoke and dust from the air. So it finally has to go to the wash too.

108. BY THAT TIME I'M READY TO COMB MY HAIR AND I'M LOOKING PRETTY and ready to make my grand entry back into the bedroom for Maria to inspect! All cleaned up and eliminated and spruced up and perfumed and ready for breakfast! Well now, breakfast. Isn't that next, Maria? Meanwhile I throw the paper back out to anybody else that wants to read it. I throw it outside the door, take off the "do-not-disturb" sign which shows that we're sleeping‚ and show that now we're available for any kind of information or notices or whatever.

DO NOT DISTURB!

109. WE HAVE DEVELOPED A VERY CLEVER LITTLE "DO–NOT-DISTURB" SIGN SYSTEM. While traveling we bought some "do-not-disturb" signs, but usually kind of accumulate them from some of the hotels we've been in, who give them away free or supply them free, and we take them along with us. We figured we paid for them in the hotel bill. We have two kinds: One very large cardboard type and one small white plastic type‚ and the big one is for me and the little one is for her. When I'm sleeping we put the big one on, and that usually also means we're both sleeping.

110. IF SHE'S THE ONLY ONE THAT'S SLEEPING or only one or the other of us is sleeping, we just put the little white one on, which means that one of us is still available for answers if necessary, or emergencies or if there's a phone call or something that has to be attended to or some answer needed, something important. Then they can creep through the door and whisper to us and not disturb the one who's sleeping. But if they're both gone from off the doorknob outside, then we're both available.

111. WHERE WE ARE NOW IS A HOUSE THAT HAS TWO FLOORS, and the folks downstairs can't always see the "do-not-disturb" sign hanging on our doorknob. They'd have to come clear upstairs to see it and so they might be tempted to make too much noise downstairs that might disturb us. So Maria has invented a new type of "do-not-disturb" sign: She tied it on a long string and she has it tied to the banister above the stairway, and every time she wants them to be quiet downstairs, she just picks it up off the floor and throws it down and lets it hang there, very obvious and visible for all to see that we should not be disturbed and they should try to be a little quieter than usual while we're trying to rest or sleep. Well‚ there's a little invention for you that you might find fairly useful. You say,

112. "WELL, I CERTAINLY DON'T NEED TO KNOW ALL THESE RIDICULOUS DETAILS!" Well, they're not altogether that ridiculous, and they have helped us to save some sleep sometimes. So you might find some of these suggestions valuable. It's sort of like a language, a code‚ who's asleep and who's not asleep and if anybody's asleep or if they're not asleep at all, and are we available or not? So it's very important with us and our sleep and our availability and their information, that we have some way of letting them know. So then I throw out the paper, take off the "do-not-disturb" sign and we are ready for action!

TEMPERATURES!

113. THEN I GO FROM THERE and usually step out on our front porch, or back porch in this case, and I look at the temperature-recording thermometer: A simple little instrument that has some little indicators in it or tiny blue rods that slide up and down inside the tube with the fluid, but stay stuck at the highest and the lowest temperatures even after the fluid has receded—they call it a temperature-recording thermometer. They cost a little bit more than other thermometers, but they're very valuable and very important and interesting to me, to keep an accurate record of daily temperatures, which I do in my diary, of the high and the low of the day, just the same way you read it in the newspaper.

114. SO THAT I CAN TELL YOU EXACTLY WHAT THE LOWEST TEMPERATURE WAS LAST NIGHT that occurred in the wee hours of the morning, because it was recorded by my thermometer even in my sleep! I didn't have to run out there every hour to take a look at it. Or I can tell you what the high was during the warmest hour of the day, which is usually anywhere between 1 and 3. So I step out on the porch and I take a look at the recording thermometer and I clock exactly what the high and the low were.

INSPECTION!

115. THEN I WALK A LITTLE FURTHER OUT ON THE PORCH AND INSPECT THE GARDEN‚ the yard, the pool and the house and look around a little more to see that everything is shipshape and in order. I'm the Captain of the ship, so I have to keep a sharp lookout on my vessel and make sure everything is shipshape. And sometimes I notice something in the yard that needs attending to, or the pool or various things, and when I get back inside I call on the intercom to let our maintenance men know what needs to be done in either mowing the lawn or trimming the garden or the trees or attending to the pool or whatnot, and I'll get into that later.

116. IN TRIMMING THE TREES, some of the branches were pretty high, and even at the top of our ladder we still couldn't reach'm. I like lots of light, and some of our trees had too many branches interfering with our light to our windows, as well as dropping too many leaves into the pool, etc. So we keep our trees very close-cropped and trimmed. Some of you might think they look like a butch haircut or a flat top, but actually it's good for them.

117. EVEN THE BIBLE TALKS ABOUT PRUNING, pruning away branches that are unnecessary and that are a drag on the main body of the tree or bush or vine because it doesn't need them, and we need the light more than the tree needs the branch! Some of these branches really know how to give shade, but we don't particularly care for that much shade in our windows where we need light rather than shade. But some of the branches were so high that we couldn't reach them.

118. SO I GOT THE BRILLIANT IDEA OF USING THE VERY LIGHTWEIGHT SKIMMER POLE, an aluminum tube that had a couple holes in the end for bolting on the skimmer net. We had a couple of these‚ so we took the skimmer off of one, and we also took the handle off of our saw, and we bolted the saw blade to the skimmer pole, and now it's quite easy for us to reach some of the highest branches and saw them off with this extension saw that we created! So it's a very handy invention.

119. HAVING INSPECTED MY SHIP and looked around the neighborhood to make sure their houses aren't on fire or something haywire, and seeing that all is well, I can go back and report to Maria that all is well. Then I sit down at my little breakfast table which I have right here in our bedroom facing the view, as we do the bed, so we can see the beautiful view of God's creation both from our bed and from my little breakfast table.

BREAKFAST!

120. THEN I BEGIN TO PREPARE MY MORNING BREAKFAST: Break-my–fast of some many hours with some kind of nourishment. When it's hot I don't really need very much in the way of a breakfast. But you do need a good substantial breakfast to get started no matter where you live. In the warm countries I don't really need a hot breakfast. It's too hot to do any cooking for me, so I make a cold breakfast, but certainly not cold cereal! Now I don't go too much for these cereals! I don't think they're much good, especially cold boxed processed cereals, dry cereal, I don't think much of those things.

121. I GO PREFERABLY FOR THE MOST NATURAL FOODS and not highly fabricated‚ refined or fast foods, such as cornflakes or Post Toasties or Wheaties or whatever. I don't think there's too much nourishment in those and they don't last me very long. I think foods in their more natural state are far better and more nourishing, more healthful and better for you. Frankly, when you hear what I have for breakfast, you'll be amazed how little I actually eat and yet how long it usually lasts me, because it is good normal healthful food.

122. SO I SIT DOWN AT MY LITTLE BREAKFAST TABLE which has on it already the materials which have been supplied to me by the kitchen, the night before, God bless'm, which is a little tin box of three eggs. And you say‚ "Oh my goodness, three eggs, no wonder! We only usually eat two eggs for breakfast!" Well, when you hear how little else I eat, you'll realize that three eggs is not too much. So they furnish me with a little tin box of three eggs, and also they've made sure that I have a jar of peanut butter, a box of powdered milk and a jar of freeze-dried instant coffee. They used to give me honey too, but I found that the natural sweetness of both the powdered milk and the peanut butter are usually sufficient to make my drink very palatable.

123. I GET ALL THESE THINGS OUT ON THE TABLE. (I usually keep them in a drawer in this little table) and I prepare to make my morning coffee–peanut-butter-milk-eggnog! Hope you're not getting too bored now by this time with the way I live and how I eat, but I'm doing this at the insistence of dear Maria and staff. It wasn't exactly my idea, but anyhow I thought maybe you might learn something from it, and maybe you might even want to copy some of these things I do. At least you might learn some lessons.

124. I SET UP AND GET MY MIXER READY, because there are so many things I have to mix together. I found a little cheap mixer that was made for children's milkshakes at a very low price‚ only a fraction of what the big kitchen mixers sell for, and it's just a little tiny mixer that I can mix my little milkshake on, and they furnish a little mixing cup for it. I put in about an inch of water in the bottom of the cup, a rounded teaspoon of coffee next, stir it and dissolve the coffee.

125. THEN I PUT IN ABOUT A HEAPING TABLESPOON OF PEANUT BUTTER, BELIEVE IT OR NOT! Chop it up, mix it good with a spoon, and then add the powdered milk, about what would be considered maybe a small cup of powdered milk, and mix that in real good too with a spoon. First of all, I get these four substantial things mixed up, and by that time I have all my ingredients in except the eggs. When I've got those first ones mixed up well,

126. I FINALLY TAKE MY EGGS ONE BY ONE, I look each one in the face and marvel at the wonder of God's beautiful symmetrical perfection, the gorgeous creation that is just one egg, and I pray for the little lady whom I always seem to see tending chickens when I'm praying for the eggs. With the milk I also pray for the dear man I almost always seem to see, a farmer milking a cow. Maybe I better start praying for the Latins who are picking the coffee beans, and the Africans that are growing the peanuts!

127. I BREAK MY EGGS GENTLY ON THE EDGE OF THE CUP. I found out it doesn't pay to hit'm all with the same force. First of all I tap each gently on the edge of the cup to see how strong the shell is. I've found sometimes the biggest eggs have the weakest flimsiest thinnest shells, and if you give it a real bang, I've had the sad experience of having this egg splatter all over‚ half in the cup and half out!

128. SO I TAP IT ON THE EDGE OF THE CUP, AS YOU GOOD COOKS KNOW, TO TEST THE STRENGTH OF THE EGGSHELL, and when I've tested to see about how tough it is, then I know just about how sharply to crack it on the edge of the cup to just make a little slot in the side of the egg that I can get my two thumbnails into and spread apart and drop the egg into my coffee instead of on the top of my table! I do this three times with three eggs until I've got a triple-header–eggnog-coffee-peanut-butter-milkshake!

129. WHEN THE EGGS ARE IN I BREAK THE YOLKS TO MAKE SURE THEY STIR EASILY and WELL, and give'm a few more stirs by a long-handled spoon. Then while I'm licking off the spoon thoroughly (I don't like to waste anything or make any extra work for the kitchen, so I lick it off from stem to stern on both sides until there's hardly a thing left on that spoon) and I'm slipping the milkshake container onto the little mixer, I set my alarm-watch beeper for five minutes‚ and then sit down to either finish the newspaper or start my diary while I am waiting for the drink to be thoroughly mixed.

130. WHEN IT'S FINISHED and my beeper goes off‚ I stop and take off the milkshake, take a nice swig to refresh me and see if it's okay, then while I'm continuing to take sips I'm taking the mixer, the little round beater off the stem of the mixer and I'm washing it in a special cup of wash water on my breakfast table, so I don't have to keep running to either the kitchen or the bathroom to wash things—I wash my mixer right there! I also wipe off the shaft of the mixer real well with a wet tissue to make sure it's clean, clean up the mixer, lay it down on its side to keep it from getting knocked off the table‚ as I did once or twice and had to repair it!

131. THEN HAVING GOTTEN EVERYTHING CLEAN and my fingers washed in my cup as well, and the whole operation completed, I set everything in place just as it ought to be: Mixer, cup, little mixer head and my paper towels that I usually set my cup on to do the mixing‚ so I make sure I don't get my tablecloth dirty, I fold them up and use them again and I usually only have to throw about one little tissue away during that whole breakfast operation, the one that I wiped the mixer off with first before I finally wash it. And oh yes, I do finish with a paper towel that I wrap the eggshells in so that I don't have to throw them into my wastebasket to attract roaches or varmints or ants, and I put them back into the tin box and they're sent back to the kitchen for disposal in the garbage can and everything else to be washed up.

132. OK! I DON'T KNOW WHY I SHOULD COVER EVERY LITTLE DETAIL, BUT ANYWAY. Anyhow, when I'm finished with this delicious coffee-milk-peanut-butter drink, I put the empty mug on my little breakfast table, put the dirty spoon in it, and pour a little water in it to keep it soaked good, so that the dishwasher won't have so much difficulty getting it cleaned. Because sometimes that stuff hardens and dries, especially the milky things, and are very hard to wash. So have a heart, have a little consideration for your dishwashers, folks! I do. PTL!

133. I ALWAYS TRY TO GREET THE FAMILY WHEN I FIRST CALL IN ON THE MONITOR IN THE MORNING on our communication system, the intercom. I try to give them a happy cheery greeting, ask how everybody is, how are the children, everybody healthy and happy‚ etc.?—Or if I see'm out in the yard first.

134. I ALWAYS HAVE TIME FOR A HUG AND I LIKE TO KISS THE GIRLS! I kiss the boys too, but for some reason or other it's not quite as exciting as hugging and kissing girls! But the boys are very sweet and I love them just as much. But I guess I get a little more physical thrill out of the females. In fact they often like to make sure I give them the full treatment‚ so as they approach me for a kiss they'll pull down their blouse or their top so that I can put one hand on each bosom and I give them an affectionate squeeze and kiss at the same time, and they seem to like this for some reason. So we greet one another with a holy kiss and I cover three holes at once! PTL! Sometimes I cover another hole too, if we get to kissing too much!

135. FREQUENTLY WHEN I AM PASSING THROUGH THE HOUSE I STOP IN THE KITCHEN WHEN I SEE THE PRETTY COOK AND I SAY, "WHAT'S COOKIN', GOOD LOOKIN?!"—and she comes running over for a squeeze and a kiss! Here in the South in the hot kitchen our girls usually go topless with just a light filmy see-through scarf on their bottom or just their panties, so I and the cooks sometimes really start cookin'! Sometimes it really cooks up quite a stew! Praise God! But I always like to know what's for supper and they tell me and I kiss'm and hug'm and bless'm and pray for'm and tell'm how much we appreciate'm! I always like to give our staff members good appreciation for all their sacrifice and all their good work and their tender loving care of us, praise the Lord!

136. WE ALSO DO TRY TO AVOID TOO MUCH KISSING WHEN COLDS ARE GOING AROUND, ESPECIALLY KISSING ON THE MOUTH. We seldom kiss on the mouth, kissing everybody on the mouth too freely if there are various catching things going around in our local family. About the only time I kiss full in the mouth, deep kiss and really get to kissing, is when I'm having sex! When I get to really feeling sexy with some girl, well, then it's almost uncontrollable and unavoidable and I don't seem to care what I catch! Thank God, we haven't caught much! The Lord really protects us!

137. SO WHAT'S NEXT? I'M NOW SITTIN' OUT ON THE PORCH DRINKING MY COFFEE-EGGNOG-PEANUT-BUTTER–MILKSHAKE, enjoying the newspaper (or enduring the newspaper!) or starting on my diary already—it depends on how much progress I made on the newspaper. We have a large round table there that I set the lawn chair on top of so I can be elevated enough to see my domain. And thereby hangs a tail! I don't know whether you really want all these de-tails or not. It's quite a tale for sure! I then am able to drink my breakfast while I work.

WNs!

138. READING THE NEWSPAPER IS WORK, as far as I'm concerned, and sometimes unpleasant work. But we need to keep abreast of the times and events and the signs of the times, particularly of what's appearing to happen and about to happen and what's going to happen, so we'll know where we are on God's timetable, His schedule, and how close things are coming. And from what I can see, as I've already told you‚ it looks to me like we can hardly avoid a war either this year or next. At least it looks like they are refusing to avoid a war! They're getting all set up for it and there's every indication of it.

139. ANYHOW, WE DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT; WE JUST GO AHEAD AND LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME AND TRUST THE LORD to help us do our work. "Fret not thyself for tomorrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Mt.6:34)‚ and as well as the work thereof! We don't worry about the past either and forget that, except in this Book of Remembrance that the Lord Himself told us to keep for your sake, that you may learn lessons from it and that these things might be written for your sakes, because they happened to us for your sakes‚ and we've gotten many good lessons out of them!

LOG!

140. NOW THE DIARY, THAT'S THE NEXT CHAPTER I guess: How I keep my diary. Well, you've all got nice Family-made diaries now, with everything organized in them and charts and markings and headings, etc., to help you remember how to keep your diary‚ and most of these are the way I keep my diary, believe it or not! In fact, that was their original source, how I keep my diary in certain columns and certain ways, and of course some of these ideas I also got originally from the 7-Star diary that I used to keep for several years. I adapted to our Family diary some of these good features and points which I thought were very applicable and useful and necessary, and added quite a few ideas and revisions of our own.

141. PARTICULARLY OUR MONTHLY SUMMARIES ARE MADE UP TO SUIT OUR OWN PARTICULAR NEEDS AND ACTIVITIES.—Such as in my case my schedule and my work page and reading work and various publications projects, and in your case your witnessing progress and stats, etc.‚ which can help you remember and make it easy to total things at the end of the month for your report. Which, if you have not kept that faithfully day by day during the month, you're going to have an awfully hard time remembering when you're there sweating over your TRF at the end of the month!

142. SO IT'S BETTER TO KEEP UP YOUR DIARY FAITHFULLY DAILY! In fact, I keep mine up not only hourly but with every change of operation or work or project or whatever I'm doing during the day. I immediately pick up my diary and make a note of what I started doing at that particular hour or time. Now I realize you don't have an awful lot of space in your diary to put too much into it, and some of you like to be flowery in your language and write on and on, in which case you better get yourself another book, a larger book, if you're going to be writing a book instead of just keeping a diary! But in our diary we have daily pages, one page per day.

143. I HAVE DIVIDED MY '82 DIARY IN HALF, EACH PAGE WITH A LINE DOWN THE MIDDLE, AND I'M REUSING IT FOR 1983 and I'm saving the new diary that we've just received, the so-called 1983 diary, I'm saving that one for 1984-1985, if I should live that long! So I won't need another diary for another three years, having used this one already for one year and I've got another year to go in this one, and two more years in the other one! Because I draw a line down the middle of the page to divide each day of the month of each year into two days.

144. FOR EXAMPLE, JANUARY 1982 IS ALREADY THERE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF EACH PAGE‚ and now I'm filling in January 1983 on the right side of the page, with a line drawn down the middle, and my page is divided right in the middle for this purpose. I've found out that having a nice long column of all these 24 hours, that's all the space I need. It's sufficient for adding the hourly information regarding my major activities of the day.

145. I DO A LOT OF ABBREVIATING TOO, WHICH OF COURSE HELPS SAVE SPACE‚ and I have a list of these abbreviations alphabetically indexed in the back of the diary in that alphabetical index, since I don't accumulate many addresses anymore, except yours, and the office keeps them! I use that for an alphabetical index of what few addresses I do have and the abbreviations, which pretty well fill it up, because I do a lot of abbreviations in my diary, so I can economize on space and probably enter a lot more in that one-column half-a-page than you do in your whole page! But I pity the person who ever tries to read it!—Ha! My abbreviations are cryptic and my writing microscopic!

146. SO I'M USING ONE DIARY FOR TWO YEARS and I've already started my 1983 columns here in January. I keep it hour-by-hour, and as I say, not only hour-by-hour but almost moment-by–moment. With each change of work I jot down each new event or each new project or change of projects, as well as listing the actual progress of projects in a chart in the back of my diary as well as in the monthly summaries.

147. ACTUALLY THEY'RE DAILY SUMMARIES OF THE WHOLE MONTH in the back there, for which I have figured out a new system to economize on space so that I don't have to do so much repetitive writing and just copy again all the things that I've already said in the daily pages. I don't repeat the details nor the titles nor the exact activity every time unless it's something major or a major event or a major activity or something of a special nature or a special point of interest or something I really need to keep a note of to remind me of if I look down the Monthly Summary of the summaries of each day.

148. I HAVE EVEN DIVIDED MY DAYS ON THE MONTHLY SUMMARY INTO HOURLY COLUMNS in a way that I'm still able to keep even these tiny little lines, each one a line for a day, each day a whole day for only one line, divided into hours! I keep the morning hours condensed into one little rectangle since they are usually almost all identical in my usual morning activities. But then from the hour when usually my morning work begins, about 9 or 10 or 11, I keep a little square for each hour and I am able to write in two lines in one of these lines because I print so small, almost microscopic, and therefore I get a lot into those little spaces.

149. SO I CAN JUST AT A GLANCE TELL YOU WHAT I'VE DONE THAT DAY IN ANY GIVEN MONTH as well as all of the various other information which you'll find in your new diary, such as what the weather was like and the temperatures and the "Hours of Word," etc. In my case I put down here for "Hours of Word" the hours that I talk or dictate or lecture or give lessons‚ etc.; and then the "Hours of Work" in my case is the number of pages I did; and then of course the "Hours of Exercise," whatever they may be, and if it's walk, kilometers; and finally the total hours of sleep within the 24–hour period. I figure those usually the following morning so that I have figured the sleep that I have had from one morning to the next morning, both all night and sometimes a nap in the day.

150. FINALLY WE HAVE THE LIST OF PARTNERS IN SEXUAL ACTIVITIES, and I have learned how to abbreviate a great deal and use abbreviations for names and types of activities, such as what kind of sexual activity it was, and I won't go into the details to give you the secrets of my coding here, lest you should happen to read my diary someday, ha! But anyway, I've got abbreviations for each kind of sexual activity‚ usually just little two or three-letter abbreviations of the word which shows what kind of sexual activity I had with that particular partner‚ including an abbreviation of her name, sometimes just her initial and exactly what we did, which is very interesting because I total it up at the end of the month.

151. I CAN TELL YOU EXACTLY HOW MANY TIMES I HAD SEX, for example, in the month of December, with whom and how many! Well‚ that was kind of a low month, because I only had sex 27 times with only three girls during the month of December, whereas sometimes the total has run up to as many as 15 or 16 different women and maybe 50-60 times a month!

152. I THINK THAT ALL-TIME HIGH WAS REACHED WHEN WE WERE IN TENERIFE and had so many women around, so many FFers and girls we were training. After all, if I was going to train them I had to teach them, and the best way to learn is by experience, the clinical method, and so my clinic was my bed and the actual operations and mechanics of it all. They were each taught personally and by hand by me in person in my bed, God bless'm! It was lotsa love and lotsa fun! So a lot of those pioneers of FFing that we trained in Tenerife I trained personally myself in my own bed, thanks to dear Maria's generosity and patience‚ and of course being very busy herself in other beds with other men.

153. THEREFORE MY SEX SCORE LATELY HAS BEEN A BIT LOW regarding the number of women‚ confined primarily to our present local staff, and since we only have a few women on our staff‚ I can't go beyond a certain limit on the number that I have sex with each day or so, and I've slowed down a little bit on the number of times as well, so that it is not always daily anymore like it used to be. It used to be several times a day with several women, but I'm getting old now and the old gray stallion or stag ain't quite what he used to be!

154. (MARIA: NO, IT'S JUST THAT YOU'RE WORKING HARDER NOW and have to save your energy for your work.) Oh, isn't that sweet and kind and generous and charitable of dear Maria to say, "No, no, Honey, it's only because you're working harder and you need more time and energy for your work." Well, that does have something to do with it, I must confess. Anyhow, be that as it may, so much for that. But I thought it might interest you how I keep my diary and save on space, etc., and just exactly how I do it in order to get all the data and information and stats in.

155. AS I SAY, I USE A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF ABBREVIATIONS‚ and normally if you tried to read my diary it would be totally incomprehensible to you unless you were familiar with the abbreviations, and it would take anybody some time to learn all these abbreviations by studying the alphabet and all the dozens or scores of abbreviations under each letter.

156. MANY OF THESE I LEARNED IN LEARNING STENO TYPING, because steno typing is printed English with alphabetical English letters, believe it or not, but in extremely abbreviated form‚ and so that course was very useful‚ even though I didn't continue my steno typing as a stenographer or a secretary. I only used it a short time, and in fact, I finally got hard up financially and sold my machine!

157. NEVERTHELESS, THE ABBREVIATIONS HAVE STUCK WITH ME OVER THE YEARS and been a great help and benefit to me in speedwriting and English shorthand, without having to learn one of the other shorthand systems, which are like learning a whole new form of writing! In fact, shorthand is learning a whole new form of writing, whether it be, what are the two kinds, Maria? (Maria: Gregg and ?) It begins with "P." (Maria: Oh‚ Pittman!) I can almost always remember the first letter of a name or a word, usually names. The words come to me, but names I have problems with. But it's strange‚ I must sort of photograph them and I remember the first letter, and if I get the first letter, Maria can almost always come up with the rest of the names! So there you are:

158. THE TWO MAIN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SYSTEMS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHORTHAND ARE GREGG and PITTMAN. But you have to learn a whole new kind of writing for those—it looks like Arabic! With steno typing, it is machine recording by using all 10 fingers operating several keys at once, and you literally learn so many abbreviations you can print whole words and sometimes whole phrases with one stroke of all ten fingers or as many fingers as necessary! And by this I learned a lot of abbreviations.

159. SO YOU'LL FIND MY DIARY READS ABOUT LIKE STENO TYPING, which is considerably abbreviated, and you may not be able to understand it unless you know steno typing or know my system of abbreviations, so it may be code to you, which is maybe just as well‚ if anybody ever decides to inspect my diary who is not friendly! I usually keep it, of course, in a very safe place and locked up at night, normally in my fleebag, so in case I should have to quick run, I won't forget it and leave it behind! Once in a while I've been a little careless and left it out, but that's the best place for it:

160. KEEP YOUR DIARY AT NIGHT IN YOUR FLEEBAG BESIDE YOUR BED! Keep it beside your chair or on your desk in the daytime when you're there, but I suggest that you lock it up, put it away when you're not actually at your desk or in your chair using it, so that someone unauthorized will not be tempted to pick it up and read it in case you have any classified or confidential security information listed therein‚ which you probably should have and do have. Well! So far we have at least gotten through breakfast! And we've also pretty well covered how I keep my diary, I think that's almost sufficient. I can't think of anything else about the diary

161. OH‚ I ALSO HAVE A RECORDING OF THE YEARS! In the new diaries we have a page for the whole year, modeled after the way I do mine, with months listed in vertical columns and the various totals and stats and major events of the year, so that you can list everything important in the whole year on one little page, except perhaps your witnessing stats, which you may need to keep on another page.

162. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT WHEN YOU WANT TO QUICKLY LOOK BACK and REFER TO A DATE OR A TIME or a time space or something you need to look back at your diary for and see exactly what was the day or the date regarding visas or your monthly periods or your pregnancy or all kinds of important reasons why you need to be able to recall dates or record dates in order to know exactly what the date was. That's very important, so be sure you keep accurate record of all important dates, periods, visas, events‚ etc. Well, that just about covers the diary, I think.

163. OH!—ALSO IN THE BACK OF MY DIARY I HAVE A LIST OF PUBS that we have completed and their progress chart of each one of these pubs as it proceeds to completion right on down to the date of our final receiving it in printed form! So that I have a list of everything we've ever published.—No, sorry, not from the beginning, although some of our stat men and researchers have dug out nearly all of it now for your information, and it's probably going to be in this same book of the History of the Family. But I've got mine reaching all the way back at least to the beginning of 1980 with FN Mag 14‚ when I started keeping an accurate record of all of our pubs.

164. WELL, PRAISE THE LORD! PRAISE THE LORD! THERE GO THE LIGHTS! THE DEVIL IS REALLY MAD! Every time I start dictating or taping, it seems like the Enemy really cuts loose, and we're having a real storm right now and it's really blowing, and apparently lightning has struck somewhere and our electricity has been cut off, which is something not at all uncommon. In the rural areas of some countries like Portugal, when it was constantly going out we almost got used to it and you immediately switch over to batteries, as I am now doing, and I trust you are still able to hear me, and let's hope these batteries are good enough to last a little while!

165. YOU HAVE TO BE SURE TO REMEMBER TO HAVE BATTERY LIGHTS READY if it occurs in darkness or during the night, and you should have tape recorders, radios and torches or flashlights that run on batteries. In fact‚ almost everything we have not only runs on electricity but also on batteries, either one or both, and therefore we're well supplied with electronics that can function independently of the local electric system in case of an emergency‚ and when need be for portability as well, including our videos and everything. We even used to have a little television that ran on battery, but we haven't considered that important enough to have battery TVs anymore. If the electricity goes off while watching a video, we just go to sleep, because the only time we ever watch videos is at night when we're too tired to do anything else and we're in bed.

166. OK, LET'S SEE WHERE WAS MOSES WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?—The diary! Did I finish? I got everything that is in my diary, yes, I got the whole works. In fact, since it's my personal record and diary of my life‚ I have glued in the Chronologue summary or condensation right in my diary, so I can remember it clear back to the very first years, my birth, my childhood, etc. as well, when I need to refer to it.—And I'll tell you, in writing this History Book we had to refer to it continuously and constantly to get our dates‚ times, and events straight‚ and it has taken a lot of work!

167. I THINK WE HAVE WORKED HARDER ON THIS HISTORY BOOK THAN ANY OTHER PUBLICATION we ever worked on, because it was so highly technical and it had to be accurate according to events and years and dates and places and times and persons, etc. So this is going to be one of the most accurate and one of the most valuable reference works that you have ever received, to know the exact history of us and your Family as a whole! Well, so much for the diary. I don't think there's anything more I can tell you about it except that I keep all those records and stats and data and events‚ persons, places, everything in my little diary.

168. LIGHTS ARE BACK ON! HALLELUJAH! THANK GOD! So here I'm going to plug in the juice again. OK, now we're back on electricity and I hope you can hear me just as well, if not better. Well, praise the Lord! After breakfast and filling in the initial entries so far in my diary for that day and its totals and stats, etc. etc., I then usually lay my diary beside me where it can be picked up with every change of events and work, and pick up the most urgent form of work.

WORK!

169. DEAR MARIA USUALLY CAREFULLY STACKS MY WORK FOR ME‚ if she can, in order of priority—at least she always lays right on top of the stack whatever she thinks is most important that I ought to do first. This morning I found lying on top of the stack of papers a list, a 1,2,3,4,5,6-page list of suggestions for "Dad's Day"—All the various items that she and the Family here contributed as what they thought was important to include in this description of my day. Apparently they didn't want me to miss anything, because they've got it all here! They've got it here somewhere, and if I miss anything this'll remind me.—Ha!

CHAIR!

170. OK, NEXT SHE WANTS TO GIVE YOU THE SETTING, THE PLACE WHERE I'M DOING ALL THIS WORK. Well, I'm one of those modern executives who no longer use a large ornate mahogany impressive executive status-symbol desk! But I have found that the best work place for me is a comfortable chair! Since most of my work is paperwork‚ reading, editing, proofreading, reading reports and business‚ etc., it is largely sedentary, meaning you sit down to do it. So I have tried to find the most comfortable possible place to sit and the most comfortable kind of a chair or in which I can be the most at ease and take the greatest strain off my body so I can use most of my energy and electrical impulses for my eyes and my brain, along with a hand to do a little writing and one to hold my reading. So my place of work‚ next chapter.

171. SO I, LIKE MANY OTHER EXECUTIVES, HAVE FOUND THAT THE MOST COMFORTABLE WAY TO WORK IS AN EASY CHAIR in a fairly secluded private spot with good light coming over my shoulder—something in the nature of a lounge chair, whatever is available, contour couch, a chaise lounge, overstuffed chair, whatever. If it has a leg rest‚ all right—if it doesn't, use a footstool and make yourself at home and comfortable.

172. FOR MY WORK COUCH, I usually use some kind of a chaise lounge, reclining chair, contour couch or lounge chair for my work to be comfortable so I can partially recline while working. But I do like to take a break when one of our pretty little angels comes in due to some business with Maria or me and it is necessary for them to enter the Lion's Lair! The Lion usually is lyin' in his couch and takes advantage of the opportunity to take a nice long stretch. Have you ever seen a lion stretch? They really stretch and they yawn, and sometimes growl or roar.

173. WHEN ONE OF THOSE PRETTY GIRLS COMES IN, I STRETCH AND YAWN AND BEGIN TO PURR, hold out my arms, and they know what that means! So they come closer and lie down on top of me, prostrating themselves before the king!—In fact, on top of the king! We have a nice little affectionate squeeze and kissing session which often develops into something even more exciting! But I think a little love break is a very necessary and very happy occasion, because all work and no play makes me a very dull boy! So I have to have a little play as I go along.

174. SO THE ONLY DESK THAT I NEED, AS OTHER EXECUTIVES HAVE DISCOVERED, AS I WAS READING IN THE PAPER THE OTHER DAY, IS A CLIPBOARD to hold the paper I am writing or working on, and a little chair–side table to hold the various instruments with which I am working‚ such as pens, pencils, the intercom for contacting the office, kitchen and various parts of the house and workers, a few reference books, and a tiny little Bambi stapler.

175. I ALSO HAVE A BALLOON GLOBE OF THE WORLD HANGING ON A STRING FROM THE CEILING BESIDE MY CHAIR so that I can twirl it around to any position, or even keep it rotating like the world actually rotates on its axis, in order to find the various places I want to look at on the world map. This is one of those balloon globes that you blow up like a balloon‚ and therefore when deflated doesn't take much room in your luggage. I long ago discarded the bulky frame it used to stand on, as being too difficult to carry and pack. So when I got to the first place without the frame, I had a problem with what to do with the globe, how to set it up.

176. I USED TO KEEP IT IN THE WASTEBASKET for a while, on top of the wastebasket‚ but that sometimes got in the way or mistaken for trash or something. So I finally got a brilliant idea, as I was looking around the room trying to figure out someplace to set it so it would be handy for me to look at, I decided there was almost no place available on any of my tabletops or anywhere that it wouldn't be knocked around or unavailable. So I finally got the bright idea of putting a little nail in the ceiling, very small, and hanging it on a string beside my chair!—That's one of my inventions!

177. I ALSO HAVE THE WALLS USUALLY COVERED WITH MAPS AND FAMILY CALENDARS AND POSTERS AND THE CHILDREN'S ART! In fact, our bedroom-and-office combo looks more like a museum and an art gallery than a bedroom and an office! But the children are always quite proud of our appreciation of their artwork by seeing it hanging on our walls. Of course they do so much of it that we're almost running out of space!

178. I'M ALWAYS TRYING TO IMPROVE THINGS, improve my work and work setup and living facilities and accommodations, and particularly I'm always working on getting sufficient good light for our many hours of close paperwork and reading. And because I like efficiency, I like to keep everything in its place, with a place for everything and everything in its place. That was almost my father's religion, and it's part of mine. Everything should be done in decency and in order, and cleanliness is godliness, so I like to keep things neat and clean and organized and everything where I know exactly where it's at and could even reach for it with my eyes shut or while I'm reading or in the dark!

179. I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE MY PEN AND PENCILS ARE ON THE TABLE BESIDE ME. I don't even have to take my eyes off the page to pick up a pen or a pencil for correction. And all my other necessary office tools and instruments are right here handy, I keep'm right where I know they're available and where I could even find them in the dark! Incidentally, I always keep a little flashlight right there within easy reach where I know exactly where it is, so if the lights should go out I could reach for it in the dark to turn on its light, and that's a very wise and important thing to remember!

180. ALWAYS KEEP A FLASHLIGHT OR TORCH OR SOME KIND OF BATTERY LIGHT HANDY WITHIN EASY REACH IN A KNOWN SPOT‚ so in case city electricity should fail and the lights in the house go out in the dark, it doesn't leave you in the dark, but you could reach quickly for a light. If you're too poor to afford a flashlight or a torch, at least you could have a box of matches and a candle within easy reach, so you don't have to get up and wander across the room and stumble over the furniture and break a leg trying to find a light!

181. I DON'T KNOW WHY SOME OF YOU GUYS HAVEN'T FOUND OUT THE VALUE OF STAPLERS as far superior to and less bulky and cheaper than paper clips! I have almost totally abandoned the use of paper clips as being too insecure and bulky and I use almost entirely one of those little Bambi or Bambini baby staplers, which I've found sufficient for almost everything that I need to staple together, including several papers at once or even sections of a Letter and changes‚ etc.

182. SO THAT'S ABOUT IT! Oh yes, I've got a box of Kleenex and a bottle of cologne for washing my hands and freshening when I feel like I'm getting too coated with xerox electronic paper dust or whatever it is! I also have one of those little calling-card-size calculators that tells the time‚ the date and that I can use for calculating as well, and it also has a little beeper alarm on it when necessary. I also like to have my little weather station right here to tell what the temperature is, and the barometer reading, as well as the humidity of the air.

183. I REFUSE TO USE THAT WORD "CELSIUS"… ! I still call them kilocycles and Centigrade, which I think is a lot more sensible and technically correct. Why bring in the names of people to try to make some [one] famous? … So I go right ahead and call it Centigrade, which is much more technically accurate‚ because it's divided into a hundred parts, "centi" meaning a hundred, and "grade" meaning in graduations of different degrees: 100 degrees!

184. FOR HUMIDITY, 50-70 IS CALLED NORMAL. Obviously in the North where they made these instruments, 50–70 is normal humidity. But humidity in the South normally runs about anywhere above that, usually somewhere around the 80s or even 90s! But it's very comfortable if you go naked! All you really need is a fan, just a simple little table fan that either blows on you or oscillates back and forth so you don't get too much at once‚ or the overhead fans with which many homes are already equipped.

FAN!

185. IN WARM WEATHER, IF YOU HAVE A LITTLE TABLE FAN YOU CAN STICK IT IN THE WINDOW, if you have a window that has a good-sized window-ledge or window–sill on it, so that your fan is secure, and it will suck in the nice cool air from the outside at night and blow it across your bed or oscillate it about the room, so you don't get too much draft at low speed. Or in the heat of the afternoon from clear across the room you can turn it straight towards you and put it on high speed and it really keeps up a nice breeze to keep you cool.

186. EVEN IN HOT WEATHER, WE SELDOM EVER USE OUR AIR CONDITIONER, although most of the Homes we have found do have one or two. I always said that you didn't really need air conditioning in the Tropics, all you needed was a good fan, because where the air is humid and warm and you therefore perspire some, the surface of your skin being slightly damp, all you need is a very slight breeze on it to keep it cool, just like a cooler, the principle of those Arizona air coolers. By the process of evaporation, your skin is kept cool by a little breeze blowing on it. So we have seldom ever found the need of an air conditioner.

187. EXCEPT SOME OF YOU BOYS WHO WORK IN DARKROOM LABS, YOU PHOTOGRAPHERS NEED AIR CONDITIONING to keep you and your chemicals cool. You'll find you really need that, or you're apt to have washed-out photos and prints and films when developed in warm chemicals of degrees higher than 70 F. or 20 C. Better keep those chemicals cool, boys! When I was in the Tropics and doing my own developing and printing, there was no such thing as air conditioning and a fan didn't help that much—it certainly didn't keep your chemicals cool! So I simply used ice water out of the fridge in order to make my solutions and then use them as rapidly as possible before they warmed up to 70!

188. BUT FOR PERSONAL COOLING ALL YOU NEED IS A NICE FAN. You can even use a hand fan, some of these beautiful hand fans made by the natives in many countries, and just fan yourself! When I was a boy before electric fans, on a hot Sunday it looked like the whole church was in motion! Because there was no air conditioning and no electric fans, but there were lady fans, and all the ladies were fanning themselves and their husbands‚ so the whole congregation looked like it was in perpetual rhythmic motion with these little hand fans! Praise the Lord! So anyhow, that's how we keep cool.

189. YES, AND I ALWAYS HAVE A GLASS OF WATER BY MY CHAIR on my little table, because I constantly drink water all day long in the nice warm climate. In fact, even in the cold climates I drank water all the time because I've found it necessary for my health and I'm thirsty, so I drink it. It's normal to drink lots of liquid, lots of water, and it's good for you. That's one reason probably why I have remained in good health, thank the Lord! Well, aside from other little odds and ends, a pair of scissors, a nail clipper and a few other things lying around here on my table, that's about it!

LAMPS!

190. NOW I'LL TALK ABOUT THE LAMPS AT NIGHT FOR WORKING. I do have a couple of neon lamps for when it gets too dark to read by natural daylight. I prefer to read by natural daylight‚ I think it's better for your eyes‚ and I have quite a rig here!—A scientific rig of reflective mirrors rigged up to catch the light from the window on both sides and focus it down on my work, believe it or not! It's not necessarily direct sunshine, but window light. It's always best of course to have a window, if possible‚ facing North, in the Northern Hemisphere, and South in the Southern Hemisphere so that you don't get direct sunlight‚ which can be somewhat blinding on a white sheet of paper!

191. BUT I HAVE MIRRORS SITUATED ON BOTH SIDES THAT CATCH THE LIGHT FROM THE WINDOW and focus it on my work! So that I get not only the window light but I get triple window light, like having three windows! I focus the light from these two mirrors so they reflect the window light on my paper. I also have discovered a way of focusing one on the ceiling for the sunlight when it's too bright, and that way I get a nice bright spot of sunlight on the ceiling which acts almost like a spotlight on my work! It's very very important that you have good light for your work, Beloved, those of you who do a lot of deskwork and reading, etc.

MORE WORK!

192. LIKE MOST OFFICE PEOPLE'S DESKS, I ALSO HAVE ONE SPOT FOR INCOMING MATERIAL and ONE SPOT FOR OUTGOING MATERIAL. In offices they often have certain trays for this purpose, stackers, each one labeled as incoming or outgoing, etc. OK‚ so I go to work and you have seen the results of most of my work, so I don't have to describe that to you! But it starts normally with a rough draft of a talk that I have given to the Family or the leadership or dictated already on tape‚ and I edit that to what I feel it should be and send it back for a first edited draft—what we call a "Semi Final," a corrected draft, and then that comes back to me and I check the corrections to make sure they have been made, and usually send it back for a few more corrections.

193. IT COMES BACK TO ME SOMETIMES SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE IT GETS REALLY READY FOR FINALIZING, what we call "lay-out" or scrunch, because we put it on the printer and gear the computer to print it out in a certain special format, as you see in the FN Magazines and the GNs. So by the time you get one of those nice easy-to-read Letters, it has been gone over and read and corrected and proofread and recorrected several times, until we feel that it is just about as good as we can get! Of course, nothing is ever really perfect, neither you nor me nor our work, but we do the best we can.

194. FRANKLY, IN COMPARISON TO SOME OF THE OTHER THINGS I'VE READ AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND NEWSPAPERS‚ I THINK WE HAVE GREATER ACCURACY and neatness and continuity and make more sense than most of them, with almost no typographical errors! Because by the time we feel the material is ready for mock-up—in other words, to mock up an actual copy of the completed publication, we have a number of copies made by our office and we give a copy to each couple of each bedroom, so that they can each have at least one copy available to read, and everybody is supposed to read them within a certain length of time, and they have a deadline by which they must hand in their suggested corrections and revisions or comments, etc. So that by the time the pub actually goes to press, there are lots of people that have read that copy as well as me and Maria! Therefore if we don't catch it, they do, and if they don't catch it then they catch it from me, ha ha! So that I think you'll find the typographical errors and mistakes in the text are rather rare!—Amen?

195. I ALSO PERSONALLY SEE TO THE ART, its content and appearance and illustrativity, so that it is usually designed by me personally, often even sketched roughly by me, to help the artist to sketch what I feel it should be, and then I make corrections and revisions and modifications and adjustments until I get it just about where I think it should be, just how I like it‚ how I want it, so that the picture says what we think it ought to say to most vividly illustrate the central and principal thought or thoughts of the Letter, until it is finalized and I give them an OK to roll! It goes then along with the Letter to press for the next edition.

196. SO THERE ARE A LOT OF STEPS TO THE FINAL STEPS AND FINAL PRINTING AND MAILING TO YOU. But, as I say there are many slips 'twixt cup and lip—there are many steps twixt, in this case, my lip and your cup!—Till it's all finished and ready for you to read, praise the Lord!—To feed you, nourish you, inspire you‚ encourage you, instruct you‚ inform you, advise you, counsel you, warn you and whatever it may be, praise the Lord! So that's my work all day long, usually from morning till night!

197. ONE OF THE MAJOR PARTS OF MY DAILY WORK IS TO ANSWER THE MANY NOTES AND REPORTS which I receive from various staff members and others, and I always answer them right away daily on their own note or their report regarding each item that they mention, so that they know I really read it, as they see my answer right there, right on their own note! Then I mark their name at the top to show it's to go back to them, and they get it back shortly with my answers and words of love and thanks, etc. PTL! And I understand a lot of them keep them as souvenirs, having my own handwriting on them and my own little greetings and words of love and thanks. PTL! I usually say, at the very least, besides answers and all: "Tx! GBY! PTL! ILY!—D." and the date. PTL!

198. WE LONG AGO ESTABLISHED A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM CALLED PAPER POWER here and everywhere we have lived, and that is, that staff members, unless it's a real emergency‚ do not knock on the door and disturb us or interrupt our work unless it's truly some emergency that needs immediate attention. So when we have a knock on the door we know it's important! Normally they just write a little note, shove it under the door and we keep one eye on the door frequently so that we'll see if there's any new message. This way we get the message, write a little answer on it, and we slip it back under the door for them to pick up, or throw it outside the door.

199. THIS WAY WE AVOID A LOT OF UNNECESSARY CONVERSATION, interruptions and distractions from our work, which sometimes requires a great deal of prayer and concentration without interruption. This system has worked very very well, passing the notes back and forth under the door, so that they do not have to intrude on our privacy and our study and our work‚ and we don't have to get involved in unnecessary conversations and interruptions and personal confrontations and whatnot!

200. I STARTED THIS 'WAY BACK IN LONDON in the little house in Downham with Brother Ho, who was constantly eager to come in and have a conference with me about this or that. So I finally just told him, as you recall, I just couldn't talk to him all day! Whenever I let him in, it was hard to get him out, and we got into all kinds of discussions and conferences and visitations and whatnot, many of which were not absolutely essential and a waste of time. But once someone is in your room like that, it's a little hard to get rid of them politely.

201. SO I FINALLY SAID, "WELL, HO‚ I'M JUST SO BUSY. PLEASE, AFTER THIS IF YOU'LL JUST SLIP A LITTLE NOTE UNDER THE DOOR; I will give it my attention‚ I promise you, and that'll give me the time to pray about it for an answer, and I'll write it on the note and shove it back to you." So that became our standard means of communication between us and the rest of the house, staff, etc., for the normal run of the day's business, unless it's a real emergency and they have to contact us immediately about something‚ a phone call or somebody at the gate or whatever, then they knock and we give them an immediate reply.

202. I REQUEST A DAILY NOTE FROM THE CHILDREN'S NURSES AND CARETAKERS AND TEACHERS ON THEIR DAILY PROGRESS, what they've eaten, how much they slept, what they had for breakfast and lunch, and what they studied that day. So I get a small note, about a fourth of a typing page, handwritten usually with the date, and signed by whoever it is, telling me about the kids' activities for the day.

203. OFTENTIMES THEY HAVE CUTE LITTLE QUOTES that different ones have said about this or that, which I get a real bang out of, a real good chuckle! Because our cute kids say some real funny things and some very wise things—it's amazing! So I get their little daily report from each of the childcare workers or their chief nannies on their progress and their sleep and food and schoolwork, etc. to keep check on them. So I know how they're getting along, even if I don't have much time to spend with them. PTL! (See "No More Tears!"—No. 1367.)

204. I NOT ONLY SEND NOTES TO THE STAFF FOR VARIOUS THINGS, BUT I FREQUENTLY SEND LITTLE NOTES TO THE CHILDREN, and if I have extra pictures or covers or artwork which we're working on and I have a spare that we've finished with, because our art usually goes through several different stages before it's complete, and I receive several different xeroxes for approval, the ones that we're through with, I pass these on to the children to color and they appreciate this. I write them little notes on them, little love notes.

205. ALSO FOR THOSE WHO READ, LIKE DAVID, when we get through with the test articles and proof articles, etc. which we have finished with, first copies, work copies, I write a little note on it to him and pass it on to him‚ letting him know he is one of the first to receive that particular Letter, and he seems to appreciate the recognition and honor of that special privilege and he likes to read the Letters. Yes, and when we get the new edition of GNs or whatever, or even a new mock-up‚ we get enough final mock–ups for each couple in the Family to have a mock-up to read before we give it its final OK, in case they find any needed corrections, etc., as I've said before. I always have David come to be the newsboy to pass these out.

SWIM!

206. GET OUT IN THE FRESH AIR AND SUNSHINE DAILY, EVEN IF IT'S ONLY CLOUDSHINE! Outdoors you get a little of the good ol' ultraviolet rays and vitamin C's and D's just being outdoors in the fresh air. Even if it's a little cloudy, some of that sunshine gets through. And I try to make sure everybody, including the children, do the same. We all need a little get out time, exercise‚ recreation and happy‚ playful, just plain fun in the beautiful creation of God in the garden of God outside where we can get lots of good exercise and fresh air and sunshine to refresh us!

207. I ALWAYS TRY TO REMIND THE NURSES AND CHILDCARE WORKERS WHEN IT'S TIME TO TAKE THE KIDS FOR A SWIM. Particularly I'm conscious of the sunshine hours and that they must get out there while the sun's still shining, and before any clouds come. So they've got to get out there and "make swim while the sun shines"!

208. OF COURSE, LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I HAVE TO TAKE A BREAK SOONER OR LATER and after I get hot enough and sometimes perspiring enough and hot enough under the collar‚ only I don't wear any collars, I usually feel like taking a dip or a real vigorous swim; that's our "get out" and primary form of exercise here. It's what I always dreamed of, to have a pool to swim in in a warm climate, and this is what we had in Tenerife‚ a small pool, and this is what we have here also. In fact, I don't like to even live in a house in warm weather without swimming at least close by, either beach or a pool or a lake or something!

209. SO USUALLY ABOUT ONE OR TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON I'M READY FOR A BREAK and I'm tired of settin' and sweatin' and scratchin' and itchin' and writhing in my chair. I shouldn't say torture chamber, but I squirm and writhe all the time I'm working, which is good for you, to keep your muscles pliant and limber and to keep your circulation going and your organs well supplied with blood, especially my brain, until finally I've had enough and I just plain quit!

210. COME ONE OR TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON, AND I'M READY FOR A SWIM! And we go out, usually Maria and I together, and we're ready for a good vigorous swim in our nice warm pool, something I always dreamed of, a nice warm pool! In some places it's not difficult to have a warm pool because of all the warm climate and warm sunshine and warm air to warm it and keep it warm. I normally spend anywhere from half an hour to 45 minutes, even often an hour, in the pool swimming vigorously from end-to-end while conferring at the same time with some leadership, having a pool conference while we swim‚ not wasting time. There's time for a talk even while we're exercising.

211. MY USUAL CUSTOM TO OCCUPY THAT HALF-HOUR OR SO IS TO SWIM AT LEAST 20 LAPS from one end of the pool to the other and back, that's 20 round trips in the water! I usually swim the length of the pool under water one way, and then I swim the length of it on my back resting and gasping for air the other way on the surface. This gives me lots of good exercise. I love to swim underwater, it's like flying and you're weightless; there's no sense of gravitation there because you're buoyant and supported by the water. It's the most comfortable exercise in the world and the most relaxing, and yet at the same time the most invigorating!

212. SO SWIMMING IS TO ME THE WORLD'S GREATEST SPORT, my favorite sport and exercise, and therefore I really love to swim and always have ever since I was a child. I used to swim in the ocean at Miami Beach for miles! It's excellent exercise‚ very good for your body, good for your cleanliness, salt water is good for any sores you may have, any rash or almost anything. It's almost good for everything that ails you. It also washes out your eyes if you swim underwater with your eyes open. Salt water is actually easier on your eyes than fresh-water swimming‚ if you swim underwater with your eyes open, which is good policy, considering that you might run into all kinds of things underwater in the ocean! In a pool you need to open your eyes once in a while too.

213. SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO WEAR FACE MASKS‚ GOGGLES, EVEN SNORKELS, BUT I HATE TO BE ENCUMBERED WITH ALL OF THAT PARAPHERNALIA! It's just a nuisance and I don't feel as free, when I'm swimming even without a bathing suit, nude, completely nude, which is the way we usually swim. You feel so free, free as a bird! You can feel just like you're flying and it's just thrilling, exciting, invigorating, as well as sexy! We often have some sexual encounters in the pool as well! We get started with just a little affection and get a little worked up and worked down and worked in and worked out‚ in and out till we explode! So that we really enjoy our pool. Thank You‚ Lord, for a house with a pool!

214. SOME OF YOU COMBINED HOMES SHOULD PRAY AND ASK THE LORD TO HELP YOU FIND A HOUSE WITH A POOL which would be a blessing to your whole Family! It's the one good clean place you can be sure of being clean to swim in for you and your children and workers and helpers. I'll tell you, that's one thing we do—we really keep it clean! Our boys are out there every day, every time they want to get out and get a little fresh air and sunshine, whoever it may be, they pick up the skimmer and they go around sweeping the pool water and picking up the leaves and debris that are always landing on the surface from the breezes and the wind and the trees, and also vacuuming the material that escapes the skimmer and settles to the bottom.

215. WE ALSO KEEP THE FILTER GOING ABOUT 16 HOURS A DAY, all day long. We only turn it off about eight hours of sleep at night to give it a rest. This filters the water as well as skims it through the little skimmer hole at the edge of the surface. It does a lot of skimming itself, as well as pumping all the water through the filter constantly all day long, so that we really keep it clean, as well as vacuuming from the bottom the debris that does escape the skimmers, the hand-skimmer and the pump skimmer, the filter.

216. THEN THERE'S ALL THE CHEMICALING THAT WE DO, because it is very necessary to chemical your pool properly in order to assure its sanitary condition and to keep the water clean and pure and even clear and crystal blue and beautiful! Our pool looks like a beautiful crystal clear blue lake, small lake of course, very small, but beautiful and clear. If you wear goggles or a face mask and swim slowly along on the surface with your face down looking at the bottom you can see it as clear as can be, beautifully clear and clean, because we keep chemicals in there constantly that keep it not only clear and clean but also antiseptic, pure and sanitary.

217. WE ADD CHLORINE EVERY TWO OR THREE DAYS, the proper amount of chlorine for the volume of our pool. You must figure out the volume, the actual volume of the water in your pool‚ and then you can find out either from a pool man or from your own figuring, if you're following instructions on the can or the bottle or whatever it is, exactly how much you need to properly chlorinate your pool so the water is clean enough to drink! This was the standard which the head Inspector of Pools in Tenerife originally taught me. He said, "We keep chemicals in these pools to keep the water clean enough to drink, because people often get it in their mouths and little children swallow it, so it's got to literally be sanitary enough and clean enough to drink it if you have to!" And who knows, you may have to drink it one of these days in an emergency!

218. SO IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO HAVE A POOL ALSO FOR A SPECIAL EMERGENCY TANK OF WATER! It's a comforting feeling to know that that tank of water is out there in the yard to use in case we run out of water and they can't even pump water to us anymore! So it's comforting to know we've got lots of water out there to drink if we have to‚ and even clean enough to drink already, or boil it. Water is your most vital and important necessary utility, a real necessity primarily for drinking‚ but also for washing yourselves, baths, and then finally washing dishes and clothes and eventually for flushing your toilets, etc.

219. IF YOUR WATER IS EVER CUT OFF, INSTRUCT EVERYBODY TO TURN OFF THEIR TOILETS, to turn off the water inlet valve, usually a little handle down on the pipes coming out of the wall into your toilet tank, a little valve that feeds water to your toilet for flushing. You need to turn that off immediately, because the toilets use more water than almost any other vessels in the house, and can quickly use up your emergency water if you don't turn off the toilets. Even if you know you shouldn't flush the toilet during such an emergency‚ you're too apt to forget, it's very easy to forget that there is such an emergency, and you have such a habit of flushing the toilet after using it that you're apt to go ahead and flush it and then suddenly catch yourself and realize it's too late to stop it, the water is gone and you've used up a whole toiletful of water!

220. BECAUSE IN AN EXTREME EMERGENCY YOU COULD EVEN USE THAT WATER THAT IS IN THE TOILET TANK, BEFORE IT'S GONE INTO THE TOILET, FOR DRINKING WATER IF YOU HAD TO! And you certainly don't want to waste the toilet water or flush the toilet until it is an absolute necessity, until your toilet is really full of wastes sufficient to make it absolutely necessary to flush it! If you have cut off the toilet water during the emergency in time, you have still got at least one tank of water with which to flush it, and normally that's sufficient to survive a water-shortage emergency of a few hours.

221. OF COURSE, IF YOUR WATER GOES OFF FOR TWO OR THREE DAYS, THEN THAT'S A DIFFERENT STORY! You may not be able to flush your toilets so much, and you may have to save your waste water from the washing of faces and hands and bodies in buckets, as we used to do out camping, and use that water for flushing your toilet! But anyway‚ it's very wise in most of these countries to have a special water storage emergency tank; in fact‚ in any country I would advise it, even the most civilized mechanized countries of the North, where in times of emergency you're apt to lose both your electricity and your water, in war or whatever, and you're apt to need emergency water for drinking, if nothing else.

222. TO HAVE A GOOD-SIZED EMERGENCY TANK OF WATER AVAILABLE IS VERY COMFORTING TO KNOW! It is better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, so praise the Lord! We also keep in each bathroom a glass or two of water full for drinking, for immediate consumption in case the water goes off even temporarily. Also always keep the bathroom wash bowl and sinks at least half filled or so, so that there will always be water available for drinking and washing your hands, and if you have a bathtub, keep it full! Since we swim daily, sometimes two or three times a day, we seldom ever have to take a bath or shower.

223. SO THEREFORE WE'RE FAIRLY CERTAIN WE'VE GOT QUITE A BIT OF WATER ON HAND IN SUCH AN EMERGENCY, even if there were a national emergency and the water were cut off for say a week or two, perhaps even a month, we could survive without city water on our own, between our own house system‚ our wash bowls and swimming pool. PTL! We also keep a number of emergency jugs of water sitting around. Every bathroom has at least one or two big ten–liter emergency jugs of drinking water, that's a couple gallons of water for such emergencies. In case even all the other water runs out, we've still got some emergency water in those jugs, in the washbowls and even in the toilet tanks, as well as the pool outside.

224. WELL, WE WERE ON POOLS AND POOL WATER! I was astounded to hear the Inspector of Public Pools and hotel pools in Tenerife when he said, "We chemical these pools so that you never have to change the water! If you keep it well–filtered, skimmed, vacuumed‚ clean and properly chemicaled, you'll never or seldom ever have to change the water! I've got some pools here that have had the same water in for seven years, believe it or not! We usually keep the same water in at least three or four years! The only reason we have to change it or drain it then, is in order to service the pool, because they usually have to paint the bottom and the walls of the pools about once every three or four years for both waterproofing and preservation maintenance. So they only drain their pools about every three or four years for painting and service and any necessary repairs, etc."

225. SO IF YOU KEEP YOUR POOL PROPERLY CHEMICALED‚ IT WILL ALWAYS BE NICE AND FRESH AND CLEAN AND BEAUTIFUL AND CLEAR, CRYSTAL BLUE, and without trash and dirt and bugs and germs, etc. Because if you add the proper amount of chlorine each day or so, it kills all germs. The liquid form of chlorine of course is the best and easiest to use and more readily dissolves and mixes more quickly. In many countries you can only get the crystal form or powdered form, and that takes a little more stirring of the pool with the skimmer or a paddle or a shovel or whatever‚ just to keep the pool water stirred to dissolve and mix the chemicals. Give it ten hours before swimming!

226. BUT IF NECESSARY, YOU CAN EVEN CHEMICAL YOUR POOL, IF YOU HAVE A SMALL ONE, WITH CHLOROX! On these bottles of Chlorox it tells you right on the bottle exactly how much to use in relation to the capacity of the water in your pool. This is what I used to do and use for my little tiny pool behind the church I built in Arizona. It was only nine feet long and about five feet wide and four feet deep. I would use about one–half gallon, I think it was‚ those half-gallon bottles of Chlorox bleach‚ I'd pour in about one every other day, because we had a lot of people swimming in it, the kids from the neighborhood‚ etc., so it had to be clean.

227. THAT'S WHERE I FIRST LEARNED THAT YOU ALSO NEED TO ADD SOME COPPER SULPHATE, just a little handful of that bluish-white copper sulphate powder to the water, usually at least once a week, to kill and deter the algae, and it also turns the water a beautiful crystal clear blue and just clears the water almost like magic! When you throw in that handful into the middle of your pool it dissolves very quickly and beautifully! Most places you can only buy it in rock-crystal form, and you have to grind it up in a mortar with a pestle like some people grind grain, and you have to grind it to a fine powder and then take a handful and throw it in the pool about once a week, and it keeps the water beautifully crystal clear and free of algae.

228. OF COURSE YOU ALSO HAVE TO ADD WHAT THEY CALL "ACID," SPECIAL POOL ACID, TO THE POOL ABOUT ONCE A WEEK. But the chlorine, in very hot climates where there is a great deal of evaporation and sunshine, you might have to add some every day. In cooler weather you may only have to add it a couple times a week. We have found that in the cooler part of the year we only need to add it about twice a week, every three or four days. We keep check on it by a little special pool chemical checker which shows the different colors that the water should turn these chemicals when added to the pool water, what color it should be, and this way you can tell exactly how much you need or don't need and whether it has sufficient chemical or not, sufficient chlorine and acid, etc. WARNING!: THESE ARE ALL POISONS!

229. THESE CHEMICALS COST A LITTLE MONEY, BUT THEY'RE CERTAINLY WORTH IT to keep your pool absolutely clean‚ free of harmful bacteria and algae and various types of animal and plant life that can be dirty if not actually injurious and disease–causing! So we keep a real clean pool, very clean and very sanitary, because I love to swim and dive under water and swim with my eyes open and frequently get water in my mouth and ears and eyes, and you'd better have mighty clean pool water to swim in if that's the way you swim!

230. NOW OUT IN GOD'S NATURAL OCEAN where it's not polluted by man, God has His own balance and recycling system, so that He keeps His water pretty clean. What is floating around in it is not usually harmful unless it's caused by man and his awful offals! Only, there you sometimes have to watch out for the animal life, the fish and the sharks and the barracudas and the octopi and man–of-war jellyfish and quite a few types of poisonous stingrays and electric eels and all kinds of other kinds of dangerous creatures that can live in natural ocean water!

231. I'VE FOUND IN MOST FRESHWATER LAKES THAT THEY ALSO HAVE A LOT OF SNAKES in some lakes. Snakes seem to go with lakes as well as rhyming with lakes, and you've got to watch out for them: Water moccasins, Copperheads and whatnot, all kinds of snakes that swim, and whose bites are venomous and poisonous and can make you pretty sick if not fatal! So watch out for your swimming, make sure the water is not dangerous and the surf, if it's ocean, not dangerous. Watch out for bottoms where there's either debris and broken glass, bottles, cans and horrible pollution of so-called civilization! Or even out in more natural places away from man's pollution you may find sharp rocks and pitholes and coral rock and whatnot on the bottom, which can also be injurious and dangerous, as well as the sea creatures and other kinds of animal life!

232. SO FRANKLY, A POOL CAN BE THE SAFEST‚ CLEANEST MEDIUM IN WHICH TO SWIM, and we keep ours that way, so praise the Lord! And I swim usually at least 20 laps, round-trip laps from one end of the pool to the other and back, in my half-an-hour of daily swimming, and that keeps me pretty well in shape even if I don't have opportunity to have other exercise, such as the long walks which we normally used to take in the North where it was much cooler and more pleasant to walk. But you will find that in the hot humid scorching sun of the southern climes you may not be quite as inclined to take long walks during most of the year as you will be to swim long swims!

233. SO THE SWIMMING HAS KEPT UP OUR EXERCISE and "get out" and health in the South as well as occasional walks we take either around the neighborhood or town, etc. But we have found that swimming daily, regularly, strenuously and vigorously, I mean really swimming from one end of the pool and back, this really keeps up our strength and our health, vital circulation, flushing out our lungs with fresh air and getting our touch of sunshine that we need, etc. So that is our get out and our exercise and the swimming we do virtually every afternoon.

234. OH YES! DEAR MARIA REMINDS ME that in warm weather since I only wear this little pair of trunks every day all day long, that usually I enter the side of the pool which happens to be in view of the neighbors with my trunks on, and then I swim around for a while with them on until they're thoroughly washed, take them off on the side of the pool that's out of sight of the neighbors, wring them out, hang them on a little line that we have there in the sun, and continue to swim on the unviewed side of the pool, the private side of the pool‚ so that we won't shock the neighbors or offend them or have any problems along that line.

235. KEEP OUT OF SIGHT IF YOU SKINNY DIP OR SWIM NUDE, which we love to do and which we have made possible by putting up a screen. You can buy in some places very light material already fastened in large rolls a couple of meters high‚ and you can stretch that across one side of your yard or pool to shield your pool from the neighbors' view.

236. IF WE STAY ON THAT SCREENED SIDE OF THE POOL WE'RE PERFECTLY SAFE FROM VIEW and can enjoy our freedom of complete nudity just the way God made us and intended for us to enjoy life free of all these encumbrances of clothing and shoes, etc. Well, as Maria is just pointing out, since I wash my panties out in the pool each day as I swim and then hang them up to dry, by the time I get out‚ if it's sunny they're already dry and I can dry myself off and slip back into them and walk back in and I wouldn't even have to change them at all!—I could wear the same pair of panties every day all day and day in and day out, because they get washed daily that way. But some days it's cold and a little cloudy and they don't get dried out‚ so just for safety's sake I usually walk in with the same ones on, get a change in the bathroom and then I hang them up to complete their drying and change to another pair that are already hanging in there and already dried out, so I alternate shorts each day. I just wear one pair one day and the other pair the next day, wash each pair out as I swim each day. And so that creates an absolute minimum of clothing and washing, and since I wear no shirts or tops or shoes or socks or anything else at all, I have virtually no washing at all to do!

237. NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD!—JUST LIKE ADAM AND EVE IN THE GARDEN, and just think, they didn't have to wash clothes at all! They didn't have to cook either because they could just pick their food off the trees, and they didn't have to wash dishes, didn't need dishes and didn't need clothes, didn't need to cook, didn't need to wash or iron or mend or anything‚ God made a perfect environment for them to live in with the least possible work and trouble until they did get in trouble, got themselves in trouble. Then He had to take them out and put them some place where they'd have to work hard to keep them out of mischief!

238. IN THE NATURAL PARADISIACAL ENVIRONMENT OF HEAVEN ON EARTH‚ such as was the Garden of Eden and some Southern countries, you can live like the natives and Adam and Eve and run around either completely naked or with almost no clothes on at all much of the year‚ day and night, and what little you might have to wear you can wash at the same time you're swimming! So, much of the time you don't have much washing except when you go to town. Let me tell you, after going to town in some of these filthy cities of the poor South, you come home, you take off all your clothing and put it all immediately in the wash, and you immediately go take a swim or shower to take off all the dirt and the filth and disease of the city!

239. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP CLEAN IN SOUTHERN WARMER COUNTRIES! The germs like the warmth too and they thrive on it, so you've got to keep free of them and clean. (Maria: How do you dry off?) Oh yes‚ well when I get out of the pool of course, in case you don't know how to do it to save your towel so it won't get too wet, you should always wipe the water off of your body, wipe your hair back real tight and squeeze all the water out of it from front to back till you can feel it running down your back, and wipe off your face and your arms and your chest and your back and your legs, "squeegee" the water off with your hands so that all the excess water and drops of water are all wiped off, and then you can easily wipe off the remainder with your towel.

240. I JUST KEEP A TOWEL HANGING OUT ON A LITTLE LINE BY THE POOL, and the sun and the air and even the rain keeps it clean all the time‚ because it gets washed by the rain and purified by the sun and cleaned by the air and it's just as fresh as though somebody had washed it every day! I can use the same towel actually for weeks just hanging out there in the sun and the air by the pool! Once in a while if there is a little too much dirt that settles on it, I have to bring it in and have it washed, but otherwise that's it! That's all the clothes I wear and all I have to wash, except as I say for trips when you have to wear shoes and socks and underclothes and upper clothes and jackets and everything to protect you from filth and disease of the festering sore of the city. Otherwise I have virtually no washing at all. Also my meals are, as you can see‚ very meager.

241. OH BY THE WAY, AFTER WIPING OFF WITH A TOWEL, IF IT'S SUNNY WE LIKE TO LIE DOWN FOR JUST A FEW MINUTES IN THE SUN, bake on one side a moment and turn and brown on the other side—actually not usually more than about five minutes on each side, that's about all we can stand in this hot sun! Then you'll feel your skin begin to burn, and that's it! Maybe in the North where the sun's rays are very slanting and the heat is much less you can take it‚ but I'll tell you, in these warm Southern countries when the sun is bright and more directly overhead, you can burn in a few moments!—I mean really feel it! When your skin begins to feel so hot that it actually hurts‚ you'd better get out of the sun—in fact, it may be too late then!

242. ANYHOW, WE'VE FOUND THAT 3-5 MINUTES ON EACH SIDE IS PLENTY FOR A GOOD LITTLE SUNNING AND DRYING out and absorbing a little Vitamin D and C and the ultraviolet rays, or whatever it is that you need. Then I don my shorts again and run back in. Of course, if you can't find a house reasonable enough with a little pool of some kind, try something else. In one place in Miami we used to use our fish pond! We just cleaned out all the junk and the fish and kept the fish pond for a pool! At least you could sit down in the water and the kids could play in the water.

243. OR YOU CAN BUY THESE LITTLE CHILDREN'S PLASTIC POOLS and they're very effective, filled with your garden hose, and they're so small you don't even have to chemical or anything, you just dump out the dirty water and refill it next time you use it! (Maria: Or drain it.) Yes, if you've got any kind of container or old wash tub. At TSC when I first went there I was a little leery of swimming in these so-called tanks which were ponds‚ just open ponds in the mud, so we bought a large galvanized metal tub to swim in or to bathe in‚ and the kids used to play and slosh around in it when it was hot, and they also got washed off at the same time. You couldn't exactly swim in it, but later on we swam right in the pond.

244. OF COURSE‚ IF YOU CAN FIND SOME KIND OF BODY OF WATER SUFFICIENT TO BE ABLE TO SWIM IN, IT'S ALSO NOT ONLY CLEANSING BUT GOOD EXERCISE. But if you haven't got anything that big, don't despair, it's not the end of the world or the end of your pleasure of cooling off and washing off! We used to just use our bathtub in one of the tropical countries we were in. We were not close enough to any body of water or ocean and had no pool, so every time we got hot during the day we'd just keep the bathtub full of water and we'd take a dip and cool off and come out refreshed! We couldn't get much exercise at it, we had to get our exercise in bed, ha! Of course, if you don't have a tub, just use your shower, but even some showers are built in such a way that you can fill up the bottom of the shower and the kids can sit in it and play around in it.

245. WHEN WE WERE KIDS IN FLORIDA, WE LOVED TO RUN THROUGH THE YARD SPRINKLER when it was hot! It was fun, good exercise and refreshing, but got us more muddy and sandy than clean! Or you can buy one of these little plastic pools, children's pools, and they even have some larger adult pools that if you know how to construct one and put it together with a do-it–yourself kit, are actually big enough to swim in! They're at least waist-deep, and in waist-deep water you can swim around quite a bit and at least cool off and wash off and enjoy it. But I'll tell you, water is essential, and some type of body of water to swim in and wash in and cool off in is virtually vital to enjoying living in the South. I guess that's why the Lord put so much water in the Southern climes! Most of'm are islands surrounded by water! PTL!

POOL HEATERS!

246. AH‚ THE POOL HEATERS! NOW THERE IS AN INVENTION!—When it begins to be a bit cool during the summer months, or it might be the winter months, depending on which part of the tropics you're in and where you're at. But frankly, I always did like warm water for bathing or swimming. That's why I always enjoyed the ocean in Miami‚ it was usually about air temperature and very comfortable to swim in, even for hours without being cold or chilled. So when I found our pool water was beginning to cool off‚ I saw we had to do something about it.

247. I LIKE OUR POOL TEMPERATURE 30 DEGREES CENTIGRADE TO BE TRULY COMFORTABLE! You say‚ "My goodness, that's bath-water temperature!" Well, that's the way I like it and that's the way we enjoy it, and you can really feel comfortable, especially swimming nude, and it really encourages much more love in the pool, and you can be more comfortable making love or being affectionate or enjoying the beauties of God's creation in the pool in that nice warm water!

248. BUT I'LL TELL YOU, WHEN THE WATER BEGAN GOING DOWN, DOWN, DOWN TO 25 C. IT BEGAN TO FEEL COLD TO US! Now 30 C. is about 85 F., and 25 C. is somewhere around 75 F.‚ and to us that's cold! I even like to have a room heated to at least 72 degrees to be comfortable‚ and that's the way Maria and I almost always like it.—We even think 30 C. is comfortable naked! So we like our water not much cooler than our room air, so I was determined there had to be some way we could heat that water in the pool! I've been in homes before which had heated pools.

249. NOW IN TENERIFE WE HAD a furnace system with a big oil furnace in the basement of our garage room that we lived in upstairs, with the furnace room just below us, which was nice in cold weather because with the furnace going, which heated the hot water for the house—it was for that purpose almost entirely—it kept us nice and snug and warm upstairs most of the time, without any additional heat, or much.

250. BUT IT WAS ALSO SUPPOSED TO HEAT THE POOL WATER by pumping hot water out to a subterranean chamber beside the pool‚ the filter-motor chamber, where it passed through what was called a heat-exchanger, which simply meant a pipe, a hot water pipe from the furnace passed through a thing which looked like an automobile muffler, with the hot water pipe, the small water pipe looking like a tail pipe passing through the muffler, and the pool filter pump pumped the pool water into the chamber around this hot water pipe constantly, pool water flowing through there over the hot water pipe. The whole thing was not more than about half a meter long, a foot-and-a-half long, and maybe six, well, eight inches in diameter, so there wasn't very much hot-water pipe to heat very much pool water! Therefore as a result, our pool never did get very warm! In fact, with the furnace going full blast most of the time in the winter, it still was too cold!

251. SO I THOUGHT WHEN I GOT HERE AND OUR WATER BEGAN TO GET PRETTY CHILLY‚ NOW THERE MUST BE SOME BETTER WAY TO HEAT WATER IN THE POOL directly without all that waste of having it pumped clear to the pool by a hot water furnace system and all that expensive contraption, and it would have been ridiculously and phenomenally expensive to install such a system in houses where we are only temporarily residents and renters with often short stays and short winters. So what in the world could we do or use to heat our pool water?

252. WELL! AS I THOUGHT AND PRAYED ABOUT IT, I USUALLY GET PICTURES of ideas of what to do, so it must be from the Lord or some of His helpers or angels! I just see a picture of it as clear as anything! I got a picture of one of those big electric heating coils that they use for heating water in cooking pots! They stick the heating coil into the pot, hang it on the side of the pot, and they can boil water very quickly without a waste of heat, with no open fire necessary!

253. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT IN HOT COUNTRIES WHERE YOU DON'T WANT THE KITCHEN HEATED UP to a sweat box, suffocatingly hot when you've got open fires going‚ and therefore these coil heaters are very efficient. All the heat goes into the liquid you are heating and very little escapes, and you may want to try that just for your ordinary cooking and your hot water heating in your kitchen, for which these heating coils are designed.

254. YOU KNOW‚ THEY'RE LIKE THOSE SAME LITTLE TINY HEATING COILS THAT YOU STICK IN YOUR COFFEE CUP TO HEAT YOUR MORNING COFFEE. If there is no other heat handy or available, you can even heat your coffee in your room that way! I used to do that in the cold countries all the time‚ if there wasn't enough hot water in the faucet or it wasn't handy‚ especially out in a trailer you don't have a hot water system usually, and you have to heat your own water. So I used to just stick the little heating coil in the cup, plug her in, and in just about a couple of minutes the coffee was piping hot!

255. OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL YOU DON'T STICK THOSE HEATING COILS INTO ANY TYPE OF MILK fluid or a food which will cake and harden and cook and literally bake on the outside of the coil to the point that you cannot get it off or wash it! You have to either scrape it off with a knife or almost file it off, some of those hard sediments and some mineral-type of sediments that just almost weld to the coil! So they are better suited for just either heating water or coffee without milk‚ liquids not containing any type of food which will stick to the coil and bake on the coil so that it is impossible to even wash it off or get it off afterwards or even scrape it off!—More watery liquids and very water-soluble materials such as your coffee or powdered coffee, instant coffee. You can have that instant coffee already in the water and still heat it up with your coil without necessarily dirtying up the coil‚ and easily rinse it off afterwards.

256. ALWAYS BE SURE THAT YOU IMMERSE THE COIL IN THE COFFEE OR COFFEE WATER OR TEA WATER BEFORE YOU TURN IT ON, otherwise we've had a few sad experiences in the past where someone turned it on but forgot to put it in the water soon enough, and it soon turns bright red and then just melts into one big glob! Or they pulled it out of the liquid quickly because it was already hot or boiling, and failed to turn it off quickly enough, and the heater just got red hot and melted! So watch out about that with those heating coils! Make sure they're not turned on until you have them immersed in the liquid‚ and be sure you turn them off before you pull them out of the liquid! I once put mine in my cup but forgot the liquid, and the cup melted too!—Ha!

257. WELL, I GOT THIS PICTURE OF THIS NICE BIG HEATING COIL—they have large heating coils of 500, 1,000 and 2,000 watts, and it's a very good idea for the kitchen. So I got the bright idea it would be good for the pool! So we found a 2,000-watt coil, which is about the biggest they make‚ and that's pretty heavy, so you better make sure you've got good strong heavy wiring in your house and a circuitry which can stand such a heavy electrical appliance! Most houses have at least some circuit for heavy utilities, and that can be used.

258. SO WE TESTED THE CIRCUITS IN THE HOUSE AND WE FOUND A CIRCUIT THAT COULD TAKE IT BY TESTING THE HEATING COIL ON IT, and it didn't knock it out. We also tested the heating coil in the bathtub to see how well it did, and it did fine! But first of all we experimented by hanging the heating coil just as you would in a pot, only we hung it from a position above the pool so that it hung in the pool, ran an electrical cord from the nearest electrical outlet and ran the cord out the window, which was conveniently located overhanging the pool.

259. BUT WE FOUND THAT BY JUST IMMERSING THE HEATING COIL JUST BELOW THE SURFACE as you do in cooking pots, much of the heat was then lost due to the fact that it was only heating the surface water, and this surface water spread out on the surface of the pool and quickly lost its heat in the air. So we saw that in order to really efficiently heat the pool water we would have to immerse the coil much deeper‚ in fact, close to the bottom of the pool if possible, so that all of the heat would be going into the pool water and very little would even reach the surface and be lost.

260. BUT WE HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM: THE HANDLE OF THE HEATING COIL WAS NOT WATERPROOF! So I got the bright idea of taping it waterproof with electrical tape, plastic electrical tape, and I spent a couple of hours doing one of the first ones by myself, and worked hard taking the handle apart and taping each wire separately and then taping the whole thing inside the handle, and then putting the handle back on and then taping the whole handle all the way from the two legs of the coil clear up to the wire of the handle.

261. I THEN TESTED IT BY PLUNGING IT INTO THE POOL and found I had in the process some how or another broken or disconnected it and it didn't work at all! So I tried again on a second coil. I didn't give up on the first try. You know us pioneers, we can't give up easily, and I was determined that system was going to work! So I bought another one and taped it again! This time, having learned how to tape the first one, it only took about one hour to tape it till it was waterproofed‚ and I tested it and it worked great! Praise the Lord!

262. THE TAPING HAD WATERPROOFED THE HANDLE, SO NOW WE COULD LOWER THE WATER HEATER TO THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE POOL, using of course heavy rubber or plastic insulated wire, so that the wire does not develop any electrical or water leaks. Also it can be a very dangerous business if you don't know what you're doing! Don't ever be standing in the water while holding on to the heater cord or before the heater actually hits the water, because in case there is an electrical leak or short, you may be the ground and you'll get a good charge out of that one!

263. ALWAYS MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE FIRST LOWERED YOUR HEATING COIL AND ITS CORD INTO THE WATER‚ including the handle part where it is most apt to leak water or electricity, either or both‚ so that if there is any short at all, it won't go through you but it will go directly into the water! Well, we soon found out that apparently that I had not taped it tight enough, and if you got your hand anywhere near the heating coil down in the water, somehow there was an electrical leak and you could feel the tingle of the electricity leaking out of the coil into the water! You didn't get a shock, but if you had a hang nail or a little cut or a tack-punctured skin or anything like that where there was a nerve exposed, you could sure feel the sharp little tingle of the electricity if you got your hand near the coil!—Or smiled with a cavity nearby!—Ha!

264. SO WE EVENTUALLY LEARNED THAT ONE WAY TO ELIMINATE THAT, IF YOUR COIL IS LEAKING A LITTLE ELECTRICITY, IS TO REVERSE THE PLUG IN THE WALL SOCKET, reverse the polarity, in other words, of the electrical flow, and thereby instead of it grounding in the water it flows back to the system. When the leak is apparently only to one of the wires, if you can reverse the polarity of your plug in the wall socket‚ it can sometimes cure this electrical leak, just as it will any appliance in your house that you may be getting a shock from, a lamp or any small thing, or even a big thing like a refrigerator!

265. WE HAVE HAD APPLIANCES THAT IF YOU TOUCHED THEM YOU'D GET A LITTLE MILD SHOCK because there was a little short somewhere, but if you turned the plug around in the wall, then it reversed the polarity so you didn't become the ground if you touched it, and it was no longer giving out shocks! And that's what happened in the pool, because we were very very careful about how we did all this and made sure we were never the ground and the wire the heating coil was already lowered into the pool water before we even touched it! Now we can even grasp the coil momentarily to feel it to see if it's warm‚ to make sure it is still working, and we check it every day.

266. THE FIRST ONE WE LOWERED INTO THE POOL WE TESTED IT AND KEPT IT ON FOR SEVERAL HOURS TO SEE IF IT WOULD IN ANY WAY STRAIN THE ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT OF THE HOUSE. We didn't want to have the wires burn out in the walls and catch the house on fire! But of course your circuit breakers or fuses are supposed to prevent that. If it's overcharged and there's a short, your fuse is supposed to blow out or your circuit breaker is supposed to flip off. Well, apparently our circuits here are able to carry the load, so we began by leaving it in a few hours in the morning, and it seemed to go all right. Then we started leaving it in all day with no problems, no overheated circuits or overheated switches or overheated outlet plates.

267. ALWAYS FEEL AROUND YOUR OUTLET PLATE TO MAKE SURE IT IS NOT OVERHEATING‚ showing that your circuit is overheating! Make sure you check your circuits, make sure that they're strong enough to carry the load. Finally after leaving it in all day each day, plugging it in in the morning and unplugging it at night, we became fairly assured enough that it was operating safely enough that we could leave it in at night as well, and sure enough we did! We tried it a few nights‚ and running 24 hours a day we found that it was working well and no problems, no overheating of the electrical circuits, no shorts, and so we have been leaving them in fulltime now!

268. WE STARTED WITH ONE WHICH HAS NOW BEEN IN THE WATER FOR ABOUT 2-AND-1/2 MONTHS DAY AND NIGHT, 24 HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK! When we found that one worked very well, we found another circuit, a separate circuit from which we could run another in order not to overload the circuit. We tested the circuits by having someone at the switchboard throw the various circuit breakers with the lights on in the house, and we found a circuit which was a separate circuit from the one that we were using for the first heating coil. We then put in another one, and that one's been operating 24 hours a day for about two months, putting a total good 4,000 watts heat into the bottom of the pool!

269. THIS HAS, AS A RESULT KEPT OUR POOL AT A VERY COMFORTABLE 30 DEGREES temperature almost constantly, even on the coldest nights! We can go out for a midnight moon light swim if we want to, and the water is nice and warm even if the air is chilly, and it really helps to increase our enjoyment and our use of the pool during these cool winter months and get the full use out of our little pool‚ as well as encourage a more romantic atmosphere on those midnight moonlight swims, or even daytime swims! When you can stay in the water and it's nice and warm, it's a lot more conducive to being romantic and loving and affectionate and sometimes quite sexy!

270. IF YOU'VE NEVER MADE LOVE IN THE SWIMMING POOL, YOU'VE MISSED SOMETHING! Sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, but where there's a will there's a way. Usually when I feel like it‚ I will—I make a way or make waves in the pool, and we have lots of fun that way, praise the Lord! The girls seem to like it, so I'm very glad we went to all that trouble to heat our pool!

271. OH BY THE WAY! WE JUST GOT A PICTURE OF A NEW WAY TO WATERPROOF THE COIL HANDLE WITHOUT TAPE! I was worrying about how long it took someone's time to have to tape up each wire in the handle and then both wires and then to tape the handle too, from metal to wire and all the rest, to make sure it was waterproof. So I suddenly got this picture as I was thinking about it during the night, I got this picture of the handle being filled with rubber cement, which is used in most countries for sealing your windshield or your windscreen of your automobile, or other places where there is vibration and the need for the waterproofing material or water proofing cement to stay flexible after hardening and drying, due to vibrations, etc., like in an automobile.

272. IT'S USUALLY CALLED RUBBER CEMENT OR WINDSHIELD CEMENT or windscreen cement. The first cement I remember when I was a young teenager in charge of the car and I had those problems of windshield leaks‚ it was a black gummy gooey icky stuff! But now they've got a nice beautiful clear rubber cement or plastic cement‚ whatever you want to call it, which, when it dries and hardens, does not completely get brittle, stiff and hard, but remains slightly flexible.

273. SO I GOT THIS BRILLIANT IDEA, A PICTURE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, that if I would loosen the handle of the heating coil and fill it with part of a tube of rubber cement, squeeze it right into that empty handle, and then shove it back onto the heating coil and screw it tight, that it would completely fill the handle, waterproof all the connections, keep water out of the handle and away from the exposed wires, and completely waterproof the handle! So that now it's the simplest thing in the world for us, in not more than five or ten minutes, to waterproof the handle of a heating coil! We simply loosen the handle, fill it full of this liquid plastic or rubber cement from a tube, push it back on and screw it tight and hang it up to dry for the 24 hours they recommend, until it's completely dry and sort of soft-hardened, and then it is ready for use!

274. OF COURSE YOU'LL FIND THAT MOST OF THESE CORDS HAVE ONLY A SHORT CORD AND YOU CAN'T THEREFORE DROP THEM VERY FAR INTO THE WATER BEFORE YOU COME TO THE PLUG. Don't get that in the water, or you'll cause a short and blow your fuse! In one of our first cases we plugged an extension cord onto it and then we had to tape up the plug as well to make it waterproof. Then we decided it was easier just to take off the plug and the socket off the extension cord and connect the wires themselves, and just tape the wires together to make it waterproof. But even that was still a little risky and takes time.

275. IN OUR LATEST INVENTION'S IMPROVEMENT WE HAVE SIMPLY TAKEN THE CORD OFF OF THE HEATING COIL COMPLETELY, disconnected it, cut off the wires, leaving just enough wire to attach an electrical extension cord to it directly without any plugs, directly to the heating coil inside the handle‚ and then tape up those two connections very well where we connected the electrical cord directly to the heating coil, and fill the handle full of rubber cement, put it back on, hang it up to dry 24 hours, and we found we could then plunge it into the pool clear to the bottom without any risks of leaks!

276. WITH ONE WHICH WAS LEAKING A LITTLE BIT, we were getting a little tingle down below, but even reversing the plug didn't seem to do any good. So I got the bright idea the thing to do was dry it out before putting it back in the pool! It was left in the pool when cold and absorbed water and therefore was shorting a little. What we needed to do was pull it out, turn it on for just a few moments‚ not more than maybe for 10 seconds at the most, so that the coil got really hot, including the handle, drying it out thoroughly‚ and then lowering it into the water. It goes in with sissst!—A big sizzle, because it's really hot, but that cured the leak! It dried the water out of the coil and the handle, so that keeping it on all the time then and keeping it hot kept the water out and it no longer leaked! So there's our latest new invention!

277. I'M THINKING ABOUT WRITING THE COMPANY ABOUT IT and recommend they make some that way originally for people who want to heat their pools! Because it certainly is a blessing to have out there on a chilly or cold day, even a rainy day! We can still get down in our nice warm water and swim around and play and have fun! Praise the Lord! Well, you say,

278. "THAT MUST BE AN AWFUL EXTRAVAGANCE to use that much electricity just to heat your pool just because you can't take a little cool water!" Well‚ for an old man like me who has to watch his health and his heart, and any unusual shocks or strains on his heart, it's very vital to health, if not my actual life; it's almost a lifesaver! It means the difference between my being able to swim or not swim, or enjoy it or not enjoy it or even having too great a shock to my body and my heart as to possibly bring on a heart attack!

279. SO IF IT'S GOING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE AND SAVE YOUR SWIMMING AND YOUR HEALTH AND YOUR SWIMMING POOL'S USEFULNESS, WE THINK IT'S WORTH IT to be willing to pay for the extra electricity and go to the trouble of making these pool heaters and inserting them into the pool for more comfortable warm water and swimming! Anyhow, you don't have to do it if you don't want to, and certainly you shouldn't do it if you can't afford it! But if you have a house that does have even a small pool, I presume that you must be able to at least afford one heating coil and a little extension cord and a little rubber cement and a little electricity to keep it warm and make it worthwhile, to be able to enjoy it any time of day or night, any day of the year, praise the Lord!

280. SO NOW YOU'VE GOT A BRAND NEW INVENTION that you've never heard about before‚ did you? Because I think we were the first to invent it! As I say‚ I'm thinking about writing the company about it, suggesting it to them. I'll give them the free information of how to do it, if they'll give us a few free heating coils, ha ha! Well‚ praise the Lord, anyhow‚ be that as it may, maybe you think that's silly and unnecessary and an extravagance. Well, OK, you can think so if you want to, but we feel like it's a necessity and I enjoy it, and the Lord gives me almost anything I want to make me happy as long as I keep Him happy with giving Him everything by keepin' you happy, praise the Lord!

281. HE'LL GIVE YOU THE DESIRES OF YOUR HEART IF YOU DELIGHT YOURSELF IN HIM! (Psa.37:4). So, I delight myself in Him constantly by trying to take good care of you and feed you and shepherd you. So He supplies all my needs and even my wants and gives me almost anything I want to make me happy in return! Praise the Lord! He likes happy employees, satisfied, contented workers, and that nice warm pool water sure makes me happy, satisfied and contented, and it's good for my health and lots of fun! PTL! Thank You Jesus! Amen!

282. WHILE I'M OUT SWIMMING, I'M ALWAYS TEACHING FOLKS ABOUT SWIMMING AND POOL CARE and how to skim and pool maintenance, etc. I'm also looking around the garden‚ checking out the yard and seeing what needs to be attended to. God put Adam in the Garden to keep it and tend it, and most gardens will go back to the jungle if you don't keep tending them! So I'm the overseer, Shepherd here, and I keep an eye on everything to make sure everything is shipshape and kept in condition, well–kept and maintained. I think we are happier that way, everything functioning properly, and a place for everything and everything in its place: Lawn nicely mowed, the shrubbery trimmed, the trees trimmed and things watered, etc. PTL!

283. EVERY TIME I GO SWIMMING I ALSO PUT ON GOGGLES AND INSPECT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL to make sure there is no unusual debris down there or some sharp toy or something that someone may have dropped and may have sunk to the bottom and someone might accidentally step on and hurt themselves. So I put on my diving goggles and I swim from one end of the pool to the other inspecting the bottom of the pool, making sure that everything is shipshape and in good condition and no things on the bottom that should not be there. Praise the Lord!

LUNCH!

284. THEN WHEN WE COME IN FROM OUR SWIM USUALLY I'M HUNGRY. It's been long enough since my breakfast drink that I'm ready for a cup of soup—of course, it's quite a cup of soup! It's a fairly large mug and it doesn't have to be hot, just barely warm, and they put some powdered milk in it and two eggs usually. My favorite is cream-of-chicken soup, though sometimes it's cream–of-celery, cream-of-mushroom, cream-of-asparagus, some kind of cream soup. I like cream soups best of all, they seem to go down better with me and seem to be sufficient for my strength and health. I enjoy a nice big mug of soup with a couple of eggs stirred into it and a little powdered milk as well.—Very nourishing‚ very filling, and lasts me then all the rest of the day until dinnertime!

BACK TO WORK!

285. SO I CAN SIT THEN AND DRINK MY SOUP WITH ONE HAND WHILE I'M WORKING WITH THE OTHER and reading or editing or whatever I'm doing, to save time and enjoy a little repast as I work. Because I like to work while there's still daylight as long as possible, and natural light is easier on your eyes and is better for them. So I work right on usually then until dusk.

DINNER!

286. IF I'VE HAD A LATE DAY with a late start or a late soup for lunch, then my schedule is late enough that I can join the Family for their late dinner and enjoy Family fellowship fairly frequently, at which time I have a chance to visit and get their reports and talk, from which you've often benefited by various talks we have given to them, which were later transformed into Letters for you.

287. WELL, THEY WANT ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR FAMILY DINNERS! I sit in a kind of big rocking chair throne that happens to be in the house, because I like a real comfortable chair at dinner, as sometimes we spend quite a while at the table if I get to talking or teaching or giving a lesson or get inspired, if the preacher comes, and I like to be comfortable. I like my folks to be comfortable too, so we have fairly comfortable dinner chairs.

288. I ALWAYS LIKE A PAIR OF READING GLASSES THERE AS WELL, and of course you should always have tissues handy, and I have my tea after dinner‚ and drink water and rinse my mouth with water after that. I always like a little bottle of cologne or toilet water on the table too for washing hands and face after dinner. One of my pet peeves is a salt shaker without big enough holes that you can get plenty of salt out of it, because I like plenty of salt and salty things.

289. IN HOT WEATHER ESPECIALLY YOU NEED A LOT OF SALT, believe it or not‚ so you should really try to eat plenty of salt. You say, "Well yes, but doesn't salt give you hardening of the arteries, arterial-sclerosis; isn't that dangerous?" Well, yes, but they say that it also helps to prevent cancer, so pick your poison, just choose whichever way you want to die. Personally I think I might as well die happy eating salt!

290. I ALSO LET THE CHILDREN DRINK TEA AFTER EVENING DINNER, but a different kind of tea‚ an herbal tea which won't keep them awake too late‚ and since we almost never have any dessert of any kind, I let them use lots of honey in their tea, a nice big heaping running-over teaspoonful of honey and they really like it. Grandpa knows how to fix the tea the best and they always want me to fix it, God bless them, especially Techi.

291. WE'RE ALWAYS VERY CONSCIOUS OF OUR NEIGHBORS and keeping good security by not talking or singing too loud, shouting too much, or anything that might be identifying or annoying and get the neighbors to discussing us.

292. BUT IF I'VE HAD AN EARLY DAY, OFF TO A VERY BRIGHT AND EARLY START, maybe at dawn or sunrise, and that resulted in an early morning breakfast drink and early afternoon soup, then I'm often hungry again for dinner about 6 o'clock, and that's too early for the Family. They're on a pretty regular dinner-at-8 schedule. So we ask the cook to bring our dinner up to our room and we eat at our little private card table by a window with a lovely view and a lovely view of you!

293. BECAUSE AT THAT TIME, IF WE ARE NOT VISITING WITH THE FAMILY IN THE DINING ROOM BELOW, WE ARE VISITING WITH YOU, the Family out there in our little dinette above, watching a Family video as we eat our dinner, to save time, and enjoying close to an hour video each day that way that we visit with you, if we're eating alone in our room. That has worked out very well, and this way we enjoy both fellowship here at home and fellowship with you abroad!

TVN!

294. AFTER DINNER THEN COMES TIME FOR THE TV NEWS USUALLY. In most countries of the world we find that the major news broadcasts are anywhere from 6 to 9. But we like to relax and watch it either with one of our staff translators if not in English, or by ourselves if we're in an English-speaking country, to see the latest sights and scenes and horrors of this world to keep us up on the news, as well as reading an English newspaper. We like to see what it all looks like, and sometimes you can tell more from seeing people's faces than just from reading it in print.

295. THAT'S WHY WE LIKE TO HAVE LOTS OF PICTURES IN OUR PUBLICATIONS, because a picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes tells a story even better than just the written text, and I'm sure you've enjoyed those pictures!—Amen? I'm sorry that in one of our recent Magazines the pictures weren't too good‚ but we are using a new printer with new methods and we were not accustomed to his style of printing‚ etc., so that the pictures came out a little faded and washed out. But we'll make sure that doesn't happen again, D.V. I hope you find the pictures in this History Book of good clear quality, and I hope you enjoy them—a real Family history in pictures in our photologs!

296. WE'RE GETTING OUT THIS FAMILY HISTORY IN TWO VOLUMES: Volume 1, which is mostly my own personal life history and family tree and our personal pictures; Then Volume 2 is more about you‚ our larger Family, and your history and pictures, etc. Because the two together were almost too big and hefty and difficult to handle and mail, so we decided you'd rather have it in two volumes—one a sort of a MO Volume, and the other sort of a Family volume.—Kind of like the difference between the GNs and the FNs.

297. IN FACT, I'M GOING TO INSIST ON GETTING A LITTLE GN CREDIT FOR THIS PERSONAL VOLUME 1. I'm going to ask for a little GN credit, if you don't mind, because I spent my time that I otherwise would have been getting out GNs‚ I spent it getting out this "Book of Remembrance Family Tree and History" instead! So I think it's just as deserving of giving it GN credit, and I think you'll find it just as enjoyable and profitable and edifying and inspirational as some of the GNs, so praise the Lord!—Amen? so since it's about 300 pages, it oughtta do you for about 10 GNs!—Amen? Tx! GBY!—So don't look for another GN for a couple of months or so!—OK?—Tx! ILY!

298. OK, NOW WE'VE HAD SUPPER AND WE'VE HAD FAMILY VIDEO AND WE'VE HAD TV NEWS, AND USUALLY, I NOW GO BACK TO WORK and work two or three more hours before video and bed time!

WORK AGAIN!

299. WHEN THE NEWS IS OVER, WE THEN USUALLY GRAVITATE BACK TO SOME OF OUR WORK, which there's always plenty of and our work is never done. Most people work from sun to sun, but our work seems never done! But we enjoy it, TTL! Because it's for you and we know it's helpful to you, encouraging, inspiring, feeding, instructional and perhaps even sometimes entertaining! So we go back then for probably another two or three hours at least, normally until about 10:30 or 11 at night.

SNAK!

300. BY THAT TIME I'M READY FOR MY EVENING SNACK, which usually consists of a little bowl of carrot pudding, emulsified or blended, liquefied carrot pudding. Sometimes to give it a little variety I eat cheese and crackers with it. It really tastes like pumpkin pie filling! It's delicious!—And the crackers constitute the crust! I always used to like to eat pie with a slice of cheese, so I've got my pie and cheese with delicious carrot filling! We tried having the cook make pie crust for a while, but that was kind of a difficult thing and not always prepared, but crackers are always ready. Cheese and crackers are always there. So now we simply put my carrot pudding in a mug so I can drink it with one hand while I eat my cheese and crackers with the other, and back to the bed with both, so I can redeem the time by watching a little video.

VIDEOS!

301. OH YES, OUR HOUR WITH THE CHILDREN! I almost forgot that. We usually have that in the evening. We have good children's videos which you've made available, and we will lie in bed with them and watch the video. We've got quite a little rig rigged up for our video‚ because our video monitor is quite small‚ and therefore to view it from bed was a little too distant.

302. SO WE HAVE RIGGED A SORT OF A VIDEO PLATFORM OR SHELF ACROSS THE FOOT OF OUR BED on which we can position the small video screen and video equipment so that we can simply sit up in bed and operate the controls and feed the video machine and whatnot. So in order to rig up this kind of a shelf across the foot of the bed, there was no shelf of course or bookcase or anything that wide and that high which we could stick our feet under, so I just simply invented a shelf!

303. I KNEW I WOULD NEED TWO LARGE FAIRLY TALL STANDS, ONE ON EACH SIDE, at the foot of the bed, and in the owner's storage I found a couple of tall stereo speakers, just the right height, about a meter high! And then I couldn't find a board of the right type to stretch clear across that far. So I took off a closet door that wasn't necessary‚ just simply unscrewed it and saved the screws for remounting again, and stretched this closet door across the top of these two speakers, and presto change-o, we have got our video/TV shelf where we can position both the TV and video right over the foot of our bed with plenty of room underneath it to stick our feet! So that they're both close enough to operate by hand or with my special mop-handle remote-control.

304. BY THAT TIME WE'RE TOO TIRED TO WORK ANYMORE, read anymore or do anything heavy anymore, so we're about ready to be entertained for a little while, and we usually go to bed for a Family video—and you're always good! We really enjoy you, especially watching your work and your place of ministry, your field and the people and your helpers‚ as well as you gorgeous girls doing those beautiful dances! GBY! Which by the way, we almost always turn on and use to turn us on while we're making love! Ooop! Forgot about that too!

305. OUR USUAL LOVE TIME IS EITHER FIRST THING IN THE MORNING DURING OUR KISS AND CUDDLE AND PRAYER TIME, OR AFTER AN AFTERNOON NAP. Once in a while we're tired in the middle of the afternoon and we take a little nap, usually after coming back from our swim and having our soup. Frequently we'll feel a little tired and sleepy and like having a little afternoon siesta, which we do, and we often have a little love-time at the same time, before or after. Or when we go to bed at night I sometimes get a little inspired and make a little love and have a little fun before we finally go to sleep.

306. AFTER OUR NIGHTLY VIDEO, then we are usually tired enough to have worn ourselves out for the day with lots of good hard work and much fun, play and accomplishment and feeling like we have really accomplished something worthwhile that day as well as had a lot of fun and good exercise and healthful recreation and good food, and finally are tired enough to really go to sleep and have a good night's rest!

NIGHT CHECK!

307. BEFORE WE GO TO BED AT NIGHT WE HAVE A REGULAR ROUTINE OF CHECKING the various things that need to be attended to before final retirement. We check the doors and windows and locks on the doors and make sure the "do-not–disturb" sign is out and the various lights are on or off which should be on or off. We usually sleep with a dim nightlight going to see our way around the room or to the bathroom. We go through our little checklist of everything, and Maria makes sure she's brought in the newspaper for me to read first thing in the morning on the toilet. We turn on the mosquito stinker to make sure that the mosquitoes don't bother us and

308. WE ALSO GO TO THE CHILDREN'S ROOM EVERY NOW AND THEN AT NIGHT, sometimes while they're sleeping‚ and check on their sleeping conditions to make sure they have sufficient ventilation, yet not too much draft, and they are properly covered.

309. SOMETIMES IT GETS QUITE COLD, with cold waves or cold spells, as we used to have in Florida‚ when we actually needed heat and had to put on heavier clothing! So watch these changes of temperature, changes of weather, that they don't catch you unawares and you suddenly are unprotected and are finding yourself getting chilled and catching cold!

310. WEATHER CHANGES AND CHANGEABLE WEATHER ARE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH if you don't accommodate yourself for them. I once asked an undertaker what was the best season of the year for his business—the dead! He said, "Spring and Fall, the weather changes! I have more business then than any other time!" People caught cold more and it would go into flu or pneumonia‚ and with old folks it would sometimes be severe enough for them to pass on! So watch the weather!—When it changes, you change!

311. ANOTHER ONE OF MY PET PEEVES IS PEOPLE THAT GO AROUND LEAVING LIGHTS ON and go off leaving them on, even leaving the room with the lights still on! I go around turning them off. As I used to say, there are two kinds of people in the world, those that go around turning lights on and those that go around turning them off! Well, I like to turn them on when they're needed, but I like turning them off when they're not being used. I'm kind of chintzy when it comes to saving on things like that.

312. APPARENTLY THE STAFF ARE AMUSED AT WHERE I HANG MY CLOTHES AT NIGHT. I already told you that I always hang up my underwear, my robe or socks, etc., for airing during the night, before I put them back on in the morning. If you give them lots of air, they'll be nice and fresh and better to put on in the morning. Well, some of the houses and rooms we've stayed in haven't had too many hooks around and it's not the custom to have bedposts anymore. That used to be the favorite place to hang your clothes before you got in bed. So I look around for the nearest thing to hang things on.

313. IT'S AMAZING HOW SOME OF THE BEST OF HOUSES ARE NOT VERY WELL EQUIPPED FOR HANGING CLOTHES OUT TO AIR AT NIGHT IN THE BEDROOM! They've got closets and hangers in the closets and you could hang them in there, but that doesn't air them. So I was looking around one night here and I looked up and saw this useless chandelier that didn't give much light and which we seldom used, and it had some nice fancy projections on it, so I just hung my underpants up there on the chandelier!

314. I GUESS SOMEBODY MUST HAVE BEEN SO AMUSED BY THAT when they came in‚ that they put this down as one of the funny notes for "Dad's Day!"—Ha! I even hang a very lightweight robe up there, or I guess they were amused also when they saw that I had my panties hanging on the rabbit ears of the television! Well‚ it's a very good place to hang them, it keeps them spread out, well-aired, and providing you don't have the rabbit ears extended too far, they won't bend. Make sure you don't damage them or make them buckle or bend and break, as some folks did with one of my radio antennas!—But not by hanging their pants on it!

315. I THINK I'VE ALREADY COVERED THIS ABOUT WALKING THROUGH THE HOUSE AND ALWAYS NOTICING AND MAKING IMPROVEMENTS about mats‚ furniture‚ locks, checking things for security, dangerous slipping or sliding rugs, or no rugs at all at the foots of stairways, etc. I'm always trying to check on things to make sure everything is safe and secure and comfortable, especially the staff themselves. If they do have some problem or something is wrong or they're sick‚ we have definite specific prayer about it and the Lord always answers, thank the Lord!

316. SOMETIMES THE LORD TELLS US WHAT THE PROBLEM IS OR WHAT THE NEED IS‚ like I was praying for Maria and her constant weakness and lack of energy and I really got desperate in prayer about it, and the Lord showed me she was not eating enough meat! Some of you hippies became very vegetarian and that became quite popular with the Eastern and Oriental religions' influence, to be strictly vegetarian.

317. BUT IF WE DIDN'T NEED MEAT, WHY DID GOD GIVE IT TO MAN TO EAT AFTER THE FLOOD? (Gen.9:3). After that water layer in the air was gone and the sun's rays and the deadly dangerous cosmic rays were coming right through and striking us, which immediately starting aging us more rapidly, man, instead of living a thousand years as he did before the Flood, his age was cut down to about 70! There is a big difference between the vegetarian age before the Flood and the carnivorous age after the Flood!

318. GOD MUST HAVE GIVEN US MEAT TO EAT FOR A REASON BECAUSE WE NEED IT! That's one of the only sources of complete amino acids, certain things you get from meat that you don't get from anything else, and human beings seem to need it now. And I know that all the most energetic aggressive people I know‚ who have the most drive, are real meat-eaters including me, my mother and my grandfather! So I don't go too much for this vegetarianism! In fact, I don't go for it at all! I eat more meat than almost anything else, and very little vegetables, so you'd have a hard time making a vegetarian out of me!

319. AND FROM THE MOMENT I GOT THE ANSWER THAT SHE NEEDED TO EAT MORE MEAT AT LEAST TWICE A DAY‚ GOOD PROTEIN, SOME GOOD PROTEIN SOURCE, HEAVY PROTEIN SOURCE, SHE GOT BETTER! If you can't afford meat, at least you can afford beans or cheese or maybe eggs or something like that, or a cheap meat like fish or chicken. As soon as she started eating more meat she began to perk up, feeling better right away‚ thank the Lord! God knows what He's doing and God knows His business and He knows you and He knows what's best!

320. SO I HAVE WARNED HER CARETAKERS AND FEEDERS TO KEEP FEEDING HER PLENTY OF MEAT and eggs to keep her strong and well and happy for your sakes, in order to keep you strong and well and happy in the Lord, because she works night and day to help feed you good strong meat spiritually in all of her various departments and publications, of which she is pretty much the manager, including the manager of me! And of course I try to take good care of her therefore, and make sure she is not only well-fed but comfortable and warm and has good light, etc., to do her work.

321. BECAUSE SHE IS NOT TOO GOOD AT TAKING CARE OF HERSELF. I guess that's what I'm for. She takes care of me‚ I take care of her—tit-for-tat, cow-operation! So that's what it's all about, "love ye one another‚ bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ," thank the Lord! (1Pet.1:22, Gal.6:2).—Amen?

POT!

322. DO I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE POTTY? (Maria: Yes, please‚ Honey!) In cold countries I got in the habit of using a bed potty. I remember my father used to use a milk bottle so he wouldn't have to get out of the bed during the night. (Maria: His must not have been as big as yours!) Ha! 'Cause I use a kind of a jar with a big wide mouth even bigger than my mouth, and not as pleasant of course as Maria's mouth, but anyway.

323. I USE A LARGE PLASTIC JAR WITH A POP-TOP, which makes it very convenient if in the middle of the night you need to go to the toilet and you're too cold or too lazy and too sleepy to go, then I just pull that into bed with me, go, clip the top back on and set it down by the bed until I can empty it in the morning. That was especially extremely handy in cold countries where you have to jump out of bed in the freezing cold and run clear to the bathroom, and you freeze or catch cold or pneumonia on the way!

324. HERE OF COURSE THE NIGHTS AREN'T SO COLD, but still I've developed that lazy habit of using that little night-pot can-o–pee, as somebody's called it, according to the old joke about‚ what's the difference between a rich man and a poor man's bed? And the answer of course is, according to the standard joke, that the rich man has a canopy over his bed, whereas the poor man has a can-o-pee under his bed!

325. THE REASON BEING THAT IN THE OLD DAYS THEY HAD OUTSIDE TOILETS, and in the middle of the freezing cold snowy nights you certainly didn't want to run out there in your bare feet and long underwear. so you kept a can-o-pee under the bed, or a potty of some kind. So I still do. It keeps me from gettin' wide awake too, so that I don't get so wide awake that I can't continue to sleep the normal time. TTL! Yes‚ after I use the little potty I have a wipe with a tissue and put cologne on my hands.

326. DO I HAVE TO TELL'M EVERYTHING? I have a squirt bottle of cologne, actually half cologne and half cheap toilet water so it'll last longer, and it's easy to use at night. You don't even have to unscrew the top, you just press the button on top, and presto!: It's a little squirter, a little spray! What did we used to call them? We used to call them atomizers. That way you can just spray your fingers. Very good for washing in the middle of the night after sex, too, if you're too lazy and too sleepy to get up. You can wash your hands in that cologne and wipe'm with a tissue, etc. till morning. So do I have to tell'm everything? Well, frankly, I think that's enough for now.

SEX AND SLEEP!

327. SO AFTER ANOTHER LITTLE CUDDLE AND A PRAYER AND MAYBE A LITTLE SEX, WE TURN OVER AND GO TO SLEEP. I usually go to sleep on my left side facing Maria's beautiful gorgeous body lying there nude and turned toward me. And I lie there admiring her beauties of God's creation! So I'm often tempted to take advantage of them and have a little sex. But if I'm too tired, I just go to sleep with that gorgeous view in front of me after prayer! We always have a little prayer together of course for the night. And maybe you said,

328. "WELL‚ WHEN DO YOU HAVE YOUR WORD TIME?" Ha! I have my Word time all day every day, the same as your Word time! I'm busy supplying the Words! As far as prayer's concerned, we not only have a little special prayer together as we awaken in the morning and a time of prayer and conference then, but also a time of prayer and conference as we go to sleep at night, plus prayer off and on all day long and prayer always as we work. So we get plenty of prayer and plenty of Word, plenty of everything, TTL! Plenty of good food and good exercise, fresh air, sunshine and everything we need for health and happiness and service for the Lord! TTL! Hal! TYJ!

329. WHEN GOING TO SLEEP, MARIA EITHER SCRATCHES MY HEAD OR SCRATCHES MY BACK TO PUT ME TO SLEEP, OR PETS MY PENIE, and sometimes that results in delightful consequences! But usually when I'm that tired and sleepy the last thing at night‚ it just puts me to sleep and I sleep like a baby from her petting. (Maria: Ten minutes after you go to sleep, whether it's at night or at nap, you wake up...) I don't think I should have to tell that. (Maria: I think you should‚ 'cause they can pray for you!) Oh, I don't want to tell'm everything, Honey. Why tell'm the bad things? Well, Maria says I ought to tell you that, so you can pray for me.

330. ABOUT TEN MINUTES AFTER I GO TO SLEEP I WAKE UP COUGHING for some reason, we don't know just why. It seems like water or something from my stomach seems to seep into my throat and I wake up with a cough and cough a little bit, but as soon as that's over, thank the Lord, I then again go right back to sleep and usually sleep very well, fairly soundly for the rest of the night, with only a few little wake-ups once in a while for one reason or another. Thank the Lord for a fairly quiet peaceful place to sleep and very thoughtful considerate Family members who try not to waken us when we are resting‚ if we should sleep late, although frequently I am up before they are‚ and we often are also up late at night long past their bedtime! So that's Dad's Day! PTL! GBAKY healthy and happy in Jesus and His labors of love for others!—In Jesus' name, amen! ILY!—D.

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family