Happy Valentines Month to you.
I feel especially loved this month by the hand made valentines received from my grandson and granddaughter. As I watched the kiddos walk home from our neighborhood Elementary school, I could not help but be struck by the anticipation on their faces as they carried home thier notes from their hearts of "Be my Valentine" greetings to family and friends.
We are so fortunate to have children in our lives including our neighbors and community children. Our dreams and hopes are in their lives. What a great counrty we share. What a responsibility we enjoy. In the words of Mark Twain, "The purpose of life is a life of purpose".

Please share our website with your friends and collagues - - The ARKGROUP's WEB site can assist you now to get to the information you need. The ARKGROUP's website provides the information that you need , about the ARK (Adults Relating to Kids) Programs and Processes for Teachers and Schools, Parents and Others who would be Intentional in the lives of Kids, both faith based and secular. Visit our site today. ARK (Adults Relating to Kids) programs and processes are here to help.

Happy Valentines.
Emily Dickerson shared her thoughts with us in these words:
My Life
"I gained it so....
By Climbing slow.....
By Catching at the Twigs that grow......
Between the Bliss.....and me......"



Bill
William R. Duffy
National Executive Director
281-537-1301

Start this quarter of to commit to renewal and growth with education and networking facilitated by the ARK Program DVDs: ARK for Teachers, ARK for Parents (Faith and Secular based), ARK Facilitator Training, The ARK Group Process and an Introduction to ARK hosted by Pat Summerall. Order yours today at www.thearkgroup.org. The ARK Program has excellent lessons, DVD's, manuals, workbooks, texts and advertising materials -- they will equip you to begin ARK programs today. ARK programs provide breakthrough parenting and teaching "skills courses." With your help, we can make ARKrelationships the norm for the 21st century family, church, school and community.

For our Friends and Followers in the Dallas area, we have had outstanding record breaking participation through February with over 68 churches participating in our ARK for Parents - Church Programs . Facilitation training can be scheduled to fit your schedule. Thanks to a wonderful gift by a local benefactor, we are able to provide ARK for Parents Programs to Dallas area churches. The program includes facilitator training, lessons on DVDs, books, and a host of supporting materials and services. We invite you to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. Contact us today by e-mail, letter or by telephone in Dallas at 817- 268-2100 or Houston at 281-537-1301 to reserve these programs for your church to enable your church family to become the parents and intentional adults in the lives of children that will change the world through your care

Resilience is that part of each of us which is an emotional intelligence compentency helping us through today's fast changing world. It allows us to bounce back after failures, disappointments, losses, uncomfortable times and those periods we all have when we feel less than others. Resilience helps us to "carry-on", and to face the future with a sense of opportunity, optimism and courage despite events.

You are resilient when:
1). You can self-reflect and understand that you are gaining wisdom from your experiences. You can appreciate yourself without illusions, fantasy or embellishment as a person of worth, a person of your faith and a person who appreciates your importance in the lives of the most humbe of others.

2. You seek to face reality head-on and identifying those setbacks, losses and disappointments for events that you encountered, not as behaviors or actions that are the essence of you.

3). You know your feelings, label them as the way you feel, and express them routinely to others.

4). You know your "feeling and thinking" time zones: past, present and future. You understand that you are a person who has emotions, memory and are one who thinks. A resilient you knows that you are of great value in your self.

5). You commit to the agony of grieving when necessary for as long as it takes.

6). You are intentional in findinig meaning and purpose in your struggles, good times and living.

7). You recognize the brillance of your physical self, your psyche of emotion, memory and intellectual self and your human spirit and it's opportunity to be the light of the world. Your resilient self recognizes when you think creatively and see yourself as flexible under stressful conditions. My daughter always says, to see yourself as expanding rather than shutting down when faced with challenges.

8). You practice keeping reserves of energy built up through regular periods of rest and renewals.

9). You seek to ask daily where you need help and you seek it out, and go and get it.

10). You have identified those people in your life upon whom you can depend. Those people who know and love you and whom you know and love as they are, imperfect in all their beauty.

My hope is that you will share these litte "bits" of gold with the ones in your life this day and in sharing you will become that "identified person" who makes possible resillience in our children and future for our world.

Read on...

Positive attitudes have continued to be shown, in study after study, as a significant factor in longivity and in nurturing relationship environments that enrich the human spirit.
Is your glass half empy or half full?
Are you optimistic for the day or pessimistic?
Optimism in your concept of self is a key management strategy.

Self-talk can be used to promote " optimism" within your self-concept . Self talk is the endless stream of thoughts that run through your head every day. Some of these thoughts come from logic and reason and others come from faith. Obviously, self-talk can contain misconceptions and ideas that result from a lack of information. When the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your self- concept can become likely pessimistic. The good news is that self-thought can be very opportunitistic and optimistic when you intentionally think positively with hope, courage, promise and care.

One last comment on the work of Researchers. Persons who build concepts of self which focus more on promise and optimism, have the greater likelihood of:
1). Decreased stress
2). Greater resistance to catching common-colds
3). Have greater coping skills during hardships
4). Experience a broader variety of more healthy biological symptoms.

We can learn postive thinking and teach these traits to our young people.
A good rule to practice and reinforce in young people is to set up a simple rule: " Don't say anything to yourself that you would'nt say to someone else".

Examples to share with others and to think on yourself:

• If you see yourself saying, "I have never done it before", flip it to a positive spin:
• "I see this as an opportunity to learn something new."
• Rather than thinking "Its to complcated"
• Say to yourself "I will tackle it from a different angle".
• Instead of: "I don't have the resources."
• Think: " Necessity is the mother of invention".
• In lieu of: "There is not enough time."
• Why not say: "Let's resuffle"
• Other than thinking: There is no way it will work."
• Turn the phrase to: " I will make it work."

Please share your ideas and read on...

Good freinds relationships are the stuff of ARK. In your acts of talking with others you invest yourself in friendship relationships which helps others to sense their belonging, purpose, hope and all the richness of being human and connected.

Friendships are vital in the growing years of our children and students. They are the heart of our city, state, nation and world's well-being.

We ARK folk have the following suggestions for you to do today as intentional adults in the lives of our shared families of kids to build a world of freindships and relationships:
1). Get out with your pet. Seek out a path to walk on your daily neighborhood jaunts an stop to talk and share your life with those you meet.
2). Work Out. Join a class or make one up or ask a neighbor to join you on a walk with their chldren.
3). Sponsor a neighborhood block or Apartment lunch on the street where you live. Get to know your neighbors, strike up conversations of opportunity, offer your life's experiences for their knowledge library.
4). Volunteer, Join a cause. Find a hobby group to make your own,
5). Hang out on the porch. If you don't have a porch, set that lawn chair up in the yard. Front porches used to be the social centers for the neighborhood. Making yourself visible with a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, a good book, besides showing others that you are friendly, will open a world, many of us have forgotten .

We hope you will find truth, beauty and good in these little actions of being open to new freindships and relationships.

Better yet, we hope that you will discover a child who will identify in a you, a person who they can trust and rely on. A person who, twenty years from today, they will recognize as helping them to become a creative and contributing member of our world.

The ARK Family wishes you and your family the very best as the March winds bring the renewal of Spring.

Kids of any age love to read fairy tales because the storyline never limits the possibility that anything can happen. Pick some opportunities today to read to children.

Check out this website for writings of Dr. Robert Brooks - In particular on the Questions about Kids and Gift Giving:

Your support of The ARKGroup, Inc. creates possibilities in our churches, community centers, and public and private schools. If you have an opportunity, idea, challenge, or destiny to fulfill through helping children to grow into their full potential, please contact us. Together we can improve the quality of life in our communities--one child, one family, one classroom, one school at a time. Helping other people lifts one's spirits and gives hope for the future.

GoodSearch - a way to support ARK while using the Internet. You can contribute to the ARKGROUP which we will invest in your favorite community services, church, juvenle justice program or school just by searching the Internet or shopping online with GoodSearch - www.goodsearch.com - powered by Yahoo!

Read on at the ARK website