Would you have believed this?

Wednesday is April Fool's Day, a time to remember the biggest hoax any major news bureau ever pulled. It happened in 1957, when the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a three-minute television news report on the current events program Panorama. Respected broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, the British equivalent of Walter Cronkite, claimed to be reporting from the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland, where locals were holding a Harvest Festival to celebrate their bumper spaghetti crop. Swiss housewives were seen picking spaghetti from trees. The superior crop was attributed to a mild winter and the virtual disappearance of the "spaghetti weevil."

Pasta was not an everyday food in the United Kingdom in 1957, and many Brits did not know it's made from wheat flour and water. An estimated eight million people watched the broadcast on April 1 and hundreds phoned the next day to request more information about spaghetti farming. Could they grow their own spaghetti trees? BBC operators advised callers to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." The next day, the network admitted the hoax.

Why not celebrate April Fool's Day by watching the original BBC telecast, linked here. Would have have believed it?  www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

The baby whisperer

Jim O'Connor does not baby his math students at St. Francis High School in La Canada, CA. The Vietnam veteran and former engineer teaches algebra and calculus at the boys' prep school, and his classes are not fun. If a student is caught even looking at the clock, he's in trouble for the rest of the period. Until recently, most students thought O'Connor was too tough, but now some want to emulate him -- to model themselves after him. What changed their minds?

In 2013, one of his students, Pat McGoldrick, visited Childrens' Hospital Los Angeles as part of a school blood drive. When he looked at the list of major donors, he was astonished to see his math teacher's name at the top. O'Connor has Type O negative blood, which can be transfused into any patient. So far, he had donated 72 gallons! But nurses told McGoldrick his no-nonsense math teacher gives more than blood. He also gives love. "We really do depend on him," said nurse Sherry Nolan.

The hard-nosed math teacher found his other calling at the hospital where, for the past 20 years, he's spent several days a week cuddling sick babies. "They seem to take to him as much as he takes to them. He holds them, feeds them, walks around with them, gets to know them, and he can always coax a smile out of them," says Nolan. "They just stare at him adoringly and he can get the crabbiest baby to calm down. He's a natural-born cuddler."

O'Conner is especially drawn to babies who have nobody; babies on "hospital hold" waiting for foster homes or babies who are dying and their parents are too traumatized to visit the hospital. He says the babies he cuddles "can do no wrong. They just want to be held by somebody."

How do kids define love?

A group of children between four and eight years old were asked to define love. Here are some of their answers.  "When people love you, they say your name different. You know your name is safe in their mouth." (Johnny, age 4)  "If you want to learn how to love, you better start with someone you hate." (Sue, age 6)  "Love is when you tell a boy you like his shirt, and he wears it everyday." (Georgia, age 7)  "Love is when you go to dinner with someone and you give them most of your french fries without making them give you any." (Bruce, age 8) "Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken." (Annie, age 5)

Now here's a sweet video shared by a reader in northern Indiana. It was made by Samaritan's Purse, and asks children the simple question, "What is love?' Samaritan's Purse is an international relief program helping meet the physical and spiritual needs of people around the world. Franklin Graham is the president of Samaritan's Purse, which reaches out to more than 100 nations. Enjoy!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcYlA58E_ss

Tempted to slow down?

In the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA, USA, Canada's Donovan Bailey ran the 100-meter sprint in 9.84 seconds. He was acclaimed the world's fastest man, and experts analyzed the race tapes to learn how he did it. All agreed that he started in the back of the pack and then overtook other runners in a dramatic mid-race surge.  The victory almost didn't happen. After so many wins, Bailey admitted he'd become overconfident and found it difficult to obey his coaches and maintain rigorous training, but the tapes also revealed that he was still accelerating at the end.

I've almost finished "the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1) and sprinting is no longer an option. When someone at church asks me to teach Sunday School I'm tempted to say, "Been there. Done that. Let the younger folks do it now." But like Bailey's coach, my Coach won't let me coast. Growing older means I have more time to exercise the gifts God has given me. Instead of slowing down, I want to be accelerating when I cross the finish line.

The government of April?

In a few days, it will be April and the cherry trees will bloom around the Tidal Basin in our nation's capital. My boyhood Sunday School teacher was a poet, and when he read an unusual comment in a New York newspaper, it inspired him to write a poem called "The Government of April." Here's the comment he found, and his response.

Sherpa Tensing, scaler of Mt. Everest, was born in April, and is domiciled in India. The government of both of these countries must therefore be consulted in matters concerning him.

"The Government of April" -- oh, what a lovely name!

The conferences of nations will be no more the same

with April at the table to bring smiles to every face

and touch to tears the steely heart with speech of lissom grace.

The Prime Minister of April, is, of course, a lady fair

with violets in her corsage and cowslips in her hair.

Her dress is sprigged with bluebells from some scented primrose wood,

and she speaks a springtime language by all men understood.

The Government of April commands neither planes nor guns

but deploys a cosmic battery of thirty shimmering suns

and thirty starry evenings and thirty soft night skies,

with March and May on either flank to guard them from surprise.

What is its constitution? I find that hard to tell.

It has a King and Queen I'm sure and a President as well.

But which one has the final word no one will ever know;

they settled all their differences a billion years ago.

Is our Father proud of us?

As a second-grader, my youngest step-daughter was the Energizer Bunny. To help her let off steam, I took her to the local high school tennis courts, where we'd hit the ball back and forth over the net -- sometimes 100 times without missing. I got most of the exercise, since she still held her tennis racquet with two hands and could only swing forehand. No matter where her returns landed on my court, I had to retrieve them and return them with one gentle bounce to her forehand. Even after an hour, she always asked to play longer, and we often did.

As she grew older, I showed her how to hold her racquet with one hand, and how to swing backhand and how to launch an overhead serve. She was a quick study, and by middle school she didn't need me anymore. She was manager of the school tennis team. In high school she played varsity tennis -- a girl to be reckoned with. Recently I learned she's teaching her second-grade son how to play tennis, and like her, he's a quick study.

The happiness I felt when I learned this gave me an clue how our heavenly Father must feel when we do the things He's taught us, like love our neighbor as ourself; love our enemies; care for widows and orphans, and live in the light of His truth. I bet He forgets all the messes of the past, and tells anyone who will listen, "That's MY child!"

A shoebox full of love

Quezon City is a suburb of Manila, in the Philippines. Fourteen years ago, a child named Joana attended vacation Bible school in Quezon City. That Christmas, students in her class received shoe boxes from children in the United States, containing modest holiday gifts. Her box also contained the address and a snapshot of the seven-year-old donor, Tyrel Wolfe. He was from a place called "Idaho" and wore a cowboy shirt. Joana wrote to thank him for the gifts, but he never received her letter.

"I still wanted to thank the person who packed the box for me," she said, so after eleven years she tried to locate him on Facebook. She found several people named Tyrel Wolfe, but only one from Idaho. Since he was dressed in cowboy attire, she submitted a friend request from "a random girl in the Phillipines." He was intrigued, and over the next year they exchanged letters and pictures. Despite a 15-hour time difference, they set aside time each morning and night for Facebook visits. Finally in 2013, Tyrel saved enough money to fly to Manila and meet Joana. "Once I saw his face, an amazing feeling came over me," she remembers. "I was so happy I cried." Tyrel stayed for 10 days. "All I knew was that Joana was the one." He returned again the next year for a month, and asked Joana's Dad (in the Tagalog language) for permission to marry her. They obtained a fiancee visa for Joana and the couple were wed at an outdoor ceremony on Tyrel's parents' 400-acre cattle ranch. Tyrel wore a barong, the traditional embroidered shirt worn by Filipino grooms.

Instead of gifts, the couple asked their wedding guests to pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child which is sponsored by Samaritan's Purse and has several drop-off stations in Idaho. Shown above, they later delivered their own boxes in person to Samaritan's Purse headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, and told their unforgettable story. "I remember as a little boy I was so excited to know the toys I put in the box would bring joy to another child somewhere in the world," said Tyrel. "I just didn't know the joy it would bring back to me one day."