December 2008

“As long as you don’t mind living off the land,” she concluded. My host’s caveat assured me I’d found the ideal location for a three-day retreat from the busy life I lead in the city.

Introducing Steve Pahl, Bob Snider, Mark Hunt, Terry Wicks, Peter Mitchell, Kerry Precht

Farewell to John Klassen, Sandra Crux

Travelling through the isolated hills of northeastern Pennsylvania on the way to a seminar one Advent, the man jolts to attention when his gas tank warning light flashes red. The S curve snakes into a tiny burg: a gas station, post office, branch bank, and a few clapboard houses.

Christians who want to make a difference as they Christmas shop may feel tension between buying local, buying fair trade, or buying at all.

Christmas without snow? I was dreading it.

MealsPlus is an outreach ministry of Cornerstone Community Church in Virgil, Ontario that began when church members discovered there were people living with severe epilepsy in their community who weren’t getting enough to eat.

Westview Christian Fellowship entered a whole new arena of ministry when they purchased a building in downtown St. Catharines, Ont. Three years ago, the church acquired an old church structure on Queenston Street, an area where it’s common to see people who are homeless and women working the streets late at night – many because they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Dressed in bright colours, three teenaged girls strolled up to the well in the middle of a Nanerige village in Burkina Faso. When Phil Bergen addressed them in their language, their faces lit up with delight at the surprise of speaking with a non-African man in their own language, and they giggled as they responded.

I chuckled to myself at the irony of it all – Hell’s Angels tying teddy bears to the handlebars of their bikes, and, in a grand display of magnanimity, delivering them to needy children. It was the annual Toy Run.

One of my two brothers died at 15. His name was Norman, and he was a thalidomide baby.
Thalidomide was a medication briefly prescribed to pregnant women to help them deal with morning sickness. Unfortunately, the medication had catastrophic teratogenic effects. It caused severe birth defects in infants exposed to the medication during pregnancy.