What’s New
| 2010 Summer E-Newsletter |
Avis Rideout: When I Become a Big Girl – Making a Home for HIV Orphans
Avis Rideout, born and raised in Triton, Newfoundland, first felt God’s call on her life when she was six years old. Sitting in Sunday school, she gazed at a poster depicting missionaries holding sick African babies. Its caption read, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” The Bible verse stirred Avis’s young heart. It was the same memory verse she had learned just weeks before. “When I become a big girl,” she said, crying, “I will go and preach the gospel to the world.”
Avis was true to her word.
Read Avis’s inspirational story, and see what God has done through Avis’s humble promise.
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| 2010 Summer E-Newsletter |
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Toronto’s Ireland Park…
…Remembering the 40,000 Irish Who Landed in Toronto the Summer of 1847, Mostly Starving and Many Dying…
This past spring I discovered Ireland Park in Toronto, a memorial commemorating Ireland’s large immigration to Canada in 1847.
Read more and see pictures of Toronto’s Ireland Park.
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| 2010 Winter Olympics |
Pole Position
A combination of skill, focus and training helped Kathy Kreiner-Phillips attain her childhood dream of Olympic gold. But it was only after she retired from the sport that she attained her ultimate goal.
Read more…
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| 2010 Winter/Spring E-Newsletter |
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Immigrant David Cragg Faces the St. Lawrence River Rapids June 1833
Discover how he made it.
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Introduction
Below you will find some of the biographical profile pieces as well as inspirational pieces I’ve written over the years.
You’ll find stories about David Cragg, one of my most favourite historical figures, and a perfect definition of an everyday hero.
You’ll also find a collection of articles commemorating Ireland’s mass immigration to Canada during the summer of 1847.
Enjoy!
David Cragg, an English farmer and gentle man, lost everything, including his wife, land, and wealth during the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution. He packed up his eight children and what little he had left to call his own, and emigrated to Upper Canada in 1833, hoping for a better life.
Discover how he made it.…
Spattered along the coast of the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario, Irish Monuments stand eerily forlorn, honouring the tens of thousands of Irish immigrants who died from Typhus the summer of 1847 onboard ships bound for freedom. That summer, settlements – from Grosse Ile east of Quebec City westward as far as Toronto – groaned under the press of human misery. The Irish came homeless, penniless, and starving. Canada was their last chance at life. They had survived the trip to the “New Worlde” but they had no guarantee they would reach their final destination. Every day the dreaded Fever hung over them like a sallow beckoning to death. These memorials remind us that while the masses of wretched humanity may have stepped upon our shores, they died before they were able to live.
Learn about the Irish Memorials in Canada.…
Inspirational Profiles
A combination of skill, focus and training helped Kathy Kreiner-Phillips attain her childhood dream of Olympic gold. But it was only after she retired from the sport that she attained her ultimate goal.
Read more…
Disabled at 17 in a diving accident, Joni Eareckson Tada found the courage to live as a quadriplegic by relying on the unfailing love of God.
Read more…
Dave Stewart, Former Blue Jays pitcher hangs up his baseball mitt and moves from serving up fastballs to serving up Thanksgiving dinners.
Read more…
Dr. Paul Thistle gave up the perks that come with a thriving medical practice in North America for the horrors of working in a rural hospital in Zimbabwe. Take a small glimpse into his life, a life filled with passion for the people of Africa, and a love for God that keeps him grounded.
Read more…
On February 21, 1999 a three-day-old girl was left abandoned on the dirty steps of a Thailand government orphanage. Tiny and helpless, she appeared utterly forsaken by the world. But not forsaken by God.
Read more…
Brenda Critch prayed for a child, but after two miscarriages and health problems it didn’t seem possible, until God sent her a message of hope in an unlikely place.
Read more…
Share in the magic of my mom’s last Christmas before she heads Home.
Read more…
Most of us will never have to endure the heart-wrenching experience of losing a child. But Lillian Baker knows that rules are sometimes broken. Lillian is the mother of five children. She has buried four.
Read more…
What would drive two rational intelligent women to deliberately provoke hundreds of bees into stinging them each week? Foolhardiness? Desperation? Hope?
Read more…
Some things never change. For this new generation of teenyboppers, mothers are passing down traditions to their daughters, including apple pie recipes and their treasured memories of times long past. Twenty years divide the giddy stardom of The Bay City Rollers and the Backstreet Boys. And yet, the newest generation of pubescent teens still need zit cream and a boy band to swoon over and call their own.
Read more…
Inspirational Reflections
With a roll of the dice, I teetered on the verge of disaster. My luck had run out.
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It seemed that the whole world filled the sanctuary; the rich, the poor, the elegant and the unrefined. It had rained all day making puddles, soggy shoes and wet clothes our common bond. Everyone was quiet in anticipation of something, something I didn’t know, something that would change my life.
Read more…
Regardless of what life threw at her, my Lady of Rock exhibited beautiful strength and steadfastness. When she collapsed, succumbing to the constant pummelling of life’s storms, I knew that amidst life’s rubble, there is Someone Who never crumbles.
Read more…
Quenching my physical senses still left a thirst in my soul to tarry behind and drink much more than a cup of cold water.
Read more…
Whether we sing from life’s mountaintops or weep in its valleys, we can experience peace knowing that God created both.
Read more…
Come and explore the South Dakota Badlands, a moonscape on planet Earth. Unearth its hidden beauty amidst seeming desolation and hopelessness, rediscovering hope where none appears to exist. Hidden beauty awaits anyone who has eyes to see past a bad first impression.
Read more…
I learned at Jewel Cave in South Dakota that even when darkness crowds my life, so thick I panic at ever finding my way again, I don’t walk alone.
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Discovering a faint light from a lighthouse slicing the blackness of a stormy night is as sweet as fancy molasses.
Lighthouses are lights into the window of the sea, beckoning men toward home, offering a balm to the seafarer’s soul.
Read more…
Come take a walk in God’s garden and find solitude. Avoid the loneliness that can gnaw at our hearts and drain our hope. God lights our way, even in our lives’ darkest forests and heaviest shadows, for He is the Light of the World.
Read more…
Too bad we can’t send a candy-gram to God. A huge chocolate heart sealed with a kiss sent special delivery to Heaven to show Him how much we love Him, and to thank Him for all His wonderful blessings. If only there was a way. There is.
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We live in a world of instant potatoes, pudding, coffee, mail and cash. Could it be that we crave an instant God, too? Why is waiting for God to answer our prayers so different than waiting in line at the grocery store?
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Is it true that ‘less is more?’ Maybe it’s time to not only clean out our closets this spring, but clear out the cobwebs in our lives as well.
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When the reality of life moves in, or when life moves on, we may find ourselves yearning for the flame that once burned in our heart for our beloved. When did love’s fire sputter and romance’s fervour waver? Can we hope to ignite it again?
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Apples, with their delicate aromas and ruddy hues are miracles, their entire life passage nurtured and protected by God.
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