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It was a pretty quiet morning at the gym today. As I laced up my tennis shoes, I found myself looking around wondering where all the people went. It seems just a month or so ago, I was scouring the room to find an open treadmill and waiting my turn t…
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Ben Carlson first came to Camp Shalom as a middle-schooler. He’s been back every year – in one way or another – ever since. He had his fair share of mischief and camper capers. Then he became an assistant counselor. He moved up to counselor. Then he…
Silentor Esthil was a very sick little boy. A years-long infection in his leg would not heal. His mother went to great lengths to find someone who would help her 9-year-old son, and she was giving up hope. Her final attempt to save his life was to ta…
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KJ Rebarcak spent much of her life struggling. A very smart young woman (KJ was valedictorian of her high school class), she was fired from her first two jobs – one at a deli and one at a shoestore. More difficult times followed. She describes her li…
It’s a big week. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday – this important day in the Christian calendar that begins the season of Lent. It’s a day we remember our mortality and the ways we continually miss the mark on living as God would have us. This week we be…
When Mary Trafford was 8 years old, her mom gave her a choice: learn how to sew or take piano lessons. “I took piano lessons for two weeks. I’ve been sewing ever since,” Mary said. Mary is the creative power behind two art quilts hanging in the Libra…
This is the fourth in an occasional series on faith pathways: Service, Nature, Study and Intellect, Contemplative, Artistic, Relationships, and Traditions. Meet four St. Paul people who connect with God through their artistic endeavors: Painting, Poe…
Kit Whan is very much a business-oriented person. She says she thought she didn’t have one creative bone in her body… until one morning she saw something on the Today show. It was a segment about adults coloring. With her sister in town for a visit,…
A Powerball official told this Munford, Tennessee couple that they’d have to be content with an immediate check for a couple million dollars until the lump sum payout can be processed. That processing requires about 10 business days. It’s hard to ima…
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His family bought the wooden loom for his grandfather when Jim Case was 5 or 6 years old. His grandpa had emphysema. Back then, one of the treatments for the disease was to periodically place people in isolation. Since the Case family couldn’t go to…
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I recently returned from a week with St. Paul people in the Dominican Republic. On the last day there, our trip coordinator, Heather, took us out to a little sandbar just off the coast. The excursion gave us a chance to relax after a week of work, an…
Near Fourth and Iowa streets in Davenport, at the lunch hour on Wednesday, 50 people stood bundled up in the chill of the January sun and prayed. Many of them Catholic sisters from area orders, they gathered at the site of one of two dozen billboards…