http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_888129.html

Pets now take communion at Connecticut Episcopal Church.

We already knew the church was going to the dogs.

http://www.chuckchamblee.com/dom/fun/yankee_dixie_quiz.htm

I took the test. I scored 63%, definitely Southern Dixie (I relapsed into my Arkansas dialect.)

I do protest one item, however. The soft drink question did not have the proper response. In Arkansas we call'em sodies.

This from my friend Mike Benson (and check my reaction at the end) --

KneEmail
"At the name of Jesus every knee should bow..." (Philippians 2:10).
Mike Benson, editor; Matt Gehlhausen, managing editor

THE LEADER OF the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was Sir Ernest Shackleton, a famous British explorer...

The expedition left South Georgia Island and sailed for Antarctica in December, 1914. While still 100 miles from the coast of Antarctica, the ship Endurance became locked in surface ice. For nine months the frozen ocean slowly dragged the vessel away from the continent, finally crushing and sinking it in November, 1915.

The group set out on foot to walk 400 miles across the ice, towing Endurances' three lifeboats and what they had salvaged from her. Traversing ice and water, they made it to barren, frozen Elephant Island, setting foot on soil for the first time in 497 days.

>From there, Shackleton and five others set out in a lifeboat for their original point of embarkation. The lifeboat took them 800 miles across the fiercest seas on planet earth -- the South Atlantic Ocean. Seventeen days later, almost a year and a half after leaving South Georgia Island originally, their tiny craft arrived. Shackleton and the others returned in a Chilean vessel to rescue the remainder of the crew from Elephant Island, not one of whom had perished.

The details of what these 28 souls endured during their odyssey are staggering. Living in frozen-stiff clothing which went unchanged for months. Frostbite. A diet of penguin and eventually their own sled dogs. Unrelenting sub-zero temperatures. And yet they endured. They persisted. They persevered.

THOUGHT: The Christian life is a journey of persistence--an adventure, even, because we do not know what each day will bring. Like the Shackleton expedition, it is an adventure filled with unexpected twists and turns. One minute you're making ground, basking in the warm glow of spiritual success, and the next you're watching your soul shatter as you fall back losing precious progress (David Jeremiah, "Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," The Persistent Christian Journey).

KneEmail #547: "For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise" (Heb. 10:36).

Bible reading for 01.08.04: Genesis 22 - 24.

You can access more information about Ernest Shackleton and the Trans-Antarctic Expedition at http://www.south-pole.com/p0000098.htm

To Subscribe/Unsubscribe, visit us on the web at www.oakhillcoc.org Be a missionary! Forward KneEmail to a friend, loved one or co-worker today.

I wrote Mike and said:

Wow! Makes me shiver just reading about it.

And our little lives right where we are is the most exciting journey of all. Wrap Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Rocky I-XXVIII, and all the rest together, and they don't come close to the thrill of our faith walk with the Lord.

Eventually, this story will show up here. and you can go here to subscribe.

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I use this service for Forthright, my inspirational list UPLift (based on this site - have you subscribed yet?), and my Brazil newsletter list. I have only praise for this service. I have no complaints, none. Well, maybe one: it's not in Portuguese for my Brazilian lists, or I would move them all there, too.

This message is from the owner of the service which hosts our email list:

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This site has offered it since the beginning, but just today I downloaded a small program to receive RSS feeds. I'm still getting the hang of it, but it avoids email notices, and people say it's a way to avoid the problems of IP blocking, spam problems, etc. We'll see how it goes.

For a short, sensible explanation, see this explanation. For the long of it, go here:

http://rss.lockergnome.com/resources/

One good thing about it: you don't have to give out an email address, no personal information, to subscribe to the feeds.