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          KEEPING THE FAITH The only survivor of a shipwreck washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and to store his few possessions. But then one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened; everything was lost. He...

WASHINGTON, DC - President Barack Obama is still looking for a church home more than a year after resigning from the Chicago church led by his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the first family has yet to join a church because Obama doesn't want his attendance to disrupt other people's worship. Gibbs says Obama enjoys services led by Camp David's chaplain on weekends the family spends at the presidential retreat, but they're not members there. In 2009, the Obamas have only attended Sunday church services twice in Washington. Two days before the inauguration,...

          DON’T BLAME CHANGING TIMES Most of us have learned to cope with, if not exactly embrace, the technological revolution that has completely restructured our world over the past two decades. Words like "Internet," "e-mail" and even "distance learning" may not be in your dictionary yet, but they soon will be. And that dictionary probably won't be paper like the ones most of us learned to use; instead, it will be part of the "spellchecker" on a computer hard drive, or perhaps on a single "CD-ROM" that contains thousands of pages of information. Despite my...

LOS ANGELES, June 30 (UPI) -- The Los Angeles Police Department, hoping to improve relations with Muslims, has appointed the force's first Islamic chaplain, police officials said. Pakistan-born Sheik Qazi Asad, 47, will become a reserve chaplain at the North Hollywood station, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. "We need to establish very good communication ... where both parties are talking to each other," Asad told the Times. "This is just opening up the door." Asad, a U.S. citizen, has spent a decade working to improve relations between police and Muslim communities in Los Angeles County. The LAPD hopes he'll...

For the past five months, White House aides and friends of the Obamas have been quietly visiting local churches and vetting the sermons of prospective first ministers in a search for a new - and uncontroversial - church home. Obama has even sampled a few himself, attending services at 19th Street Baptist on the weekend before his inauguration and celebrating Easter at St. John's Episcopal Church.

          LIFEBOAT One of the great World War II films was LIFEBOAT, about the ordeal faced by survivors of a passenger ship that was sunk by a Nazi U-Boat in the middle of the Atlantic. The film details their struggle for survival in a small lifeboat, fighting the elements, thirst and then fighting against each other. Each person has their own ideas about how to navigate the little boat: they argue about who should be in charge; and they find little things to fight over even when they run out of things to fight over....

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 26, 2009) -- Several Walter Reed Army Medical Center staffers survived the deadliest accident in Washington Metrorail's 33-year history Monday. Maj. David Bottoms, a Walter Reed chaplain and Col. Thomas Baker, chief of pathology, said they were both riding in the first car of the train that slammed into another stopped train during Monday's rush-hour commute home. "I was reading and listening to my iPod, and I noticed the front end of the car was buckling and it was coming toward us. It looked like a wave ... it stopped three seats in front of...

A Catholic priest who was critically injured while deployed with his Fort Lewis unit died Saturday, more than five years after his Humvee struck a roadside bomb in Iraq. The Rev. Tim Vakoc becomes the first chaplain to die of wounds sustained during the war in Iraq. The former major from Minnesota – known to most as Father Tim – suffered brain damage and lost an eye from the May 30, 2004, attack. He had most recently lived at a nursing home in New Hope, Minn. “He was a great man of God,” said Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek, who...

NEW HOPE, Minnesota, JUNE 22, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Father Timothy Vakoc, an Army chaplain who was injured in Iraq in 2004, passed away Saturday at the age of 49. The priest's personalized CaringBridge Web site reported that he was "surrounded by family and friends who prayed him into heaven" at St. Therese nursing home in New Hope He was wounded on May 29, the 12th anniversary of his priestly ordination, when his humvee was struck by roadside bomb while returning from celebrating Mass for the soldiers in Mosul. The chaplain was transported through Germany back to Washington D.C., having lost an...

ST. PAUL (AP) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1 Father Tim Vakoc, who was critically wounded in a roadside bomb attack near Mosul, Iraq in May 2004. CBS Close numSlides of totalImages Related StoriesFamily Fights VA For Pulling Chaplain's Benefits (11/14/2007) Priest Wounded In Iraq Continues Recovery (8/29/2006) Related LinksRead More Minnesota News A Minnesota priest who was gravely wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq five years ago has died, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis confirmed Sunday. The Rev. Tim Vakoc was 49. He died at a nursing home in suburban New Hope about 8...

          WHAT MAKES A DAD! God took the strength of a mountain, The majesty of a tree, The warmth of a summer sun, The calm of a quiet sea, The generous soul of nature, The comforting arm of night, The wisdom of the ages, The power of the eagle's flight, The joy of a morning in spring, The faith of a mustard seed, The patience of eternity, The depth of a family need, Then God combined these qualities, When there was nothing more to add, He knew His masterpiece was complete, And so, He called...

~ Flag Day, June 14 ~ Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies militaryand the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. Click Betsy Ross The History of Flag Day Red Skelton ~ Pledge of Allegiance (spoken) Red Skelton ~ Pledge of Allegiance (written) Star Spangled Banner Ragged Old Flag Old Glory This Ain’t No Rag, It’s A Flag You're A Grand Old Flag Please remember that The Canteen is here to support and entertain our troops and veterans and their families, and is family friendly.

          ROBIN WILLIAMS: Human Being In January 1997 my family and I PCS-ed from Camp Lejeune to Okinawa. On the trip from the east coast to LA where we would board the Freedom Bird, we decided to take a few days for sightseeing in San Francisco. We stayed at the BOQ in Naval Station, Treasure Island. One night my wife sent me to the convenience store for some milk. On the way I saw one of the old boat hangars lit up. There was a beehive of activity around the huge building, with cars and...

Last week, the FBI arrested four members of a would-be terrorist cell in New York. While the arrests eliminated the immediate threat from this particular group, it highlighted a much bigger threat: the spawning of terrorism in American prisons. The four men, allegedly angered by the deaths of Muslims in Afghanistan, had planned to bomb several synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down a military plane using a Stinger missile. Happily, the plastic explosives and the Stinger missile they planned on using were fake. The FBI, acting on a tip from another member of their mosque, penetrated the cell, sold...

wind is blowing steadily at about 25 knots. It’s like standing in front of a giant hair dryer. The weather forecaster says there are gusts up to 35 knots. The wind is sending a steady stream of sand and dust whipping across the flightline into the faces of airmen and soldiers alike. There is silence, except for the wind. Yet, we stand at attention in two straight lines, beginning at the ramp of a C-130 Hercules. We’re waiting to render honors. We ignore the heat, the wind and the sand. We are humbled by the presence of one of our...

Navy chaplain Lt. Shane Dillman, convicted of rape, as well as various fraternization and adultery charges, left the court building at Norfolk Naval Station in handcuffs Monday to begin serving his sentence. Capt. Moira Modzelewski, the military judge who presided over the case, sentenced the lieutenant to 10 years' confinement and dismissal from the service. Her ruling must be affirmed by Rear Adm. Richard O'Hanlon, commander of the Naval Air Force Atlantic. Dillman, who was stationed on the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, admitted last week to multiple affairs with young enlisted women, but he pleaded not guilty to rape, one...

          PROMISE YOURSELF Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind to speak of health, happiness, and prosperity to every person that you meet; to make all your friends aware of the special qualities within them; to look at the sunny side of every thing and let your optimism work to make your dreams come true; to think, work for, and expect only the best; to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own; to forget past mistakes and press on towards...

          Words from Ronald Reagan on Memorial Day President Ronald Reagan's June 6, 1984 speech in front of the U.S. Ranger Monument in Normandy commemorating the Rangers' charge up Pointe du Hoc: "Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take...

As I noted yesterday and many times in the past, the four Muslims caught trying to blow up New York synagogues and U.S. planes converted to Islam in prison, where the Muslim chaplaincy is controlled by CAIR, ISNA, and an alphabet soup of extremists and jihadists. Today, Bill Warner points out that the men met at Masjid Al-Ikhlas, a Newburgh, New York mosque, whose imam is Salahuddin Muhammad, a New York prison chaplain. Hello . . .? Yet, authorities refuse to do anything to this guy. And they continue to refuse to overhaul the Muslim prison chaplain system and who...

Hot&sunny, ops 24/7, bad guys regrouping. The brawl will begin again...probably tonight. bad guys redistributing ammo&moving for new cover. We're on the edge of town&hear the imam's rail against us...morale extremely high...extra intensity, friends on the line. senior nco's and officers here, feel the pull. They've trained everyone on the line...Today at the Div. Chaplain office. He waded into Ar Ramadi during the firefight three days ago...to provide ministry at the aid station...where he was needed. Second, coordinating Holy Week Services. A)worry about large numbers in one place. B)organists in short supply and no organ.C)We are going to worship..we need...