“It’s even better than Legoland,†said actor Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame in the PBS show, Jesus: Countdown to Calvary. Bonneville made the comment while viewing a massive model depicting what the city of Jerusalem looked like in the first...
Hanging in our basement, next to a Lego model of the Apollo 11 lunar lander, is the front page of a Chicago Tribune, dated July 21, 1969. The headline: “GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND.†Last year, the United States celebrated 50 years since that incredible day when Neil...
We reached the Garden of Gethsemane after hiking down a winding, slippery road on the Mount of Olives, east of the Temple walls in Jerusalem. The pavement was so treacherous and the road so steep that we had to hold on to handrails as we weaved our way down. But we...
Two fishermen, brothers Moshe and Yuval Lufan, trudged along the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel—the same body of water where Jesus’s disciples cast their nets. Moshe and Yuval kept their heads down, their eyes fixed on the muddy ground, searching...
The life of a giant is no piece of cake. I recently listened to a book about the making of the classic movie, The Princess Bride, which featured a humongous actor known as André the Giant. André was a gentle giant, according to the book’s writer, Cary Elwes, who...
We had just stepped off of the bus at the Dan archaeological site in northern Israel when our guide told us to quickly turn around. So our tour group hustled back onto the bus because there had been an incident very close to this site at the border between Israel and...
Walking into the Dead Sea is like trying to walk across a polished floor in roller skates. When I arrived at the Dead Sea in Israel this past March, I figured I would simply stroll across a sandy beach and stride into the saltiest body of water in the world. Nothing...
The only time I ever got motion sickness was in a helicopter as the pilot kept turning it in circles over the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. He wanted the passengers on both sides of the copter to get a good view of the lava pouring into the ocean. It was...
By Doug Peterson It was pitch dark, it was storming, and Seth Kerlin had no idea if he was heading toward shore or if he was being sucked out to the open ocean. If his small boat capsized or if he was swept out to sea, Seth would not survive. The boat, just a small,...
Publishers Weekly, the main trade magazine for the publishing industry, recently featured a nice review for my latest book, The Call of the Mild. The book, which I co-wrote with Torry Martin, is a sequel to Of Moose and Men, and it continues the wild but true...