Every Sunday morning, before church, I go running with my youngest son along the paths winding through the University of Illinois Arboretum. Along the route, we pass Japan House. So it was only fitting to do a feature story on the man behind Japan House, Shozo Sato....
Our tour group gathered beneath a canopy at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, listening to our guide on a beautiful, shirt-sleeve day. To one side, we could hear the singing of another church group gathered near the tomb, and to the other side was the cacophony of the...
A letter that helped to convict a Nazi war criminal… A squeegee handle that saved the lives of half a dozen people on 9/11… A set of stairs that saved hundreds more… These ordinary objects played a role in some extraordinary stories. These stories are also some...
“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...