By DANNY MINTON Gladys May Aylward wanted to be a missionary to the Chinese people, but it was the 1930’s, and the world was engulfed in unrest. Besides, she was a woman, a small woman with no language skills in any Chinese dialect, and no credentials to merit anyone sponsoring her efforts in wanting to go. But Gladys longed to
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By LORETTA FULTON Flash back to 2008 and place yourself on a street corner in downtown Abilene. That’s where D Grant Smith was when an experience changed his life. Always small and insecure, Smith was standing on a street corner when he saw a rough looking, much bigger guy on the opposite corner. Smith feared that the guy was going
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By LORETTA FULTON Dr. George Knight would have been proud. Three of his former students were featured speakers for the annual George Knight Lectures Oct. 28-29 at Hardin-Simmons University. Theme for lectures was “Women of the Old Testament,” with Dr. Susan Pigott, Dr. Robert Ellis, and Dr. Meredith Stone delivering the lectures. Knight, a professor for years at Logsdon School
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By LORETTA FULTON Halloween is barely a memory and Thanksgiving is on the horizon, but it’s not too soon to start planning for Christmas, specifically Operation Christmas Child. National collection week is Nov. 18-25, which means Sunday School classes, organizations and individuals don’t have much time to start filling either cardboard or plastic shoeboxes with Christmas goodies to send to children
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By LORETTA FULTON The first trip to Africa made such an impression on 12-year-old Molly McCoy that she vowed to her parents she would return, even if it meant going without them. She wasn’t kidding. Molly, the daughter of James and Debbie McCoy, made 10 more trips with a group of Abilenians who travel to Zambia each summer on a
Read moreBy NANCY PATRICK Did you know you can actually look up colors related to causes and find a long list of color symbols? Wikipedia has a list of awareness months and days. Anything that anyone has ever cared about appears on one list or another because we all have our pet peeves, projects, and passions. Something I would like to
Read moreIDLE AMERICAN Commentary by Dr. Don Newbury We called prized possessions “gen-u-wine” back in the day. That’s not the correct spelling, of course, but when the word fell from our lips, we emphasized each syllable to make sure hearers clearly understood that our claims were 100 percent true. “Genuine” back then was about as far away from “fake” as the east
Read moreBy JIM NICHOLS I do not like the idea. I prefer to think and believe that my current self is the result of something within me. I prefer to believe that, as a child, I had a rather central future that, though I did not know about it in detail, simply unfolded as I grew older. Thus, as an adult,
Read moreBy DANNY MINTON Today, I walked out back, a cup of coffee in hand, and took inventory of what I saw. From the back I can see several hundred yards in many different directions. I see the creek as it meanders a short way then empties into a long thin manmade lake. There are patches of finely manicured lawn, cut
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Spirit Of Abilene 