Two “extreme tourists”, Guilluame Combot and Enora Nedelec, have recently made the 18-month journey by foot from Capetown to Khartoum, from south to north across sub-Saharan Africa. Surviving on about $2.00 (US) each day and with only two backpacks of supplies, the pair walked each day not knowing where they would sleep each night. You can read their story here: “Extreme Tourists Set Off To Walk Across Africa”.

Combot and Nedelec entered some areas of southern Sudan that are so remote that the local people did not even know what a “tourist” was. The locals there could only conceive of the possibility that these two travelers were really foreign aid workers.

But at one point, the very-long-distance pedestrians entered a village that is so isolated that its inhabitants had never seen white people before. The villagers forced Combot to eat something to prove that he was not a ghost.

Recently deceased 98-year old Verna Oller of Long Beach, Washington, USA, had quietly amassed a fortune of (U.S.) $4.5 million that almost no one knew about. Ms. Oller’s lifestyle betrayed nothing about her wealth. As the ABC News video shows (please see the link below), Ms. Oller was so frugal that she once cut out the zipper lining from an old jacket and used it as replacement shoe laces. Ms. Oller also had no college education nor formal training in business nor finance.

As stated in her will, Ms. Oller decided to bequeath all of her fortune to her home town.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/frugal-millionaire-leaves-fortune-to-home-town-20253023

Don’t despair.

If you’re in a place in your life where you’re not sure where to go next: first and foremost, don’t despair.

Perhaps you’re at a stage where you know that change needs to come,- but you’re not quite sure what to do about it. Yet first of all,- be at peace.

The former things are but shadows and symbols of what lies ahead for each of us. They are harbingers of the new beginnings. New thoughts, new ideas, and new loves- sprouting up to greet us all.

To celebrate the first anniversary of Shadows and Symbols, here is the list of the top 10 posts of this site.

1.  At the Dawn of the Fourth Turning

2.  Identity, Authority, and Purpose: Symbols of the Prodigal Son

3.  Law vs. Love: The Theology of “Bottle It Up”

4.  Russian Patriarch Has Died

5.  The Wandering Kings of Slumdog Millionaire

6.  Something Greater Than Solomon Is Here

7.  70 Sextillion

8.  The Donkey and the Colt

9.  The New Monasticism: The 12 Marks: Mark #2

10.  Arbiter of the Kingdoms of This World?

Shadows and Symbols would like to express our condolences to our friends in the Russian Orthodox community on the occassion of the death of Patriarch Alexei II. Spritual leader to about 100 million people, Alexei II died at his Moscow home on Friday, December 5, at the age of 79.

Alexei II was elected patriarch in June 1990, and presided over the Russian Orthodox Church during many imortant events in the history of Russia: the aborted coup of the Soviet Union in the summer 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of that year, the turbulent years of Boris Yeltsin, and the rise of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of the Russian Federation in January 2000.

The patriarch’s legacy upon the Russian Orthodox Church is profound. For example, there were only 18 Russian Orthodox monasteries in Russia and Ukraine at the time of his election. Today, there are 700. Alexei II will also be remembered for playing a key role in reuniting the Russian Orthodox Church inside of Russia with the Russian Orthodox Church in exile (the Church Abroad) in 2007.

Please see the story at Religion News for more details:

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/russian_orthodox_leader_alexy_ii_dies_at_79/