Har Shalom announces upcoming events
Congregation Har Shalom, 2537 County Road 203, will host these events:
Kabbalat Shabbat will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday. The Kabbalat Shabbat will include a Torah study and free catered dinner. Contributions will be welcomed.
A Shabbat Morning Service will take place from 9:30 a.m. to noon July 12. The morning services will include Torah reading and Torah study, followed by kiddush.
For more information, visit www.harshalomdurango.org.
St. Paul’s announces schedule change
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church announces these changes to the Sunday schedule:
Worship service will start at 9:30 a.m., followed by fellowship at 10:30 a.m. and Bible study at 10:45 a.m.
St. Paul’s is located at 2611 Junction St., on the hill directly across from Miller Middle School.
Mormon missionaries to get iPad minis
SALT LAKE CITY – The Mormon church is moving forward with its plan to arm missionaries with iPad minis and broaden their proselytizing to social media.
A test program – that began last fall with 6,500 missionaries serving in the United States and Japan – went well, prompting the initiative’s expansion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a news release this week.
Church leaders expect to have the specially configured mobile devices in the hands of more than 32,000 missionaries by early 2015.
Using the iPad minis has proved an effective tool for missionaries to communicate with church leaders and keep in touch with people who have expressed interest in joining the Mormon church, said David F. Evans, director of the church’s missionary department, in a video posted on Mormonnewsroom.org.
“We know in many parts of the world, the traditional forms of proselyting work very, very well,” he said. “In some other places where technology and urban life has developed in such a way that missionaries have a harder time contacting people, we hope that these tools become even more valuable in those places.”
Scholars say this is the latest example of the LDS church’s gradual embrace of the digital age and its recognition that door-to-door proselytizing is not the most effective way to expand church membership.
Vatican gives thumbs up for exorcisms
VATICAN CITY – Exorcists now have a legal weapon at their disposal.
The Vatican has formally recognized the International Association of Exorcists, a group of 250 priests in 30 countries who liberate the faithful from demons.
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported Tuesday the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy had approved the organization’s statutes and recognized the group under canon law.
More than his predecessors, Pope Francis speaks frequently about the devil and, last year, was seen placing his hands on the head of a man purportedly possessed by four demons in what exorcists said was a prayer of liberation from Satan.
The head of the association, the Rev. Francesco Bamonte, said the Vatican approval was cause for joy.
“Exorcism is a form of charity that benefits those who suffer,” he told L’Osservatore.
Alabama shuts church’s sex offender housing
CLANTON, Ala. – Believing it was his calling to reach out to people Jesus called “the least of these,” Pastor Ricky Martin built a little church and opened a camp out back for some of society’s most unwanted people: sex offenders.
With the help of some former inmates convicted of rape, sodomy, child sexual abuse and other crimes, he raised a gray-block chapel in a rural patch of central Alabama in 2010 and parked old campers and recreational vehicles behind it to house the men. More than 50 convicted sex offenders have lived there since.
The camp came to an end Tuesday, when a law passed by the Alabama Legislature earlier this year shut down Martin’s sex-offender refuge.
Martin said he will make the remaining men leave the half-dozen campers parked behind the church, although he doesn’t like it.
“It’s about like it’s against my constitutional rights,” he said Monday. “This is a state coming against a ministry.”
China bans Ramadan fast in northwest
BEIJING – Students and civil servants in China’s Muslim northwest, where Beijing is enforcing a security crackdown after deadly unrest, have been ordered to avoid taking part in traditional fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Statements posted in the past several days on websites of schools, government agencies and local party organizations in the Xinjiang region said the ban was aimed at protecting students’ well-being and preventing use of schools and government offices to promote religion. Statements on the websites of local party organizations said members of the officially atheist ruling party also should avoid fasting.
“No teacher can participate in religious activities, instill religious thoughts in students or coerce students into religious activities,” said a statement on the website of the No. 3 Grade School in Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang.
Similar bans have been imposed in the past on fasting for Ramadan, which began at sundown June 28. But this year is unusually sensitive because Xinjiang is under tight security after attacks that the government blames on Muslim extremists with foreign terrorist ties.
Herald Staff & Associated Press
