Today's category: DeathScattered Ashes? ? ? ? ? ? A woman from New York was getting her affairs in order. She prepared her will and made her final arraignments. As part of these arraignments she met with her pastor to talk about what type of funeral service she wanted, etc.? ? ? ? ? ? She told her pastor she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Bloomindales.? ? ? ? ? ? "Bloomindales!" the pastor said. "Why Bloomindales?"? ? ? ? ? ? "That way, I know my daughters will visit me twice a week."View hundreds more jokes online.Email this joke to a friend

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. The next posting of Transitions will be 12-29-23.  STAFF CHANGES Amantha L. Barbee, to PneuMatrix and the Center for...The post Transitions for the week of 12-1-23 appeared first on Baptist News Global.

A Romanian man who took part in international human smuggling has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for the deaths of 39 migrants from Vietnam who suffocated in a trailer.

Large wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, have resulted in the deaths of 55 people so far and extensive damage in the historic town of Lahaina.

Collectively we can do better. Nearly every week, we read a new tragic headline and story of unaccompanied children and youth from Central America meeting some horrific end while attempting to immigrate to the US. In the previous few months alone, there have been reports of mass abductions, a deadly fire at a Mexican migrant detention center, heat stroke deaths in abandoned cargo boxes and videos of tiny children being left at the border wall by smugglers called “Coyotes.”As a leader of a major project aimed at identifying causation and potential solutions to this challenge, there are two obvious truths we must face. One, the national conversations we are having about this challenge are shaped by wildly inaccurate rhetoric that is frankly not helping. And secondly, the major efforts by both faith-based and government agencies alike are insufficient, dated and in need of fresh and more sophisticated approaches to the challenge.