Woman Says God Told Her to ‘Feed the Strippers’
People have claimed to have heard God instruct them to do all sorts of things over the years, but this is probably a first: “I felt the lord say to me, ‘Go feed the strippers,’” Erin Stevens tells Fox News. The calling came to Stevens, a pastor’s wife in Nashville, following a 21-day fast. So Stevens formed her own ministry under an organisation called Strip Church, a network of ministries around the world with a shared mission of reaching out to those in the sex industry. In her own branch of Strip Church, Stevens says she takes home-cooked meals to local clubs, and offers moral support and guidance to the women dancing there. So far, Stevens has met with 100 dancers across 10 to 15 clubs, and at least one woman says she’s left her stripping career thanks to her efforts. “I had been missing so much from my life and had been hiding,” says the woman, a 23-year-old mother. (Newser)
Town Forced To Change All The Street Addresses
Sharon Ammons has lived in Whitmire, SC, for 67 years, but her life is about to change forever — and so is her address. She’s not alone. Everyone who lives in the small southern town of 1,141 is getting a new address for their home. The measure is supposed to help first responders find their way to the right home if there’s an emergency.
Ammons doesn’t see the point to the change. “I don’t see where it’s going to help us, because we’re all familiar with the streets,” Ammons said. But getting around Whitmire isn’t easy for EMTs coming from Newberry, the nearest town with full-time responding emergency services. Whitmire only has volunteer services. “There are four separate streets called ‘Railroad Ave.,’ but they’re not connected to each other,” Taylor said. “There are two different streets called ‘Sims.’ People don’t understand that the first responders don’t know every street name.” The Whitmire Town Council voted to change the street names as part of an enhanced 911 addressing system that is paid for through a grant awarded to the Newberry County Sheriffs Department. (Huffington Post)
Croc Hid Under Bed In a lodge While man slpet Blissfully
In Zimbabwe, if there’s a monster hiding under your bed, it may just be an eight-ft crocodile. Guy Whittall recently discovered as much when he heard a maid scream from his room at the Humani Ranch one morning. The 40-year-old had managed to sleep the entire night without noticing there was a crocodile under his bed.
According to Caters News Agency, Whittall blissfully slept more than eight hours on the low-lying bed, completely unaware of what was concealed beneath. The former cricket player, who currently serves as director of the family-owned lodge, even recalled hanging his feet over the side of his bed for some time in the morning. “The really disconcerting thing about the whole episode is the fact that I was sitting on the edge of the bed that morning, barefoot and just centimeters away from the croc,” Whittall said. (Huffington Post)
Eat Pray love: Japanese man finds Buddha in snacks
life is fleeting and so are the images of Buddha that Japanese artist Koshi Kawachi carves — from stick-shaped snacks made of corn. Feeling the need to express the ephemeral nature of life after the death of his grandfather, Kawachi began creating the Buddha statues from the snacks nearly six years ago with a handheld drill that resembles a dental tool. “I am just carving out what already exists inside the material,” the bespectacled 40-year-old told Reuters. “My mind is empty when I look at the snack and carve.”
Each snack stick costs about 10 yen ($0.10) and they come in 18 flavours, including fermented soybean and octopus dumpling. The cheese ones are softer and require a different carving technique, Kawachi said. He sets the 10-cm snacks on end at his work table, praying and bowing his head once before starting to carve. He bows once again after finishing a few moments later and then reverentially lifts the statue into his mouth and snaps off the body with a crunch, savoring each chew. “Humans are said to have 108 cravings or sins,” said Kawachi, who over the years has completed a sculpture with 107 of the statues. (Reuters)
Chinese hospital seeks virgins’ blood for research
A Chinese hospital’s request for blood from healthy female virgins for use in medical research has been condemned as insulting to women. The Peking University Cancer Hospital said it needed the blood of 100 female virgins aged from 18 to 24 years old for studies on the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is usually transmitted through sexual contact. Some internet users condemned the request as promoting virginity worship and demeaning to women. “Male virgins are not needed, just females, how is this scienceIJ” wrote one user of Sina Weibo, a social media service similar to Twitter and a lively forum for popular opinion. The hospital defended the call for donors, saying that virgins’ blood was less likely to be infected with HPV. (Reuters)