Missionaries of the World

The 11 medieval monolithic cave churches of this 13th-century 'New Jerusalem' are situated in a mountainous region in the heart of Ethiopia near a traditional village with circular-shaped dwellings. Lalibela is a high place of Ethiopian Christianity, still today a place of pilgrimage and devotion. The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela are exceptionally fine examples of a long-established Ethiopian building tradition. Monolithic churches are to be found all over the north and the centre of the country. Some of the oldest of such churches are to be found in Tigray, where some are believed to date from around the 6th or 7th centuries. King Lalibela is believed to have commissioned these structures with the purpose of creating a holy and symbolic place which considerably influenced Ethiopian religious beliefs. Lalibela is a small town at an altitude of almost 2,800 m in the Ethiopian highlands. It is surrounded by a rocky, dry area. Here in the 13th century devout Christ...

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’s Quotos…… 01. I can expect no sympathy or help from (my family - Florence Nightingale 02. How very little can be done under the spirit of fear - Florence Nightingale 03. Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization - Florence Nightingale 04. I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse - Florence Nightingale 05. There is no part of my life, upon which I can look back without pain - Florence Nightingale 06. The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm - Florence Nightingale 07. Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe - Florence Nightingale 08. To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose - Florence Nightingale 09. She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel - Florence Nightingale 10. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, ...

In a region of almost inaccessible Sandstone Peaks, monks settled on these 'columns of the sky' from the 11th century onwards. Twenty-four of these monasteries were built, despite incredible difficulties, at the time of the great revival of the eremitic ideal in the 15th century. Their 16th-century frescoes mark a key stage in the development of post-Byzantine painting. 'Suspended in the air' (the meaning of Meteora in Greek), these monasteries represent a unique artistic achievement and are one of the most powerful examples of the architectural transformation of a site into a place of retreat, meditation and prayer. The Meteora provide an outstanding example of the types of monastic construction which illustrate a significant stage in history, that of the 14th and 15th centuries when the eremitic ideals of early Christianity were restored to a place of honour by monastic communities, both in the Western world (in Tuscany, for example) and in the Orthodox Church...

Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp, was a celebrated English Nurse and Pioneering Modern Nursing, Writer and Statistician born on 12 May 1820 at the Villa La Columbaia, near the Porta Romana at Bellosguardo in Florence, Italy; she was named after the city of her birth. Her father, William Edward Nightingale (1794-1874), was son of William Shore, a Sheffield banker. When Nightingale came of age on 21 February 1815 he inherited the Derbyshire estates at Lea Hurst and Woodend in Derbyshire from, and assumed the surname of Peter Nightingale, his mother's uncle. On 1 June 1818 he married Frances Smith, a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery. They had two daughters, Parthenope and Florence. "Parthe" was given the classical name of Naples where she was born. Florence Nightingale was brought up at Lea Hall; in 1825 the family moved to Lea Hurst which Nightingale had just built. In 1826 he also bought Embley Park in Hampshire and in1828 he became High Sher...