Tony Hudson

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – In August, Erin and Ellie were strangers. By October, they were best friends. That's what can happen when two never-met-before college freshmen get assigned one small 250-square-foot dorm room in which to live.

PROVO, Utah – Culturally speaking, David Gaskins is as far removed from the Bible Belt as a North American missionary can be. And yet Gaskins, who planted Mosaic Church in Provo, still knows first-hand this foundational truth of Southern Baptist life: “People,” he said, “always show up for food.”

LANGLEY, British Columbia – “You must be out of your mind.” No one said it. But it had to be what most reasonable people were thinking when they heard what Christian and Laura Rowland had decided to do.  

FLINT, Mich. – Leo and Miosha Robinson know what people think. And it hurts.

BAR NUNN, Wyo. – Trent Fetherston had a reputation – the kind of reputation a man will get in an everybody-knows-everybody kind of town like Bar Nunn, Wyoming, when he spends what seems like thousands of consecutive happy hours with a drink in his hand and a chip on his shoulder.

BAR NUNN, Wyo. – Baggs, Bairoil, Glendo, Granger, Medicine Bow, Meeteetse – race past them at the posted interstate speed limit of 80 miles per hour, and one after another, every tiny town in Wyoming can easily look like the same blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blur out the passenger-side window.

LAREDO – They didn’t want to do it, but they had no choice.

PROVO, Utah – In Provo, appearances can be deceiving.

SNEADS FERRY, N.C. – Brittany Brown will never forget the evening of November 19, 2005. But her memories of that night, the night she gave birth to her second child, are anything but typical.

SNEADS FERRY, N.C. (BP) – The bathroom smells like shrimp, the office is packed with preschoolers, and up on stage, all the Neverland props from the previous night’s very-off-Broadway performance of “Peter Pan” have been shoved to one side.