Boston Marathon Bombing- What is the truth?
Sunday, April 28, 2013
How to Multiply your Physical Output!
You can increase
your physical output by following these simple steps.
Did you know how
much your spiritual or psychological attitude affects your physical output? Of
course, we all know that to be true. But a few days ago, I was reminded of this
reality. As you may know, I like to keep myself in shape physically &
sometimes post my 5-km times on my Facebook page. I do it mainly to encourage
some of you who may need to be doing more exercise. “If Dennis can do that, maybe I should give it a try.”
Most of my life
I have been quite active physically, having been involved in teaching young
teens. I was usually pulled into playing soccer, if only as a goalie or
defensive player, neither of which I did very well. At the same time, I also have fought low
self-esteem, insecurity & discouragement, which has translated into a
deeper relationship with the Lord for the needed strength & inspiration in
daily living. Like Paul said, “For I
know in me (that is in my flesh) dwells no good thing.”[1] And James
advises, “Draw nigh to God, & He
will draw nigh to you.”[2]
Over the last 3
or 4 years, I started a running project as I saw I was putting on weight around
mid-drift bulge! I have always liked to eat, as I come from a family of big-eaters.
At my father’s death, he weighed in around 300 pounds. I am a little under 200
right now, & my 2 brothers are quite a bit over that!
I never had any
problem with weight, & could usually eat all I wanted with little or no
consequence. I have usually kept a
healthy diet & stayed away from pork products, white sugar, white flour
& white rice most of my life & very
little alcohol. But a few years ago, I noticed a tire starting to develop
around the waistline. So I decide a running
project was in order. On the beach that summer, I started running for
between 10-15 minutes. That’s all I could do. I soon built up to 20 minutes &,
over time, 25-30 minutes.
Now, I run my 5
km in usually under 35 minutes. My fastest time has been just around 30 minutes
flat. But I generally do around 33 minutes. It’s a slow pace, but it gets my
heart pumping & lungs expulsing & inhaling deeply. I feel really good
afterwards. I feel physically refreshed &
psychologically renewed. My mind seems sharper & I am less stressed.
Last Tuesday,
however, I was quite discouraged. I had had an argument with my wife over
something I cannot even remember at the moment. Book distribution has been way
down, which means financing is low. Financial
problems normally affect other aspects of our lives, & the problems
become exaggerated in our minds, especially if we are looking down at the
waves, like Peter did.
I sure you remember
the story from the Bible. Jesus had just miraculously fed a huge amount of
people, about 5,000 men, besides the woman & children. He then constrained
the disciples to get away by boat, while He Himself sent the multitude away.
What a humble leader concerned about His flock. He then went into a mountain to
pray until evening.
Meanwhile, the
disciples were having trouble getting to the other side of the lake as the wind
was against them. At about the fourth watch of the night, or about 3 a.m.,
Jesus goes unto them walking on the water. By this time, the disciples are
exhausted & probably discouraged, worried or fearful even though they are
men of the sea. The Bible says, that when they saw Jesus walking, they cried
out in fear that it was a ghost!
Finally, Jesus
calls out to them to not be afraid, that it is He. Peter then answers, “Lord, if it is you, bid me to come out on the
waters with you.” And the Lord says, “Come.”
Peter then starts his famous walk upon the waters. He seems to do quite well
until he is reminded about how strong the winds are & how high the waves
are. He starts to sink, & cries out, “Lord,
save me.” Jesus immediately puts forth His hand & catches Peter &
says unto him, “O you of little faith,
why did you doubt?”[3]
When they get
into the ship, the wind stops, & the disciples worship Jesus saying, “Of a truth You are the Son of God.”[4]
Well, I got my
eyes off the Lord & on my problems & so, I began to sink. Nevertheless,
that day even though I did not feel like running, I compelled myself to. It
took all my effort to not stop in the middle of the 5-km distance & just
walk. When I finally finished the 5 km, my time was 38 minutes & 39 seconds. At least I had run the whole distance.
But it was a very slow time, in fact, the slowest time all year. The discouragement I was feeling had resulted in a low physical performance.
It reminds me of
the true story of an Olympic athlete who was expected to win his competition.
However, the same morning of his final race, he was informed of his mother’s
death. He ended up falling during the race & finished poorly. His
psychological attitude had defeated him & he had lost the race even before
it began.
Back to my
story: The day after my poor time was a national holiday in Portugal. A
couple who has been going through a very serious financial situation, where
their business closed & they lost all their savings & property to the
banks, came by for their bi-monthly visit. It is during this time that they
pick up needed staples & we are able to share God’s Word with them,
counsel, pray & fellowship together.
That day, we
started with a Bible class on discouragement, as our friend has had suicidal
tendencies. After class, we then snacked & sang some Christian songs
together & praised God for our blessings. We ended up reading from the
Bible together, before finishing with a good strong heartfelt prayer for the
next 2 weeks until they come again.
What happened
the next day surprised me. After running my 5 km, I looked at my watch & my
time was 5 minutes 20 seconds faster
than my time 2 days before. I realized how my
spiritual state had affected my physical performance. Also, the day of rest & relaxation &
prayer & praise & reading & sharing God’s Word had made a
difference & had affected me positively.
In conclusion, take that day off that you need & don’t push yourself so hard day after
day. Even God rested on the seventh day & commanded us to follow His
example. That is where we get the 7-day week. Try to maintain your spiritual
life. Get together with like-minded people to share your faith & encourage
each other. Like it says in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”[5]
Yesterday, I
spent the day working on my present
passion: stories with meaning for children. I finished up the first 3 books
I had been working on for quite some time, but never seemed to have the time to
finish. Instead of going out fundraising & distributing books, I wrote &
edited & formatted & finished 3 books. At 7 o’clock, when I went
running, my time was one minute faster than the day before, or 6 minutes & 20 seconds faster than
the day of my discouragement. Doing my
passion & trusting God for tomorrow increased my physical performance.
So there are a
few tips for you. Trust God. Take a
break. Pray. Do your passion. They’re all good for you! Get the inspiration
you need. But don’t forget to get back to work. Do what you can do & trust
God for the rest! He loves you & wants you to trust in Him. Just pick up a
dollar bill or coin & read, “In God
we trust!” Won’t you?
Footnotes:
[1] Rom.7:18
[2] Jam.4:8
[3] Matthew 14:31
[4] Matthew 14:33
[5] Heb.10:25
US tourists swim for 14 hours after boat sinks
By Danica Coto, AP, Apr 25, 2013
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)—The fishing trip off the rugged north coast of St. Lucia was supposed to last all day, but about four hours into the journey, the boat’s electric system crackled and popped.
Dan Suski, a 30-year-old business owner and information technology expert from San Francisco, had been wrestling a 200-pound marlin in rough seas with help from his sister, Kate Suski, a 39-year-old architect from Seattle. It was around noon April 21.
He was still trying to reel in the fish when water rushed into the cabin and flooded the engine room, prompting the captain to radio for help as he yelled out their coordinates.
It would be nearly 14 hours and a long, long swim before what was supposed to be a highlight of their sunny vacation would come to an end.
As the waves pounded the boat they had chartered from the local company “Reel Irie,” more water flooded in. The captain threw life jackets to the Suskis.
“He said, ‘Jump out! Jump out!’” Kate Suski recalled in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press.
The Suskis obeyed and jumped into the water with the captain and first mate. Less than five minutes later, the boat sank.
The group was at least eight miles (13 kilometers) from shore, and waves more than twice their size tossed them.
“The captain was telling us to stay together, and that help was on its way and that we needed to wait,” Kate Suski said.
The group waited for about an hour, but no one came.
“I was saying, ‘Let’s swim, let’s swim. If they’re coming, they will find us. We can’t just stay here,’” she recalled.
As they began to swim, the Suskis lost sight of the captain and first mate amid the burgeoning swells. Soon after, they also lost sight of land amid the rain.
“We would just see swells and gray,” Dan Suski said.
A plane and a helicopter appeared in the distance and hovered over the area, but no one spotted the siblings.
Several hours went by, and the sun began to set.
“There’s this very real understanding that the situation is dire,” Kate Suski said. “You come face-to-face with understanding your own mortality … We both processed the possible ways we might die. Would we drown? Be eaten by a shark?”
“Hypothermia?” Dan Suski asked.
“Would our legs cramp up and make it impossible to swim?” the sister continued.
They swam for 12 to 14 hours, talking as they pushed and shivered their way through the ocean. Dan Suski tried to ignore images of the movie “Open Water” that kept popping into his head and its story of a scuba-diving couple left behind by their group and attacked by sharks. His sister said she also couldn’t stop thinking about sharks.
When they finally came within 30 feet (9 meters) of land, they realized they couldn’t get out of the water.
“There were sheer cliffs coming into the ocean,” she said. “We knew we would get crushed.”
They swam until they noticed a spit of sand nearby. When they got to land, they collapsed, barely able to walk. It was past midnight, and they didn’t notice any homes in the area.
“Dan said the first priority was to stay warm,” she recalled.
They hiked inland and lay side by side, pulling up grass and brush to cover themselves and stay warm. Kate Suski had only her bikini on, having shed her sundress to swim better. Dan Suski had gotten rid of his shorts, having recalled a saying when he was a kid that “the best-dressed corpses wear cotton.”
As the sun came up, they began to hike through thick brush, picking up bitter mangoes along the way and stopping to eat green bananas.
“It was probably the best and worst banana I’ve ever had,” Dan Suski recalled.
Some three hours later, they spotted a young farm worker walking with his white dog. He fed them crackers, gave them water and waited until police arrived, the Suskis said.
The Suskis were hospitalized and received IV fluids, with doctors concerned they couldn’t draw blood from Kate Suski’s arm because she was so dehydrated. They also learned that the captain and mate were rescued after spending nearly 23 hours in the water.
St. Lucia’s tourism minister called it a miracle, and the island’s maritime affairs unit is investigating exactly what caused the boat to sink. Marine Police Sgt. Finley Leonce said they have already interviewed the captain, and that police did not suspect foul play or any criminal activity in the sinking of the ship.
The brother and sister said they don’t blame anyone for the shipwreck.
“We are so grateful to be alive right now,” Kate Suski said. “Nothing can sort of puncture that bubble.”
Upon returning to their hotel in St. Lucia earlier this week, the Suskis were upgraded to a suite as they recover from cuts on their feet, severe tendonitis in their ankles from swimming and abrasions from the lifejackets.
“It’s really been amazing,” Dan Suski said. “It’s a moving experience for me.”
On Saturday, they plan to fly back to the U.S. to meet their father in Miami.
Once a night owl, Kate Suski no longer minds getting up early for flights, or for any other reason.
“Since this ordeal, I’ve been waking up at dawn every morning,” she said. “I’ve never looked forward to the sunrise so much in my life.”
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)—The fishing trip off the rugged north coast of St. Lucia was supposed to last all day, but about four hours into the journey, the boat’s electric system crackled and popped.
Dan Suski, a 30-year-old business owner and information technology expert from San Francisco, had been wrestling a 200-pound marlin in rough seas with help from his sister, Kate Suski, a 39-year-old architect from Seattle. It was around noon April 21.
He was still trying to reel in the fish when water rushed into the cabin and flooded the engine room, prompting the captain to radio for help as he yelled out their coordinates.
It would be nearly 14 hours and a long, long swim before what was supposed to be a highlight of their sunny vacation would come to an end.
As the waves pounded the boat they had chartered from the local company “Reel Irie,” more water flooded in. The captain threw life jackets to the Suskis.
“He said, ‘Jump out! Jump out!’” Kate Suski recalled in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press.
The Suskis obeyed and jumped into the water with the captain and first mate. Less than five minutes later, the boat sank.
The group was at least eight miles (13 kilometers) from shore, and waves more than twice their size tossed them.
“The captain was telling us to stay together, and that help was on its way and that we needed to wait,” Kate Suski said.
The group waited for about an hour, but no one came.
“I was saying, ‘Let’s swim, let’s swim. If they’re coming, they will find us. We can’t just stay here,’” she recalled.
As they began to swim, the Suskis lost sight of the captain and first mate amid the burgeoning swells. Soon after, they also lost sight of land amid the rain.
“We would just see swells and gray,” Dan Suski said.
A plane and a helicopter appeared in the distance and hovered over the area, but no one spotted the siblings.
Several hours went by, and the sun began to set.
“There’s this very real understanding that the situation is dire,” Kate Suski said. “You come face-to-face with understanding your own mortality … We both processed the possible ways we might die. Would we drown? Be eaten by a shark?”
“Hypothermia?” Dan Suski asked.
“Would our legs cramp up and make it impossible to swim?” the sister continued.
They swam for 12 to 14 hours, talking as they pushed and shivered their way through the ocean. Dan Suski tried to ignore images of the movie “Open Water” that kept popping into his head and its story of a scuba-diving couple left behind by their group and attacked by sharks. His sister said she also couldn’t stop thinking about sharks.
When they finally came within 30 feet (9 meters) of land, they realized they couldn’t get out of the water.
“There were sheer cliffs coming into the ocean,” she said. “We knew we would get crushed.”
They swam until they noticed a spit of sand nearby. When they got to land, they collapsed, barely able to walk. It was past midnight, and they didn’t notice any homes in the area.
“Dan said the first priority was to stay warm,” she recalled.
They hiked inland and lay side by side, pulling up grass and brush to cover themselves and stay warm. Kate Suski had only her bikini on, having shed her sundress to swim better. Dan Suski had gotten rid of his shorts, having recalled a saying when he was a kid that “the best-dressed corpses wear cotton.”
As the sun came up, they began to hike through thick brush, picking up bitter mangoes along the way and stopping to eat green bananas.
“It was probably the best and worst banana I’ve ever had,” Dan Suski recalled.
Some three hours later, they spotted a young farm worker walking with his white dog. He fed them crackers, gave them water and waited until police arrived, the Suskis said.
The Suskis were hospitalized and received IV fluids, with doctors concerned they couldn’t draw blood from Kate Suski’s arm because she was so dehydrated. They also learned that the captain and mate were rescued after spending nearly 23 hours in the water.
St. Lucia’s tourism minister called it a miracle, and the island’s maritime affairs unit is investigating exactly what caused the boat to sink. Marine Police Sgt. Finley Leonce said they have already interviewed the captain, and that police did not suspect foul play or any criminal activity in the sinking of the ship.
The brother and sister said they don’t blame anyone for the shipwreck.
“We are so grateful to be alive right now,” Kate Suski said. “Nothing can sort of puncture that bubble.”
Upon returning to their hotel in St. Lucia earlier this week, the Suskis were upgraded to a suite as they recover from cuts on their feet, severe tendonitis in their ankles from swimming and abrasions from the lifejackets.
“It’s really been amazing,” Dan Suski said. “It’s a moving experience for me.”
On Saturday, they plan to fly back to the U.S. to meet their father in Miami.
Once a night owl, Kate Suski no longer minds getting up early for flights, or for any other reason.
“Since this ordeal, I’ve been waking up at dawn every morning,” she said. “I’ve never looked forward to the sunrise so much in my life.”
Canadian Priest Killed in Snatch and Grab Shooting in Haiti
Reuters, April 25, 2013
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters)—A Canadian missionary was shot to death on Thursday as he left a bank in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, according to local media reports.
The priest, Richard Joyal of Manitoba, was shot three times in the back by a man on a motorcycle who snatched a bag the priest was carrying, the reports said.
Joyal had previously worked in the Philippines and Ivory Coast, according to a source familiar his activities in Haiti.
The Canadian government recently issued a travel advisory for its citizens visiting the Caribbean nation, warning them to “exercise a high degree of caution due to high crime rates in various parts of the country and ongoing political tensions.”
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters)—A Canadian missionary was shot to death on Thursday as he left a bank in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, according to local media reports.
The priest, Richard Joyal of Manitoba, was shot three times in the back by a man on a motorcycle who snatched a bag the priest was carrying, the reports said.
Joyal had previously worked in the Philippines and Ivory Coast, according to a source familiar his activities in Haiti.
The Canadian government recently issued a travel advisory for its citizens visiting the Caribbean nation, warning them to “exercise a high degree of caution due to high crime rates in various parts of the country and ongoing political tensions.”
Like a Tarantino movie: carjacking victim tells of 90 harrowing minutes spent with Tsarnaev brothers
Eric Moskowitz, The Boston Globe, April 26, 2013
The 26-year-old entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind him, slamming to a stop. A man in dark clothes got out and approached the passenger window. It was nearly 11pm.
The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him, lowered the window—and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door, and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about the previous Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy photos of suspects less than six hours earlier.
“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
He ordered Danny to drive—right on Fordham Road, right again on Commonwealth Avenue—the beginning of an achingly slow odyssey in which Danny felt the possibility of death pressing on him like a vice.
Now, Danny—the victim of the Tsarnaev brothers’ much-discussed but previously little-understood carjacking—filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10.30 p.m. on April 18, and the Watertown shoot-out that ended just before 1am. Danny asked that he be identified only by his American nickname.
The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and the iPhone 5, whether anyone still listens to CDs—all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.
Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they asked while silently analysing every threatened command, every overheard snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him.
“Death is so close to me,” Danny recalled thinking. His life had until that moment seemed ascendant, from a province in Central China to graduate school at Northeastern University to a Kendall Square start-up.
“I don’t want to die,” he thought. “I have a lot of dreams that haven’t come true yet.”
After a zigzagging trek through Brighton, Watertown, and back to Cambridge, Danny would seize his chance for escape at the Shell Station on Memorial Drive, his break turning on two words—“cash only”—that had rarely seemed so welcome.
When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device—letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman.
“F—-!” he heard Tamerlan say, feeling the rush of a near-miss grab at his back, but the man did not follow. Danny reached the haven of a Mobil station across the street, seeking cover in the supply room, shouting for the clerk to call 911.
His quick-thinking escape, authorities say, allowed police to swiftly track down the Mercedes, abating a possible attack by the brothers on New York City and precipitating a wild shootout in Watertown that would seriously wound one officer, kill Tamerlan, and leave a severely injured Dzhokhar hiding in the neighborhood. He was caught the following night, ending a harrowing week across Greater Boston.
Danny spoke softly but steadily in a 2 ½-hour interview at his Cambridge apartment.
Danny, who offered his account only on the condition that his Chinese name not be revealed, said he does not want attention. But he suspects his full name may come out if and when he testifies against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I don’t want to be a famous person talking on the TV,” Danny said, kneading his hands, uncomfortable with the praise he has received from the few friends he has shared the story with, some of whom encouraged him to go public. “I don’t feel like a hero… I was trying to save myself.”
Danny, trained as an engineer, made scrupulous mental notes of street signs and passing details, even as he abided the older Tsarnaev’s command not to study his face.
“Don’t look at me!” Tamerlan shouted at one point. “Do you remember my face?”
“No, no, I don’t remember anything,” he said.
Tamerlan laughed. “It’s like white guys, they look at black guys and think all black guys look the same,” he said. “And maybe you think all white guys look the same.”
“Exactly,” Danny said, though he thought nothing of the sort. It was one of many moments in their mental chess match, Danny playing up his outsider status in America and playing down his wealth—he claimed the car was older than it was, and he understated his lease payments—in a desperate hope of extending his life.
Danny had come to the United States in 2009 for a master’s degree, graduated in January 2012, and returned to China to await a work visa. He came back two months ago, leasing a Mercedes and moving into a high-rise with two Chinese friends while diving into a startup. But he told Tamerlan he was still a student and that he had been here barely a year. It seemed to help that Tamerlan had trouble understanding even Danny’s pronunciation of the word “China.”
“Oh, that’s why your English is not very good,” the brother replied, finally figuring it out. “OK, you’re Chinese … I’m a Muslim.”
“Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!” Danny said. “We are so friendly to Muslims.”
When the ordeal had started, Danny prayed it would be a quick robbery. Tamerlan demanded money, but Danny had just $45 in cash—kept in the armrest—and a wallet full of plastic. Evidently disappointed to get so little out of holding up a $50,000 car, he told Danny to drive. The old sedan followed.
“Relax,” Tamerlan said, when Danny’s nerves made it hard for him to stay in the lane. Danny, recalling the moment, said, “My heart is pounding so fast.”
They lapped Brighton and crossed the Charles River into Watertown, following Arsenal Street. Looking through Danny’s wallet, Tamerlan asked for his ATM code—a friend’s birthdate.
Directed to a quiet neighborhood in East Watertown, Danny pulled up as instructed on an unfamiliar side street. The sedan stopped behind him. A man approached—the skinnier, floppy-haired “Suspect No. 2” in the photos and videos released by investigators earlier that evening—and Tamerlan got out, ordering Danny into the passenger seat, making it clear that if he tried anything he would shoot him. For several minutes, the brothers transferred heavy objects from the smaller car into Danny’s SUV. “Luggage,” Danny thought.
With Tamerlan driving now, Danny in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar behind Danny, they stopped in Watertown Center so Dzhokhar could withdraw money from the Bank of America ATM using Danny’s card. Danny, shivering from fear but claiming to be cold, asked for his jacket. Guarded by just one brother, Danny wondered if this was his chance, but he saw around him only locked storefronts. A police car drove by, lights off.
Tamerlan agreed to retrieve Danny’s jacket from the back seat. Danny unbuckled, put on the jacket, then tried to buckle the seat belt behind him to make an escape easier. “Don’t do that,” Tamerlan said, studying him. “Don’t be stupid.”
Danny thought about his burgeoning start-up and about a girl he secretly liked in New York. “I think, ‘Oh my god, I have no chance to meet you again,’ ” he recalled.
Dzhokhar was back now. “We both have guns,” Tamerlan said, though Danny had not seen a second weapon. He overheard them speak in a foreign language—“Manhattan” the only intelligible word to him—and then ask in English if Danny’s car could be driven out of state. “What do you mean?” Danny said, confused. “Like New York,” one brother said.
They continued west on Route 20, in the direction of Waltham and Interstate 95, passing a police station. Danny tried to send telepathic messages to the officers inside, imagined dropping and rolling from the moving car.
Tamerlan asked him to turn on and demonstrate the radio. The older brother then quickly flipped through stations, seemingly avoiding the news. He asked if Danny had any CDs. No, he replied, he listens to music on his phone. The tank nearly empty, they stopped at a gas station, but the pumps were closed.
Doubling back, they returned to the Watertown neighbourhood—“Fairfield Street,” Danny saw on the sign—and grabbed a few more things from the parked car, but nothing from the trunk. They put on an instrumental CD that sounded to Danny like a call to prayer.
Suddenly, Danny’s iPhone buzzed. A text from his roommate, wondering in Chinese where he was. Barking at Danny for instructions, Tamerlan used an English-to-Chinese app to text a clunky reply. “I am sick. I am sleeping in a friend’s place tonight.” In a moment, another text, then a call. No one answered. Seconds later, the phone rang again.
“If you say a single word in Chinese, I will kill you right now,” Tamerlan said. Danny understood. His roommate’s boyfriend was on the other end, speaking Mandarin. “I’m sleeping in my friend’s home tonight,” Danny replied in English. “I have to go.”
“Good boy,” Tamerlan said. “Good job.”
The SUV headed for the lights of Soldiers Field Road, banking across River Street to the two open gas stations. Dzhokhar went to fill up using Danny’s credit card, but quickly knocked on the window. “Cash only,” he said, at least at that hour. Tamerlan peeled off $50.
Danny watched Dzhokhar head to the store, struggling to decide if this was his moment—until he stopped thinking about it, and let reflexes kick in.
“I was thinking I must do two things: unfasten my seat belt and open the door and jump out as quick as I can. If I didn’t make it, he would kill me right out, he would kill me right away,” Danny said. “I just did it. I did it very fast, using my left hand and right hand simultaneously to open the door, unfasten my seat belt, jump out … and go.” Danny sprinted between the passenger side of the Mercedes and the pumps and darted into the street, not looking back, drawn to the Mobil station’s lights. “I didn’t know if it was open or not,” he said. “In that moment, I prayed.”
The brothers took off. The clerk, after brief confusion, dialed 911 on a portable phone, bringing it to Danny in the storeroom. The dispatcher told him to take a deep breath. The officers, arriving in minutes, took his story, with Danny noting the car could be tracked by his iPhone and by a Mercedes satellite system, mbrace.
After an hour or more—as the shoot-out and manhunt erupted in Watertown—police brought Danny to Watertown for a “drive-by lineup,” studying faces of detained suspects in the street from the safety of a cruiser. He recognized none of them. He spent the night talking to police and the FBI, appreciating the kindness of a state trooper who gave him a bagel and coffee. At 3 the next afternoon, they dropped Danny back in Cambridge.
“I think, Tamerlan is dead, I feel good, obviously safer. But the younger brother—I don’t know,” Danny recalled thinking, wondering if Dzhokhar would come looking for him. But the police knew the wallet and registration were still in the bullet-riddled Mercedes, and that a wounded Dzhokhar had probably not gotten far. That night, they found him in a boat.
The 26-year-old entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind him, slamming to a stop. A man in dark clothes got out and approached the passenger window. It was nearly 11pm.
The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him, lowered the window—and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door, and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about the previous Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy photos of suspects less than six hours earlier.
“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
He ordered Danny to drive—right on Fordham Road, right again on Commonwealth Avenue—the beginning of an achingly slow odyssey in which Danny felt the possibility of death pressing on him like a vice.
Now, Danny—the victim of the Tsarnaev brothers’ much-discussed but previously little-understood carjacking—filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10.30 p.m. on April 18, and the Watertown shoot-out that ended just before 1am. Danny asked that he be identified only by his American nickname.
The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and the iPhone 5, whether anyone still listens to CDs—all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.
Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they asked while silently analysing every threatened command, every overheard snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him.
“Death is so close to me,” Danny recalled thinking. His life had until that moment seemed ascendant, from a province in Central China to graduate school at Northeastern University to a Kendall Square start-up.
“I don’t want to die,” he thought. “I have a lot of dreams that haven’t come true yet.”
After a zigzagging trek through Brighton, Watertown, and back to Cambridge, Danny would seize his chance for escape at the Shell Station on Memorial Drive, his break turning on two words—“cash only”—that had rarely seemed so welcome.
When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device—letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman.
“F—-!” he heard Tamerlan say, feeling the rush of a near-miss grab at his back, but the man did not follow. Danny reached the haven of a Mobil station across the street, seeking cover in the supply room, shouting for the clerk to call 911.
His quick-thinking escape, authorities say, allowed police to swiftly track down the Mercedes, abating a possible attack by the brothers on New York City and precipitating a wild shootout in Watertown that would seriously wound one officer, kill Tamerlan, and leave a severely injured Dzhokhar hiding in the neighborhood. He was caught the following night, ending a harrowing week across Greater Boston.
Danny spoke softly but steadily in a 2 ½-hour interview at his Cambridge apartment.
Danny, who offered his account only on the condition that his Chinese name not be revealed, said he does not want attention. But he suspects his full name may come out if and when he testifies against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I don’t want to be a famous person talking on the TV,” Danny said, kneading his hands, uncomfortable with the praise he has received from the few friends he has shared the story with, some of whom encouraged him to go public. “I don’t feel like a hero… I was trying to save myself.”
Danny, trained as an engineer, made scrupulous mental notes of street signs and passing details, even as he abided the older Tsarnaev’s command not to study his face.
“Don’t look at me!” Tamerlan shouted at one point. “Do you remember my face?”
“No, no, I don’t remember anything,” he said.
Tamerlan laughed. “It’s like white guys, they look at black guys and think all black guys look the same,” he said. “And maybe you think all white guys look the same.”
“Exactly,” Danny said, though he thought nothing of the sort. It was one of many moments in their mental chess match, Danny playing up his outsider status in America and playing down his wealth—he claimed the car was older than it was, and he understated his lease payments—in a desperate hope of extending his life.
Danny had come to the United States in 2009 for a master’s degree, graduated in January 2012, and returned to China to await a work visa. He came back two months ago, leasing a Mercedes and moving into a high-rise with two Chinese friends while diving into a startup. But he told Tamerlan he was still a student and that he had been here barely a year. It seemed to help that Tamerlan had trouble understanding even Danny’s pronunciation of the word “China.”
“Oh, that’s why your English is not very good,” the brother replied, finally figuring it out. “OK, you’re Chinese … I’m a Muslim.”
“Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!” Danny said. “We are so friendly to Muslims.”
When the ordeal had started, Danny prayed it would be a quick robbery. Tamerlan demanded money, but Danny had just $45 in cash—kept in the armrest—and a wallet full of plastic. Evidently disappointed to get so little out of holding up a $50,000 car, he told Danny to drive. The old sedan followed.
“Relax,” Tamerlan said, when Danny’s nerves made it hard for him to stay in the lane. Danny, recalling the moment, said, “My heart is pounding so fast.”
They lapped Brighton and crossed the Charles River into Watertown, following Arsenal Street. Looking through Danny’s wallet, Tamerlan asked for his ATM code—a friend’s birthdate.
Directed to a quiet neighborhood in East Watertown, Danny pulled up as instructed on an unfamiliar side street. The sedan stopped behind him. A man approached—the skinnier, floppy-haired “Suspect No. 2” in the photos and videos released by investigators earlier that evening—and Tamerlan got out, ordering Danny into the passenger seat, making it clear that if he tried anything he would shoot him. For several minutes, the brothers transferred heavy objects from the smaller car into Danny’s SUV. “Luggage,” Danny thought.
With Tamerlan driving now, Danny in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar behind Danny, they stopped in Watertown Center so Dzhokhar could withdraw money from the Bank of America ATM using Danny’s card. Danny, shivering from fear but claiming to be cold, asked for his jacket. Guarded by just one brother, Danny wondered if this was his chance, but he saw around him only locked storefronts. A police car drove by, lights off.
Tamerlan agreed to retrieve Danny’s jacket from the back seat. Danny unbuckled, put on the jacket, then tried to buckle the seat belt behind him to make an escape easier. “Don’t do that,” Tamerlan said, studying him. “Don’t be stupid.”
Danny thought about his burgeoning start-up and about a girl he secretly liked in New York. “I think, ‘Oh my god, I have no chance to meet you again,’ ” he recalled.
Dzhokhar was back now. “We both have guns,” Tamerlan said, though Danny had not seen a second weapon. He overheard them speak in a foreign language—“Manhattan” the only intelligible word to him—and then ask in English if Danny’s car could be driven out of state. “What do you mean?” Danny said, confused. “Like New York,” one brother said.
They continued west on Route 20, in the direction of Waltham and Interstate 95, passing a police station. Danny tried to send telepathic messages to the officers inside, imagined dropping and rolling from the moving car.
Tamerlan asked him to turn on and demonstrate the radio. The older brother then quickly flipped through stations, seemingly avoiding the news. He asked if Danny had any CDs. No, he replied, he listens to music on his phone. The tank nearly empty, they stopped at a gas station, but the pumps were closed.
Doubling back, they returned to the Watertown neighbourhood—“Fairfield Street,” Danny saw on the sign—and grabbed a few more things from the parked car, but nothing from the trunk. They put on an instrumental CD that sounded to Danny like a call to prayer.
Suddenly, Danny’s iPhone buzzed. A text from his roommate, wondering in Chinese where he was. Barking at Danny for instructions, Tamerlan used an English-to-Chinese app to text a clunky reply. “I am sick. I am sleeping in a friend’s place tonight.” In a moment, another text, then a call. No one answered. Seconds later, the phone rang again.
“If you say a single word in Chinese, I will kill you right now,” Tamerlan said. Danny understood. His roommate’s boyfriend was on the other end, speaking Mandarin. “I’m sleeping in my friend’s home tonight,” Danny replied in English. “I have to go.”
“Good boy,” Tamerlan said. “Good job.”
The SUV headed for the lights of Soldiers Field Road, banking across River Street to the two open gas stations. Dzhokhar went to fill up using Danny’s credit card, but quickly knocked on the window. “Cash only,” he said, at least at that hour. Tamerlan peeled off $50.
Danny watched Dzhokhar head to the store, struggling to decide if this was his moment—until he stopped thinking about it, and let reflexes kick in.
“I was thinking I must do two things: unfasten my seat belt and open the door and jump out as quick as I can. If I didn’t make it, he would kill me right out, he would kill me right away,” Danny said. “I just did it. I did it very fast, using my left hand and right hand simultaneously to open the door, unfasten my seat belt, jump out … and go.” Danny sprinted between the passenger side of the Mercedes and the pumps and darted into the street, not looking back, drawn to the Mobil station’s lights. “I didn’t know if it was open or not,” he said. “In that moment, I prayed.”
The brothers took off. The clerk, after brief confusion, dialed 911 on a portable phone, bringing it to Danny in the storeroom. The dispatcher told him to take a deep breath. The officers, arriving in minutes, took his story, with Danny noting the car could be tracked by his iPhone and by a Mercedes satellite system, mbrace.
After an hour or more—as the shoot-out and manhunt erupted in Watertown—police brought Danny to Watertown for a “drive-by lineup,” studying faces of detained suspects in the street from the safety of a cruiser. He recognized none of them. He spent the night talking to police and the FBI, appreciating the kindness of a state trooper who gave him a bagel and coffee. At 3 the next afternoon, they dropped Danny back in Cambridge.
“I think, Tamerlan is dead, I feel good, obviously safer. But the younger brother—I don’t know,” Danny recalled thinking, wondering if Dzhokhar would come looking for him. But the police knew the wallet and registration were still in the bullet-riddled Mercedes, and that a wounded Dzhokhar had probably not gotten far. That night, they found him in a boat.
The "Facts" Keep Changing About the Boston Bombings--And It's Fueling a Conspiracy Theory Industry
(DID THE GOVERNMENT HAVE PRIOR INFORMATION THAT A BOMB WAS PLANTED AT THE MARATHON BUT DECIDED NOT TO POSTPONE THE EVENT?) Dennis
By Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, April 25, 2013
In the aftermath of massive, complicated crimes it’s not uncommon for a bit of crucial information to be immediately put forward by police, only to be contradicted later on. While it’s understandable that initial leads and assertions might end up being wrong in a dynamic situation like the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, wholesale contradictions can encourage skepticism of the motives of those releasing inaccuracies—as with initial, false reports that Osama bin Laden hid behind his wife when U.S. forces shot him. Another effect of changing details can be to encourage conspiracy theorists who latch onto inconsistencies, and to undermine trust in authorities. (IF AUTHORITIES WANT TRUST THEY NEED TO BE TRUTHFUL)
Now, almost a week after the Tsarnaev brothers fought a rolling street battle with dozens of heavily armed police officers, we learned Wednesday night that they had only a single handgun, according to sources who spoke with ABC News and the AP, something that directly contradicts what officials had previously said.
Here are some of the biggest changes to facts released in this investigation:
•Suspects’ arms—After the manhunt, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the brothers were “heavily armed” and numerous reports detailed a fairly extensive arsenal. According to a New York Times report from April 21 citing a law enforcement official, “The authorities found an M-4 carbine rifle … two handguns and a BB gun.” Now unnamed sources say there was only a single 9mm pistol between the two brothers. Indeed, photos of the shootout suggest only one brother had a weapon. (MAYBE THE POLICE STARTED SHOOTING AT THEM!)
•Boat gunfight?—Police initially reported that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fired on police when they found him hiding in a boat Friday night. “It was back and forth … yes—he was firing,” Watertown Police Chief Ed Deveau told CNN Saturday (though the FBI cautioned at the time that only federal authorities had official information). The Washington Post reported that the suspect inside the boat “was shooting back.” But later, the Washington Post and the AP reported yesterday that Tsarnaev was unarmed when police found him after what was described as a gunfight. As it turns out, police may have been spooked by an errant shot, and fired into the boat, but apparently zero shots came out. (THE MAN THAT FOUND HIM SAID HE SEEMED TO BE BADLY INJURED AND UNCONSCIOUS)
•7 -Eleven and the MIT officer—Initial reports suggested the brothers tried to hold up a 7-Eleven, and then killed an MIT officer who either responded to the robbery or just happened to be in the area. But days later, authorities revealed that the holdup was committed by different suspects and the confusion was caused by the close proximity of the two events. It’s still unknown exactly why the brothers killed the police officer. (DO WE KNOW IT WAS THEM?)
•Carjacking—Some reports indicate that the person whom the brothers carjacked escaped while they inexplicably went into a store to buy snacks, while others say the brothers let the victim go because he wasn’t American. It’s also still unclear which brother stole the black SUV, and which drove the Honda that followed.
•Trip to NYC—What the suspects did after the bombing remains a mystery, but one detail that emerged was that they were planning to head to New York City—to party. That’s what New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday. But today, NBC News reports the brothers discussed trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, but that the plan was not well developed and “aspirational at most.” (WILL WE EVER KNOW THE TRUTH?)(IT STARTS SOUNDING LIKE DALLAS 1963 ALL OVER AGAIN)
By Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, April 25, 2013
In the aftermath of massive, complicated crimes it’s not uncommon for a bit of crucial information to be immediately put forward by police, only to be contradicted later on. While it’s understandable that initial leads and assertions might end up being wrong in a dynamic situation like the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, wholesale contradictions can encourage skepticism of the motives of those releasing inaccuracies—as with initial, false reports that Osama bin Laden hid behind his wife when U.S. forces shot him. Another effect of changing details can be to encourage conspiracy theorists who latch onto inconsistencies, and to undermine trust in authorities. (IF AUTHORITIES WANT TRUST THEY NEED TO BE TRUTHFUL)
Now, almost a week after the Tsarnaev brothers fought a rolling street battle with dozens of heavily armed police officers, we learned Wednesday night that they had only a single handgun, according to sources who spoke with ABC News and the AP, something that directly contradicts what officials had previously said.
Here are some of the biggest changes to facts released in this investigation:
•Suspects’ arms—After the manhunt, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the brothers were “heavily armed” and numerous reports detailed a fairly extensive arsenal. According to a New York Times report from April 21 citing a law enforcement official, “The authorities found an M-4 carbine rifle … two handguns and a BB gun.” Now unnamed sources say there was only a single 9mm pistol between the two brothers. Indeed, photos of the shootout suggest only one brother had a weapon. (MAYBE THE POLICE STARTED SHOOTING AT THEM!)
•Boat gunfight?—Police initially reported that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fired on police when they found him hiding in a boat Friday night. “It was back and forth … yes—he was firing,” Watertown Police Chief Ed Deveau told CNN Saturday (though the FBI cautioned at the time that only federal authorities had official information). The Washington Post reported that the suspect inside the boat “was shooting back.” But later, the Washington Post and the AP reported yesterday that Tsarnaev was unarmed when police found him after what was described as a gunfight. As it turns out, police may have been spooked by an errant shot, and fired into the boat, but apparently zero shots came out. (THE MAN THAT FOUND HIM SAID HE SEEMED TO BE BADLY INJURED AND UNCONSCIOUS)
•7 -Eleven and the MIT officer—Initial reports suggested the brothers tried to hold up a 7-Eleven, and then killed an MIT officer who either responded to the robbery or just happened to be in the area. But days later, authorities revealed that the holdup was committed by different suspects and the confusion was caused by the close proximity of the two events. It’s still unknown exactly why the brothers killed the police officer. (DO WE KNOW IT WAS THEM?)
•Carjacking—Some reports indicate that the person whom the brothers carjacked escaped while they inexplicably went into a store to buy snacks, while others say the brothers let the victim go because he wasn’t American. It’s also still unclear which brother stole the black SUV, and which drove the Honda that followed.
•Trip to NYC—What the suspects did after the bombing remains a mystery, but one detail that emerged was that they were planning to head to New York City—to party. That’s what New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday. But today, NBC News reports the brothers discussed trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, but that the plan was not well developed and “aspirational at most.” (WILL WE EVER KNOW THE TRUTH?)(IT STARTS SOUNDING LIKE DALLAS 1963 ALL OVER AGAIN)
Catholics try their hand at old-fashioned evangelism
Tim Townsend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Apr 25, 2013
SHREWSBURY, Mo. (RNS) On a recent rainy Saturday, about 125 Catholics packed a basement conference room, many of them older, most of them lay people. Many were representing their parishes.
They gathered here to learn how to spread the faith, a concept that is both fundamental to Christianity and nearly foreign to modern Roman Catholics.
For the first hour of the conference, Kenneth Livengood, a parishioner at Holy Trinity Parish in St. Ann, Mo., detailed one way—door-to-door evangelization, a missionary strategy more familiar to Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“We’ve been tricked into thinking faith is a private matter,” Livengood told the audience. “That’s a lie. Faith is meant to be public, and there are many ways to share it.”
He taught them how to form a door-to-door ministry, explained how to divide a boundary map of their parish into geographical sections, suggested useful handouts, gave safety tips, and showed videos that detailed the best way to respond to various reactions from those on the other side of the door.
“Divide up into teams of two,” Livengood said. “One of you can do the talking and the other should be a silent prayer warrior. At the next house, flip your roles.”
Evangelization is central to the Christian mission, but for the average adherent, the physical act of approaching a neighbor, work colleague or family member can be daunting.
A pamphlet produced by the Archdiocese of St. Louis called “Witnessing Christ Door-to-Door” offered a list of suggestions “since this may be a novel, perhaps, intimidating path.”
The suggestions include:
•”Ask each person you meet if they are in need of prayer.”
•”Early Saturday mornings may not make for the most receptive ears.”
•”Trying to provide too many facts about the Church may cause misunderstandings.”
•”Doing a little role-playing before going out for visits may be helpful.”
•”Sometimes a person answering the door thinks getting back to regular Mass attendance would make their grandmothers very happy, which might present a welcoming start for conversation.”
In the final scene of the Gospel of Matthew, the resurrected Christ appears to his disciples and tells them—in what has come to be called the “Great Commission”—to make new disciples by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Catholics are no less engaged by the Great Commission than evangelicals, but over the last century, the church has relied on evangelizing through the example of its social justice work, relieving those in the pews from having to knock on a neighbor’s door.
In the late 1980s, Pope John Paul II began referring to “the new evangelization” as a strategy of bringing lapsed Catholics in Europe back into the church.
In his book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” the pope wrote that evangelization “has never been absent” in the church. He quoted the Apostle Paul from the book of 1 Corinthians: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”
Pope Benedict XVI made his predecessor’s “new evangelism” a central theme of his papacy, even convening a monthlong meeting of bishops from around the world last fall to discuss it.
During a speech to his fellow cardinals in Rome last year, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan called evangelization “the sacred duty,” saying in the words of St. Augustine that it is “ever ancient, ever new.”
“The how of it, the when of it, the where of it, may change,” Dolan said, “but the charge remains constant.”
Many observers have cited Pope Francis’ humble behavior as its own kind of evangelization. Or, to use a phrase attributed to his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.”
Bevans said images of Francis stopping to bless a disabled man during his papal inauguration, or washing the feet of women during Holy Week, were especially powerful.
Julie Bostick, executive director of the St. Louis archdiocese’s office of laity and family life, said the archdiocese would hold another “how to” conference in June, focusing on evangelizing in the family. Another in the fall will tackle evangelizing in the workplace.
“Sometimes people get a little nervous talking about their faith, but spreading the message of Jesus Christ has always been the mission of the church,” she said. “We’re just trying to refocus.”
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Manter a Visão Celestial
Jesus falando em profecia
Manter a visão celestial é como observar por um planetário as realidades colossais, infinitas e magnÃficas do espaço sideral.
Manter a visão celestial significa focar em Mim acima de tudo, colocar as coisas do espÃrito acima das da carne. Significa lembrar-se por que assumi a forma humana, sofri e morri por você, para poder remi-lo, compreendê-lo, e perdoar-lhe sempre, curá-lo e protegê-lo.
Significa colocar a Palavra em primeiro lugar em sua vida, acreditar e agir segundo a sua verdade. Significa entrar no templo Comigo cada dia, ter comunhão com o Meu EspÃrito e se alimentar espiritualmente. Significa clamar as Minhas promessas não importa como se sinta ou quais as circunstâncias no fÃsico.
*
Um atleta em treinamento para se classificar para as OlimpÃadas tem que manter essa visão e meta. Ele tem a “visão olÃmpica”, que o faz aguentar os treinos e exercÃcios difÃceis e exaustivos. Ele não dá importância ao fato de não ter tempo de folga, a fadiga do dia, ou as poucas horas de sono. — Porque aquela meta, a visão, se torna mais importante do que quaisquer dificuldades atuais. Para conseguir sobreviver aos anos de treinamento, a meta tem que ser algo que vai valer a pena para ele — tem de ser tudo para ele. E assim que ele decide que é, precisa lutar para permanecer concentrado naquela meta e manter aquela visão diante de si o tempo todo.
Tem que decidir se vale a pena deixar tudo o mais de lado pela Minha Palavra e as Minhas promessas para o futuro para ganhar esse prêmio. Então, assim que tiver decidido, tem de lutar para manter sua concentração, essa visão perante você!
Muitos de vocês já tomaram essas decisões; mas agora é o perÃodo em que têm que ser tenazes e determinados, quando é preciso lutar para não perder o foco.
O que pode fazer na prática para manter a visão celestial?
— Lute para ter o seu tempo no templo Comigo. Esta é a maneira mais eficaz de se renovar com a Minha visão e para não se esquecer da Minha visão celestial.
—Obedeça a Minha Palavra não importa como se sinta.
—Louve-Me regularmente, louve-Me consistentemente.Nada clareia a sua visão mais rápido do que o louvor. O louvor abre seus olhos para a visão celestial para que correr atrás dela, almejá-la e lutar por ela seja muito mais fácil para você. A visão se torna mais real para você, o que faz com que seu desejo de correr atrás dela seja ainda mais forte e efetivo.
*
A visão celestial, como Paulo disse, significa “prosseguir para o alvo, pelo prêmio da soberana vocação de Deus.”[1] Significa fazer da Minha vontade — da Minha soberana vocação — a sua meta e propósito na vida. É tudo pelo que você luta, “corre atrás” e procura — cumprir a Minha vontade, a ponto de considerar isso o prêmio. Não somente um prêmio, mas o prêmio, tudo o que sempre quis fazer na vida!
Tal como Paulo disse, é “a soberana vocação de Deus em Cristo Jesus”. Essas são palavras-chave: “em Cristo Jesus”. Você encontra essa soberana vocação em Mim — ao olhar para Mim, ao viver para Mim. Esta soberana vocação é no final das contas o chamado para viver por Mim. Tudo o que faz na vida está relacionado a Mim, ou seja, você tem que estar olhando para Mim. Tem que manter os olhos em Mim para alcançar a sua meta — Minha meta — para você.
*
Você mantém a visão celestial fazendo as escolhas que o levam para perto de Mim — a linha de chegada, se preferir. É como um corredor na pista: ele só pode ir na direção na qual está olhando. Se estiver com os olhos fixos na linha de chegada, é lá que vai parar. Mas se os seus olhos estiverem em outras trilhas que o distanciam da pista de corrida, não vai alcançar a meta da corrida.
Se quiser manter a visão celestial na sua corrida da vida, concentre-se em Mim, o Autor e Consumador da sua fé, do curso da sua vida. Mantenha a visão permanecendo focado em Mim e tomando apenas as decisões que você sabe que vão levá-lo para uma vida mais plena em Mim.
*
Uma conexão forte Comigo no espÃrito o ajudará a manter a visão celestial o tempo todo.
Pode fortalecer essa conexão através dos momentos que passa Comigo na Palavra. Você fortalece seu enfoque espiritual ao se concentrar no Meu poder. Ganha este elo mais forte sendo fiel, obediente, e seguindo adiante. Você mantém a visão forte ao ficar mais próximo e Ãntimo Comigo como seu Marido.
As chaves para manter essa visão são encontradas ao fazer aquelas coisas que o aproximam mais de Mim, que aumentam a sua fé e encorajam o seu espÃrito; aquilo que os funde ao mundo espiritual e traz o espÃrito muito mais à tona na sua vida. É assim que você mantém a visão. É assim que se mantém conectado e consegue correr com paciência a carreira que lhe está proposta — e vencer![2]
*
E vi um novo céu, e uma nova terra. Porque já o primeiro céu e a primeira terra passaram, e o mar já não existe.
E eu, João, vi a santa cidade, a nova Jerusalém, que de Deus descia do céu, adereçada como uma esposa ataviada para o seu marido.
E ouvi uma grande voz do céu, que dizia: Eis aqui o tabernáculo de Deus com os homens, pois com eles habitará, e eles serão o seu povo, e o mesmo Deus estará com eles, e será o seu Deus.
E Deus limpará de seus olhos toda a lágrima; e não haverá mais morte, nem pranto, nem clamor, nem dor; porque já as primeiras coisas são passadas.
E o que estava assentado sobre o trono disse: Eis que faço novas todas as coisas. E disse-me: Escreve; porque estas palavras são verdadeiras e fiéis.
E disse-me mais: Está cumprido. Eu sou o Alfa e o Omega, o princÃpio e o fim. A quem quer que tiver sede, de graça lhe darei da fonte da água da vida.
Quem vencer, herdará todas as coisas; e eu serei seu Deus, e ele será meu filho."—Apocalipse 21:1–7[3]
Publicado originalmente em 2006. Atualizado e republicado em abril.
Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Edson Campos.
[1] Filipenses 3:14.
[2] Hebreus 12:1.
[3] NVI.
Manter a visão celestial é como observar por um planetário as realidades colossais, infinitas e magnÃficas do espaço sideral.
Manter a visão celestial significa focar em Mim acima de tudo, colocar as coisas do espÃrito acima das da carne. Significa lembrar-se por que assumi a forma humana, sofri e morri por você, para poder remi-lo, compreendê-lo, e perdoar-lhe sempre, curá-lo e protegê-lo.
Significa colocar a Palavra em primeiro lugar em sua vida, acreditar e agir segundo a sua verdade. Significa entrar no templo Comigo cada dia, ter comunhão com o Meu EspÃrito e se alimentar espiritualmente. Significa clamar as Minhas promessas não importa como se sinta ou quais as circunstâncias no fÃsico.
*
Um atleta em treinamento para se classificar para as OlimpÃadas tem que manter essa visão e meta. Ele tem a “visão olÃmpica”, que o faz aguentar os treinos e exercÃcios difÃceis e exaustivos. Ele não dá importância ao fato de não ter tempo de folga, a fadiga do dia, ou as poucas horas de sono. — Porque aquela meta, a visão, se torna mais importante do que quaisquer dificuldades atuais. Para conseguir sobreviver aos anos de treinamento, a meta tem que ser algo que vai valer a pena para ele — tem de ser tudo para ele. E assim que ele decide que é, precisa lutar para permanecer concentrado naquela meta e manter aquela visão diante de si o tempo todo.
Tem que decidir se vale a pena deixar tudo o mais de lado pela Minha Palavra e as Minhas promessas para o futuro para ganhar esse prêmio. Então, assim que tiver decidido, tem de lutar para manter sua concentração, essa visão perante você!
Muitos de vocês já tomaram essas decisões; mas agora é o perÃodo em que têm que ser tenazes e determinados, quando é preciso lutar para não perder o foco.
O que pode fazer na prática para manter a visão celestial?
— Lute para ter o seu tempo no templo Comigo. Esta é a maneira mais eficaz de se renovar com a Minha visão e para não se esquecer da Minha visão celestial.
—Obedeça a Minha Palavra não importa como se sinta.
—Louve-Me regularmente, louve-Me consistentemente.Nada clareia a sua visão mais rápido do que o louvor. O louvor abre seus olhos para a visão celestial para que correr atrás dela, almejá-la e lutar por ela seja muito mais fácil para você. A visão se torna mais real para você, o que faz com que seu desejo de correr atrás dela seja ainda mais forte e efetivo.
*
A visão celestial, como Paulo disse, significa “prosseguir para o alvo, pelo prêmio da soberana vocação de Deus.”[1] Significa fazer da Minha vontade — da Minha soberana vocação — a sua meta e propósito na vida. É tudo pelo que você luta, “corre atrás” e procura — cumprir a Minha vontade, a ponto de considerar isso o prêmio. Não somente um prêmio, mas o prêmio, tudo o que sempre quis fazer na vida!
Tal como Paulo disse, é “a soberana vocação de Deus em Cristo Jesus”. Essas são palavras-chave: “em Cristo Jesus”. Você encontra essa soberana vocação em Mim — ao olhar para Mim, ao viver para Mim. Esta soberana vocação é no final das contas o chamado para viver por Mim. Tudo o que faz na vida está relacionado a Mim, ou seja, você tem que estar olhando para Mim. Tem que manter os olhos em Mim para alcançar a sua meta — Minha meta — para você.
*
Você mantém a visão celestial fazendo as escolhas que o levam para perto de Mim — a linha de chegada, se preferir. É como um corredor na pista: ele só pode ir na direção na qual está olhando. Se estiver com os olhos fixos na linha de chegada, é lá que vai parar. Mas se os seus olhos estiverem em outras trilhas que o distanciam da pista de corrida, não vai alcançar a meta da corrida.
Se quiser manter a visão celestial na sua corrida da vida, concentre-se em Mim, o Autor e Consumador da sua fé, do curso da sua vida. Mantenha a visão permanecendo focado em Mim e tomando apenas as decisões que você sabe que vão levá-lo para uma vida mais plena em Mim.
*
Uma conexão forte Comigo no espÃrito o ajudará a manter a visão celestial o tempo todo.
Pode fortalecer essa conexão através dos momentos que passa Comigo na Palavra. Você fortalece seu enfoque espiritual ao se concentrar no Meu poder. Ganha este elo mais forte sendo fiel, obediente, e seguindo adiante. Você mantém a visão forte ao ficar mais próximo e Ãntimo Comigo como seu Marido.
As chaves para manter essa visão são encontradas ao fazer aquelas coisas que o aproximam mais de Mim, que aumentam a sua fé e encorajam o seu espÃrito; aquilo que os funde ao mundo espiritual e traz o espÃrito muito mais à tona na sua vida. É assim que você mantém a visão. É assim que se mantém conectado e consegue correr com paciência a carreira que lhe está proposta — e vencer![2]
*
E vi um novo céu, e uma nova terra. Porque já o primeiro céu e a primeira terra passaram, e o mar já não existe.
E eu, João, vi a santa cidade, a nova Jerusalém, que de Deus descia do céu, adereçada como uma esposa ataviada para o seu marido.
E ouvi uma grande voz do céu, que dizia: Eis aqui o tabernáculo de Deus com os homens, pois com eles habitará, e eles serão o seu povo, e o mesmo Deus estará com eles, e será o seu Deus.
E Deus limpará de seus olhos toda a lágrima; e não haverá mais morte, nem pranto, nem clamor, nem dor; porque já as primeiras coisas são passadas.
E o que estava assentado sobre o trono disse: Eis que faço novas todas as coisas. E disse-me: Escreve; porque estas palavras são verdadeiras e fiéis.
E disse-me mais: Está cumprido. Eu sou o Alfa e o Omega, o princÃpio e o fim. A quem quer que tiver sede, de graça lhe darei da fonte da água da vida.
Quem vencer, herdará todas as coisas; e eu serei seu Deus, e ele será meu filho."—Apocalipse 21:1–7[3]
Publicado originalmente em 2006. Atualizado e republicado em abril.
Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Revisão Edson Campos.
[1] Filipenses 3:14.
[2] Hebreus 12:1.
[3] NVI.
Golden Opportunities
By D.Brandt Berg
Download Audio (10.5MB)
When very special opportunities arise, we’ve found from years of experience in the Lord’s work that it's something God does in a special way to reach a special audience that you may not have the opportunity to reach again.—Someone He wants to reach or some particular field of ministry that He wants you to proceed with and pursue and not to forsake too soon.
The primary ministry of all of us is reaching the lost and reaching the people who need the message. It’s more important even to leave the ninety-and-nine and go out and seek the one lost sheep—the ninety-and-nine are safe in the fold.1 There are far more out there who are unsaved and who need salvation and who need the message and the love of the Lord who do not yet know Him and are not yet convicted about serving Him, to whom you can speak and give the message both of His love and His call to service.
So I would not pass up a golden opportunity to reach people who are needy, including the poor rich, who seldom are ministered to by missionaries, particularly missionaries like us with such a simple message of His love. They are also in turn able to provide you more opportunities of service, as well as to help support the Lord’s work.
It’s important not to neglect those golden opportunities which the Lord presents and gives you a foot in the door to pursue. We have found it’s best to go ahead with those things as long as you can, and you’ve at least entered the field and covered as much of it as you can while you can, because you can’t always go back to it. You don’t always have a second chance. Sometimes we’ve thought, “Well, we have something else we’ve got to do in the meantime; we’ll go back to that later”—and we went back later and there had been a change of heart and they had grown cold.
God has certain setups that are golden opportunities, and that kind of opportunity is very rare. You have to have a real sixth sense of the Lord—maybe it’s a seventh sense of the Holy Spirit and His guiding—to recognize such unusual opportunities and to realize that this is something that God has suddenly opened to you, a golden opportunity that must be pursued at once and followed up now or it may never come again and you may never be able to reach those same people again, or that class of people or that type of people in that particular field again.
God has His harvest times, and they don’t always last, because as He said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. The field is already white unto harvest.”2 Why is He in such a hurry? Why does He want to get so many laborers into the harvest quickly? Because the harvest won’t last if it’s not reaped when it’s ripe, and then you’ll be sorry.
You may find out when you come back that the harvest has been devastated by some storm of the enemy or some opposition or some freeze of their hearts, and it’s gone and past and you’ll never have it again. So it’s important to try to seize these golden opportunities of harvest time which may come but once, sometimes never again.
God rarely opens doors that He doesn’t want you to enter. When He opens doors like that, it generally means that you’re supposed to enter and follow it up until He closes the door. I have found that He will always let you know, and the time will come when the door will close, if you’ll follow it up at the time and do your best, harvest rapidly while the field is free and open and the harvest is good and the opportunity is golden and the people are receptive and responsive and their hearts are open.
If you wait too long or neglect it or put it off, you may find that the door has closed or God has even allowed it to be closed because you missed the ideal time, the psychological moment, the spiritual moment, God’s golden-harvest moment: His golden opportunity when the harvest is ripe and ready to be reaped.
We say, “I’ll do that when I get back” or “Later.” We procrastinate, we put it off, we postpone it, and we find out when we come back that the whole situation has changed—there are different people in charge who are not interested; the people have lost interest. The whims of man are fleeting, fame is fleeting, and when you’re on that wave of receptivity, you’ve got to ride it as long as it lasts, because it may eventually crash on the beach and go to pieces. But you can ride it while it lasts and you can get the glory of it while it’s going.
I preached almost this same sermon to a little group of 50 hippies in a little club called the Light Club in Huntington Beach a long time ago. I told them, "We’ve got to ride the wave now while it’s here, because it won’t last forever!" And it only lasted a few months, but as a result we became known almost nationwide before it crashed.
I have found that God’s appointments will not be disappointments. But you can disappoint God if you don’t meet His appointment, if you don’t get there and stay there when He wants you to be there. If you set for yourself too rigid a schedule, you may miss something that God is opening up. You may miss some choice field, some ripe harvest, and find out you just cannot get back in again, discovering that things will never be the same again. We must follow up such golden opportunities when we have them and ride the crest of that wave until it breaks on the shore.
This is what we have done many times over the years, and we have ridden the crest of a wave of popularity and receptiveness, a ripe harvest field, and we have reaped it until the Lord shut the door and it was no more.
This reminds me of a marvelous opportunity we had at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, six months of reaching 10,000 people a day with our witness at our little booth there; handing out hundreds of thousands of tracts and pieces of Gospel literature to thousands of people who maybe never heard or never got anything else with a personal sweet witness, smiling happy face of a young person, a kind loving word, and would remember it forever.
Our booth had a beautiful seven-foot-tall picture of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The theme of the fair was peace, and it had a beautiful golden frame with a blue tinge to the picture against this bright orange wall. Blue and orange were the fair colors, so a lot of the news media took pictures of it and marveled at the beauty of our little exhibit, which was the cheapest, smallest one in the whole building. People commented on it, and the manager loved us and loved it.
We had that opportunity only two summers and that was it. We almost didn’t go back the second summer, but the Lord convicted us and gave my mother a vision that we had forsaken our plow.
So we went back and we did what the Lord told us to do. We followed God instead of following our schedule or even some of our own ideas and our own plans and our own personal feelings. It was a marvelous opportunity that only lasted a little while. If we’d failed to go back, it would have been gone forever.
So don’t leave that plow deserted in a fertile field before a ripe harvest which God has opened a door to. Don’t forsake it, and don’t forsake the task God has given you. Don’t abandon something that is fruitful and paying off—as long as you’re reaping and fruitful and getting souls or support or the blessing of the Lord spiritually or in some other way. As long as God is blessing you and making you fruitful and making you a blessing, pursue it and keep after it until it comes to its end. And it generally will end, because harvests don’t last forever, fields are not open forever, doors do not stay open forever. Something closes them in the long run, and the time is gone, the time is past. “The summer is ended, the harvest is past,” the Scripture says, “and yet we are not saved.” They are not saved and the time is gone.3
“There is a time for everything,” God’s Word says. “A time to laugh, a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war.”4 And there’s a time for each field, a time for each harvest, and we need to get action on the harvest fields when they are “white unto harvest” and ripe and ready, before they rot in the field or are destroyed by the storm or the freeze.
It’s important to go through the open doors and accept the invitations and take advantage of the golden opportunities which may only knock once and be gone forever. The door may only be opened once and then be slammed shut and locked forever afterwards. May God help us never to fail to go through those open doors and take advantage of those marvelous harvest fields which may never be available again.
When things are going strong, that’s the time to keep at it! If Nehemiah had come down to fiddle around with something else then, he might never have finished the wall.5 We have to keep on the job until it’s finished. Do the thing until the time is spent and over and the harvest is harvested and the door is shut and the wave is spent and crashed; then God will let you know when it’s time to go on someplace else and do something else.
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called.”6 When God calls you to a certain ministry, you’ll want to stay in it until you’re finished, and then go on to whatever else God wants you to do.
Don’t pass up those golden opportunities, leaving a plow in the field that may not be there when you get back. The field may not be there either. It may be their last chance. Seize it today!
Originally published October 1980. Updated and republished April 2013.
Read by Simon Peterson.
1 Matthew 18:12.
2 Matthew 9:37; John 4:35.
3 Jeremiah 8:20.
4 Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.
5 Nehemiah 6:3.
6 1 Corinthians 7:20.
Download Audio (10.5MB)
When very special opportunities arise, we’ve found from years of experience in the Lord’s work that it's something God does in a special way to reach a special audience that you may not have the opportunity to reach again.—Someone He wants to reach or some particular field of ministry that He wants you to proceed with and pursue and not to forsake too soon.
The primary ministry of all of us is reaching the lost and reaching the people who need the message. It’s more important even to leave the ninety-and-nine and go out and seek the one lost sheep—the ninety-and-nine are safe in the fold.1 There are far more out there who are unsaved and who need salvation and who need the message and the love of the Lord who do not yet know Him and are not yet convicted about serving Him, to whom you can speak and give the message both of His love and His call to service.
So I would not pass up a golden opportunity to reach people who are needy, including the poor rich, who seldom are ministered to by missionaries, particularly missionaries like us with such a simple message of His love. They are also in turn able to provide you more opportunities of service, as well as to help support the Lord’s work.
It’s important not to neglect those golden opportunities which the Lord presents and gives you a foot in the door to pursue. We have found it’s best to go ahead with those things as long as you can, and you’ve at least entered the field and covered as much of it as you can while you can, because you can’t always go back to it. You don’t always have a second chance. Sometimes we’ve thought, “Well, we have something else we’ve got to do in the meantime; we’ll go back to that later”—and we went back later and there had been a change of heart and they had grown cold.
God has certain setups that are golden opportunities, and that kind of opportunity is very rare. You have to have a real sixth sense of the Lord—maybe it’s a seventh sense of the Holy Spirit and His guiding—to recognize such unusual opportunities and to realize that this is something that God has suddenly opened to you, a golden opportunity that must be pursued at once and followed up now or it may never come again and you may never be able to reach those same people again, or that class of people or that type of people in that particular field again.
God has His harvest times, and they don’t always last, because as He said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. The field is already white unto harvest.”2 Why is He in such a hurry? Why does He want to get so many laborers into the harvest quickly? Because the harvest won’t last if it’s not reaped when it’s ripe, and then you’ll be sorry.
You may find out when you come back that the harvest has been devastated by some storm of the enemy or some opposition or some freeze of their hearts, and it’s gone and past and you’ll never have it again. So it’s important to try to seize these golden opportunities of harvest time which may come but once, sometimes never again.
God rarely opens doors that He doesn’t want you to enter. When He opens doors like that, it generally means that you’re supposed to enter and follow it up until He closes the door. I have found that He will always let you know, and the time will come when the door will close, if you’ll follow it up at the time and do your best, harvest rapidly while the field is free and open and the harvest is good and the opportunity is golden and the people are receptive and responsive and their hearts are open.
If you wait too long or neglect it or put it off, you may find that the door has closed or God has even allowed it to be closed because you missed the ideal time, the psychological moment, the spiritual moment, God’s golden-harvest moment: His golden opportunity when the harvest is ripe and ready to be reaped.
We say, “I’ll do that when I get back” or “Later.” We procrastinate, we put it off, we postpone it, and we find out when we come back that the whole situation has changed—there are different people in charge who are not interested; the people have lost interest. The whims of man are fleeting, fame is fleeting, and when you’re on that wave of receptivity, you’ve got to ride it as long as it lasts, because it may eventually crash on the beach and go to pieces. But you can ride it while it lasts and you can get the glory of it while it’s going.
I preached almost this same sermon to a little group of 50 hippies in a little club called the Light Club in Huntington Beach a long time ago. I told them, "We’ve got to ride the wave now while it’s here, because it won’t last forever!" And it only lasted a few months, but as a result we became known almost nationwide before it crashed.
I have found that God’s appointments will not be disappointments. But you can disappoint God if you don’t meet His appointment, if you don’t get there and stay there when He wants you to be there. If you set for yourself too rigid a schedule, you may miss something that God is opening up. You may miss some choice field, some ripe harvest, and find out you just cannot get back in again, discovering that things will never be the same again. We must follow up such golden opportunities when we have them and ride the crest of that wave until it breaks on the shore.
This is what we have done many times over the years, and we have ridden the crest of a wave of popularity and receptiveness, a ripe harvest field, and we have reaped it until the Lord shut the door and it was no more.
This reminds me of a marvelous opportunity we had at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, six months of reaching 10,000 people a day with our witness at our little booth there; handing out hundreds of thousands of tracts and pieces of Gospel literature to thousands of people who maybe never heard or never got anything else with a personal sweet witness, smiling happy face of a young person, a kind loving word, and would remember it forever.
Our booth had a beautiful seven-foot-tall picture of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The theme of the fair was peace, and it had a beautiful golden frame with a blue tinge to the picture against this bright orange wall. Blue and orange were the fair colors, so a lot of the news media took pictures of it and marveled at the beauty of our little exhibit, which was the cheapest, smallest one in the whole building. People commented on it, and the manager loved us and loved it.
We had that opportunity only two summers and that was it. We almost didn’t go back the second summer, but the Lord convicted us and gave my mother a vision that we had forsaken our plow.
So we went back and we did what the Lord told us to do. We followed God instead of following our schedule or even some of our own ideas and our own plans and our own personal feelings. It was a marvelous opportunity that only lasted a little while. If we’d failed to go back, it would have been gone forever.
So don’t leave that plow deserted in a fertile field before a ripe harvest which God has opened a door to. Don’t forsake it, and don’t forsake the task God has given you. Don’t abandon something that is fruitful and paying off—as long as you’re reaping and fruitful and getting souls or support or the blessing of the Lord spiritually or in some other way. As long as God is blessing you and making you fruitful and making you a blessing, pursue it and keep after it until it comes to its end. And it generally will end, because harvests don’t last forever, fields are not open forever, doors do not stay open forever. Something closes them in the long run, and the time is gone, the time is past. “The summer is ended, the harvest is past,” the Scripture says, “and yet we are not saved.” They are not saved and the time is gone.3
“There is a time for everything,” God’s Word says. “A time to laugh, a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war.”4 And there’s a time for each field, a time for each harvest, and we need to get action on the harvest fields when they are “white unto harvest” and ripe and ready, before they rot in the field or are destroyed by the storm or the freeze.
It’s important to go through the open doors and accept the invitations and take advantage of the golden opportunities which may only knock once and be gone forever. The door may only be opened once and then be slammed shut and locked forever afterwards. May God help us never to fail to go through those open doors and take advantage of those marvelous harvest fields which may never be available again.
When things are going strong, that’s the time to keep at it! If Nehemiah had come down to fiddle around with something else then, he might never have finished the wall.5 We have to keep on the job until it’s finished. Do the thing until the time is spent and over and the harvest is harvested and the door is shut and the wave is spent and crashed; then God will let you know when it’s time to go on someplace else and do something else.
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called.”6 When God calls you to a certain ministry, you’ll want to stay in it until you’re finished, and then go on to whatever else God wants you to do.
Don’t pass up those golden opportunities, leaving a plow in the field that may not be there when you get back. The field may not be there either. It may be their last chance. Seize it today!
Originally published October 1980. Updated and republished April 2013.
Read by Simon Peterson.
1 Matthew 18:12.
2 Matthew 9:37; John 4:35.
3 Jeremiah 8:20.
4 Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.
5 Nehemiah 6:3.
6 1 Corinthians 7:20.
Palestinian Christians battle Israel barrier route
By Diaa Hadid, AP, Apr 24, 2013
BEIT JALA, West Bank (AP)—Palestinians in this Christian village are hoping the new pope can succeed where others have failed—pressing Israel to drop plans to build a stretch of its West Bank separation barrier through their picturesque valley.
Since Vatican properties are affected, residents have appealed to the Roman Catholic Church to use more of its significant influence in the Holy Land to reroute the barrier, even as local Catholic leaders hold a special protest Mass in threatened orchards each week.
The Vatican has called on Israel not to seize the lands, but local Palestinian Catholics want the new pontiff to lean more heavily on Israel.
“We have hope in the new pope, as he is close to the poor and the oppressed,” said the Rev. Ibrahim Shomali, the Palestinian priest who has been leading the protests.
Israel has been building the barrier since 2002 in response to a wave of suicide bombings early last decade that killed hundreds of people. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out Palestinian attackers.
Palestinians say the barrier is a land grab because it zigzags through the West Bank. When complete, nearly 10 percent of the West Bank, including many Israeli settlements, would lie on Israel’s side, according to the United Nations. Roughly two-thirds of the 700 kilometer (450-mile) structure has been built.
Beit Jala is a postcard-pretty Christian town of 16,000 in the overwhelmingly Muslim West Bank. The likeness of the Palestinian patron, Saint George, is carved into building facades. Groceries sell beer and butchers sell pork, items banned under Islamic law. A bowling alley faces an Israeli military base.
Yet the village feels hemmed in. It abuts the biblical town of Bethlehem on one side. On another, barbed wire separates Beit Jala from the Jewish settlement of Har Gilo. Part of the separation barrier seals in another side, protecting a nearby road used by Jewish settlers. Residents say the planned stretch of construction will close off one of the village’s last remaining open spaces.
“They are crowding us inside a ghetto,” sighed Issa Khalilieh, whose family lost 12 acres (five hectares) in years of Israeli confiscations, and is poised to lose another three acres (one hectare) to the barrier.
In the Beit Jala area, Israel’s Defense Ministry plans to seize some 790 acres (320 hectares) of the Cremisan Valley, said lawyer Ghaith Nasser. Some one-third of the land is Vatican-owned, with a monastery surrounded by pines, playground and vineyard that monks have used to make wine since 1882. Nearby is a convent where nuns run a school for 600 Palestinian students. Some 60 families own the rest, a series of terraced olive and apricot orchards plunging into the valley. Residents go there to relax, barbecue and pray.
If the route goes as planned, the monastery and orchards will be on Israel’s side of the barrier. The convent and school will be on the Palestinian side, surrounded by high concrete walls, lawyers said.
Yigal Palmor, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the government is in “direct dialogue” with the Vatican and affected monks and nuns in the area to try come to an amicable decision.
An Israeli-Palestinian documentary on the fight of residents in the village of Bilin to reroute the barrier was nominated for an Oscar this year.
The route of the barrier has drawn accusations that Israel is using the structure to incorporate some Jewish settlements, how home to more than 500,000 Israelis, into its future borders.
“The barrier has a route that … is clearly not defined by what Israel calls security reasons,” said Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, an advocacy group that monitors the route of the barrier around Jerusalem. “The planned route goes way into the West Bank to put the settlement blocs within its area.”
BEIT JALA, West Bank (AP)—Palestinians in this Christian village are hoping the new pope can succeed where others have failed—pressing Israel to drop plans to build a stretch of its West Bank separation barrier through their picturesque valley.
Since Vatican properties are affected, residents have appealed to the Roman Catholic Church to use more of its significant influence in the Holy Land to reroute the barrier, even as local Catholic leaders hold a special protest Mass in threatened orchards each week.
The Vatican has called on Israel not to seize the lands, but local Palestinian Catholics want the new pontiff to lean more heavily on Israel.
“We have hope in the new pope, as he is close to the poor and the oppressed,” said the Rev. Ibrahim Shomali, the Palestinian priest who has been leading the protests.
Israel has been building the barrier since 2002 in response to a wave of suicide bombings early last decade that killed hundreds of people. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out Palestinian attackers.
Palestinians say the barrier is a land grab because it zigzags through the West Bank. When complete, nearly 10 percent of the West Bank, including many Israeli settlements, would lie on Israel’s side, according to the United Nations. Roughly two-thirds of the 700 kilometer (450-mile) structure has been built.
Beit Jala is a postcard-pretty Christian town of 16,000 in the overwhelmingly Muslim West Bank. The likeness of the Palestinian patron, Saint George, is carved into building facades. Groceries sell beer and butchers sell pork, items banned under Islamic law. A bowling alley faces an Israeli military base.
Yet the village feels hemmed in. It abuts the biblical town of Bethlehem on one side. On another, barbed wire separates Beit Jala from the Jewish settlement of Har Gilo. Part of the separation barrier seals in another side, protecting a nearby road used by Jewish settlers. Residents say the planned stretch of construction will close off one of the village’s last remaining open spaces.
“They are crowding us inside a ghetto,” sighed Issa Khalilieh, whose family lost 12 acres (five hectares) in years of Israeli confiscations, and is poised to lose another three acres (one hectare) to the barrier.
In the Beit Jala area, Israel’s Defense Ministry plans to seize some 790 acres (320 hectares) of the Cremisan Valley, said lawyer Ghaith Nasser. Some one-third of the land is Vatican-owned, with a monastery surrounded by pines, playground and vineyard that monks have used to make wine since 1882. Nearby is a convent where nuns run a school for 600 Palestinian students. Some 60 families own the rest, a series of terraced olive and apricot orchards plunging into the valley. Residents go there to relax, barbecue and pray.
If the route goes as planned, the monastery and orchards will be on Israel’s side of the barrier. The convent and school will be on the Palestinian side, surrounded by high concrete walls, lawyers said.
Yigal Palmor, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the government is in “direct dialogue” with the Vatican and affected monks and nuns in the area to try come to an amicable decision.
An Israeli-Palestinian documentary on the fight of residents in the village of Bilin to reroute the barrier was nominated for an Oscar this year.
The route of the barrier has drawn accusations that Israel is using the structure to incorporate some Jewish settlements, how home to more than 500,000 Israelis, into its future borders.
“The barrier has a route that … is clearly not defined by what Israel calls security reasons,” said Aviv Tatarsky of Ir Amim, an advocacy group that monitors the route of the barrier around Jerusalem. “The planned route goes way into the West Bank to put the settlement blocs within its area.”
