How you listen

We were taught to do the following  exercise in a group.  5 persons were needed. An outsider will call A and narrate  something  in front of  the audience.  B,C,D and E were sent out. I was in the audience.  A has to listen carefully, grasp the matter, then  call B and tell him what he heard from the outsider. Then A will be sent out . B will call C and tell him what he heard. C will do the same  to D and D to E.  Finally E will narrate it to the audience. All is done in front of the audience. The matter was completely different when it came to the audience from E. We had enough to laugh. It was a game to measure  human beings capacity  of grasping a matter and sharing it with others.

Jesus said,  

 “So pay attention to how you listen” Lk 8:18

The children of God have to listen from the Heavenly Father daily. The way you listen and grasp the message of the Father  is very important. Today the image of Christianity is very low among non Christians because  many Christians do not  hear  directly from the Father. But they interpret and share  it in their own way from what they have heard from their predecessors. The heavenly Father wants every one of His  children to hear directly from Him .

How to listen and grasp the message? When you pray and are in the presence of the Father, follow your mind, your conscience, your imagination and all your inner elements. When the Holy Spirit  touches you, your spirit get stirred up. It might  reflect in any part of your inner man or outer man.  Your inner man (human spirit)  can sense, feel, or see it.  God is not outside of you.  He is inside of you. Don’t seek him outside. He communicates with your spirit. If your spirit is alert, alive, keen to listen, sharp to grasp and sensitive, you will catch the message.

First time I typed in the docs using my mobile. When I read it only I realised the mistakes in my pronunciation.  Then I could correct it.

When you are in prayer, listen. If you surrender fully your body, soul and spirit to the Lord before you pray, He will speak and give you the reply immediately. (Is 65:24). What you heard in your soul, saw in your mind, sensed in your heart is the reply the Lord is giving. Share it  and check it with the person for whom you received the message. If it is correct, you have listened and grasped the matter correctly. If it is wrong, pay attention to how you listened. Correct the mistakes and try again. Go on trying until you grasp the answer from  the Lord correctly. Make it a routine.

Burkina Faso: Kidnappers Release Pastor and His family after Four Days

The Christian pastor who was abducted on Sunday with his family in Burkina Faso’s north-eastern province of Soum has been released.

Local sources told national broadcaster Omega Radio that Pastor Pierre Boena, his son David and his daughter-in-law, Ami Sawadogo were released yesterday (7 June).

The report does not specifically mention the two granddaughters, Fasne-wendé Ouédraogo and Pélagie Sawadogo, who were also abducted during the raid on Sunday, but does state that the pastor was released “with all the other members of his family in Malian territory”.

The reason for their release is not known, nor is it known whether a ransom was paid.

Pierre Boena, a pastor with an Assembly of God church, was kidnapped on Sunday evening in his village of Bilhore, near the border with Mali.

At the time of the attack he was at home with four family members and a church member, Pauline Sawadogo, who was visiting with her two daughters, Sanata and Zoenabou, local sources told World Watch Monitor.

These sources suggested that Pauline and her daughters may have been kidnapped along with Pastor Boena’s family on Sunday. Speaking on Thursday they said the whereabouts of Pauline and her daughters remain unknown.

Meanwhile there has still been no news regarding catechist Basnéré Mathieu Sawadogo, and his wife Alizeta, who were abducted two weeks earlier. Mathieu serves as a catechist at their parish, Notre Dame des Apôtres (Our Lady of the Apostles) in Arbinda, 100km from Djibo.

Kidnappers have previously targeted Djibo. Eighteen months ago an Australian couple were taken hostage from the city by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Ken and Jocelyn Elliott had run a 120-bed clinic for 40 years until their abduction in January 2016. Jocelyn was released a month later, but her husband remains in captivity.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the recent kidnappings but World Watch Monitor understands that the perpetrators are believed to be members of the Fulani ethnic group.

Some relatives have been able to speak over the phone with the hostages, who told their family that they were in good health and were being treated well by their abductors.

The kidnappings could be the result of acts of violence against Fulani communities by security forces which, it was said, had angered them.

The Fulani and the Tuareg are the two main nomadic ethnic groups in northern Burkina Faso, and in neighbouring Mali and Niger.

Access to grazing land and water have caused tensions between the two communities. Militant members of the two communities are also fighting alongside numerous Islamist groups active in the Sahel region.

POPE HEARS OF TERRORISM CONCERNS

The recent kidnappings of the two Christian church leaders has created an atmosphere of anxiety among Christian communities in the land-locked Sahel nation, seen as a model of tolerance in a troubled region.

Burkina Faso’s 20 million inhabitants – predominantly Muslim (around 60%), but also with significant numbers of Christians (over 20%, the vast majority of whom are Catholics) and followers of indigenous beliefs (15%) – have long enjoyed peaceful co-existence.

Two weeks ago, 21 Catholic bishops from Burkina Faso and Niger said a better dialogue was needed between Muslim and Christian communities if terrorism was to be eradicated.

Following their five-yearly ad limina meeting with Pope Francis, in which the bishops discussed their concerns with him, Bishop Laurent Birfuore Dabiré of Dori, Burkina Faso, told Vatican Radio that “peaceful cohabitation” between Muslims and Catholics continued “despite the atmosphere of insecurity, and everything must be done to support it”.

His diocese is located in the tense border region with Mali where many of the kidnappings and attacks have taken place but, he said, what unites people “is family, culture, and traditions that are independent of religion”.

INCREASE IN ISLAMIST ACTIVITIES

Unlike Mali, Burkina Faso has not seen as many terrorist attacks. But it appears it is being slowly drawn into the wars of the Sahel. Attacks attributed to Islamist militants have intensified, particularly in the northern part of the country, prompting a military campaign in the region.

In a report published last month, Human Rights Watch highlighted the atmosphere of fear created by the increase in Islamist activities in the region. The New York-based group accused security forces of extrajudicial killings, abuse of suspects in custody and arbitrary arrests. .

In March, the capital Ougadougou was rocked by twin attacks on the country’s army headquarters and the French embassy.

Schools and teachers in and around Djibo have also been targeted by the militants. In April Islamic State in the Greater Sahara kidnapped a teacher “because he was speaking French to the pupils” rather than Arabic, the South African news agency News24 reported.

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Kidnapped US Missionary Jeff Woodke is Alive, Says Niger’s President

A US missionary kidnapped in Niger in October 2016 is alive, according to the West African nation’s president.

Jeff Woodke, who worked for Jeunesse en Mission Entraide et Developpement (JEMED), a branch of the US-based Youth With a Mission, was abducted by unknown assailants late in the evening of Friday 14 October, 2016, from the town of Abalak in northern Niger.

For 20 months, there has been no news of Woodke, but on Monday, 4 June, President Mahamadou Issoufou told TV channel France24 that both he and a German aid worker kidnapped in April this year are alive.

“We have some news; we know they’re alive,” the president said. “We continue to create the conditions for their release. Perhaps the contacts that are underway will help to achieve that goal.”

It is the first proof of life since the kidnapping of the two Western citizens in the Sahel country.

Little had been known, or at least divulged, about Woodke’s condition or location, other than that his captors were tracked to neighbouring Mali by Nigerien authorities. No group has publicly claimed responsibility.

Last July, a coalition of jihadist groups active in the Sahel region (Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, also known as the Group to Support Islam and Muslims), affiliated to Al-Qaeda, released a video showing six foreign hostages, including three missionaries, but not Jeff Woodke.

The three missionaries in the video were: Colombian nun Gloria Argoti, kidnapped on 7 February from her convent in Karangasso, southern Mali; Australian surgeon Ken Elliott, kidnapped in January 2016 from Djibo in northern Burkina Faso, near the Mali border; and Swiss missionary Béatrice Stockly, kidnapped in Mali’s northern town of Timbuktu, also in January 2016.

All are still captive.

Jeff Woodke’s wife, Els, issued a video pleading for his safe return when there was no sign of him in that video, believing that he could also be held by those who issued it.

“I am sure that the families of the captives were very encouraged by this message and appreciated the mercy shown by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen in sending this news and instructions about their loved ones,” said Mrs Woodke in her video.

“But my husband Jeff is not mentioned, so I did not receive the benefit of the reassurance and directions of how to proceed that the other families did. This has been very hard for me, for Jeff’s sons and his father to understand.”

The German Joerg Lange, employed by the aid group Help, was kidnapped by armed men on 11 April, in Niger’s western town of Ayorou, which shares a border with troubled northern Mali.

No group has claimed responsibility for his abduction, but a security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that his kidnappers had “already taken him to northern Mali”.

On Monday, President Issoufou said he did not know exactly where the pair were being detained, but that “it is more likely that they are in Mali”.

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Four Iranian Christians Set to Begin Ten-year Prison Sentences

The four Iranian Christians who saw their ten-year prison sentences upheld by an appeal court earlier this month are expecting to have to report to prison any day now.

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, and fellow Church of Iran members Yasser Mossayebzadeh, Saheb Fadaie and Mohammad Reza Omidi could receive a call within the next 24 hours to report at the prison gate in their home city of Rasht, Mansour Borji from the London-based advocacy organisation Article 18 told World Watch Monitor.

The four Christians were convicted of “promoting Zionist Christianity” and running house churches and appealed their sentences before the Revolutionary Court on 14 December last year but were unsuccessful.

Nadarkhani and Omidi, in addition to their jail terms, were also sentenced to two years’ internal exile, which they are to serve in the south of Iran, on the opposite side of the country from their homes near the Caspian Sea.

Four other Christians who also received lengthy sentences are still waiting the outcome of their own appeals, which were heard in the Revolutionary Court by the same judge, Judge Hassan Babaee, who, according to Article 18, “doesn’t have a good track record in dealing with Christians arrested for their Christian activities”.

Borji said this is partly because judges can’t be independent, as sentences are dictated by intelligence officials.

“Iranian Christians are concerned about the unjust verdicts issued against Pastor Victor Bet-Tamraz, and three other Christians who were sentenced alongside him, Amin Afshar Naderi, Kaviyan Fallah Mohammadi and Hadi Asgari“, Borji said

“We are following the appeal process closely and ask all Christians worldwide, and the key members of the international community to join us in calling for these convictions to be overturned. The Iranian government has to be reminded of its obligations under international law and its own constitution, to end its harassment of peaceful Christian community”, he added.

Pastor Bet-Tamraz was sentenced to ten years in jail in July last year for “acting against national security by organising and conducting house-churches”. The three converts were also given ten years, though Amin Afshar-Naderi was given an additional five years for “insulting the sacred” (blasphemy).

Shamiram Isavi Khabizeh, the wife of Victor Bet-Tamraz, was given a five-year sentence of her own in January, while their son, Ramil, is also facing charges.

Miles Windsor from Middle East Concern recently said prison terms are getting longer for Iranian Christians.

“Whilst Christians have consistently been put in prison for their faith in Iran in considerable numbers, the length of the sentence has seemed to have increased in the recent year or so,” he said.

‘ONGOING VIOLATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM’

Although Iran’s constitution acknowledges Christians (excluding converts from Islam) as one of the recognised religious minorities allowed to operate in the country “within the limits of the law’, in practice the government continues to harass and imprison Christians and other religious minorities, noted the US State Department’s 2017 International Religious freedom report, which was released last month.

It is illegal for Muslim citizens of the Islamic republic to change or renounce their religious beliefs.

The country has been on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) since 1999, “for having engaged in, or tolerated, systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom”.

In 2017, over a dozen Christians – most of them converts to Christianity – were given prison sentences of between 10 and 15 years for “acting against national security”.

Iran is 10th on the 2018 Open Doors World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to live as a Christian.

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