Living in France!

I'm settling down in France slowly but surely. In September I started teaching in a secondary school in Angouleme and I love it. What is demanding is driving there from where we live in Civray (Vienne) because I need to be there just before 8 a.m. three days a week. I need to live our house at 6:30 to get there for 7:30 and I usually find a parking place in the Parking blanc. 

So I welcome the holidays! I am going to be able to sleep a little more in the  morning instead of getting up at 6 a.m. I might also go to bed later than 11 p.m. without feeling exhausted in the morning. 

The last day of term at our school was great. We were all gathered in the court yard at 11 and listened to every year presentation on different themes. Students expressed what they felt about the main Christian themes: Joy, Love, Hope, Peace in different ways. The most poignant was the Year 7 call to stop the persecution of Christian in Aleppo and to help the Syrian refugees.

At lunch time I went in town for lunch with four colleagues and had a cheesy omelette with Gruyere.   

On the Thursday, it is customary for the English teachers to set up a Christmas market in the préau. It was well attended. The kids loved it, they could buy two different kins of mince pies, small and normal size, crackers, and plenty of other artefacts that my colleagues managed to order a month ago!

Wednesday afternoon, Steven and I managed to have some quiet time in St Macoux. There is a restaurant by the side of a étang and we had a drink and a place of chips. Not many birds in sight though because it was cold!

Syria: under bombs and under fire

TO SECRETARY JOHN KERRY AND PRESIDENT OBAMA,

The repeated targeting of healthcare workers and hospitals by the Russian and Syrian governments are war crimes. We call on you to give Syria’s heroic healthcare workers and the communities they serve a zone free from bombing to ensure their protection. The international community has agreed the bombs need to stop. The resolutions are in place. They simply need to be enforced.

SPREAD THE WORD

BOMBS AND UNDER FIRE

We are in an emergency. In July 2016 a medical facility was attacked on average every 17 hours. Many facilities have been attacked multiple times, often changing location for safety. When they started building a hospital in one northern Syrian town, local residents begged them to move -- knowing the hospital would be targeted.

Since Syria’s peaceful uprising was met with brutal force doctors have been systematically targeted by the Syrian government and its allies. For the Syrian government anyone treating people on ‘the other side’ is a valid target, and their elimination part of a deliberate strategy to force people back into areas under its control. 

Of the 750 medical workers killed since the beginning of the conflict, all but 52 have been killed by Syrian or Russian government attacks - this is just what has been documented, the real number is likely much higher. 

Despite being in clear contravention of international humanitarian law, medics have been executed and tortured. One doctor who was interrogated said “the most important thing was not to reveal my medical work,” since it is common knowledge that doctors are tortured worse than other prisoners.

However, the biggest killer of medical workers in Syria is neither torture nor execution. The greatest threat comes from the air - the Syrian government and Russian bombing. At least 750 medical workers have been killed and over 400 hospital attacks have been destroyed by these indiscriminate weapons. 

These attacks are not just killing physicians and damaging hospitals, but destroying entire communities. When you kill a doctor in Syria, you are ensuring that hundreds, if not thousands, of people will die. 

When you destroy a medical facility, you push people out of their communities to seek desperately needed services. In addition to routine aerial attacks targeting hospitals, health workers face a chronic lack of supplies and specialists. This is particularly dire in besieged areas, where treatable diseases and injuries can be a death sentence.

The Degradation of Christian Women under Islam

The Degradation of Christian Women under Islam
Muslim Persecution of Christians: June, 2013

by Raymond Ibrahim at the Gatestone Institute

A church in the Syrian village of al-Duwayr, after an attack by Islamist militiamen. (Image credit: Syria Report)

Meanwhile, in Egypt, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson was urging Christian Copts not to protest Muslim Brotherhood rule, even though they would suffer under it most. According to Al Azhar, the world's oldest Islamic university, Islam is a religion of peace.

The degradation of Christian women living in the Islamic world continued in the month of June. In Syria, after the al-Qaeda linked rebel group conquered Qusair, a city of the governate of Homs, 15-year-old Mariam was kidnapped, repeatedly gang raped according to a fatwa legitimizing the rape of non-Sunni women by any Muslim waging jihad against Syria's government, and then executed.

According to Agenzia Fides, "The commander of the battalion 'Jabhat al-Nusra' in Qusair took Mariam, married and raped her. Then he repudiated her. The next day the young woman was forced to marry another Islamic militant. He also raped her and then repudiated her. The same trend was repeated for 15 days, and Mariam was raped by 15 different men. This psychologically destabilized her and made her insane. Mariam became mentally unstable and was eventually killed."

In Pakistan, Muslim men stormed the home of three Christian women, beat them, stripped them naked and tortured them, and then paraded them in the nude in a village in the Kasur district. Days earlier, it seems the goats of the Christian family had accidentally trespassed onto Muslim land; Muslims sought to make an example of the Christian family, who, as third-class citizens, must know their place at all times.

Iraq: During the middle of the night, armed men attacked St. Mary's Assyrian Catholic Church in Baghdad; they wounded two Christian guards, one seriously. Later the same day, bombs were set off at two Christian-owned businesses, both near the church; they killed one Christian shop owner, a parishioner at St. Mary's. Since the U.S. "liberation" of Iraq in 2003, 73 churches have been attacked or bombed, and more than half of the country's Christian population has either fled or been killed.
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Father, we thank you that we have the freedom of faith and worship in our countries. We ask you in the name of Jesus-Christ our Saviour and King to stop those conflicts, to give wisdom to the leaders of those countries, to strengthen all our Christian brothers and sisters who live in such countries where those atrocities prevail, to help them rebuild their lives and guide us to do our utmost in our lives to spread your message of love, forgiveness and peace. May your will be done in Jesus'name. Amen