"As many as 17 Christian missionaries from the United States and their family members, including children, were kidnapped on Saturday by a gang in Port-au-Prince as they were leaving an orphanage, according to Haitian security officials. Details of the kidnapping remained unclear, but local officials said the missionaries were abducted from a bus headed to the airport to drop off some members of the group before continuing to another destination in Haiti."


https://www.rawstory.com/american-missionaries-kidnapped-haiti/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 12:54AM by Dave the Atheist.

The mormon church squanders our missionaries like a wastrel squanders his inheritance.

I hope they are okay, and will continue to be okay.

Being kidnapped like that has got to be one of the scariest things which can happen to anyone.

(When I was in Colombia, being kidnapped was one of the specific possibilities which might well happen to foreigners in the country. Nothing bad happened to us, but English-speakers of many different nationalities--strangers to us--would stop us on the street to give us advice: sometimes about us as individuals, and other times about what we were carrying or wearing, with pierced-ear earrings getting the most "votes" of concern. It was plenty scary, and having to be constantly on guard 24/7 really does wear you down. When we finally lifted off from the airport in Bogota it felt wonderful, because we knew that when the airplane touched down again, we would be safely back in the U.S.A.)

With that $100b slush fund, ours will be next if they’re not in that group already.

Exactly!

ChurchCo will put up a 'we don't negotiate with criminals/terrorists' front while going back-channel to get victims safe/ released if (when) this happens (which I hope doesn't)

'Deep Pockets' is what it's called.

Sometimes small-time criminal kidnapping is settled for what is considered very low funds, not what you'd maybe expect.

Our son's TBM in-laws sent their younger, buxom, blonde daughter to Uruguay.

She rode a bus all night along with a group of other missionaries to some destination within the country. At the station, she had stowed her backpack in the cargo hold under the bus.

She woke up to a gun held to her forehead. Four masked men ransacked all the backpacks and stole everything they could.

When the family related the story to us, they said .....

....wait for it ....


"How lucky they didn't get her backpack !"

It doesn't say whose missionaries they are.

olderelder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It doesn't say whose missionaries they are.


True. But from the brief description in the article I'm confident they're not CoJCoLDerS.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/17/americas/haiti-american-missionary-kidnap-intl-hnk/index.html

"An Ohio-based Christian aid group called Christian Aid Ministries confirmed the missionaries and family members abducted in Haiti are affiliated with it"

I used to work with an uber-Christian preacher type who would take a group down to Haiti every couple years to "help the poor." His idea of helping the poor was to bring them a bunch of Bibles which weren't exactly edible or useful for shelter. Bless his heart.

I guess some of the people are so desperate in the lawless environment they start acting like opportunist pirates. Haiti has had more than it's share of hardship.

I have a TBM cousin who goes down to Haiti twice a year to help. She wanted me to come down but we got into an argument when I suggested getting clean drinking water was paramount to learning about JS finding some golden plates in a mountain.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 04:51PM by moehoward.

The fact that there are 17, including children, indicate they were sent by a conservative Protestant church or denomination.

Both my daughters have been on such short-term missions, either with their high school or their colleges: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Haiti a few times. It exposes them to world missions, and out of these groups a few may go into full (career) missions. They work on a church property, and spend some time assisting in things like street evangelism. We realize there are risks: political, criminal, health/dietary, environmental. But these places' needs are great, and we have much to offer.

On a contrary note, remember when the "Fair Play For Cuba Committee" recruited students to go help "the Revolution" with the sugar cane harvest?

I don't get the comparison.

Sugar cane is actual food. Street evangelism is busy work BS to make people like you and your daughter think they are doing something.

Because of language barriers, there was not much they could do, so that was more to give them an exposure. Sometimes they assisted in children's program or distributing tangible goods. The main activity was building some structure (it varied) for the mission church. They worked 10-12 hours a day, and got a 2-3 day vacation break at the end of a 3-4 week stint.

You're probably wondering: yes, I did pay for the trip.

I realize you consider any/all religious proselytizing abhorrent, but don't judge Christian missionary work on the CoJCoLdS model.

The reference to the sugar cane was a sardonic joke. Sugar cane work--especially the cutting--is brutal, back-breaking work. (I can attest to that, if Vietnamese bamboo is anything similar: very woody and tough.) The "red diaper babies" of the 60s never actually did that: they were political tourists, visiting Castro's show-case installations and projects.

"Christian Aid Ministries" is a multi-action umbrella organization for Amish and Mennonite evangelical and charitable projects at home and abroad.

Don't get me wrong, I think American evangelical missionaries should be thrown out of every country including this one--if only--but the Anabaptist movement which takes in the sects of Amish/Mennonite folks is composed of honest, austere, and hardworking people, without megachurch airplane-owning ministers and stage-show "healers" and shouters, which makes them better than most evangelical Protestants.

$1M per captive is what the kidnappers are demanding.

Among several children being held is an 8-month old baby.

No matter how dedicated I was to a cause I can't imagine travelling to a dangerous location with my children, including a young babe. Plus, I have no guts anyway.

I sure hope they all get out of this OK. The nightmares may last forever.

And what food is available for the kids and babe I wonder.

I bet there's a whole lot of praying going on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2021 08:03PM by Nightingale.