The Librarian
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Over 2,500 people from the far corners of northwestern BC, to as far south as 100 Mile House came to Prince George this weekend for the annual Jehovah’s Witnesses Convention.
With evacuation orders issued in central parts of the province, 130 families (a total of 306 people) who attended the convention are now unable to return home.
“We have an agreement with the CN Centre for a number of days where we rent the facilities, and it includes the grounds. We rent the stampede grounds and the parking lots,” says Dale Johnson, the Chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “After our convention was over, we asked permission from the City and CN Centre if they would mind if these refugees- these people who have been displaced– could stay for a few extra days. The City was kind enough to allow them to stay parked.”
5 local congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses are looking after the needs of evacuees. They are providing sewage, water, food and anything else that is required on-site.
More trailers have been brought in from the Prince George Jehovah’s Witnesses. Families in the local congregations have also taken in evacuees.
Johnson says the community has been great. “The CN Centre, they’ve allowed us to stay. They have offered us the use of their facilities there. We had a contract with them and so they have been very kind to allow us continue that contract for our use only. The City has been great. We have had some of the local politicians come and check on our folks to give them direction as to where to go to register. They have offered food at no cost. We think about the fire fighters; local folks that sometimes aren’t appreciated, but we have been given such clear direction from these people that we feel really secure and looked after.”
Now all that’s left to do is wait.”Our friends are concerned and our families are a little bit stressed, but they are getting the emotional and spiritual help that they need on a daily basis,” says Johnson. “We have made visits to almost every family over there. They are playing the waiting game. There’s rumors floating around, but as the information comes in from the authorities that’s what we pass on so people don’t get upset. They are happy, they are content and looked after.”
A disaster administrative centre for the group has also been set up at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses on 15 Avenue.
http://www.ckpg.com/2017/07/10/cn-centre-opens-facility-to-jehovahs-witness-evacuees/
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I can see this as a safety feature....
But I remember the days when people would worry about listening devices in their homes. Nowadays they purchase them.
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Were none of them able to swim even for a few minutes? I can understand dying by being pulled under by a huge ship sinking...but just falling off a boat? I've jumped off of more boats than I can think of for the sheer fun of swimming.
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JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES IN KAZAKHSTAN FEAR REPEAT OF RUSSIA BAN AFTER ‘SCARY’ CRACKDOWN
After operations at its headquarters were suspended last week, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Kazakhstan fear their country’s government is going down the same path as neighboring Russia, where the Christian group was effectively banned earlier this year.
The Kazakhstan court's decision to suspend operations at the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch office in the city of Almaty came less than two months after a 61-year-old believer was sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of inciting religious hatred. Both decisions came shortly after Russia’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling in that country outlawing Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist organization.
“People are a little bit afraid because it seems that it was right after the Supreme Court of Russia [decision],” Bekzat Smagulov, a Jehovah’s Witnesses spokesman in Kazakhstan, told Newsweek Friday. “We don’t know the exact reason, but what do you think? How will we think because if what happened in Russia and then we have these problems? How do you explain these things?”
Jehovah’s Witnesses, which was founded in the United States and is best known for its objection to blood transfusions and military service, has operated in Kazakhstan for 25 years. It now has 18,000 followers in the Muslim-majority country and 59 local religious organizations.
Kazakhstan passed a restrictive law in 2011 that featured stringent requirements such as forcing religious organizations to register with the government. The law, which has mainly affected Muslim minority groups, has seen the number of religious groups decline to 16 from 48, according to a 2017 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
People sing as they attend the annual Jehovah's Witnesses assembly gathering of 30.000 believers on July 22, 2011 in Villepinte, a Paris suburb. A crackdown on Jehovah's Witnesses in Kazakhstan has followed similar actions against the Christian group in neighboring Russia. Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
The situation for Jehovah’s Witnesses, said Smagulov, did not noticeably deteriorate until this year. It was in March that Russia’s justice ministry declared that Jehovah’s Witnesses violated an anti-extremism law that has been used against groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS). The verdict was upheld a month later by the country’s Supreme Court, liquidating all 395 of the group’s local religious chapters.
An appeal against the verdict, which was widely condemned internationally, will be heard on July 17.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has been one of Russia’s closest allies, and the two neighboring countries are founding members of multiple military and trade agreements. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has led the country since its days under Soviet rule.
Although the percentage of Kazakhstan’s population made up of ethnic Russians has declined since its independence from the Soviet Union, it remains a significant 21 percent. And 25 percent of the population is estimated to be Russian Orthodox, making it the largest non-Muslim religion in the country. The Orthodox Church, which has ballooned in numbers and power under Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been an outspoken supporter of the ban of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.
As in Russia, Jehovah’s Witnesses say the pretense for actions against the religion is fabricated. In the case of the suspension of the headquarters’ operations, the police argued that the building did not have enough security cameras. Despite already having 20 cameras on the premises, the authorities demanded three more be installed.
“We didn’t know the reason, they didn’t explain it why they did this inspection,” Smagulov said. “They tried to find something wrong. Even though we didn’t agree, we decided to put the cameras in that day. And we showed that to the court but it did not work.”
Jehovah's Witnesses sing at a meeting in Russia. Two Jehovah's Witnesses were recently given a prestigious parenting award, despite the group being regarded as "extremist." Courtesy of Jehovah's Witnesses
Three weeks after the inspection, the court ordered the office suspended and fined the group around $2,000. But that was far from the full extent of the recent crackdown.
Two weeks prior to the inspection, Smagulov said, around 40 armed police and members of the National Security Committee (KNB), formerly the KGB, conducted a raid of the Almaty headquarters, with many wearing masks. It created a very public, and frightening, spectacle. The raid coincided with World Expo 2017 taking place in the Kazakh capital Astana, during which the Almaty headquarters hosted several visitors.
Claiming they suspected there were foreigners present illegally, the armed security services asked for everyone’s identification.
“We didn’t expect these people with masks,” Smagulov said. “It’s only if terrorists attack they come. But when someone with a weapon comes running, it’s a little bit scary. They sieged our property.”
Already, one Jehovah’s Witness has suffered the consequences of the crackdown. Teymur Akhmedov was sentenced to five years in prison in May after what Jehovah’s Witnesses and human rights groups have called an unjust case involving entrapment.
Akhmedov and an associate, Asaf Guliyev, who was later sentenced to five years of “restrictive freedom,” were invited to the home of a group of apparent students to discuss their faith on several occasions last summer. In reality, the students were members of the KNB and were covertly recording the conversations.
Investigators claim the responses to questions given by Akhmedov advocated “the superiority of one religion over another.” An appeal against the conviction was denied last month.
The actions go wider still. Smagulov claims that many of the country’s main media outlets have begun broadcasting and publishing negative information about Jehovah’s Witnesses. Countering the growing negative perceptions is an arduous task.
“We try to fight but we are not the majority in society, it’s hard to fight,” Smagulov said. “Usually the government tries to protect the minorities."
An appeal against the suspension of the group's headquarters will be heard on July 14, but, with the ever-growing hostility toward them, Smagulov added, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that Kazakhstan is not heading down the same path as its influential neighbor.
“We had conversations with the minister for religious affairs and he said Kazakhstan has its own way of thinking, that they’ll act independently of Russia but in reality we see different things," he said.
http://www.newsweek.com/jehovahs-witnesses-russia-ban-kazakhstan-634550
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Do we have any Catholic experts out there?
Is the Pope here referring to the the Virgin Mary as the Star of the Sea?
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The Hong Kong-based team rebutted skepticism over their claims of finding Noah's Ark in Turkey. Two members of the search team that claims to have found Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey responded to skepticism by saying that there is no plausible explanation for what they found other than it is the fabled biblical boat that weathered a storm that raged 40 days and 40 nights and flooded the entire Earth.Noah's Ark Ministries International (NAMI) held a press conference April 25 in Hong Kong to present their findings and say they were “99.9 percent sure” that a wooden structure found at a 12,000-ft. elevation and dated as 4,800 years old was Noah’s Ark.members of the Chinese-Turkish team stood by their finding.“How can a ship be on a mountain?” Yeung Wing-cheung, one of six team members who entered the structure on Mount Ararat last October, told the Monitor today by telephone from Hong Kong.“The only record of a wooden structure on Mount Ararat is Noah’s Ark," Clara Wei, the team coordinator, also said today by telephone from Beijing. "So up to now I believe this is the most probable explanation. We don’t have another explanation." Turkish officials from Agri Province, the location of Mount Ararat, also attended this week’s press conference in Hong Kong. Lieutenant governor Murat Güven and Cultural Ministries Director Muhsin Bulut, both provincial officials, believe the discovery is likely Noah’s Ark, according to the announcement posted on the team's website.
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Jesus Film
in Topics
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Fotos y detalles fueron añadidas aqui:
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Is anyone else following the YouTube channel by a woman called Antoinette Mitchell?
In very broad outline:
she comes from a JW family
became active again 3 years ago
got disfellowshipped 8 months ago
came out as gay on YouTube at the same time
talked about heartbreak of family and friends not talking to her
determined to go back by attending all the meetings
a few days ago got reinstated
I feel sorry for what she's gone through and also glad she got reinstated.
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Nice illustration.
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WAY too early.....
ACTUALITÉS | L’État du Kazakhstan suspend les activités du siège national des Témoins de Jéhovah
in Topics
Posted
la source