Source: ASSIST News Service, via Godreports, June 30, 2015<\/p>\n
Ali Pektash grew up in a Kurdish family with 10 children. He was rejected by his mother, which opened a deep wound in his life. He was taken in by his uncle, but he too chased him out.<\/p>\n
He met and married Zehra, but succumbed to heavy drinking, which began to destroy his life. He would start to shake if he didn\u2019t have a drink and things got so bad that he was beating his wife several times a day and struggling to breathe after just a few steps.<\/p>\n
Friends persuaded him to find work in Saudi Arabia, where the sale of alcohol is forbidden. But he was surprised to discover there was plenty of it available there.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Mecca held the key to success, friends suggested, so he agreed to join a group on hajj (pilgrimage) during his time in Arabia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I belonged to God somehow\u2014he was my friend\u2014but I did not belong to a religion I could find. I circled the Ka\u2019ba seven times (one of the specified rites involved in the pilgrimage), and watched everybody kissing this black stone. But I walked the other way. I believed in a living God, not in a rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
When they retreated to their tents for the night, he chose to sleep under the stars because it was so hot.<\/p>\n
Then something remarkable happened in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus came to me in a dream, put his finger on my forehead and his hand on my heart. He was smiling at me and said: \u2018Get up and leave this place.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00bb Full story with pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb Editor\u2019s note: A different sort of pilgrimage will happen in the USA soon and can use our prayers. Read this insightful piece about \u201cBurning Man\u201d: A Journey towards Understanding Alternative Spiritualities<\/a> (Billy Graham Center for Evangelism).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: ASSIST News Service, via Godreports, June 30, 2015 Ali Pektash grew up in a Kurdish family with 10 children. He was rejected by his mother, which opened a deep wound in his life. He was taken in by his uncle, but he too chased him out. He met and married Zehra, but succumbed to … Continue reading TURKEY: Kurdish Pilgrim Touched by Jesus in Mecca<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5801,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions\/5801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}