Source: Preemptive Love Coalition, February 19, 2017<\/p>\n
A devout Muslim, Waleed worked for years as a soldier with Special Forces, and he has the sorrow and stories to prove it. He is more than qualified to work as a security specialist on our front-line deliveries. But now, standing there with that big grin on his scarred face, he looked more like a little kid.<\/p>\n
How can he be smiling? We\u2019re in a bombed-out church in the heart of Mosul, where ISIS had painted a giant black flag on the cross out front. Where thousands of Christian homes were marked with the Arabic letter \u201cN,\u201d their lives threatened with the sword, their possessions looted [and] families ultimately driven out of their ancestral neighborhoods like cattle.<\/p>\n
Already that day, we\u2019d picked through airstrike wreckage, seen rotted bodies of ISIS fighters, heard and felt and seen the battles of this god-forsaken war, heard stories of untold suffering\u2014and now, standing in this bombed out, burned-up church, Waleed had the nerve to grin at the destruction?<\/p>\n
\u201cSee? Look up\u2026 they missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full story<\/a> and\/or watch the two-minute video<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb See also Mass Christian Immigration from Iraq Makes Future of Church Uncertain<\/a> (Voice of America), and read about Burmese Christians ministering in Mosul<\/a> (Christianity Today).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Preemptive Love Coalition, February 19, 2017 A devout Muslim, Waleed worked for years as a soldier with Special Forces, and he has the sorrow and stories to prove it. He is more than qualified to work as a security specialist on our front-line deliveries. But now, standing there with that big grin on his … Continue reading IRAQ: A Little Hope in Mosul<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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-6999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999","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=6999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7000,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions\/7000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}