Joanne Sizoo
By John Marks
FORT MILL TOWNSHIP — She saw unmatched hospitality. She saw devotion. She saw people of varying faiths living peacefully.
Then, Joanne Sizoo came home.
The Grace Presbyterian Church minister recently returned from Iraq, where she went places and saw sights she still can’t entirely share. Some, because details could put Christians there in danger. Others, because Sizoo is still reconciling them herself.
“Just the extraordinary faithfulness of the Christians in Iraq, and their graciousness towards Americans, was pretty amazing,” she said.
Images of faith
Sizoo met a lady, a “very visible Christian who’s out to make a difference,” who leaves the area where she lives every weekend because it isn’t safe. She has bodyguards at all times when she is there. Sizoo met sisters who couldn’t pay the ransom for their brother, kidnapped one day and found on a street the next.
She also met enough people to understand there’s more than fear to the country.
“The danger comes from the outliers, not the regular folks,” Sizoo said.
Read more at http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2014/03/11/3344288/pastor-returns-from-iraq-with.html
1 Comment. Leave new
It is helpful to remember how these Iraqi and Syrian Christians are truly suffering for their faith, just as Ms. Sizoo reports when listening to folks from Sojourners and other such groups talk about how “oppressed” they are for their “faith.” It also helps to remember that some of the groups causing the violence in the region are Hezbollah, with whom some of our national staff have had lengthy conversations.
I hope Ms. Sizoo’s story gets widely distributed among faithful Presbyterians.