Mother, son to go on separate missionary trips this summer

ADRIAN, Mich. —

Mother and son Judy Ackley and Dennis Ackley will be doing some serious traveling this summer on missionary trips, though to very different parts of the world.
Judy Ackley and Dennis Ackley are both partners with Judy’s husband and Dennis’ father, Larry Ackley, in Larry’s Custom Cycles in Adrian.
On June 15, Dennis Ackley will leave for a remote area of western Alaska to help run a camp for Yupik Eskimo children.
The camp, operated by the Assemblies of God in Alaska, offers the children a week of traditional camp activities such as swimming, hiking, horseback riding and crafts, along with Bible classes.
The Ackleys belong to the Bethany Assembly of God Church in Madison Township.
The camp where Dennis Ackley will go is 500 miles from the nearest city, Anchorage, and 17 miles from the nearest village, called Emmonak. To get there, Ackley will fly to Alaska, take a bush plane, then go by boat and four-wheel drive vehicle to the camp.
At the camp, called Agaiutim Nune — Yupik for Place of God — Ackley will teach classes and help with running the camp. He will be working with David Boyd, a former Bethany Assembly of God children’s pastor who, with his wife, Mary Boyd, now is director of the Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge, a program of the Assembly of God churches that supports missionary work.
Boyd asked Ackley to go on the trip. Another young man and some church leaders from Alaska also will help them.
Ackley, an avid hunter who has been on some “pretty remote hunting trips,” said he looks forward to the chance to go to Alaska, and also to working with the children.
“It’s the opportunity to work with some needy kids,” said Ackley, who is making his first missionary trip.
At the camp, to which all supplies have to be brought, everyone will sleep in tents. The camp lasts a week and about 90 children ages 8 to 12 years old will attend In all, he will be in Alaska two weeks, with a couple days spent in Kodiak after the camp is finished, Ackley said.
Soon after Dennis Ackley returns, his mother will head to Cha-am, Thailand, where she will help care for the children of Assembly of God missionaries on retreat from India and southern Asia.
Judy Ackley is a veteran of missionary trips, having traveled twice previously to Thailand as well as to El Salvador and Mongolia. She made her first trip, to Thailand, 12 years ago.

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Israeli Archeologists Unearth 2,700-Year-Old Seal Featuring the Name of Jesus’ Traditional Birthplace

JERUSALEM (The Blaze/AP) — The Israel Antiquities Authority says archeologists digging at a Jerusalem site have found the oldest artifact that bears the inscription of Bethlehem — a 2,700 years old seal with the name of Jesus’ traditional birthplace.

In this photo made available, Wednesday, May 22, 2012 by Israel's Antiquities Authority, shows a detail of a seal bearing the name "Bethlehem" in ancient Hebrew script. (AP Photo/Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)

Eli Shukron, the authority’s director of excavations, says this is the first time the city’s name has appeared on an artifact from this period. According to The Jerusalem Post, this finding provides tangible evidence that the ancient city of Bethlehem existed. The clay seal, or bulla, was found in a Jerusalem dig.

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IDF: Israel in range of nearly 65,000 Hezbollah, Iran, Syria missiles

Some 3,500 missiles in Syria and Iran are currently aimed at Israel, while Hezbollah is developing drones and sea-to-air missiles, Brig. Gen. Itay Baron, head of the IDF Military Intelligence research section, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.

Hezbollah has some 60,000 rockets and missiles - 10 times what it had in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Naveh said at a Zichron Yaakov convention.

Baron told the Knesset committee that Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria are all trying to find ways to undermine Israel's military and technological superiority to damage Israel's weak spot, the home front. Baron added that all three are constructing military systems that would exhaust Israel's civilian populations, while augmenting their ability to absorb Israeli attacks by arming themselves with masses of rockets and missiles. Hezbollah, while developing drones for offensive purposes, has already
received sea-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, as well as explosives and camouflage equipment. Baron added that Iran has an arsenal of 450 missiles in striking distance of Israel. Syria has 3,000 rockets and missiles, covering ranges from 70 to 700 kilometers. Baron said the missiles were not very precise, but the surface-to-air Russian-made defense systems were quite technologically advanced.

Naveh said Hezbollah's swift arms increase over the past six years is part of its effort "to reach a situation where quantity is part of quality, and a quick blow at Israeli cities could produce a victory photo."


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The battle is on. The Catholic Church has thrown down the gauntlet in the front lawn of the White House.
The Archdiocese of New York, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., the University of Notre Dame—43 Catholic dioceses and organizations nationwide in total—filed a dozen federal lawsuits against the Obama administration for violating their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion.
The Catholic dioceses and businesses are suing the Obama administration over new regulations that would force health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and abortion drugs.
“By suing the Obama administration, they are sending a message that the freedom of religion guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution is essential to our liberties and that they will fight to preserve it,” says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “The Constitution guarantees more than simply freedom of worship. It also protects the right to live out one's religious beliefs in accordance with their faith.”
As Perkins sees it, regardless of their views on abortion or contraception, Americans of all faiths oppose forcing religious organizations to pay for such services. The Obama administration, through its Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he argues, would do just that by forcing religious organizations to cover abortifacients and contraceptives in their health-care plans.
Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund president and CEO, also applauded the lawsuits. He says the lawsuits are about religious freedom and freedom of conscience, not about contraception, just as the archdioceses themselves are saying.
“These new cases are about the very right to determine what is ‘religious’ and what faith-based beliefs may be followed in life,” Sears says. “They join the growing list of evangelical, protestant and Catholic religious organizations and employers who are taking a stand in objecting to the government when it forces any religious institution or individual to provide or fund morally repugnant services.”

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Pakistani Muslims Rape Girl, Beat Relatives for Prosecuting

A band of Muslims this month severely beat a pregnant Christian woman in Punjab’s Narowal district--causing her to lose female twins to miscarriage--in an effort pressure her family into dropping charges of raping her 13-year-old niece, the woman’s husband said.
Asher Masih of Dhamala village told Compass by phone that the men attacked his home on May 8.
“All three male members of our family, including my father, brother and myself, were out for work when Irfan Safdar and his accomplices trespassed into our house and started beating up my mother, sister-in-law and my wife, who was in her fifth month of pregnancy, mercilessly,” he said.
Masih’s elderly mother said she pleaded for the attackers to spare his wife, but they did not listen.
“They murdered our children, they raped our daughter,” she said. “We have nothing left with us.”
In a country where Muslim criminals believe police and courts will give little credence to the complaints of Christians, the family accuses three Muslims of gang-raping the girl at an outhouse on March 29.
“She had gone to a nearby field to use the toilet when she was forcibly taken away by three men later identified as Irfan Safdar and Shahid. Their third accomplice remains unidentified as yet,” Masih said. “At first we thought that she might have stopped at some neighbor’s house, but when she did not return after a long time, we set out to look for her.”
He said a villager informed the family that he had seen Safdar and two others taking the girl to an outhouse. The family rushed to the site, but Safdar and his accomplices fled, Masih said.
“We found [name withheld] inside the outhouse, raped and badly injured,” he said.
Masih said the family tried to register a First Information Report (FIR) with local police, but officers turned a deaf ear, as Safdar is the son of former police inspector Safdar Bajwa.
“They also refused to register [the victim’s] statement under Section 164, which is mandatory in such cases,” he said.
Police refused to file their complaint for more than a week, during which time the suspects repeatedly threatened the family, he said.
“They told us we were poor and weak and could not face them no matter how much we tried,” Masih said. “There are about four or five Christian families in the overwhelmingly Muslim village, but almost everyone is fed up with the Bajwa family because of their criminal activities.”

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