Where selling books costs your life

From Christianity Today

Rami Ayyad, manager of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, was found dead of multiple stab and gunshot wounds early Sunday, October 7.
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Ayyad, 26, was kidnapped at 4:30 p.m. Saturday as he closed The Teacher’s Bookshop, which is operated by the Palestinian Bible Society and located in a central part of Gaza City. No one has claimed responsibility. But Ayyad had received regular death threats for his work as the public face of the bookshop.

The interior ministry of Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza since the June ouster of its political rival Fatah, has issued a statement condemning the murder, the Associated Press reports. An AP story said Hamas has launched an investigation.

On Friday, October 5, Ayyad noticed a car lacking license plates following him, according to a Palestinian Bible Society press release. On Saturday at 6 p.m. Ayyad phoned his wife that he had been kidnapped by a group of people right after he had closed the bookstore. Ayyad told his wife that he would return home late that evening. Ayyad placed a second call with a similar message to someone else. At that time, a Bible Society official reported the incident to police in Gaza City.

New (nearly) clothes for Kalubian

This week I took over another load of children’s clothes for Kalubian, the poor village where we have a church plant. As in most places in the Philippines there are children everywhere. And as in most poor places in the Philippines they rarely get new clothes. In this instance they were not getting ‘new’ clothes but secondhand ones, but from the response I got they could have been crafted especially for Harrods!

Babies clothes in particular are well received. For 2 reasons, firstly they are relatively expensive here, compared to adults clothes. And secondly because babies are in them for such a short amount of time before they outgrow them they don’t get a lot of use. Thus for mamy of the poorest clothes for their babies are a luxury they literally can not afford; something I would have found difficult to conceive of before working here.

Enjoy the photo! I enjoyed taking it.

And you thought your church had problems…

A convent in Italy is being shut down after a fight between its last three remaining nuns.

So badly did relations deteriorate between the sisters of Santa Clara in Bari that the Mother Superior ended up in hospital with scratches to her face.

Now the local archbishop has intervened and asked the Vatican for permission to close the convent.

But Sister Liliana, the only nun still there, says she has no intention of leaving her home of the past 44 years.

The Clarissa nuns are regarded as the most austere order of the Roman Catholic Church, devoted to a life of prayer, penance and quiet contemplation.

But at the Santa Clara convent in Bari, the vow of silence was shattered by an unholy row.

Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista say they were driven to distraction by the nasty habits of their Mother Superior.

They became so angry that during the summer, they turned on Sister Liliana scratching her face and throwing her to the ground.

The two nuns have now moved into a nearby convent leaving Sister Liliana barricaded inside.

Despite the efforts of the Archbishop Giovanni Battista Pichierri to reconcile the three sisters he has been forced to call on the Vatican for help.

He wrote to the Holy See telling them the sisters had “clearly lost their religious vocation” and with only one nun remaining has asked for permission to close the convent down.

But Sister Liliana is not going without a fight.

She has not once left the nunnery in 44 years and she is not about to be pushed about now.

She has written to the Pope telling him she will only leave when God decides it is time to go.

And since she is devoted to her vow of silence it is not that easy to reason with her.

From the BBC