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Hi, I’m Carla with Raised to Walk, and these are just some thoughts on a Sunday.^[1]

What I do each week is I give a weekly update about where we’re at with helping some Afghan Christians on their immigration journey, and I also just share a few thoughts that I’ve had for the week.

The way I got involved with this — I always start the stream off with this because it is a little bit of a crazy story — but my friend Mark Ritchie had been doing Bible studies via Zoom in Pakistan since 2020, and then in 2021 he asked me to help him with some of those classes.

About that same time, there were some Afghan Christians that had come into his classes through some of the Pakistani pastors that he was working with. So one thing led to another. In 2022 when things in Pakistan got really hostile for the Afghans, we started trying to find ways to help them keep from being deported and also looking at the options for them long term for immigration.

So that’s the way it started, and then Mark’s friend Don joined, and he has a ministry — Don Shire Ministries at https://www.dsminternational.org/ — and he agreed to help in that any donations made to his ministry, if you select Raised to Walk, then that will go to help this group.

So anyway, that’s the way it started, and it’s been a real experience learning all about immigration and it’s been an education. I realized that there were a lot of things that you generally can pay attention to, and international relations was not one of the things I paid attention to.

So I’m trying to do a crash course now about learning about the dynamics of what’s going on with our history with Afghanistan, as well as what the heck is going on with Pakistan. I still don’t quite have my head around that one.

I’m also trying to learn Persian. I’m working on the alphabet now. I’m a little excited because I just realized — I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the Arabic letters — but I just realized recently that when you look at the form of the letter itself, they don’t actually stay in that form; the tail loops up when you write. That was one of the things that I was having a hard time with, not recognizing the letters when I saw the words.

That was my little realization of the week: how the Arabic letters work.^[2]

I found an amazing resource on the Persian language online from UT Austin.^[3]

Challenges of Evangelism: Does Anyone Want What You Have?

So anyway, on to the topic of today’s stream, which is titled “Does Anyone Want You Have?” The thought behind this is that there have been a couple of situations that have caught my attention in the past week about people who are in evangelistic efforts and the impact of that.

So the Great Commission in Matthew 28  verse 18:

“Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'”

So this verse is really — when you look at the difference between the different streams in Christianity — that really is one of the foundational verses that evangelicalism is based on. That is a belief that that is direct instruction of Jesus, that we are to make disciples.

Conversions vs Discipleship

Now one of the things that is, I guess, kind of a hang-up for us sometimes is that we look at conversions as the equivalent of disciples, which is not true. If somebody just responds to an altar call, okay, that’s great, but that’s not making a disciple. That’s making a convert. Discipleship is a lot more than that.

Discipleship is learning more about God, learning how to respond to God’s voice and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It’s about being transformed. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” (Romans 12:2).

That is discipleship. When we look at our church efforts — a lot of times it’s about the number of baptisms or the number of members of the church, and I don’t think there’s a lot of measurement of what is the quality of the fruits of the members? And that’s harder because it’s not as easy to count. So I think that’s part of the problem.

The Importance of Sanctification

I think another part of the problem is there are some beliefs in certain Protestant churches that really dismiss the process of sanctification. So when you combine that with this push on numbers, I think that’s a problem.

I mentioned that I’ve been listening to the Generation Jihad podcast, going back through starting at episode number one in March 2020, and I’m up to like episode 40 now. This is a podcast that talks about our history in Afghanistan.^[4] They started this podcast not too long after the Doha agreement was signed.

Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast

But this episode of a podcast called Bodies Behind the Bus just started playing, and it was really interesting.^[5] It was a story of a girl named Dylan, and she was a missionary to a country in the Middle East — she never said which one it was — but with an organization called Live Dead.

She was explaining how she got involved, why she wanted to go on a mission trip, and what the organization was like. As she was explaining it, she was talking about how she goes there because she wants to witness and spread the gospel. But a lot of her time was spent in classes and doing work for the organization rather than really interacting, engaging with, and doing life with people that were in the country that she was in.

But at the end of the day, it got to be very authoritarian, especially towards her. She was a young single woman, and so they treated her like she was basically their drudge — she was the workhorse. She said they had a very, very intense schedule and they had to  record all their time. It was very controlling; she was in a very controlling situation. She said that even when they had time off, as a single person she was supposed to babysit for the families so they could have a break, so she never really got a break.

The story is a lot longer, but the thing I wanted to talk about was that at the end it got to be very exploitative towards her, and it was so bad that it was her friends that she had made in this Muslim country — who knew her and liked her and cared about her — that told her that she needed to go home. That the situation she was in was not good for her and she needed to leave.

This was the witness of this missions organization: that they’re treating this young woman — who they should be looking out for — so poorly that the Muslims in the country where they were supposedly spreading the good news were like, “Go home, you need to leave.” That was the witness.

So my question is: why would, as an organization, if that is the message that you’re giving, why would you want to do that? Women in Muslim countries already face a lot of oppression, so why would they want to listen to another religion that is basically doing the same thing?

She said at the very end — the host asked her where she was at now — she’s back home and she’s working through the trauma that all of that caused. She’s coming back into all the craziness of the U.S. at the same time and COVID. And she said, “I still haven’t found a church where I feel safe.” That is another very sad statement about where we’re at right now in the American church.

Marcus Schroeder Arrested for “Preaching the Gospel”

Timestamp: 00:12:52

So the other circumstance that came up that was really kind of on the same topic: there was a 19-year-old named Marcus Schroeder, and the story is he’s arrested for preaching the gospel in Wisconsin. This video shows him being arrested.^[6] This is one of the stories, there’s been a bunch of stories about this.^[7] And another one: “Christian warrior speaks out after arrest for reading Bible in protest of drag queen performance for kids.”^[8]

Okay, so here’s the thing. I read one of the articles about it, because anytime that people say, “Oh, the church is persecuted,” and “Christians are being persecuted.” Is this really true?

So this is what happened: there was some sort of Pride event in a town that this guy does not live in. He drove from outside the area and he went to this event, and he was going up and talking to people trying to engage them. I don’t know what all he was saying — there really weren’t details — but with people who didn’t want to be engaged. So he was asked to leave.

I guess he was trying to engage with them, and then he started praying, and so he was asked to leave. I guess he was like, “Oh, we’re just praying.” And the event organizers said, “You can pray outside.”

So Schroeder did, but then he gets a sound system and he’s broadcasting this, and at that point he’s arrested.Then there’s a story afterwards: he’s going and speaking in front of the city council and he’s basically preaching from the book of Galatians.

So that’s what came across my feed on Twitter, and I was like, you know, this is the thing: this is what upsets me about it. You’re not being persecuted for the gospel.  You’re not being persecuted.

These are consequences of actions, because honestly, you’re being a jerk.

So this is the thing: number one, he’s going to someplace else; he’s not a member of the community. He goes into this event and he’s asked to leave.

Now, people may say, “Well, he shouldn’t have to leave.”

I’m in Houston. I see stories about Lakewood Church pretty frequently of protestors at Lakewood. There was a story about six guys from this really fringe, fundamentalist church that pretty much thinks that Joel Osteen is an antichrist or something protesting at Lakewood.^[9] They get asked to leave.^[10]

I don’t think they were arrested, but they get asked to leave. They were protesting, disrupting the service, and they get removed.

There have been abortion activists that have done the same thing. They’re removed.^[11]

Even at my church, if you start speaking in tongues in the service, someone will come up to you and ask you to stop, and if you don’t, you’re probably going to be removed.

So you can’t just go to somebody else’s event and do whatever you want. It’s like somebody coming into your house and rearranging everything. You might say, “Oh yeah, I have some in-laws that do that,” but it’s rude. It’s just a basic common courtesy.

So he’s going to an event that somebody else — whether you agree with them or not — somebody else planned. They paid for their permits, they rented whatever facilities that they needed, they set the guidelines, they set the price for the tickets, they decided who can be vendors there, whatever. And it’s their event. And so you going in and bringing something in that is not what they planned — whether you agree with it or not — you just can’t do that. It’s just, again, it’s rude.

I’ve run events. When you are putting together an event, you put in a lot of expense of promoting it and in organizing it. Again, you get to say who can be a vendor there and who can be participating. Not necessarily so much the attendees, but as far as who’s going to be speaking, who’s going to be performing, and who’s going to be selling things or promoting things. You’re going to decide that.

As an event organizer, there are a lot of times that I said, “I’m sorry, you can’t be there. We just don’t think this is the right fit for this event. This just is not suitable for this event.” It’s not persecution; it’s just something that you are able to do as an event owner.

Actually, when I did the Easter event, we would have vendors there, and this I just thought was lame. Dan Huberty — this is the first time he was running for State Rep — he went and he was handing out flyers at our Easter event.^[12] I thought, “Dude, you’re lame.” Did he get a booth? Did he even ask? No. We have a whole bunch of people there, so he just starts promoting himself there. That was lame. Did we say anything to him? No, we didn’t. But still, that was lame.

Same thing: this park where the event was held was surrounded by all these businesses. A lot of businesses that didn’t have a location around the park were participating and bringing a ton of people in and increasing traffic to the area. Did this one restaurant even give us  a gift certificate for a giveaway?

No, nothing.

Then the restaurant sent an employee outside to stand on the corner and hand out coupons to attendees to get into their restaurant. The event wasn’t fenced which is why they were able to do it. Handing out coupons to event attendees, without contributing anything to the event itself, and then taking attendees that could be buying from our food vendors …  it is what it is. They’re in the space around the park. But it was so lame.

But this is what Marcus Schroeder was doing. He’s basically deciding that even though this is their event, “I’m going to do whatever I want to do.”

 No. Life does not work that way. You don’t get to do just whatever you want.

So then when he goes out and he gets a sound system … again, you don’t just get to do whatever you want. And if he had been part of the community that he was doing this in, then he might know that. He didn’t even live there. You’re not being arrested for preaching the gospel. You’re being arrested for basically setting up your own event without permits. Even for setting up a sound system like that, you have to have permits. You can’t just do whatever you want.

I got into a discussion about this with someone on Twitter, and they’re said, “The gospel can’t be bound.” Okay, so here’s the deal. What do you think that means? So this is Galatians — the guy was reading from Galatians in the city council meeting, but this is Galatians chapter 5, verses 22–23:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

He’s going and reading Galatians to the city council. Context. Context.

Who was the letter of Galatians written to? As well as every other letter in the New Testament? Believers. It was written to believers. Did Paul go out and give dictates to people who were not believers? No, he did not. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 9 — let me read through the end of the chapter:

“When I wrote to you before, I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. But I wasn’t talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin, or are greedy, or cheat people, or worship idols. You would have to leave this world to avoid people like that. I meant that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or is a drunkard, or cheats people.”

— Ken Paxton, Dan Patrick, Greg Abbott … take note. —

“Don’t even eat with such people.” Now, these are people who claim to be Christians but basically you see no fruit in their life. You don’t see the fruit of the Spirit in their life. And then he ends up with, “It isn’t my job to judge outsiders. But it is certainly your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. God will judge those on the outside. But as the scriptures say, ‘You must remove the evil people from among you.'”

Are the people Marcus Schroeder is going to — are they believers? Probably not. They didn’t want to hear it. So no, they’re not believers. Is it his job to judge them? No. According to Paul, no. He’s supposed to be cleaning up inside his church.

So what’s his church like? Does he have people committing adultery in his church? Does he have people that are abusing others? Do you think his church is clean? If not, then maybe he should be talking about that, and explaining how his own church should handle that, rather than going into a community, among a space, that doesn’t want to hear it.

The Fruit of the Holy Spirit is the Proof of the Gospel

So it goes back to the beginning of the stream: does anyone want what you have? Do you have something? Do you have evidence of something that someone wants? If you did, then maybe the gospel wouldn’t be such a hard sell for you.

Because this is the thing. This verse in Galatians — this is the gospel, this is the good news. The fruit of the Spirit — this is the transformation that the Holy Spirit works in our lives.

He makes us something that we were not before.

Where we were hateful and angry, he makes us have love towards others.

Where we were in depression and sadness, he gives us joy.

Where we were in chaos and confusion, he gives us peace.

Where we were impatient and always taking offense at the slightest thing, he gives us this patience and forbearance.

Where we were harsh and cruel before, he gives kindness.

And where we were self-interested and always out for our own interests, he brings goodness in our lives, and he builds faithfulness in us, and gentleness, and self-control.

 This is what he does. This is a transformation.

There is no law against these things. This is what Christianity is. This is the message of the gospel.

The good news is what he works in us.

It’s not a set of doctrines that you’re supposed to be proclaiming.

You’re supposed to be the product demonstration.

That’s what it is. We are supposed to be the good news.

If somebody can’t see that in your life, why would they want to listen to you? It’s like going to somebody who is 500 pounds and asking them what you should do for your health and for dieting and how to lose weight. Would you ask them? Well, if they started at a thousand pounds and they’re down to 500, then maybe you would. But if you haven’t seen any evidence of weight loss in their life, would you ask them?

No, you wouldn’t. Because you haven’t seen that success.

So if someone can’t see the change that the Holy Spirit — that the truth of the power of the Resurrection — has made in your life, then what do you got? You got nothing.

Church Discipline is for the Church – Not for Outsiders

In Romans, chapter 2 — and Paul is talking about some of the same things here:

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.”

So it’s not saying that there is no judgment, or that there are no consequences for wrong actions. But going back to 1 Corinthians, believers are supposed to be concerned with fellow believers, and then you leave the rest to God.

“And do you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them yet do the same things? Do you think you will escape God’s judgment?”

This is what Jesus was talking about in that “judge not” passage. I have a Bible study on that.

Does the Bible say “judge not lest ye be judged?”

“Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”

God’s Grace Leads to Salvation

God gives us grace and he shows us kindness, and I know people who are very concerned about evangelism. Again, I think part of our issues in the American Protestant church is that we get real hung up on that decision moment — on the altar call — and we think we need to be handed these little tracts, like we need to know how to convert somebody or lead them to salvation.

It’s the kindness of God that leads us to repentance, (Romans 2:4) and it’s the Holy Spirit that saves.

I went to a private Christian school for six years and they had that mindset It took a while — not a little bit, a lot — to get over feeling guilty about not doing what they were recommending regarding evangelism, and realizing that their recommendations weren’t that great. But you just have to be ready to step forward in the situations where God puts you, and  be ready to — what is it, is it First Peter? —

“Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks the reason for the hope that is within you, but do so with gentleness and respect.”

You just have to be willing to share your story.

We’ve talked a lot about giving a testimony in our Monday Bible studies with the Afghans. One of the Afghans who has worked as a missionary said that they were taught to give a 60-second testimony. He said that for him, before he came to Christ he was very angry, and he said, “Now I have peace.” For somebody who struggles with anger —  that will attract their interest.

You don’t have to know the answer to every question, but you at least need to know what God’s done in your life and be able and willing to share it. If you don’t know what God’s done in your own life, then that is probably where you should start.

Evangelism, Respect, & Boundaries

Timestamp: 00:27:41

But going back to that 19-year-old, who has obviously been given some kind of weird ideas about evangelism and what his responsibilities are, I would suggest going and reading this book, Boundaries. Great book. Because he is obviously just trampling over all sorts of boundaries — in interacting with other human beings, following legal guidelines, laws and codes for communities, and how to operate in society. He just doesn’t really quite seem to grasp that. So this would be my recommendation for him.

The Fruit of the Spirit is the Best Testimony

But moving on from that — this is a reminder: if you don’t have fruit of the Spirit in your life, and don’t have an acquaintance with the Holy Spirit, then I don’t really think you can be talking to other people about that. You can’t go and introduce somebody that you don’t actually know to another person. So if you don’t know the Holy Spirit for yourself, then how can you introduce him to anyone else?

Afghanistan Update

Timestamp: 31:47

U.S. Endorsing the Taliban

So anyway, just moving on from that into Afghanistan news. The big news this week is that there was a U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan that met with the Taliban this week,^[13] and this caused a lot of uproar because a lot of people feel like this was giving the Taliban legitimacy.^[14] That’s a whole thing.^[15] The envoy was saying, “We stressed with them that they need to respect women and protect Afghan allies.” Well, that was supposedly part of the deal from the very beginning, and they’ve never done that.^[16] And so it was just giving them credibility that they don’t deserve and that they haven’t earned, because the Taliban are terrorists and thugs.^{[17] [18] [19]}

Having been urged extensively by Afghans & human rights defenders on the need to directly engage the Taliban on human rights, particularly the extreme restrictions on women & girls, I joined my colleagues in talks with the Taliban. 1/4 https://t.co/eRvSuYQjwI

— U.S. Special Envoy Rina Amiri (@SE_AfghanWGH) July 31, 2023

Who are the "Afghans & human rights defenders" whose voice seems to shape the US and UN policies toward Afghanistan?

There is something going on behind the curtains and we deserve to know what!
If you know more & willing to speak, reach out to me at zahra.nader@zantimes.com https://t.co/hcyudqPVGS

— Zahra Nader (@ZahraYusufi) August 2, 2023

Women protesters say international engagement with the Taliban is like paying ransom to kidnappers #StandWithWomeninAfghanistan https://t.co/N4ocU46KWi

— Sara | سارا (@Sara98ahr) August 2, 2023

The coalition of Afghan women's protest movements reacted to the recent statement ( majority of Afghan Women Activists have Asked for direct engagement with Taliban) of Rina Amiri, the US special representative for Afghan women's affairs.
This protest movement asked the US…

— Nilofar Ayoubi 🇦🇫 (@NilofarAyoubi) August 2, 2023

The U.S.’s Promise to Afghan Allies

August 31, 2021: Remarks by President Biden on the End of the War in Afghanistan.^[20]

And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out. Secretary of State Blinken is leading the continued diplomatic efforts to ensure a safe passage for any American, Afghan partner, or foreign national who wants to leave Afghanistan.

In fact, just yesterday, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that sent a clear message about what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel, freedom to leave. And together, we are joined by over 100 countries that are determined to make sure the Taliban upholds those commitments.

It will include ongoing efforts in Afghanistan to reopen the airport, as well as overland routes, allowing for continued departure to those who want to leave and delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has made public commitments, broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan, on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans. We don’t take them by their word alone but by their actions, and we have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.

Pakistan Deporting Afghan Refugees

This is happening in Pakistan this week. There was another round of searches and arrests. Five hundred Afghans were deported from Pakistan this week. A lot of them were Afghan allies that had been waiting to have their visas processed.^{[21] [22]}

#BREAKING: At around 12:00 tonight local time, the Pakistani police raided the houses of Afghan refugees in Islamabad . Beat and arrested dozens of them, local sources say.@TajudenSoroush pic.twitter.com/VVKzlaitdk

— Nilofar Ayoubi 🇦🇫 (@NilofarAyoubi) August 2, 2023

Almost two years since we bailed from Afghanistan. While we & @StateDept @USCIS drag our feet in fulfilling our promise to our allies, those who escaped to Pakistan are rounded up & deported back into the hands of the Taliban. This is shameful https://t.co/2lAnUPzvIy pic.twitter.com/XIhy26FJ2V

— Carla Alvarez – Raised to Walk (@RaisedtoWalk) August 3, 2023

Twelve-Year-Old Dies Working to Help Family

The situation is so dire in Afghanistan that people just have to do whatever they can to survive. A 12-year-old girl was picking things up near the border, trying to help her family, and she fell under a truck and died.^[23]

In Torkham, a 12-year-old girl named Sadiqa, She worked to move people's boxes from border to find a small amount of money to support her family. Today she's fell under the tires of a truck and she died. #ChildrenRights #AfghanRefugees#education #humanitarian #Rights pic.twitter.com/LFstE5xWkv

— Jahanzib Wesa (@jahanzibwesa) August 3, 2023

Child labor is not unusual in Afghanistan, and there are stories about girls who are dressed as boys so they can go and work in some of these different mines. But this is a reminder of how dangerous this type of work is for children. This is bad, right? Afghanistan is in a very, very dire situation as a country.

But the crazy thing is, in the U.S. we are loosening up child labor laws and child protection laws so that young kids can work in these kinds of dangerous places.^{[24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]  [30] [31]} There have been a couple of stories about teens that have died in some of these factories.^{[32] [33]} But we’re just sold out to corporate overlords and just seeing people as tools to be used.

Kids in Afghanistan are doing this out of dire necessity, but it’s happening in the U.S. because of corporate greed.

Suicide by Women Rises in Afghanistan

Going down to the next story: there are quite a few stories that came out this week about the rise in suicides by women.^[34] Things are so horrific there. And for a lot of them, there’s just no hope.^[35] And it makes it worse when you have the U.S. and NATO allies acting like the Taliban are legitimate rulers, giving them credibility and recognition. It’s just, it’s just even worse.

“Arwin, who heads Afghanistan Women & Children Strengthen Welfare Organisation, said the NGO receives reports of at least 9 to 11 suicides by women every month, many of them young girls. However, the actual number could be in the hundreds, she said.” https://t.co/hrevphN062

— Heather Barr (@heatherbarr1) August 3, 2023

Targeted Killings of Afghan Allies in Afghanistan

So another story: there are targeted killings taking place in Afghanistan, and usually the victims are soldiers of the previous government.^[36] And here’s the thing — I’ve mentioned this before — a lot of times the Taliban will go out and say that they’re doing an attack on, like, ISIS or something like that and they’re taking out terrorists. Again, they are the terrorists. But it’s not true; they’re actually targeting former soldiers of the Afghan Republic or officials of the Afghan Republic, and they’ll just say it’s ISIS.

🇦🇫‼️🇦🇫👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/tOHgutYzKo

— Clint Stevens🇵🇸 (@clint_d_stevens) August 4, 2023

The Two-Year Anniversary of the U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan: a National Dishonor

Because we’re coming up on the two-year anniversary, this is a throwback to two years ago — a story from August 17th, 2021, “The Taliban vow to provide safe passage to Kabul airport, and a Biden advisor says”

We saw how well that worked out.^{[37]  [38]  [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]} People being killed trying to get to the airports.^{[44] [45]}  Attacks. ^{[46] [47] [48]}

This, again — the Taliban are terrorists and thugs.

Lies people believe from terrorists still dumbfound me

Refreshing memories as August is upon us pic.twitter.com/5LiHqr8MDE

— jason criss howk (@jason_c_howk) August 3, 2023

The Abandonment of the Afghan People is a Global Failure and Collective Shame

There’s a lot of discussion about how this is just a global failure that we have this catastrophe going on in Afghanistan where we had all these NATO forces there.^[49] We are now doing so little collectively, globally, to help the people that we had promised to stand by. We aren’t. We’re just closing a blind eye and ignoring their plight.

(1/2) The call for victims of violence to ‘refrain from violence’ in Afghanistan isn’t a national issue; it’s a global failure. It’s a contradiction that transcends borders & even politics. Asking those who suffer to be silent is a universal betrayal of human dignity & empathy. pic.twitter.com/ZaVldWYyCo

— Kumayl (@kumayl) August 4, 2023

Taliban Ban Beauty Parlors in Afghanistan

I mentioned in a couple of other streams that the Taliban are idiots, but they closed beauty parlors. So women already couldn’t take part in working in marketplaces and sell things there, but up until a couple of weeks ago they could still operate beauty parlors.^[50]

Now that the Taliban have decided that beauty parlors have to be closed. there are hundreds of thousands of women who are out of work. They’ve lost their livelihood. They are continuing to increase the misery for women.  It’s basically illegal to be a woman in Afghanistan.

Taliban recently closed more than 120000 beauty salons in Kabul alone. As a result, many women now have zero income and are forced to sell little belongings such as carpets to buy bread. #DoNotRecogniseTaliban #LetHerLearn pic.twitter.com/TYgP5oCuRM

— Afghanistan Fact Checks 2 (@AfgFactChecks2) August 4, 2023

Taliban Ban Girls from Attending School After Third Grade

The other thing that the Taliban did was they banned women from being able to go to university. ^[51] Then they banned them from being able to go to school after the sixth grade.^[52] Now they banned girls from going to school after the third grade.^[53]

I teach a Bible study on Monday with Afghan Christians, and then on Thursday I meet and read with the kids of two families that live in the same apartment.  I asked them about school in Afghanistan before the NATO withdrawal. One of my translators said that they started learning English in fourth grade. So just think about what you learn up to third grade. They may be able to read in Pashto, maybe, but after that their education is cut off. Just think about the eight-year-olds that you know, and imagine them not having any education after that.

Afghan Education: Evidence of the Benefits of Phonics

There’s one thing that I want to say about the kids learning English in fourth grade: the kids that I read with — they may not know what some of the words mean, but when they read to me, they haven’t ever come across an English word that they can’t pronounce.^[54]

They learned English phonetically, and they can sound out and read pretty much anything I put in front of them. Obviously English is a weird language, and so some of the pronunciations sometimes aren’t always right and I’ll have to correct it. They can sound out English words better than most kids that I see in our schools here in the U.S.

I don't know what school is like under the Taliban, but I was told that before the Taliban takeover, they started learning English in 4th grade.

(The Afghan kids I work with may not know what every word means, but they can sound out any English word put in front of them) https://t.co/uivZBLVt2e

— Carla Alvarez – Raised to Walk (@RaisedtoWalk) August 5, 2023

The Impact of the Lack of Phonics in U.S. Schools

We don’t teach phonics in schools in the U.S.; we teach reading with Whole language Learning, which is a whole other issue.^[55] But I’ve been really impressed with the Afghan childrens’ English skills and the English syllables that they can handle.

I started reading with the Afghan children early this year, but they had been out of school since the pandemic started. For the 10-year-old,  she had probably just started English when COVID hit. Whatever the Afghan teachers were doing, how they were teaching English, they had been doing it really well. You could probably bring some of the Afghan teachers here to the U.S. and teach Americans that don’t know how to sound out a word.^[56]

This is a true story. I taught a third-grade Sunday school class and I had a whole table of kids that didn’t know what a syllable was. This is the craziest thing to me. We were helping the children learn the books of the New Testament. We were not asking them to read the names of the books to us. We would say the book name and have them repeat it, so they could learn them.

Whey could not even say words like “Thessalonians” — these multi-syllable words, or “Philippians.” They couldn’t even repeat them to us. It was just really crazy. I asked, “Do you know what a syllable is?” I wrote out the word on the whiteboard, broke it down by syllables, and said, “A syllable is one sound; clap for each sound.” My background is business, but I felt like I had to learn how to teach remedial reading just to do some of the activities in the Sunday school class.

It is so frustrating to me that we don’t teach kids with phonics, because all of the research shows that that is the way to teach reading. It actually activates parts of the brain that advanced readers use.^{[57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62]}

Learning to read with phonics trains you to be a good reader.

Internalizing Systemic Failure: When Kids Blame Themselves for Reading Gaps

Teaching a third-grade Sunday school class, I could tell that even at eight, how kids’ identities are already being shaped by how people respond to them.^[63] There was one girl that I could tell that she saw herself as the “dumb, funny girl.” She would never really try to do the activities or learn things. But all I did was show her what a syllable was and how these big long words broke down into sounds. After that, we went through the books of the New Testament again and — I’m not kidding you — she had the entire list of New Testament books memorized in five minutes. Five minutes. It was just that she hadn’t been taught well, and she thought it was her, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t her.

No Way Out: Why a Third-Grade Education Cap Is a Life Sentence of Restriction

Going back to Afghan girls: this is just basically condemning them to a life of poverty and restriction. Because if they can’t even get past a third-grade education — what can happen for them? Even if they move to another country later in life and were able to get a way out, those years are lost.

Beth Bailey, The Afghanistan Project Podcast: The Absurdity of Negotiating with Terrorists

Moving on. This is a comment by Beth Bailey about the ridiculousness of the claim that we’re supposedly in talks with the Taliban. I mean, why are we even in talks with them? They’ve made it clear what they intend to do. They’ve made it very clear that they don’t care what we say. They’ve made it very clear that they think they can do whatever they want. So why are we even doing this?

Some “big thinkers” out there still think negotiating with Taliban is the best way to help Afghan women & girls.

How? After 2 years of making it clear to the Taliban that the legitimacy they long for is linked to treating women as people, they’ve only increased restrictions.

— Beth W. Bailey (@BWBailey85) August 5, 2023

The Hostile Situation for Women in Afghanistan

This is an article talking about the plight of Afghan women who are in prison. ^[64] Afghan prisons are not good for anyone, and the women especially experience a lot of abuse.^[65]

Our latest report on the situation in Afghanistan concerns female prisoners who “are enduring a deplorable situation.”

“They face humiliation, insults, physical torture, and sexual assault”.

The report includes graphic content. https://t.co/QpFIIxfQ6l

— WRN Afghanistan (@WRNAfghanistan) August 4, 2023

U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan Accommodates the Taliban

The U.S. sent a special representative for discussions with the Taliban to tell them that they need to loosen up restrictions on women.^{[66]  [67]} This just happened. ^[68] Then immediately after the meeting, the Taliban say, “Girls cannot go to school after the third grade.”

It’s basically saying, “Screw you; we’ll do whatever we want to do.” That’s exactly what the Taliban are doing. So quit giving them the courtesy of treating them like they’re civil human beings that can be reasoned with and are respectable leaders of a country. They’re not. The Taliban are terrorists and thugs. So quit treating them as anything else.

Ban on women’s work.
Ban on women’s travel without a male relative.
Ban on women’s visits to parks even with a male relative.
Ban on girls’ secondary education.
Ban on girls’ university education.
Ban on women’s beauty salons &
NOW;
Ban on girls’ education beyond grade 3.…

— Ziauddin Yousafzai (@ZiauddinY) August 5, 2023

Women can’t work, they can’t go anywhere without a male relative, they can’t go anywhere.^[69] They are just blocked in on every side, and it continues to get worse.^[70] Every week it continues to get worse.

The Taliban Shooting Citizens in the Streets

This tweet is actually linked to a video of someone who is showing the Taliban shooting people in the streets — their former Afghan allies. So this is a thing. Supposedly the agreement with the U.S. was that the Taliban would allow anyone who wanted to leave to leave, and that the Afghan allies would be given safety. That’s not happened. Not at all.^[71]

These are just a few of the heroic sacrifices members the Afghan armed forces made year after year – and that Biden, Trump, and so many others refuse to acknowledge.
More than 70.000 Afghan soldiers and officers died fighting our common enemies.
May they never be forgotten. 🇦🇫 https://t.co/QRn8Piwzs7

— Stephan Jensen (@StephanAJensen) August 5, 2023

Afghan Allies in Hiding for Their Lives

This week there was an Afghan ally that I hadn’t heard from for awhile and I was just about getting ready to send them a message. He is somebody who has helped my group of Afghan Christians in different areas and has given me advanced notification of certain things.

He is in Pakistan waiting for his SIV application to be processed the his Pakistan visa had expired. I’ve explained before that if they can’t get a visa extended, they have to file an exit permit to leave Pakistan, go back to Afghanistan, and wait to get a new Pakistan visa.

That is what he had to do. He had to exit Pakistan and was in hiding in Afghanistan while he was waiting to get his new Pakistan visa. This is somebody who has connections and can get visas. It’s very, very difficult for Afghans to get Pakistan visas.

He had to go back to Afghanistan and was in hiding for 10 days. He had to escape the Taliban at the border and at one point he had to hide in a rain barrel. He had some contacts that helped him hide.

I said, “Do you think that Pakistan gave the Taliban a heads-up that you were coming back to the country?”

He said he thought that they did.

So this is the situation — almost at two years after the NATO withdrawal — this is the situation that we’ve put our allies in. There’s another story about the Taliban torturing a child because his family was part of the former Afghan government.^[72]

Translation: Taliban crime and terror in Afghanistan!

Two years after the rule of the terrorist Taliban in Afghanistan, soldiers and employees of the former government are victims of targeted assassinations of this group every day and every day we witness the arrest, torture and killing of our compatriots.

This is the Islamic system of the Taliban and their service to Afghanistan 👇

Monsters. A child was brutally tortured in a Taliban prison over a PUBG game. Upon learning that the child is the son of a martyred ANDSF officer from the previous government, the Taliban reportedly killed his uncle.#Afghanistan https://t.co/fcWh738cVv

— Natiq Malikzada (@natiqmalikzada) August 5, 2023

The Taliban are Terrorists and Thugs

Why am I sharing all this? I’m sharing all this because I wanted to be clear about exactly who the Taliban are and that when the State Department and the U.S. put out these propaganda puff pieces about how the Taliban are our allies against counter-terrorism, it’s a complete and total lie.^{[73]  [74]} The Taliban themselves are the terrorists.^{[75]  [76]} That was one of the things that came out — I don’t know if it was this week or last week — some U.S. spokesperson said, “Oh, terrorist threats have gone down and terrorist attacks have gone down.”

Who’s doing the reporting?

What kind of reports do you think you have when the terrorists themselves are in charge? Please!

This is  why I’m sharing these stories so it’s clear — Taliban are terrorists and thugs.^[77]

As they say in the South @POTUS Bless. Your. Heart. What press? The Taliban propaganda network, ie @VOANews Al-Qaeda is PART OF THE TALIBAN GOVERNMENT and the Taliban are TERRORISTS & THUGS. All the gaslighting in the world won't help if there is another US hit- kiss 2024 goodbye https://t.co/2NqEGhhdBC

— Carla Alvarez – Raised to Walk (@RaisedtoWalk) July 1, 2023

Afghanistan Oversight: SIGAR and Afghan Ally SIV Application Processing

Timestamp: 00:50:26

There is a special commission that is in charge of overseeing and providing oversight on the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. It is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and the acronym is SIGAR. SIGAR posts tweets on a regular basis and they do quarterly reports to Congress.

When I’m talking about these the Taliban are doing, this is the thing: none of this stuff is new. Government officials know this. So when you see Republicans in Congress doing all these special hearings on Afghanistan or investigations, they’re just posturing.^{[78] [79]} There’s no confusion about the withdrawal at all. There’s no confusion about what went on. We already know what happened. Republicans are just putting on a show. There’s no confusion about what happened, there’s no confusion.

So SIGAR is talking about how the processing of the SIV applications is super slow because they have antiquated I.T. systems and inadequate inter-agency coordination, which — it’s just a complete goat rodeo.^[80] d^[81] That’s what it seems like to me.

The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process has suffered from chronic understaffing, reliance on antiquated IT systems, and inadequate interagency coordination, resulting in years-long processing timeshttps://t.co/pfgqNZwAeH

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 2, 2023

I wanted to do what I could for my Afghan friend who had to go back to Afghanistan and wait in hiding for a Pakistan visa, soI went into my congressperson’s office (Dan Crenshaw) and asked them to do a follow-up to see where his SIV application was. I asked my friend if he had gotten any feedback or any response. He did get an email on July 6th saying that his application was at “COM approval.”

The Bottleneck of the SIV Application Process

This is the SIV application process: COM approval.^[82] That’s step one. So his application is in COM approval. They just finally got through reviewing all of the information that he submitted.

And I said, “What about your other people?” He was the head of an organization that provided logistical support to U.S. and NATO allies. The thing is, most of our troops were pulled out in 2013 and 2014.^[83] So the operations that were going on there — we were able to do that because of our partners in Afghanistan.

He said, “Well, I have four people in COM approval.”

This is what happens when it goes to COM approval: before it gets to COM approval — which is with the State Department — they submit all their information, and there’s a vetting process of the documents that are being submitted with the applications. My understanding is that’s been contracted to third parties. Then it goes to COM approval for review, and while it’s at COM approval they will verify and confirm with the U.S. supervisor for that application — so whoever they worked with that was a U.S. citizen, the senior most official — they will call them and ask them to confirm that this person worked for them. So it’s a direct, personal contact. I’ve mentioned before that is part of the problem: there are a lot of people who can’t get a hold of their U.S. supervisor, and so they’re kind of out of luck.

He said that four of his employees’ supervisors got a call to confirm their service.

I said, “Oh, that’s great — four people. That’s awesome.” I know he has a lot of former employees, but that’s awesome.

He said, “Yes, but 12 of them were denied.”

I said, “Why was that?”

He said that the State Department said the recommendation letters were fake.

So the State Department had just called for four people to confirm the recommendations, but then they said 12 of the letters were fake. Then there were a couple of other reasons give, like derogatory information, or they didn’t have adequate significant, faithful service, or something like that.

Okay, so if you’re saying that their work for this agency was not significant, but these other four’s was — that doesn’t make sense. They’re claiming that the same person — the same supervisor — who wrote the letters for the four people were acceptable, but the letters for the twelve were fake. It didn’t sound to me like the State Department had even called to confirm the validity of the recommendation letter for the twelve applications they denied. It sounded like the person reviewing them had just decided that the letters were fake.

I don’t know what the deal with that was. I don’t know if the processing numbers in COM approval are so bad that they’re trying to speed through it, denying applications so they can get some processed and make their numbers look better. I don’t know.

But the people that had their SIV applications denied had 120 days to appeal. I asked if he had begun the appeal process.

He said, “Well, no, it just happened. We didn’t know what to do.”

I said, “Well, I would have your supervisor send a letter and tell them that she did write those letters and they are valid, and that they have provided service. Just respond to each of them.”

He said, “Well, do you have a template? Because I’m probably going to have to do it, because she [his former supervisor] is super busy.”

So I just wrote something I would say if I were him and I sent it to him, so they had something to work off of.

The Inefficiencies of the U.S. Immigration System

But this is the thing. This is part of the complete incompetence. Part of the issue is that they are understaffed. But can you use a little bit of common sense? If you have an organization — I’m not sure how many people he had, I think he had around 250 employees — and if they’re all submitting SIV applications, wouldn’t it make sense to have, I don’t know, maybe a couple of people working through this so you could verify them all at once? So the people processing the applications are at least familiar with the organization and the supervisor that’s authorizing these SIV applications. Don’t you think that would make a little bit of sense? But it just seems like it’s scattered and there’s no coordination. It’s very, very, very inefficient. Use a little bit of common sense.

U.S. SIV Applications: Balancing Security with Responsiveness

SIGAR also points out that they have to balance processing applications while trying for speed, but also making sure that they properly vet and do security clearances for the people.^[84]

Need for expeditious processing of SIVs must also be balanced with need to carefully vet Afghans applying to resettle in United States to ensure they do not pose national security threats—a process that requires significant staff time among U.S. officialshttps://t.co/pfgqNZwAeH

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 3, 2023

That’s true, and I agree with that. But as one person that I was talking to pointed out, they went through that when they started working for these organizations. And so if you had people working on very sensitive projects in Afghanistan with the U.S. military, and you don’t know who they are, that’s a problem.

The whole — scare quotes — “well, we have to be sure they’re vetted” — you really should have been doing that before you let them work on these projects to begin with. So that’s kind of a bogus argument, because that happened on the front end. It happened on the front end. That’s already been done.

USCIS Foot Dragging on Processing of P1/P2 Humanitarian Parole Applications for Afghans

 This is  another discussion about how slow the P1/P2 Humanitarian Parole application processes are.^[85] They estimated it was going to take between 12 and 14 months for the processing of these P1/P2 applications.

#USCIS, which processes Afghan refugee applications, said staffing levels fell from 352 to 189 between 2017-2021. By the end of FY2022, staffing increased to 304 officers, leaving 24% of authorized positions unfilledhttps://t.co/d8IbkwaHMo

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 6, 2023

The P2 path was just created in 2021, partially for situations like the Afghans are in, and it really hasn’t been processed at all.^{[86] [87] [88] [89]}  But most U.S. refugee admissions take between two and ten years.^[90] There are massive issues.

(1/2) In fall 2021, #StateDept estimated P1/2 processing time for Afghans would last approximately 12–14 months, an ambitious timeline given the average worldwide processing time for U.S. refugee admissions is 2–10 years

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 4, 2023

The problem is that we told Afghans that they had to leave Afghanistan and go to a third country to be considered refugees to apply for this path. You can’t be considered a refugee if you’re in your home country. They left based on U.S. instructions. They had to be out of their home country for a year before they could be considered a refugee.

According to the National Immigration Forum, delays for Afghan refugee applicants result from under staffing in the International and Refugee Affairs Division of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which is responsible for processing themhttps://t.co/d8IbkwaHMo

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 5, 2023

It doesn’t even look to me like they’ve begun to process the applications from Afghans.^[91] 

It’s hard to know if this is true or not, but people have told me that some people are getting letters to find out where they [the applicants] are to schedule interviews. But sometimes things the Afghans hear aren’t always true. There’s hope that it’s coming soon, but I don’t know for sure. I haven’t heard of any actual interviews.

SIGAR: The Delays in Immigration Application Processing are a Result of Poor Planning

According to SIGAR:  overall, the whole withdrawal and the SIV applications, the P1/P2, all of it, is just a result of a lack of poor planning.^[92]

(1/2) Reviewing, vetting, and processing SIV, P1, and P2 applications is enormously time consuming for all the agencies involved. According to analysis in a number of U.S. government sources, while some of the delay and poor organization surrounding…

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 5, 2023

I know that there are Afghans who listen to this, and I will just say that you have a right to be frustrated with the lack of urgency that the U.S. has towards fixing the problem and processing the applications. But our immigration system has been a mess for a long time.

It’s not just about processing Afghan applications; we’re just a mess.^[93] We have this whole stack of a mess of laws, and things get changed.^[94] The U.S. immigration system is a network of all these different agencies. It’s just messy, and it’s inefficient.

Also, on top of that, the year of the withdrawal from Afghanistan — we had just had an attempted insurrection.^[95] We had a former president that tried to overthrow the government while he was still in office.^[96] He tried to seed as much chaos as possible.^[97]

We were in the middle of a historic pandemic. ^[98] Trump had not prepared for distribution of the vaccines at all.^[99]

So there were a lot of fires —  a lot of bonfires — that were going on at the same time.

I’m not saying this is an excuse at all, because obviously what happened in Afghanistan with the withdrawal is inexcusable. I’m just saying that’s what was going on.

That’s an explanation for it; it’s not an excuse.

So part of the reason behind the debacle with the withdrawal from Afghanistan is that there was a lot going on during that.

Could we have done better?

We could have done a whole heck of a lot better.

But I also think that part of it is we, as Americans, don’t like to think that we didn’t do a good job. We didn’t do a good job. We have to admit that we didn’t do the job.

We have to admit that there are some things in our government that need some dramatic overhauling. Unfortunately, part of that requires Congress to be on board with fixing those things. We just have a lot of people representing us that are only concerned with themselves and aren’t concerned with the responsibility that they’ve been elected to handle.

So it’s not just you — they’re not concerned about Americans either.

Gender Disparities in Afghan Immigration Applications

Moving on. Okay. This is interesting — I never — this is another update from SIGAR, and they were just saying that there are very few women represented in SIV applications.^[100]

(1/2) As of September 2022, there was a significant gender imbalance in whom U.S. govt was trying to resettle. According to a report from Senator Shaheen’s office, #StateDept initially said only 6% of SIV applicants were women, though they later updated that figure to 14%

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 4, 2023

 Going on to the next update: there are more women represented in P1/P2 applications, but again, those haven’t been processed.^[101] So even in the immigration applications there’s severe gender discrimination against women in getting out of the situation. They’re the ones that are most at risk. So I mean, literally — like I said — it’s pretty much illegal to be a woman in Afghanistan.

(2/2) The Association of Wartime Allies estimates the correct figure is between 7% and 10%. Senator Shaheen’s report found that women constitute an unspecified higher percentage of P1 & P2 referrals, however, these have been deprioritized compared to SIVs https://t.co/dfpDhaEN9E

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 4, 2023

The Hobbling of the U.S. Immigration System Under Trump

I still need to remember this — Trump basically slashed and just gutted our immigration system, the staff to process applications.^[102] That is part of the reason the immigration process is so slow: not only is our system as a whole a mess, but what we had was gutted under Trump.

And this is just an update — like, these are what the offices were. This is what our staffing went down from; I think it was like down from 352 to 189 people that were processing all these applications in USCIS and in the refugee admissions. It’s increased a little bit, but we’re still understaffed by 24 percent.^[103] So we have a situation where the staffing was gutted for refugee admissions, but the need exponentially explodes. And so that’s a little bit about what’s going on too.

#USCIS, which processes Afghan refugee applications, said staffing levels fell from 352 to 189 between 2017-2021. By the end of FY2022, staffing increased to 304 officers, leaving 24% of authorized positions unfilledhttps://t.co/d8IbkwaHMo

— SIGAR (@SIGARHQ) August 6, 2023

That is all of my Afghanistan updates and all my updates from SIGAR. But if you want to read the full text of the tweet threads as well as the reports that they link to, if you go to my website raisedtowalk.org, I’ll have an article up with this live stream with links to all of those.

Greg Abbott and the Texas Border

Timestamp: 01:07:00

But back to the U.S., and what our wonderful — please note the sarcasm in that word — Texas governor, Greg Abbott, is doing. At the Texas border they’re separating families again.^{[104] [105]}

Exclusive: Texas troopers separating families at border in apparent policy shift, sources say https://t.co/sxucreiRlQ

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) August 2, 2023

What Texas under Greg Abbott is doing at the border  reminds me of what Pakistan does: separating families. So with Pakistan, this has happened to several of our families. Afghans have to have valid visas to be in Pakistan, whether it’s a tourist visa or a family visa or a medical visa. And medical visas — you may be able to come for a short period of time, but they’re a complete nightmare to get renewed or extended.

I have a video I’m still working on editing about the Sound of Freedom, where I talk about Operation Underground Railroad and what they did, and how their Afghanistan rescue, was really not that much of a rescue. ^[106] d^[107] Operation Underground Railroad got medical visas for the Afghans that you can’t renew them; it’s difficult.

But anyway, this is what Pakistan will do. A family will apply for visas, and Pakistan will maybe only approve one or two. Can believe that? I mean, that’s like literally one of the most sadistic things you can possibly do.

We have a lady in the Afghan church has an opportunity for asylum with Sweden, because she’s worked with them before. But she had to have a valid Pakistan visa. She had applied for a visa when we did a whole big group of visas. Her husband’s visa was approved for Pakistan. I don’t know about her kids. But hers wasn’t. So she sent me a message and I didn’t know that she had gone back to Afghanistan. She applied again for a new visa, and it was denied. I’m like, holy crap. I mean, can you imagine that? It’s just so sadistic.

This is what we’re doing in the U.S.: we’re separating families at the border too. The refugees at the board are in a precarious situation as it is, and then you’re going and separating families.

Greg Abbott’s Barbed Wire Traps in the Rio Grande

Then this is super disturbing. This is literally like something the Taliban would do. In the buoy border across from the Rio Grande they have traps — barbed wire — and then in between those buoys there saw blades in between them. They found two bodies stuck on those buoys in the past week.^{[108]  [109]} I can’t believe this.

#Breaking: Mexico Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena says a 2nd body was found Wednesday, about 3 miles north of where a body was found stuck to the border buoys at ~ 2:35 p.m.

Bárcena said it’s not clear if the second body is connected to the first body. https://t.co/5JDpgvFHPX

— Aarón Torres (@AaronTorres_) August 3, 2023

Wrap-up for the Week

Timestamp: 01:10:26

Anyway. That’s the news for this week.

What else have we been doing? I don’t know; I’ve just been sending emails. I have another effort that I’ve been sending emails to people to get some help on, so just hoping I start getting some responses. It kind of seems like I go through spurts. I’ll send emails and I won’t get any responses, and then all the responses will come at once. I hope I go through another time period when I start to get responses to things.

So anyway, it seems like we do have some movement. Some of the Afghans Zoom in and join in on my Bible study at my church in Kingwood, and then afterwards we have a little chat. One of them said today that he got a call from UNHCR, and he’s going to be going in for a fourth interview. So I’m really, really hoping that means that he gets his UNHCR refugee certification. That would be really amazing. I’m hoping that he can get a referral for an asylum to a country. That’s what we’re hoping for.

But anyway, that’s enough for this week. And thanks for watching. I hope you have a great week coming up and that you’re able to do some good. See you next time.

2026 NOTE: This video transcript has been lightly edited from the transcript. The original post contained a summary with links to the articles and updates shared in the stream. However, as the original RaisedtoWalkTV channel has been hijacked into a multi-channel network, the transcript sabotaged, and the ability to correct the transcript removed from my control, I have updated this post with the full text.

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