Sunday, March 21, 2010

Laura Silsby - Last Baptist

Laura Silsby who dropped everything in the middle of a personal financial meltdown to do God’s work and pick up and save “33” Haitian orphans is still in jail.

All Haiti 'orphan' children reunited with parents
PORT-AU-PRINCE — The 33 Haitian children at the center of a US abduction row have finally been reunited with their families, but the fact that not one of them turned out to be an orphan raised fresh concern.

SOS Children's Villages, the international aid group caring for the children since the drama erupted seven weeks ago, said Wednesday it was only right for them to be handed back to their families.

"It has turned out that all of the 33 children have parents. SOS Children's Villages is convinced that in most cases, the best place for a child to be cared for and protected is within the family," the group said in a statement…

The national director of SOS Children's Villages, Celigny Darius, suggested the high-profile case, which diverted valuable media spotlight off the massive relief effort in Haiti, had raised serious questions…

SOS Children's Villages, which has looked after the 33 since January 30, is now free to focus solely on almost 500 other children in its care, many of whom were simply handed to aid workers at the gates of the compound.
Ms. Silsby is the last of ten Baptist Missionaries in Haitian custody who arrived on a wing and a prayer to do missionary work on the natives whether they needed it or not - whether the children abducted were orphans or not.

Last Baptist held in Haiti faces new charge
Laura Silsby, a businesswoman from Boise, Idaho, and leader of the mission volunteers drawn from members of four Southern Baptist churches in Idaho, Kansas and Texas, faces a new charge of "organization of irregular trips" under a 1980 law restricting travel out of Haiti…

She already could stand trial on charges of kidnapping and criminal association in the Jan. 29 attempt to take 33 Haitian children to a temporary orphanage in the Dominican Republic without proper paperwork. According to the Associated Press, Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he has until early May to decide whether to release Silsby or to order a trial.
This is on a more secular level where people think that “God’s law”, made up or real, trumps the laws of men and nations.

The same idea on another level is at work with the Vatican and its institutions that are currently in hot water over child abuse.

It would seem that in Christianity, that crimes against children are discounted when you put God into the equation of Charity. And at the same time, you take children and or the laws of nations and people out of the same social equation.

Christianity in theory and in practice sometimes does not appear to be uniform or the same across the board. Or at least that is how an outsider might look at it?

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