Don Feder is my hero and the hero of all Christians.

My Jewish hero is Don Feder, who is author, columnist, and President of the Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation [JAACD]. In protesting what he considers "an epidemic of anti-christian bigotry and persecution" he says, "by maintaining their loyalty to the eternal values as revealed at Sinai, Christians have become pariahs in the eyes of the establishment, but heroes in our eyes."[ quotes from LifeSiteNews, April 28th article] I was not sure what the word "pariah" means so I looked it up and the Winston [English] dictionary said it " a member of one of the low castes of Hindus in southern India, often agricultural laborers, descended from non-Brahmanical aborigines, hence an outcast or social outcast". Well, on the one hand I can speak to this issue as a "radical" Christian who believes all the words from God the Father's mouth to Adam & Eve, Moses, Abraham,Isaac, Ishmael and his mother Hagar, the shepherd boy-turned-King David, Solomon, Ezekial, Jeremiah, Amos, Habbukuk, Isaiah, Joel, Jude , Philemon, Obadiah, Micah, and the words of Jesus, God-in-the-flesh to the 12 disciples, the people, the Sanhedrin, the "scribes and Pharisees". When I read what a pariah is, I thought well, I did not know it was that bad! I can attest that Christian persecution is the agenda of the demoncrats, and I can attest that Christian persecution is the agenda of the communist party and the socialists too, who look at anybody who believes there is a God, with a wink-wink, cover-your-mouth-not-to-giggle look.

I can attest that I am bold for the Lord, for His commandments, for His statutes, and His ways, His path in life and that I could write volumes on how much persecution I have endured because of it. I could tell you how my daddy beat me for being baptised. I can tell you he beat me again because I intervened to prevent him from beating my two much younger brothers [who were 8 and 10 years younger than me, and two and four years old at the time] for their infants-not-watched-properly destruction of tarring the back of my daddy's pickup with the grease gun. When I did not answer his question of if I had done it [I was in the house when it happened] because I realized who had done it, and that if he turned his wrath upon them, it would kill them, he decided I had done it! And proceeded to beat me "to death" my mama said, and I thought, "I will not give him the satisfaction of knowing he is hurting me" and I clenched my jaw and endured a beating for something I did not do and had no responsibility for, while my mother was screaming at me, "cry or he'll kill you." I can tell you of intervening for my mother in the middle of the night once when I heard my daddy trying to strangle her and she was gurgling and I went in the kitchen where she was on her knees and he was strangling the life out of her and she was discolored and I summoned up the strength and force of God Himself through a quick prayer [I was Christian even then] and put my eight year old child's hands on his mighty farmer-built muscled arms that were like sinews, and I said to him as my whole body shook with rage at him, "if you kill her, I will kill you, so help me God" and he let go of her and went out the back door. I can tell you of another time, when I heard another fight between them in the kitchen in the middle of the night and I went in the kitchen to intervene and my daddy was waving a loaded shotgun around. When I walked in, he said,"I am going to kill her [my mama] and all of you [ six children]" and he stuck the shotgun in her face. I said, "if you kill her who will take care of _______[my youngest brother who might not appreciate being named here] --shoot me instead". I thought he would. He stuck the pointed shotgun in my face so close it was almost touching the tip of my nose. I closed my eyes and in my head, I prayed, "Dear Jesus, if he shoots me, please take my soul to heaven" and I waited. I held my breath. He was so out of control, so wild, that I thought if I breathed, or trembled, he would shoot me out of panic, of insanity. I had no fear, because I knew Jesus and I knew HE would take me to a better life if my daddy had shot me. After what seemed several minutes, my daddy laid the shotgun down and walked out the back door. He never mentioned it and my mother never mentioned again. I could tell you about being fired for saying I will not participate in medical killing, fired not once but three times. I could tell you how a hosptial told me that because of my beliefs in the Commandment, 'thou shalt not kill' and the application of that commandment to the subject of human life in the womb, they said, "you are not the right person for the job". I could tell you how my daddy told me to get the h--- out of his house when I was there to help him after my mother had surgery, and he was angry because I protested his cursing at me, and how he told me to "never come back" because he was "sick of my talking about God" . I could tell you pf another time my mother dumped me at the Greyhound bus station without a penny to my name to get rid of me and another time of how she left me at the church at about the age of seven and did not go back to get me. I can tell you how she despises me, for some reason that I still do not know. I can tell you that my daddy said because I "was so different from the rest of his children [ because I take seriously the words of Jesus] he wondered if I were his child?" and my mother only said, "if you say that again, I will slap your face"-- no denial, just a threat from her.

I can tell you how in the year 2002, I had quit the job I had in Boston where I had worked only a few days, in the hopes of going to the Boston University program for international health, and had not been paid yet, to go to Georgia to help. I did that because my brother told me that my mother was in the ICU. I went into debt to take the train to Georgia and then my mother who was in the ICU acted like the queen who just expected it, and when I sat up with her in the hospital room all night her first night out of the ICU, because of her need for help to bathroom, and I was cat-napping in the bedside chair at her beck and call, instead of saying thank you, one of my brothers became enraged, accused me of "wanting to steal my mother's money" He is the same brother who now mooches off my mother for the past year or two living free and acting like he is the boss , just taking over where my dad left off in abuse, anger, violence, insanity,domination and power tripping, since my daddy died last December, and the same brother who knocked me down and kicked me and broke my ribs after my daddy's funeral for writing thank you notes to the pall-bearers and Minister. I can tell you how my "christian" sister and her equally "christian" husband, my brother-in-law allowed me to sleep on their living room floor a few days after my daddy told me to leave and hadwaved his cane in my face again, and told me to never come back. They did not consider me "good enough" to sleep in their empty bedroom where there was a vacant bed, and then after two days, dumped me at the evening stop for supper spot of the bus station in Tifton GA after my sister said the same thing about me wanting to "take mama's money" and started a fight, shouting at me and making wild accusations ! The insanity in the family runs deep. My mother does not have any money and never did, her dad was an alcoholic! She put my daddy who owned property in a nursing home on medicaid, signing papers of indigency. If she did have money, I would not take it. I am not a thief and had no evil desires in wanting to give my mother the benefit of my nursing skills. My own poverty attests to the fact that I do not thieve or embezzle. That man was the same brother- in- law who chastised me for giving the absolute last $5 I had to my name to his 70+ cleaning lady who was working to pay off a debt her "medicare insured" husband had died and left with her. I was thinking, it is written to help the widows and orphans and since I was neither I figured I should help her. My brother- in-law heard of it, scolded me, attempted to shame me, ridiculed me and dumped me not even at the bus station because I had no money for a ticket but at an eating place but God intervened and sent a traveling bus of a Church my way, who gave me a ride back to the coast to meander back up the eastern seaboard. This "family" of mine who has never helped me, who has beaten me, attempted to shame me but I cannot be shamed for Jesus's sake, ridiculed me, made false accusations against me, poisoned the entire extended family against me, told the Preacher I was evil [ because I wanted to be a missionary] saying I just wanted the "travel" to Peru to serve Jesus there and that the church should not help me serve Jesus in Latin American countries or anywhere. That same family now wants me to pay on my daddy's headstone, if you can believe that! The same family who did not call me when my daddy was in the ICU and where he died two days later, and the same family who made no effort to save him and had an attitude, 'oh well he was old, it was time for him to die', when he was nearly 80, not 100, and who turned a deaf ear to his begging to go home to live, who did not allow me to see him alive, now wants me to be a part of the family debt but never considered me good enough to be a part of the family. The same mother who would not allow me the "use" of the family homestead of my daddy's house for a week or two after my daddy died so that my daughter and I could spend time together because she had a three weeks' leave from the Peace Corps and we had no other place to be on the eastern seaboard, now wants me to help pay her expenses for my daddy.They want a fine granite marker for their pride to signify where he lays his head in death when she denied him the right to lay his head on his own pillow in his own house, for 2-3 years before he died, and indirectly caused his death. He died of a broken heart in that awful place. Their attitude is he deserved it but his death broke my heart too! I forgave him and I wanted a real father.

I could write a book or two on what it is like to live in America in the year of our Lord 2005 and be unashamedly and bold for Jesus. If you ever want to know me just ask me.

gloria poole pappas