Peter -n- Melodye

What do you say when someone asks you, "When did you stop beating your wife?" If you answer, "I haven't," then it looks like you are still beating her. But if you answer something like "a long time ago" then it looks like you used to beat her but eventually stopped. If you never beat your wife then you can't answer the question. It's a lose-lose situation, and if you aren't given the option to challenge the validity of the question itself then you have no way out. It's entrapment. Roughly a year ago Guy was called as a defense witness in the trial against David Brown. During the course of the testimony the judge himself challenged Guy with a set of questions very similar to the "when did you stop beating your wife" question. And he absolutely disallowed Guy any possibility of challenging the question or any non-answering of the question -- even though Guy specifically asked for each of these. When Guy finally gave an an...

Yesterday the trial for Guy Eshelman began ... sort of... If you've read INjustice in Albania in this blog then you will be aware of this trial and who Guy is so I won't go into that. We arrived at the courthouse about 9:40 with a group of 10 or so missionaries. The trial was to begin at 10. Several missionaries were already there in addition to embassy representatives and others who came to support Guy. More arrived every few minutes until we were probably 25 or more. (There was another group who met at the AEP to pray for the trial at the same time.) We all filed through a somewhat perfunctory security and were directed to a certain room. I just started to think about what the room would look to a stranger when we were told that the trial was being moved to another room. We all dutifully filed out of room #1 and into room #2 where we were searched a little more carefully this time. We were told to place any bags at the back of the room, including ladies' purses, a...

(This email went out Nov 18. It appears that something in the way I worded the message caused it to get picked up by a lot of spam filters and so I'm posting it here so people have a way of getting the message.) We have been asking you to pray for David Brown. Please continue to do that, especially as tomorrow (Wednesday, November 19) the court will be giving their final decision for his guilt or innocence (and perhaps sentencing). We have also asked you to be in prayer for our teammate, Dr. Guy Eshelman, who testified in defense of David Brown and, in turn, was recently charged with failure to report a child abuse. (As you'll read below, he had been told that it was already reported.) Up until this point our only action point has been prayer—which is HUGE! Thank you for all who have written encouraging emails and are praying. Now we are being asked to do something more. Evangelical missionaries in Albania work together under a single umbrella organization ca...