“That really pulled on my heart,” Powell said. “I’m a grandmother of 18 and also a great-grandmother. Entire families are staying in one hotel room. They are in a state of trauma, but they are strong, strengthened by being together as a community. Under any other circumstances they would be in a refugee camp, but the Israeli government is assisting them.”
Given the broad support for Gaza’s Palestinians among many young people, Powell hopes to bring a delegation of Christian college students to Israel so they can experience the country for themselves. “They only know what they see in the media and on TikTok, which is targeting the younger generation to disillusion them and to turn them against Israel,” the faith leader said.
Nick Hansen, the co-pastor of a Pentecostal church in Denmark, was in Israel on Oct. 7 to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles. While the shock of that day has subsided, he said, “there is now a somberness, a silence, a void without joy and without peace,” in Israel. “Everyone seems to be on high alert, on guard for the next attack.”
Hansen said he felt compelled to come on the mission with the other pastors to see the carnage for himself. “Sitting in Europe and watching the news, we wonder whether Israel is going too far. Being here, you understand the sheer evil of Oct. 7. It was a celebration of death, a brutality that doesn’t exist even in nature,” he said.
Pastor Ken Soltys, the founder of Ken Soltys Ministries in Hayesville, North Carolina, said he was deeply affected by the pastors’ encounters with the families of Israeli hostages in a Jerusalem hotel. Shelly Shem-Tov described the kidnapping of her son Omer Shem-Tov, explaining that he has asthma and celiac disease.
“Omer is our youngest. We call him our sunshine. He’s a good boy who went to a festival to dance,” the mother told the pastors. “I hope you will go home and tell your community our story. I hope this nightmare will end and I will hug my sunshine.”
This article originally appeared here.
