Letters: Delivered from Chinese imprisonment

Delivered from Chinese imprisonment

My wife, Anita, and I serve International Baptist Church of Hong Kong. I want to share a praise item, which we were not able to broadcast 11 months ago because of security issues with one of our mission friends. Kaushic Biswas was the architect of “A Taste of Grace,” a cooking school training Hong Kong immigrants with a trade and the gospel. He has trained hundreds and led many to faith in Christ.

Kaushic took a package for an acquaintance across to China. To his surprise, it had a metal toy gun hidden under a false-bottom panel. He was set up by persons from another faith. Kaushic was arrested on his next trip to China to get cooking spices. He remained in a small cell with many prisoners for nearly 11 months.  He was fed soggy vegetables and wet bread.  However, he shared his faith, and several inmates came to know Jesus as Lord.

With the help of several business people and some faithful and fine attorneys, after paying many fines, Kaushic returned to his family and our church. It is so good to have him back. We laid hands on him and his wife, Dang, and thanked God for his return.  We are asking him to pace himself as he recovers, and we are exploring ways to have him return to “the vineyard” of Christian service at an appropriate time.

Please ask others to thank God with us, and to pray for Kaushic’s healing and for his “recalling” to Christian service.

Dan Williams

Hong Kong

Try another church

I agree with you in regard to Abercrombie & Fitch. Even if I were “young and fit,” I wouldn’t buy their clothes, because I’m too tight.

On comparing their policy to the church, I have to agree to a certain extent. There’s no doubt that there are churches that have “turned people off,” and they just felt like they didn’t belong. But I will be willing to bet (if I weren’t Baptist) that the majority of these people tried only one church.

I like fried okra but can’t stand it boiled. If I would have tried boiled okra first, I would have said all okra is terrible. But I also tried it another way and found out that all okra is not bad.

My point is: Try another church. It may be a whole new experience.

F.A. Taylor

Kempner, Texas 

Answers for Kountze questions

I am the lead attorney representing the Kountze cheerleaders.  Your questions  deserve answers:

1. The students’ parents purchase the supplies for the banners, not the school.

2. The students’ create the banners after school.

3. No school employees are involved in constructing the banners or selecting the message.

4. The act of holding up and running through the banners is optional, not mandatory.  In fact, during the 2011 football season, run-through banners were not used at some of their games because the cheerleaders chose not to create them on those occasions.

5. The cheerleaders’ parents pay for the uniforms, not the school, thus the cheerleaders, like any other student wearing a Kountze football T-shirt in the stands represent the school.  But the school does not give the cheerleaders a message to carry, nor does it tell the banner holders in the stands what to say.  Implications are often proven wrong, as this case demonstrates. 

6. Yes, other students are free to hold up banners from different faiths, including atheists. 

One of the prices of free speech is that one sometimes has to hear things that they don’t agree with. But should cheerleaders of the Christian faith have to surrender their right to freely express their sincerely-held religious belief because someone disagrees with it? Of course not!  This is America, and student-led and student- initiated expressions of religious faith are constitutionally protected. 

Remember that many of our fallen heroes died to protect the rights guaranteed in our Constitution.

David W. Starnes

Beaumont