After fifteen months of full-time service with CPT's Aboriginal Justice Team, my view of peacemaking is broadening from answering Ron Sider's 1984 challenge, embracing the cross and the Spirit of The Way and standing in front of weapons, to also challenging the church to transform violence and oppression through outreach, education, advocacy and liberating love.
Pray for forty villages near the Urra dam in Tierralta, Cordoba, Colombia, visited by Christian Peacemaker Teams. May God work in their organizing in defense of their communities from armed groups, resource extraction interests and Phase 2 of the dam megaproject.
Israeli soldiers and border police used a backhoe to uproot 200 young olive trees in the Palestinian village of Susya in the South Hebron Hills on 23 April.
Pray that the women of Iraqi Kurdistan may find freedom from domestic violence, discrimination in legal and medical systems, honor killings and other forms of oppression. Give strength and courage to those who advance women's rights and well-being.
Israeli soldiers in Hebron arrested a thirteen-year-old boy from his house on 14 April. Settlers and soldiers physically prevented internationals from accompanying the blindfolded child.
A newly released report compiled by internationals working in the West Bank city of Hebron documents an alarming rate of abuse of the rights of children.
God, grant that those
persecuting you in your people in Palestine -- demolishing homes, cisterns and
houses of prayer, and justifying the pillage by the need to practice war --
will turn from their vanity and practice love and peacemaking instead.
Residents of forty communities near a dam organize to 
