If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed! (joh. 8:36)

After Los Angeles I had a 3-hour flight to our next stop Dallas. Purpose was to visit relatives of my brother Leo and sister-in-law Lilly, and David - the much respected and beloved bookkeeper of the Institute in Salt.

His nephew Raja' is a Sign language interpreter student who is preparing to come back to Jordan after his graduation. We hope that he will join our team for the Sign language interpreter training programme.

Dallas was the place where in 1963 John F. Kennedy was assasinated (foto with cross on the road deck), another event that I well remember and which sent shock waves into the world.

After 9 hours of driving we ended up in New Orleans on the Mississippi river, in a paddle-steamer with dixie band, a children's dream of mine come true.

Slavery
From New Orleans we drove to the Whitney sugar cane plantation where we were given an overview of slavery and the slave trade of the 18/19th century. Millions of Africans were traded and sent to grow sugar cane and process the sugar, the new poison of the 'new world'. It killed the slaves and their children and it's still doing its miserable and macabre job of despoiling human life.

Animals
This museum farm confronted me with the inhuman slave trade and the unfathomable and unconciable treatment of fellow human beings, who's fate was literally worse than that of animals. Millions perished. And all this was sanctioned by a pope and implemented by the farmers, many of whom saw themselves as good christians.

But how to reconcile the one with the other is beyond me. It literally makes me cry. The last indentured farm workers who previously had been slaves were still around till 1970. At that time I was around 20 years old and, as a student, visiting the United States for the first time.

Dream
On Sunday I visited the memorial and the center/museum in Atlanta - Georgia which presents the aftermath of slavery in the US. Martin Luther King, the man who fought for freedom of his people, the former slaves, while adopting Ghandi's pacifist policy of civil disobedience and non-violence, a pastor and servant of his people, was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. His most famous speech was his 'I have a dream'. We also attended and much enjoyed a church service in Martin Luther King's Baptist Church. It was almost the third part of a sequence of slavery (Whithey plantation), fight against discrimination (Martin Luther King), and freedom (the pastor referred to the church as 'freedom church'). He brought a beautiful message - with Sign language interpreting - of salvation for our souls, blended with social concerns, a kind of personal as well as political faith.