My HOPEFULLY LAST REVISION of my summary strong response(:

Summary/Strong Response
     
    In the article entitled, “Iran: Attack on Christian Couple Soon After Their Release
From Prison in Hamedan” published on December 2, 2011 on Persecution.com, a couple is arrested and put in prison with no formal charges. While they were visiting Pastor Vahik Abrahamian and Sonia Keshish Avanesian at their home in Hamedan in September 2010, they were watching a film when the secret police burst through the door with no warning. The article does not give specific reason as to why the two couples were arrested but it indicates it had to do with their belief in Jesus Christ. Both couples were then taken to the prison, separated, and were even forced to spend part of their imprisonment in solitary confinement.

          According to the Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN) who wrote the article, during their stay, one of the women had to be forced to the hospital because her blood pressure reached a critically low level. She was demanded not to talk or communicate with anybody in the hospital and as soon as her health was restored, she was immediately taken straight back to the secret prison. The article discussed a primary couple, Arash Kermajani, 29, and his wife, Arezoo Teymouri, 26, who were imprisoned for about eight months and were never formally charged. While they were in prison, however, they heard that they were being accused of being ‘ideological thieves and members of a Zionist group opposing the Islamic Regime’ stated Kermajani.

              The couples were never harmed physically, thank the Lord, but their Christian
beliefs were certainly questioned countless times. After they served for about eight months, one day
they were just simply told to “get out”. They walked out of the prison and to a main road
where they hired a ride. As they were driving away from the prison, several men on
motorcycles pulled up alongside of their car and began to hurl bricks at the car. Arezoo
stated that they became very fearful for their lives and the men continued to ride along side
of them, threatening the young couples’ lives. The God fearing couple then began to pray
and received strength from God to get through their fear of man. They then felt that the best
thing for them to do would be to go into hiding in another country so they fled to a
neighboring country. They stated that they did not want to leave Iran, that they wanted to
stay and continue serving the Lord but they felt that fleeing for now was the best idea. They are currently awaiting resettlement by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).


    The article on the couple that was arrested in Iran with no proper charges was a definite
eye opener in the audience of Christians and those who have a heart for the persecuted all over
the world. When a Christian reads these stories of the unfortunate persecutions they should walk away feeling compelled to do something to help, not feel sorry for them then forget the story entirely. God’s Word calls us to uphold our fellow believers and to encourage one another through prayer and support and if we are Christians, we are demanded to follow God’ Word. The article was inspiring and really showed the grace of God and how when we put our faith and trust in Him, He can deliver us from anything the enemy puts in our way. What the article did not show, however, is the severity of persecution and imprisonment in the Middle East. The issue is so prevalent and yet, this article didn’t seem to capture the proper tone to move its’ audience to take action.

           This couple that was being discriminated in Iran was very fortunate. Although they were
jailed for 8 months with no verifiable charges and their persecutors attempted to brainwash
them, they were not harmed physically. However, many cases, especially in the Middle East are
not so fortunate. Sometimes the victims are tortured physically, not fed properly or all, deprived of water, and tormented day and night. This couple,  Arash Kermajani, 29, and his wife, Arezoo Teymouri, 26, , certainly faced difficult times and circumstances, but in order to get a decent response from the audience of believers who are concerned for their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are being persecuted, these articles need to be written to capture the hearts of their readers. The writers of these articles need to have hearts that are burdened for the suffering. This article, however, was not as informing as it should’ve been. It did not go into grave detail of how horrible these cases can be at times and it did not have enough information on this story itself. How did the Christian couple feel as their personal home was being raided by these secret police? Why did the government suddenly decide to go for them? How long was Arezoo in the hospital for and why was she demanded not to speak to anyone? Were the men throwing bricks at their car government officials and did the couple recognize them? These are all questions that remain unanswered by this online article. Perhaps this article was meant to be just a short, very little detailed story, but it could’ve provided a little more coverage on the story. The Middle East may be the harshest area in the world toward Christians, and believers need to be informed and keep their brothers and sisters in Christ upheld in prayer. The Lord is always with His followers and we need to put our trust in Him and help others who are down.

Whew! Haven't blogged in a while!

Hey fellow blog readers! Sorry to have kept you waiting so long between my excitingly awesome blogs about the progress of my summary/strong response, but truth be told, not a whole lot of progress has been going on lately. Sure i've made little teensy weensy bitty changes here and there, but nothing worth noting on here. I've kinda been slacking latel:/ BUT NO MORE MY FRIENDS! I'm sitting in starbucks drinking a nice cold iced coffee and working on my comp! What more could a girl ask for right?? Well anyways, let's get down to the meat! So i just revised my summary/strong response on my report about the Christian couple who was being unrightfully persecuted in Iran hopefully for the last time (but that's up to you Mrs. Morley, did i mention how beautiful you've been looking lately??!!) And i will post the finished result soon after i publish this bad boy!! So the few things i had to change were as follows: I needed to include who or what organization wrote the article, when was the article published, where was it published, where was the couple at now, and i needed to come up with a pretty dang good thesis. The article was published on Persecution.com by the Farsi Christian News Network (FCNN), and it was posted on the website on December 2, 2011. As of right now that i know of, the couple is staying in a neighboring country right now awaiting resettlement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). My thesis statement however, i was kind of struggling with. I knew what i got out of the article and how i wanted to turn it into a strong response, but for some reason i seemed to have an issue doing so. My thesis statement i finally decided on was "When a Christian reads these stories of the unfortunate persecutions, they should walk away feeling compelled to do something to help, not feel sorry for them then forget the story entirely." I'm not 100% satisfied with this thesis statement however. I don't feel like i totally got across what i wanted to. I would revise it, but i'm having a really hard time coming up with a good one, so i guess this one will just have to do. Thanks for reading(:

What I plan to put on my website

The purpose of my website is going to be to inform people of the severity of persecution. My main focus is on the Middle East, but I also want to make people aware of persecution being an issue all over the world. Even though the article that i'm using isn't one of the most violent or horrific cases there have ever been, it is still very sad and unfortunate and these people were and are still very much in need of our prayer and support. Sure, there are already websites such as Persucution.org, Persecution.org, and VoiceOfTheMartyrs, but these websites are more of a place where Christians go to read up on the latest stories of their brothers and sisters who are in need of their prayer, or to form prayer groups with other people around the world. All of those things are great- really great, but for my website, i want it to just basically be about informing the uninformed about Christian persecution, or perhaps persecution in general, but i want it to be more aimed at Christian persecution, mainly in the Middle East.

rough draft of my literacy narrative

Literacy Narrative

                When I was first learning to read, probably around the age of 4 or 5, my sister would often let me read to her. Nikki, my older sister, being about 7 years older than me and an intimidating person in my eyes (she wasn’t the nicest when we were growing up…) often made me feel uncomfortable when I would read aloud in her presence. “You’re saying that wrong!” or “That’s not how you pronounce that word!” were often things I would hear her say, or scream, at me when I was trying to put together all of these different letters and vowels and consonants and such into structure such as words and sentences (although I was usually reading Doctor Seuss so the sentences weren’t too awful complex). When I did pronounce a word or phrase wrong, and it happened often, she would let me know. When that would happen, I do remember that in my mind I would think “I don’t think that’s how you say this…” or “I don’t remember how to say that” and I would try my best to say the word as correctly as I possibly could, but a lot of times it wasn’t. When she would harshly correct me, I felt awful. I felt stupid! “How hard should it be to accomplish something that other people do every single day!” I felt powerless; this impossible task in front of me often seemed to hard to do, and I eventually started to hate reading aloud. To my sister or anyone. I figured, if I’m not reading aloud to people, then how can I be chastised for making mistakes?

                I soon discovered, however, that the task was not impossible at all! It just required some time and a lot of dedication and hard work. Reading was pretty simple for me once I got the gist of it. In fact, I enjoyed reading and I did it often. In school, we read aloud in class a lot. Once we started to get into books a little more complex than Doctor Seuss, I really enjoyed reading. I read more than just the books and articles that we were assigned to read in class. What made me so interested in reading I think, was the getting to escape for awhile. The sense that no matter what’s happening in real life at that moment, if you just pick up a book or even a magazine, you can take your mind to a different place. At least, that’s why I enjoy it now. When I crack open a book that I know I’m going to like or I continue reading on in a book that I’ve already enjoyed so far, I just love not knowing what will happen next. I think that’s the thrill that anybody gets out of reading. I mean, what’s more exciting than getting to find out something about characters you’ve just met or reading on about someone’s life or anything! There are books out there on just about any subject, and they’re easy to find. So what I enjoyed about reading 14 years ago when I was first learning how to do so, is still what keeps the excitement there for me now.

Narrative on my Literacy Narrative

The writing process can be very long and tedious. Helpful, but tiresome. Effective, but annoying. Right now, we are in the middle of revising literacy narratives.  We have already completed our first and second drafts. The revising hasn’t been too bad yet, just changing a few meanings of paragraphs and the way certain things come across. My main problem was that the beginning and closing of my papers didn’t seem to agree and my audience changed throughout the paper. I rewrote a second draft and I hope I solved those two problems. However, I’m quite sure I’m going to be writing a few more drafts before I’m ready to start editing and such. Although I believe all my ideas agree thus far, I feel like not everything in the paper is stated or comes across to the reader the way I would want it to. I want my paper to be an influence on people teaching young children to read. I want for those people to understand that kindness and not harsh correcting, is the most effective way to help a child in this particular area. My paper implies that, and I state that exact thing many times throughout it, but I would still like to portray my thoughts a little bit different. Right after this blog post, I will also post a copy of my rough draft. It’s not all that great (I mean it’s a rough draft so go figure..) but it’s what came to my mind as I was trying to write this narrative. I had trouble at first starting out my paper, but after I wrote a few sentences and got a couple of thoughts written down, I began to have more and more of an idea of what I wanted my paper to be about. When my paper is finally finished, I will also post the end product and hopefully, they will be quite different, but still have the same main idea and focus.

The coolest blog to EVER exist

To begin the "coolest blog that ever existed", i must confess...this probably isn't going to be the coolest blog that ever existed...probably not even in the top 1,000,000. I just gave it that title to get people interested and to get people to read it, so since you're already reading it, you might as well just keep reading it. Well anyway, what this blog is really about is what i've learned so far in composition 12. So far, there's been a lot of writing and journal entries and searching the web and stuff like that. The writing has been alot, but it hasn't been anything over-bearing or anything like that and they've mostly been about things that are semi-easy to write about. What we've learned about as far as terms and such have been rhetorical analysis, rhetorical situation, good writing, and focused freewrites. The rhetorical situation, by definition, refers to any set of circumstances that involves at least one person using some sort of communication to modify the perspective of at least one other person, according to owl.english.purdue. edu. A rhetorical analysis is when you study a piece of writing, song lyrics, or even just a flyer advertising something and you write down things such as what is the general tone of this writing, who is the audience meant to be, what is the overall main point, and so forth. For good writing, we had to make a checklist for what we think makes something a good piece of writing. We all had different things like no run-on sentences, ideas must make sense, use transitional  words, use a good vocabulary, and brainstorm brainstorm brainstorm!! Lastly, we learned of focused freewrites. By definition, a focused freewrite is basically a chunk of writing that a writer composes in a certain period of time, without the pencil leaving the paper, writing on a certain topic, and writing anything and everything that comes to your mind concerning that topic.

BBBLLLOOOGGGGGGIIIINNNNNGGGG(:(:(:(:(:

Blogging. The definition of blogging, according to dictionary. com at least, is "

a Web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites." Not many people blog, at least that i know of. Most people are more into facebook or a while back, myspace. Twitter was pretty popular there for awhile, but not so much anymore. I think that people blog as a way to get what they're thinking out there. Sure you could make a facebook status or a tweet, but honestly, if one of my facebook friends posts a status that's like 7 lines, i more than likely would just think 'too long, i don't feel like reading that much' and just skip to the next post on my homepage. But blogging is meant to longer than facebook statuses or tweets or myspace postings. Blogging is more about stories and people have more freedom to go into detail instead of just doing a line or 2. At least a writers blog is anyway. Blogging can also be a bad thing because people, especially in America, tend to become over obsessed about things. I'm sure there are your average bloggers who only spend about maybe 15 or 20 minutes on their blog daily, and then you have the other people who just sit there for hours and hours and hours blogging non-stop with blood shot eyes and in need of a refill of coffee. At least it happens on facebook and myspace. Well anyway, before i turn into one of those blood shot eyed crazy people who are in need of coffee (even though i'm DEFINITELY in need of coffee right now), i better go. Have fun blogging and don't do it too much(: