It was Saroukos’ third visit [from Australia] to see her husband, Matt, a U.S. Army lieutenant stationed on Oahu. The newlyweds married last December.

She said she hadn’t had issues before, but this time U.S. border officials at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport flagged her for additional screening.

Saroukos said they were then taken to a holding room, their bags and phones were searched, and they were asked a slew of questions — everything from her work as a former police officer to whether her tattoos were gang-related to her marriage to an American.

Saroukos said officials conducted a body cavity search, walked her through the airport in handcuffs, and drove her to the Federal Detention Center.

Because Saroukos had missed the cutoff for dinner, she was not given food. At no point was she allowed to call her husband or mother.

Saroukos’ husband is now on leave in Sydney with his wife. He told HNN he waited for hours at Honolulu airport, repeatedly asking officials what happened to her, but no one gave him answers. He was finally told she was taken to the detention center but was not allowed to see or talk to her there.

Saroukos said she’s sharing her experience to warn people of the increased risks of traveling to the U.S.

Though consulting astrology or horoscopes is forbidden in Scripture, more than a quarter of Christians say they believe the stars and planets have some impact on human destiny, according to a Pew Research Center study.

The study was conducted in the fall of 2024 through a survey of a nationally representative sample of 9,593 U.S. adults.

Some 30% of U.S. adults stated that they consult astrology or a horoscope, tarot cards or a fortune teller at least once a year. Most, however, said they engaged in the practice for fun and few said they based major life decisions on what they are told.


Continued below.

Utah‘s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth was meant to be a moratorium, giving lawmakers the chance to reevaluate the policy once experts reviewed research on the impacts of treatment.

This week, nearly 2½ years after the law took effect, lawmakers received the findings of that study.

Utah health care experts concluded, in a more than 1,000-page report, “Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes” as a result of gender-affirming care.

Well, now that the results are in, they will change the law to follow the evidence, right?

But some Republican legislators are already dismissing those findings.

I guess it wasn't all about the evidence after all.

While the review prepared for lawmakers acknowledged “an increase in some specific types of benign brain tumors,” it found in studies that included thousands of transgender individuals that “increase risk of mortality was consistently due to increase in suicide, non-natural causes, and HIV/AIDS. Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult.”

She’d traveled from Kennett, Missouri, her home for nearly two decades, to St. Louis for what she thought was a routine meeting to renew her employment authorization document.

The document, issued by the federal government, allows her to work legally in the U.S. and is set to expire in January 2026.

After a brief meeting, Mayorga said a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer told her she needed to stay at the office in St. Louis. She agreed in hopes of receiving her renewal that suddenly seemed in peril.

Nearly seven hours passed before ICE officers entered the room, placing the 45-year-old woman, whom many residents in Kennett described as a soccer mom, in shackles at the wrists, waist and ankles.

Mayorga said before she knew it, officers placed her in the back of a van with four male ICE detainees.

She’s expected to be deported to Hong Kong.

Back in Kennett, Mayorga’s arrest shook the town of around 10,000 people, where she works at John’s Waffle & Pancake House.

Three weeks after Mayorga’s arrest, more than a hundred residents gathered at John’s Waffle & Pancake House on Tuesday.

John’s is typically closed on Tuesdays, but its owner, Liridona “Dona” Ramadani, opened the doors, pledging to donate all of the sales that day to Mayorga’s legal fund and to support Mayorga’s children.

Ramadani described Mayorga as part of her family and a diligent worker. It was Ramadani who retrieved Mayorga’s purse and car left in St. Louis after her ICE detainment — a 3½-hour drive up Highway 55.

“She never missed a day — always upbeat, always smiling,” Ramadani said. “She was always happy and greeting everybody — never standing around, always just working, finding something to do.”

Maybe we need REALLYREAL ID?

Authorities wrestled a US-born citizen to the ground, cuffed him and dismissed his so-called Real ID as “fake” during an arrest operation targeting undocumented people on Wednesday under the direction of the Trump administration, according to a viral video and reporting by Telemundo.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, was at his construction job in Foley, Alabama, when officials arrived to arrest workers there. Garcia Venegas – who was born in Florida to Mexican parents – began filming the arrests with his mobile phone before officials reportedly knocked the device out of his hand and tried to arrest him as well.

Video of the arrest shows three officials wrestling him to the ground, while he yells: “I’m a citizen!”

According to an interview with the Spanish-language US news outlet Telemundo, officials took out his wallet, removed his ID – which complies with higher federal security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses as well as identification – and told him that it was fake.

Officials removed the cuffs from Garcia Venegas hours later – after he gave them his social security number, verifying his US citizenship.

His cousin, also a US citizen, told Telemundo they both went through the process of acquiring the Real ID, undergoing “the protocols the administration is asking for”.

“I feel sad because, even though we were born here, that doesn’t matter any more,” the cousin said. She added: “To have our skin color has, apparently, become a crime. And it has become a crime deserving of this type of treatment – as if we were real criminals.”

Last May, Roger Floyd and Thomas McLaurin walked the lengths of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, passing a roundabout with a garden, and a vacant gas station with a large sign that read: “Where there’s people there’s power.” Though it had been four years since the murder of George Floyd, their nephew and cousin, respectively, concrete barriers erected by the city to protect the area still cordoned off the corner of the street where he was killed by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25 May 2020.

Behind those barriers stands a memorial with a black-and-white mural of George Floyd on the side of a bus stop shelter. “That’s my blood that was laying there taking his last breath. What was he going through?” McLaurin recalled thinking as he stood in front of the mural. Flowers and stuffed animals from visitors surrounded the memorial. Roger said he was struck with a range of emotions from sadness to peace. “You think about the racist demeanor that these individuals had toward him, and it was just like his life did not matter,” he told the Guardian. “The entire space to me is just sacred.”

Now, five years since George Floyd’s murder, the future of the square where he died remains uncertain, as the city council deliberates on development plans. McLaurin and Roger Floyd want the area to be commemorated as a historic site that launched a global racial justice movement and served as a rallying call for police accountability. Roger Floyd would like it to become a pedestrian plaza that includes a memorial to his nephew as well as shops and a library.

Continued below.

At least 18 people were killed in the latest strikes, Ukrainian officials said.

LONDON -- Russian drones and missiles again bombarded cities across Ukraine on Saturday night into Sunday morning despite the completion of the largest prisoner exchange of the 3-year-old war.

The Armed Forces Operational Command in Poland -- a NATO nation that borders Ukraine to the west -- said in a Sunday morning post to X that its fighter jets were scrambled during the Russian attack. "Intensive activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation has been observed, associated with strikes carried out on objects located, among others, in the western territory of Ukraine," the statement said.

Continued below.

There ain't no cure for hate
My friends
Why do you hate my guts so much
What have I done to you
To be mistreat by you friends
I never mistreat you on friends
I have lots of respect for you friends
I never mistreated you once in my life

If we are quick to hear God and the teachings from the Scriptures, what does that look like in real life? Well, quick is the opposite of slow, so it means we are not slow to hearing the Lord and the Word of God in the Scriptures. So it would indicate that we have a desire to hear from the Lord and from his word, and so we are students of the Scriptures who are diligent to pursue truth, righteousness, and godliness, to apply them to our lives.

However, not everyone who is swift in studying the Scriptures and in knowing what they teach is also all who are quick to listen in the sense of heeding God’s words, applying their teachings to our everyday lives, and obeying our Lord and his New Covenant commandments. There are many who have head knowledge only who do not apply the biblical lessons in all practicality to how they live, in practice and in conduct, on a daily basis.

Now, not everything written down in the Scriptures applies to our lives today, such as we are not those who are under the Old Covenant liturgical, ceremonial, sacrificial, purification, dietary, circumcision, and Sabbath laws that the Jews had to follow prior to Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins on that cross. So, we have to look at context, and to whom the words are spoken, and the time period and circumstances, but all under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

But we must be very careful not to disregard Scriptures obviously intended for the church, which teach biblical doctrine and holy living and death to sin, just because they do not fit in with our chosen lifestyles. For our chosen lifestyles should agree with the Scriptures because they are chosen for us by God, and by faith in the Lord we submit to the will of God for our lives. And always study the Scriptures in their appropriate context, not out of context.

And what would cause anger in this context? There are people who get angry with God because he does not perform for them in the way that they think he ought. They get angry with God when life does not turn out for them the way that they had hoped. And they get angry with God when they get angry with those who are teaching the truth of the Scriptures which they do not want to hear or accept, because they want to live however they want.

But Jesus Christ did not give his life up for us on that cross so that we could continue to live however we want in sinful lifestyles and practices, and so we could ignore what he taught, and what his New Testament apostles taught, if what they taught doesn’t agree with our chosen lifestyles. He put our sins to death with him so that, by faith in him, we will deny self, die to sin daily, and follow him in walks of obedience to his commands, as empowered by God.

Therefore, as those who are of genuine faith in the Lord Jesus, we are to put out of our lives all that is morally filthy, and all that remains of wickedness, so that we can now, in humility, receive the word of God into our lives and into our thinking, believing, actions, attitudes, words, and behaviors. Sin must no longer be our practice, for if it is, and if obedience to God is not our practice, we will not have salvation from sin nor eternal life with God.

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]

Quick to Hear
An Original Work / May 25, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

This word “bless” means “to speak (reason) which confers benefit; to confer what is beneficial” (source: Bible Hub Interlinear). So this will never be about lying to people just to make them feel good, i.e. only saying nice flowery things which sound good to the human ear. This will have nothing to do with us using worldly means and methods to attract people to our gatherings and/or so that they will like us and so they will think well of us.

This has to do with speaking to others what is for their good, as God defines good, not as the world does. So this involves speaking the truth to others, in love, and not the lies, and speaking to them what is helpful, useful, positive and valuable in the eyes of the Lord, not in the eyes of a godless world.

But there is a modern movement among “Christian churches” which is leading “Christians” to this secular way of doing things in the name of God, and in the name of Christianity, and in the name of “blessing” people, and in the name of “sharing the gospel,” which has nothing to do with God or the gospel or with biblical blessings. And it uses very worldly means and methods to draw in large crowds of people to their “church” gatherings.

But “blessing” is the opposite of “cursing.” So it is positive, it is kind, it is thoughtful, it is caring, and it is loving. But it is not dishonest, ungodly, and worldly. It should be what draws people to God and to genuine faith in Jesus Christ, as opposed to drawing people to secularized gatherings of the worldly “church” by utilizing worldly means and methods to attract the world, and by altering the gospel to not offend the world with the truth of the gospel.

So, if we “bless” those who persecute us, it means we are saying to them what is kind, thoughtful, loving, honest and what will be helpful to them in a good way, as opposed to swearing at them and calling them awful names and threatening to get even with them, and the like. In other words, we treat them the opposite of how they treat us. We return their hate with love, and their unkind acts with kindness, and their mistreatment with blessings.

[Proverbs 24:17-20; Proverbs 25:21-22; Matthew 5:8-12,43-48; Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:27-36; Luke 10:27; John 13:33-35; John 15:12; Romans 12:9-11,14-21; 1 Corinthians 13:1-8; 1 Corinthians 16:14; 1 John 4:7]

All Through the Night

Based off Various Scriptures
An Original Work / December 7, 2013
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Blessed are you when you’re persecuted
Because of your faith in Jesus Christ.
Blessed are you when people insult you,
And falsely say what leads folks to doubt.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is
Great in the heavens. You’re not alone.

When you are persecuted in one place,
Flee to another. God will be there.
You will be hated by all the nations
Because you testify of God’s grace.
Many will seize you and persecute you,
And put to death the foll’wers of Christ.

Yet do not fear what humans may do to you,
For I’m with you all through the night.
I tell you, love your enemies with my love,
And forgive as I forgave you.
Pray for those who do evil against you.
Rest in my love and grace from above.

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Bless Your Persecutors
An Original Work / May 25, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

About 1 in 3 Americans are turning to New Age practices like tarot cards, astrology, and fortune tellers at least once a year, a recent study found — but most say it’s “just for fun.”

A study published by Pew Research on Wednesday found that 30% of Americans consult at least one of these New Age practices at least once a year. Astrology was the most popular (28%) followed by tarot cards (11% ) and fortune tellers (6%).

Most Americans who engage in these practices say they do them for fun, not for insight or guidance. But Catholic Answers apologist Tom Nash told CNA these activities are “spiritually dangerous.”

“Tarot cards, Ouija boards, seances, and other similar activities are all dangerous forms of divination,” Nash said.

Continued below.

Pope Leo XIV has confirmed the election of a heterodox priest who supports “women’s ordination” to be the new bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Father Beat Grögli, the pastor of the Cathedral of St. Gallen, will be the new bishop of the diocese on Wednesday. The day before, he was elected by the cathedral chapter, a group of 13 local priests.

Due to the Concordat of 1845 between the Holy See and the Catholic Swiss state Church authority, the bishop of St. Gallen is chosen by the cathedral chapter with input from the local Catholic College, a type of church parliament that is elected by the Catholics in the diocese and also consists of laypeople. The Holy See can then confirm or deny the elected man as bishop.

Continued below.

My Dad took us to see South Pacific in 1958. "This Nearly Was Mine" is a beautiful very sad song.

I love "Magic Moments" that my husband would play on his trumpet --- such a happy tune.

Detention ordered for referencing God, divine justice

Two Assemblies of God pastors in Cuba, Luis Guillermo Borjas and his wife, Roxana Rojas, were detained this week after invoking their religious beliefs during their son’s military tribunal.

Prosecutors are seeking an eight-year prison sentence for the couple, who face charges of disrespect and disobedience to authorities.

The incident occurred in Nueva Gerona, Isla de la Juventud, where the couple resides, according to the U.K.-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Continues below.

With Judgement imminent, we pray for a sign of repentance as Biden stares into the reflecting surface of eternity.

On May 18, 2025, the news broke that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the 46th president of the United States and one of the most recognizable Catholic figures in modern American political life, was diagnosed with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer. The cancer, classified with a Gleason score of 9—aggressive and spreading to his bones—is no trivial diagnosis. Though still hormone-sensitive and medically manageable to a degree, for a man of his age and medical history, it is virtually a death sentence. It is the kind of diagnosis that forces even the most secular of societies to confront the fragility of life. And for those who live in the household of faith, it demands reflection not only on mortality but on the state of the soul.

The coincidence of Biden’s diagnosis being announced publicly the very same week that CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s book about Joe Biden is released is striking, to say the least. Some are going to be dismissive about the two events, but I tend to lean on the side of this being more than mere happenstance. I believe any discerning reader and listener is going to ask deeper questions.

Continued below.

Felt like posting this.

Christ is Risen!

If forever punishment was true, Jesus wouldn't need to wait on anybody. If forever punishment was true, Jesus would forget about the lost sheep and get the party started in Heaven. However, this verse describes Jesus as WAITING. Remember, God is patient, not wanting any to be lost.

1 Corinthians 15:25
English Standard Version
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.​

One KJV verse says that some are punished forever. Another KJV verse says that all are made alive. They can't BOTH be true, so which one is, please?

Matthew 25:46
King James Version
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

1 Corinthians 15:22 King James Version
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Dr Peter Kwasniewski tweeted about this. TAN Books is located in the Diocese of Charlotte which infamously just had it's bishop shutdown the Latin Mass across the board and is allowing it to be held in one spot (a formerly protestant property).

So in response, to improve Catholics' understanding and education on the matter, TAN is discounting all of their books related to the TLM by 75%.

I wanted to have this done months ago but, all is as God wills it.

This ended up being a much different experience from Theodore’s baptism a couple years ago. This was a group of 9-10 babies, and the only group we could get into that worked with all of our other arrangements was a Spanish baptism. Luckily my wife and her family are Hispanic so it at least made a little sense.

Now my older son Theodore was baptized in New York while we were living with my in laws. And when we did that we didn’t need anything except his baptismal attire. Apparently my parish here in California does things differently but nobody gave us a heads up. All the other families had these kits that had a candle, rosary and a their own shell for the water (apparently to keep as a sacramental). A nice family lent us their shell, but then when it was time for the candle we froze. Until Joey’s godmother remembered she had a candle in her purse that was a discarded altar candle from the St Jude shrine at St Dominic’s Catholic Church in SF (one of my favorite churches in the country). Turns out they weren’t planning to be there yesterday but stopped in last minute for Mass and that’s when she got the candle. So now that’s on our mantle, and it feels so providential since it was already a holy candle.

Joey was a trooper, where Teddy shrieked and cried through his baptism Joey slept the entire time. Only jolting slightly with the third pouring of water, which my wife and I both say was the Holy Spirit awakening him.

It was a lot of fun and I’m thrilled he’s finally baptized into the Church family.

"Unlike many others at Harvard, I have no dramatic cancellation, or intellectual persecution, or struggle session to report. I stopped teaching at Harvard last year primarily because of its anti-truth-seeking culture, radical left-wing bias, racial and gender discrimination, and prevailing anti-intellectualism, which made continued participation a poor use of time. There are exceptions, but on the whole Harvard has strayed from its foundational mission of unbiased truth-seeking and has become ideologically driven, too often resembling a secular church or a partisan think tank. The university’s culture and practices prioritize ideological conformity over open inquiry and debate, suppressing dissenting viewpoints and compromising academic freedom. This shift undermines the core values of a secular university and poses a threat to the integrity of academia and broader society."

I can see this from their actions.

LAHORE, Pakistan — A judge in Pakistan on May 16 handed custody of a Catholic girl to the Muslim man who kidnapped and forcibly married her despite evidence that she was coerced into stating she converted to Islam, her father said.

“My daughter Jessica Iqbal couldn’t recite the Kalima [Islamic conversion proclamation] or respond to any other question about Islam in the courtroom,” Iqbal Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “It was quite evident that she had been forced to claim that she had willingly converted her faith, yet the magistrate still allowed her to go with her abductor.”

Masih, a house painter in Chungi Amarsidhu, Lahore, Punjab Province, said his 32-year-old Muslim neighbor, Azeem Ullah, took his 16-year-old daughter from their house in the early hours of April 30.

Continuing below.

One of the nice things about the Bible is that if one Verse leaves you scratching your head or otherwise leaves you with unanswered questions, there’s more than likely another Verse in the Bible where you can find the answer. At first glance it seems terms such as “sin’ or the “second death” are bandied about, and some who are without patience may find it frustrating that the Verses mentioning those terms don’t define them. And often even preachers may use those terms, mentioning them to people who don’t exactly know what they are and would leave the church still not knowing.

Yet there are others who aren’t too familiar with the Bible who see no problem in calling out a person, telling them, ‘You’re gonna die, you sinner,’ while they themselves don’t know what they’re talking about or lack the depth needed in determining to what extent a person may be subject to the “second death” and the mitigating circumstances that may prevent a person from meeting that fate.

What is sin? James 4:17 says that sin is knowing what the right thing to do is but failing to do it. Well, that explains it, right? Perhaps not. It begs the question of what the right thing to do is. Since this definition is in the Bible, one wouldn’t be wrong in believing that the right thing to do is that which God would consider to be “good,” as He considered the things He did in creating the world in Genesis to be “good.” Seems that if we use the story of Creation told in Genesis, something good as God sees it is anything that adds to what God created instead of detracting from it.

If you still don’t know what sin is at this point, Galatians 5:19-21 lays some examples: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies…” Well, then. I guess we all know where people like the Roman Emperor Caligula might be spending their eternity! To be clear, that Verse says these are “works of the flesh,” and it says that those who commit such acts “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” One could safely conclude that these acts are acts of sin, if we can presuppose that these are not the right thing to do and detract from what God created. Can you conceive of the Lord considering the above acts to be “good”? Then again, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, as the Bible reminds us.

The various acts considered to be sinful are just one part to considering an act to be an act of sin. The other part, in order to charge a person with committing sin, is that the person engaged in such acts has to know these acts are not the right thing to do. Otherwise, although we know the person committed sinful acts, it may not be enough to lay the charge of sin on him for all time and evermore. Some may say we could have used a James when many lawful authorities moved to hold that ignorance of the law is not a defense, particularly when it comes to giving out traffic fines, but that’s another story.

Anyway, what about the “second death”? Between Matthew 25:41 and Verses such as Revelation 21:8, the second death involves the lake of fire. Offhand, it’s hard to think of anyone that would want to spend eternity there. But anyway, Jesus in Matthew 25:41 says that he would say to those who failed to help the poor and needy to go into the lake of fire. Revelation 21:8 says, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” So, we know what the second death is. It is the death that sinners may go to after having died once, that is after having been buried when they died the first time.

Is there a way of avoiding the lake of fire? There is. Although Passages such as 1 John 5:17 says that “All wrongdoing is sin,” it goes on to say that ”there is sin that does not lead to death.” This certainly applies to those who know what is sinful but have done the sin anyway. What sin would not lead to the lake of fire? 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, God would be faithful and just to forgive us those sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Note that the Verse doesn’t say He WILL forgive us, it just says He will be faithful and just if He does so. So, like lots of things in the Bible, there are no absolutes. But safe to say, you stand a better chance in asking for forgiveness than if you don’t ask at all, to avoid the second death. And recall Luke 23:42-43, in which the condemned man on the cross next to Jesus asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus enters Paradise, and Jesus tells him that today he will ‘be with him in Paradise.’

Foreign aid is one of the easiest conduits for government officials to steal money from poor and middle-class Americans.

I had a question, for the last several years I have been having a problem with my Verizon cell phone account, they have been ripping me off, charging me over $400/month for my cell phone bill when it was previously only $80/month, there were fraudulent charges on my account put there by a criminal, I have been going back and forth with Verizon for many months trying to get the fraudulent charges eliminated but they refuse to do anything about it, I have been forced to shell out a massive amount of money every month or they would cancel out my cell phone service. My parents want to hire a lawyer and pursue a lawsuit with Verizon. I would like to forgive them but I have to do something to make these charges stop and I also need to be compensated for the money I have shelled out. Is it scriptural to pursue a lawsuit and sue the company for compensation? Should I sue? Thanks!