SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) — A Korean immigrant who lost his wife, two children and mother-in-law when a Marine Corps jet slammed into the family’s house said Tuesday he did not blame the pilot, who ejected and survived.
“Please pray for him not to suffer from this accident,” a distraught Dong Yun Yoon told reporters gathered near the site of Monday’s crash of an F/A-18D jet in San Diego’s University City community.
“He is one of our treasures for the country,” Yoon said in accented English punctuated by long pauses while he tried to maintain his composure.
“I don’t blame him. I don’t have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could,” said Yoon, flanked by members of San Diego’s Korean community, relatives and members from the family’s church.
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A response like this is simply amazing. He lost his family and his house, all of which I can’t imagine, and yet he offers grace.
December 10th, 2008
As we head into the traditional western Holiday Season, I’d like to present this Hubble Space Telescope imagery Advent Calendar. Every day, for the next 25 days, a new photo will be revealed here from the amazing Hubble Space Telescope. As I take this chance to share these images of our amazing Universe with you, I wish for a Happy Holiday to all those who will celebrate, and for Peace on Earth to everyone. – Alan (25 photos total – eventually)
Link
December 10th, 2008
In the early 1990s, the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama produced the first mathematics-driven estimates of how many people are going to hell.
The estimates were a practical tool, a guide for where to concentrate the church’s evangelical efforts and where not to bother. Any well-run modern business does this. A company that sells insurance or cereal or cars likes to let its sales force know how many dependable customers are in each region, how many potential new customers, and also how many marginal prospects – people not worth wasting time on. With this information, the sales force can focus its efforts productively. So it is with the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama.
The church assumes that in a given neighbourhood, nearly all the Southern Baptists are already saved (they also assume that, people being people, a certain small percentage are damned idiots). Other Baptist and evangelical denominations are a mixed lot – some are still savable, others have irrevocably blown it. Most, but not all, Catholics are a lost cause. Non-Christians – Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Confucians, atheists and others who refuse to accept Jesus – can be written off, evangelically speaking.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board did all the work on this. It devised a secret mathematical formula, estimating what percentage of each religious group will go to hell: X% of Southern Baptists, Y% of Episcopalians, Z% of Catholics, and so on. The Home Mission Board puts great faith in these percentages.
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December 10th, 2008
