I think the original poster has a very valid point. Too many do-gooders who like to make themselves look benevolant and generous. The people who live
here year around and give of their time and effort are the ones that should be thanked. Just my not so humble opinion.
Dogs are not our whole life, but make our lives whole.
I think that if you come onto the BN with a temper...you'll just get laughed at. Perhaps some real information...as history, who YOU
are...experience.....
This extra info would certainly help your cause here. Regardless.....of the issues down there you are having....I thank you for being down there
helping out the needy. 5 Stars for you.
Walt Eckstein
President/director at Baja Christian Fellowship
Location
Veracruz Area, Mexico
Industry
Nonprofit Organization Management
Walt Eckstein's Overview
Current
* President/director at Baja Christian Fellowship
* Operations Manager at Tools for Rebuilding the Nations
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Walt Eckstein's Experience
President/director
Baja Christian Fellowship
Nonprofit Organization Management industry
January 2010 – Present (1 year 8 months)
Direct operations of outreach to the poor with education and basic human needs...food, clothing, shelter.
Operations Manager
Tools for Rebuilding the Nations
Nonprofit Organization Management industry
December 2009 – Present (1 year 9 months)
[Edited on 8-3-2011 by mcfez]
Old people are like the old cars, made of some tough stuff. May show a little rust, but good as gold on the inside.
Originally posted by backninedan
We have heard from one side. Anyone care to speak in favor of the missionary position???????
I have lived in the Punta Banda area for 8 years and have witnessed the rich christans come down on a long weekend or holiday in their convoy's of 12
passanger vans and throw up a 12x12 shack or two and then leave . The people that really do the good dont arvertise or seek others approval one
facility that I have been in that takes care of severly handicaped children reeks of urine so bad you can smell it before you get out of the car. The
socalled director lives very lavishly next door.
I agree that there is an over abundance of christian missionaries not only in Baja but all over the world. The good they do is debatable. I fully
support helping those in need but believe in doing it without stings attached that includes, language, values, politics, and of course RELIGION.. I
for one support Dr's Without Borders.
Here is another scam I am tired of. I was filling up with diesel yesterday just north of Ensenada when a well tanned, healthy, scruffy Gringo with a
TKT in his pocket approached and asked if I spoke English. I said yes. His response was " hey I am living down here and do not get my check until
Saturday could you help me out with a few dollars" I was flabbergasted. If a cop would have been near by I would have complained. Has anyone else
encountered Gringos panhandling in Baja?
Originally posted by aimee76
I am sick of it and yeah, they peeed in my cornflakes if you say so...........just because we spend all year advocating for these indigenous people
before government entities, providing them with medical care(corneal transplants, cosmetic surgeries etc) and then these Christian Travel Agents such
as the Williams, and the Love Mexico bring in these groups for financial profit and screw up our whole program.
Originally posted by El Comadante Loco
Has anyone else encountered Gringos panhandling in Baja?
Sure. In some cases they have a legitimate problem like having their car stolen or something like that. I leave it to intuition to qualify them.
Others get hooked up with these drug rehab groups and are on the streets with a full line of crap. In some cases, their existance is being subsidized
by US welfare agencies.
I don't give them the time of day.
Originally posted by DENNIS
Others get hooked up with these drug rehab groups and are on the streets with a full line of crap. In some cases, their existance is being subsidized
by US welfare agencies.
I don't give them the time of day.
We've got a couple of those down here in SQ. I told them both they would do better standing with a handwritten sign at a freeway offramp NOB...
Originally posted by El Comadante Loco
I agree that there is an over abundance of christian missionaries not only in Baja but all over the world. The good they do is debatable. I fully
support helping those in need but believe in doing it without strings attached that includes, language, values, politics, and of course RELIGION.. I
for one support Dr's Without Borders.
Good people will do good things with or without religion.....bad people will do bad things with or without religion.....but for good people to do bad
things, that takes religion. [anon]
One of my pet peaves is school children standing on the tope begging for whatever cause. What about teaching them a work ethic. like a car wash or
what ever to support their cause.
Aimee tends to disappear for long periods of time:
The Lady Vanishes Part III: Aimee Semple McPherson
Before there was Jim Bakker, before there was Jerry Fartwell, before there was Jimmy Swaggart, there was Sister Aimee.
Born to an Ontario farming family in 1890, Aimee Kennedy was born again at age 17, and married a Pentacostal preacher named Robert Semple a short time
later. After Semple died on a missionary trip to China, leaving Aimee with a year-old daughter, she relocated to the U.S.
Like Tony Alamo, she slipped into her late spouse's shoes by becoming a traveling preacher, and married a wholesale grocer named McPherson.
Aimee was a red-haired dynamo who enthralled everyone, even Christians who thought women should obey St. Paul: sit down and shut up. No one could shut
up Aimee McPherson. She pitched her revival tent throughout Canada and New England for two years, with two children in tow, and she drew crowds
everywhere she preached.
In 1921, three years after the family settled in Los Angeles, the McPhersons divorced. Incredibly, this didn't put much of a dent in Aimee's popular
image. By 1923 she and her mother, Minnie, had built a religious empire around Aimee's International Church of the Foursquare Gospel - the PTL of its
day. Its Angelus Temple in Echo Park was the nation's first true megachurch - an airy, modern masterpiece with seating for 5300 parishioners. As if
that audience wasn't big enough, "Sister Aimee" (as her flock called her) also became the first American woman to be granted an FCC license for her
own radio station. She preached every day of the week and up to six times on Sundays, advocating a humble and squeaky-clean lifestyle without adding
too much fire and brimstone. In the deeply corrupt L.A. of the Roaring Twenties, such homilies were warmly welcomed. As I wrote in my post about the
real stories behind the film The Changeling, the LAPD at this time was rife with corruption. A "gun squad" practiced its own strange brand of urban
Western justice, mowing down suspected criminals and inconvenient persons alike under the force's shoot to kill policy; bodies were routinely found in
alleys, warehouses, and other dark corners of the city. The LAPD also had its fingers in an array of criminal enterprises: bootlegging, prostitution,
extortion, bribery. In another L.A. church, a social crusader and beloved Presbyterian minister named Gustav Briegleb would rail against this
lawlessness for years.
A return to wholesomeness wasn't the only alluring thing about the Foursquare Church. Each worship service was like a Vegas floor show with faith
healings; a full orchestra, the Foursquare choir, costume changes, elaborate sets.
It all worked. By 1926, at the age of 35, Sister Aimee was a millionaire with an estimated 40,000 followers.
Aimee on the Beach
In the early evening hours of May 18, 1926, Aimee was one of a dozen or so swimmers at L.A.'s Ocean Park Beach. A strong swimmer, she cut purposefully
through the waves in her knee-length bathing suit and diving cap while her personal secretary waited on the beach, looking over some notes.
But when the secretary looked up, Sister Aimee was gone. She had apparently drowned before she could call out for help.
For days, thousands of mourners gathered on the sand to mourn Sister Aimee. Though no trace of her had washed ashore, she was certainly dead.
But then strange rumours began to surface: Sister Aimee had been sighted at various California hotels in the company of her radio station's married
engineer, Kenneth Ormiston. Not everyone believed the rumours, of course, but Mrs. Ormiston seemed certain that her husband had run off with Sister
Aimee. He had vanished around the same time the preacher supposedly drowned.
Minnie Kennedy, on the other hand, insisted her daughter must have been abducted for ransom and offered a $25,000 reward for her safe return. A Los
Angeles lawyer soon announced he was in contact with the kidnappers, and they had accurately described a scar on one of Sister Aimee's fingers. They
were demanding $500,000, or else they would "sell her to old Felipe of Mexico City. We are sick and tired and of her infernal preaching." Aside from
the reference to Mexico, the ransom demand contained no clues to Aimee's location. Her followers could only sit tight and pray.
No further demands or instructions were conveyed by the captors. A month after Aimee disappeared, Minnie appeared to give up hope of recovering her
daughter. She held a memorial service for her at Angelus Temple.
Three days after the service, a dazed Sister Aimee staggered out of the desert near Agua Prieta, Mexico, across the border from Douglas, Arizona. She
told local authorities she had been abducted from Ocean Park Beach, lured to a car by a couple who claimed to have a sick child in need of her healing
powers. She was driven into the desert and imprisoned in a shack by two men and a woman they called Mexicali Rose. Miraculously, she somehow escaped
her captors and ran across miles of scorching sand without being pursued, without getting her shoes overly dirty, and without becoming dehydrated or
sunburned. Aside from a few blisters and some exhaustion, she was in fine condition.
Sister Aimee tried in vain to lead authorities back to the shack in middle of the desert. It was never found.
But it didn't take long for the investigators to find out where Aimee had really been for the previous month: In Carmel, having a faux honeymoon with
Kenneth Ormiston. Minnie and the attorney had helped Aimee prop up the absurd abduction story. And Aimee stuck to it, while Ormiston insisted he had
been out of town with another woman.
In July a grand jury convened to hear evidence on the case. Sister Aimee was represented by Sammy Hahn, the prominent attorney who would take on
Christine Collins' lawsuit against the LAPD three years later. In the end, there simply wasn't enough solid evidence to show that Sister Aimee may
have fabricated her kidnapping. No charges were filed.
You'd think this would be the last straw for Sister Aimee's flock, wouldn't you? They could overlook the divorce and the circus-style pageantry, but a
faked drowning followed by a faked kidnapping? Pretending you're preaching to evil kidnappers while you're actually canoodling with your married
employee? That's just too much. I mean, this stuff makes Orel Roberts look sane. To make matters worse, Aimee married a third time and died from a
barbituate overdose in 1944.
But the Foursquare Church has never wavered from Sister Aimee's account of her abduction. Sister Aimee's followers staunchly defended her against all
accusations of hoaxery. They even accused the investigators of trying to smear her reputation (on behalf of Satan, naturally).
Her son, Rolf, declared years later that his mother was targeted for kidnapping because she knew too much about the L.A. underworld of organized crime
and political corruption, thanks to her work with drug addicts and prostitutes.
Church officials contend that Sister Aimee's fatal overdose was accidental.
Mexicali Rose and her godless thugs have never been found.
Sources:
1. Landsburg, Alan. In Search of Missing Persons. Bantam, 1978.
2. Wikipedia entry on Aimee Semple McPherson. Retrieved Aug. 25/09.
3. Wikipedia entry on the Foursquare Church. Retrieved Aug. 25/09.
Posted by S.M. Elliott at 3:56 AM
Labels: crime, disappearances, hoax, hoaxes, religion
"If it were lush and rich, one could understand the pull, but it is fierce and hostile and sullen.
The stone mountains pile up to the sky and there is little fresh water. But we know we must go back
if we live, and we don't know why." - Steinbeck, Log from the Sea of Cortez
"People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." - Theodore Roosevelt
"You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing for them or to them." - Malcolm Forbes
"Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others
cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you." - Jim Rohn
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