The Eshelman Family

The following is an award winning article of Cecil’s published in "The Pilot" (a local paper in North Carolina) September, 2003: 

 

      This recent September 11 was the first that my wife Tonya, who grew up in Siberia, and I have spent in America since the year 2000. We were overseas when planes hit New  York's twin towers on September 11, 2001. We lived and worked with our two children for the last two years as Assembly of God missionaries in the Republic of Georgia, located by Russia and Turkey on the Black Sea.

     I, like many Americans, have memories September 11, 2001 indelibly marked in my memory, even though we were in a foreign country. In fact, the memories I have of that tragic day consist largely of the responses of the people around me, most who had never been to my home country.  Since the city of Tbilisi, where we lived, is eight time zones ahead of New York, the actions of that day unfolded during our afternoon. It was as though the whole nation of Georgia stood still, stunned and shocked, almost unbelieving.

     Through the evening of 9-11-2001, we received phone calls from Georgian friends expressing their deepest sympathies for the United States and asking if I had any relatives who might have been hurt.  Neighbors in our apartment building seemed to try to find ways that they could help us, feeling, perhaps, that by supporting the American family that they knew, they would somehow be helping buttress the whole country of America.

    Although many expressed desires to console us, I believe there was a much greater dynamic at work. Perhaps many sensed that all of America was their friend and that they wanted to stand by their friend in a time of trouble.  After enduring the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia experienced some civil wars.  Even though things have been more stable the last few years, Georgians are a people closely acquainted with suffering and grief.  In their society they know how important it is for friends to stand together in times of need.      For months after September 11, 2001, when people in the Republic of Georgia would discover I was an American (perhaps when I shopped in a store) they would offer empathy. Usually it was just a statement of sorrow, but sometimes they made direct statements, describing what should be done with the people who were responsible for 9-11. Some men even volunteered their armed services. One friend of mine told me, in Russian, "If George Bush asks me to help fight, I will." Then, with an serious expression, he looked me in the eye and said, "I've got a gun."  Some of these encounters allowed me to express my belief that even when things seem out of control God is still God; that when the world seems insane, Jesus is able to bring us sanity; and that only in Christ will anyone ever find peace. 

     One of the things that most surprised us after returning to the States this year was the impression often given by nightly news programs--that people in other countries don't like America or Americans. Having traveled in several foreign countries recently and having not once experienced an anti-American attitude, I think many news programs aren't telling the whole story. Indeed, in the country of Georgia it has become popular to study English, and many young people there have told me in my own language, "We love America."

 

 

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