Posted on 09/07/2012 7:04:48 AM PDT by Cronos
The horror of a Southern Baptist missionary’s death in Jordan is gradually resonating to her childhood home on the rural South Plains this week.
Sudan native Cheryll Harvey, 55, a longtime member of College Heights Baptist Church in Plainview, was found stabbed to death late Tuesday night in her apartment in the city of Barha, about 50 miles north of Amman.
Harvey’s teaching was in connection with the Jordan Baptist Society, according to a report published by the Baptist Press.
Don Robertson, pastor at College Heights Baptist Church, said Harvey had taught English and other subjects in Jordan for 24 years.
“She was very content over there,” Robertson said. “She loved those people.”
She maintained a membership with the College Heights congregation and would speak at the church when she was back in the United States on furloughs from the teaching position.
“We loved to hear her debriefings,” Robertson said.
Harvey had visited the College Heights congregation in the last year.
Her brother Dennis, a pressman at the Avalanche-Journal, said U.S. Embassy officials told him Thursday an arrest had been made in the case.
The Jordan Times, an English-language newspaper published in Amman, reported investigators had ruled out robbery as a motive because nothing was missing from her fourth-floor apartment.
The pastor at First Baptist Church in Sudan, Robert Roecker, said: “She was not a threat to anyone. That’s why it’s such a shock.”
Roecker said Harvey had spoken at his church three times in the 11 years he’s been the pastor.
Roecker is working with Dennis Harvey on memorial arrangements, a task both men said is difficult because there’s no timetable yet for Cheryll Harvey’s body to be returned to the United States.
“I only know what they’re telling me gradually,” Dennis said.
Both men said it’s possible her body could be sent home as early as Sunday.
Dennis Harvey said he’s been spending time trying to contact friends and relatives about his sister’s death.
She is also survived by another brother, Ryan.
“Cheryll was greatly loved by both our personnel in the Middle East and by her many students,” International Mission Board President Tom Elliff said in a statement released through the Baptist Press.
“We are faced once again with a sobering reminder of the brevity of life and the importance of faithfully serving the Lord to the very end of our time on Earth. Cheryll has left for us a great example that we should follow,” Elliff said.
The IMB is an element of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Brave lady, stabbed by "brave" Moslems...
Jordan is next
2Cor 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; [18] While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Jordan under its King has the last sane Islamic government in the Middle East. The King is a US ally. How long he runs the country is up in the air as the radical Islamists are out to take over Jordan.
Just before the so called Arab Spring, I visited as a tourist Egypt and Jordan. The streets were safe for me to walk and the people mostly friendly, although I could detect controlled animosity towards the US and the West. The sightseeing was beyond incredible.
Now all these land are cess pits or on the verge of the drop into a cess pit. They say they follow a god, but it is a god of hate and destruction.
Cheryll Harvey: God bless her.
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