From Our Mountains
I will share one more thing with my brothers and sisters of the House Fellowship Network.
When I was a very young boy my mother would take me to our Armenian church there in Glendale, CA. We were all refugees in those days. Let's just say that we were Christians, and to be gentle about it, we were not welcome in Anatolia.
The people of Armenia converted to Christianity around 400 AD, and thus the first translation of the New Testament from the Greek was into Armenian.
We used to have well over 1, 000 churches all across central and eastern Turkey, but all of them, except those in Eastern Armenia, which was protected by the Russian army, were destroyed during the 19th century. Yet, there is a blessing in everything. Even a heart attack can be a blessing, lol.
Because our churches were set on fire and laid down stone by stone, we escaped with only our prayers and music. In all of our music we praise God, even while running.
Much of what we sing is actually memorized passages of the Bible. Returning to America after so many years, I find my country men and women so ... stressed from life.
So come, I invite you to walk with me and my family's goats on the slopes of Mt. Ararat, the resting place of the Ark, and hear us sing our praises to God.
In Old Persian, they called us the "Hayastani," or, the People who Sing to God. We ran for the boarders, but because our praises were in our hearts, we brought our songs to God with us. It is all we came to America with.
God bless your family, God bless you, and God bless those whom God has put before you.
Armenian brothers: