Seven year old Lauren was excited for Halloween after her Dad picked her up from her mother's
home. A native of Texas, she had her cheerleader costume on and her Jordanian father was to take her trick-or-treating with her half-sisters from her Dad's new marriage.
However...something very unexpected happened. Her father drove her to the airport instead.
"Mom and I have a surprise for you. You are going to Jordan to meet your cousins, aunts, and uncles. They are excited to meet you."
Her Dad had lied to her. Her Christian mother knew nothing about her ex-husband's plans to steal their daughter away to raise her as a Muslim girl
in the Middle East.
I had the pleasure to interview that little girl last night. Lasting well over an hour, it was the longest interview of a radio guest to-date. Lauren Burns is now happily married, a mother of two young boys, and the host of a podcast called Redeemed. Her faith in and love for Jesus Christ is very
evident.
I was spellbound as I listened to her tell the story of her rescue from Jordan three months later. Thanks to the determination of her mother, a team of "military specialists", as I label them, snuck into the country without the approval of the US State Department and literally snatched Lauren off of a school bus that involved a physical
altercation. In what seemed to be a perfect ending to a Hollywood cliffhanger, the bus carrying Lauren, her mother, and her rescuers to the safety of Israel was on the bridge when the Jordanian police arrived in mass a few hundred yards behind them. The police figured out literally a minute too late that the airline tickets for a flight out of Jordan were a diversion from the real plan of escape.
Lauren's story was told in the 2017 Lifetime movie entitled Desperate Rescue starring Mariel Hemingway. She has also shared her story at length on
YouTube.
The Gramazin Testimony Report Challenge
As you know, my radio show is only 5 minutes in length each weekday. I find a way to break up a longer interview with a guest
into multiple shows. As a faithful and dear listener has counseled me, sometimes I do that segmentation well and sometimes I do not.
How on earth can I break up Lauren's story into 5 minute segments? Imagine going to a movie theater to watch an action movie and you only see 5 minutes of it before you are asked to come back the next day to
see the next 5 minutes. Even if I were to break up Lauren's story into a few minutes a day, I'd need a dozen episodes to share her whole gripping story.
I can't do that.
So...what do I do?
A plan came to mind late last evening. Instead of airing my interview with her on the radio, I'm going to have a week of five shows that only give snippets of my interview and invite the listener to visit the Gramazin website to hear the whole interview. I am going to do that by creating what will sound like five 5-minute movie trailers complete with
music, sound effects, and the audio snippets from our hour long interview. The Gramazin team already has expertise in this line of work. I have not yet planned when I will air such a production on WEZE 590 AM.
An
Encouragement to Me
As our Zoom call concluded last night, I told Lauren that her story was encouraging to me. Her mother overcame impossible odds to rescue her daughter. It shouldn't have worked. Everything was against her mother, including the US government. Lauren's Dad had every reason to think at the time that his kidnapping of his
daughter had secured Lauren's permanent identity as a Muslim woman living in Jordan. Lauren's mother couldn't afford the extravagant costs for such a rescue operation.
Yet, Lauren's mother believed. She had faith that Jesus Christ would rescue her daughter from the clutches of Islam. She persevered for three months through hardship after
hardship, determined to believe that Jesus would give her mission a success. The line that most touched me was this (paraphrased):
"My Mom thought that Jesus had already taken her to the village where I was located. She believed He would certainly finish the job and have someone spot me on a school bus."
There are many obstacles still in the path of Gramazin. Money. Obscurity. Resistance. I can get discouraged when I look at them. Yet, all I need to do is look at what Jesus has already done with Gramazin in 2024. Why would He abandon the ministry now? According to the example of Lauren's story, He won't.
