Please read For Saeed Abedini's Wife and Family, Year-Long Imprisonment in Iran Takes Its Toll, by Grace Thornton, Baptist Press, at Religion Today.
" "Be patient and endure." From an Iranian jail cell, Saeed Abedini penned those words in a letter to his daughter Rebekka for her seventh birthday this year. But as the American pastor marked a year in Iran's brutal Evin Prison with no hint of a coming release, "enduring" is taking a toll on wife and two children in Boise, Idaho.
"Rebekka and her brother Jacob, 5, know they're growing up without their father present to mark milestones or sing to them at bedtime. Abedini's wife Naghmeh -- who hates flying -- keeps an intense travel schedule speaking and lobbying for her husband's release, according to WORLD Magazine.
"To a degree, she's seeing some payoff. On the heels of President Obama expressing concern for Abedini during in a Sept. 27 phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the European Parliament called on Iran's government Oct. 10 to release the pastor and seven other prisoners. Human rights lawyer Attieh Fard also addressed the issue of Iran's mistreatment of Christians at a Sept. 24 meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council, urging Rouhani to release 42 Iranian Christians in prison and 45 awaiting trial, according to World Watch Monitor, a religious liberty advocacy organization."
Please read Christian Pastor's Wife: Obama Asked Rouhani to Release My Husband, by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, at persecution.org.
"The wife of Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini who has been sentenced to eight years in prison, said that during the September 27 telephone conversation between Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani, the release of her husband was discussed. Saeed's case is one of the most visible of the many human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime, which works to silence views contrary to its own both politically, and, as in Saeed's case, religiously."
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