The US State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senators John Kerry and Scott Brown are to be praised for their good work which led to the release of Everett mother of two Lissa Alphonse and the pastor she was traveling with, among others, who were kidnapped by a lone gunman during a religious tour of Egypt.
Her release unharmed is also a credit to Egyptian officials who worked so hard to free Alphonse.
In another week, or about that time, Alphonse will be returning here to her children and husband. Her husband has admitted his wife has been shaken by the affair, which must have been petrifying when you consider that she was visiting Egypt to enhance her religious leanings and knowledge.
We congratulate Everett resident Lissa Alphonse on being freed in the Sinai peninsula.
What could be more ironic for a religious woman from this city than to be kidnapped and held for a ransom in the Sinai and then released?
The story of Moses leading the Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt into the Sinai is told with unsurpassable simplicity in the Old Testament.
Removed from slavery, they were to find a different sort of bondage wandering in the Sinai for 40 years but receiving the word of God on Mt. Sinai when Moses came down fro the mountain with the Ten Commandments.
It was in such a place that Lissa Alphonse was kidnapped and returned.
She will obviously be shaken by the experience – but what a place to have something like that happen to a person!
To be in bondage and to be freed in the Sinai while on a religious trip to Egypt is an extraordinary coincidence.
We wish Mrs. Alphonse the best on her return to Everett.
We thank our leaders for the use of their influence to have her freed.