Posts by Lynda Waddington

A 12-part Christian education series authored and promoted by Colorado-based Focus on the Family has been circulating around Iowa for the past few years. The program has been screened and discussed in local churches and private homes, but starting Monday the series will have its first screening in the state Capitol.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Although only about four million of the estimated 44.3 million people of Latino descent in America live in non-coastal farm country states, cultural differences and economic realities associated with those populations have created additional challenges for rural health care delivery systems that are already stretched thin. Experts warn, however, that society will have a high price to pay if access to medical and behavioral health care isn’t provided to immigrants regardless of their resident status.

The May 12 immigration raid at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa changed the lives of many people. Immigrants were detained, criminally convicted and subsequently deported. Some immigrants were sent back into the community with ankle tracking devices but left with few options to materially provide for themselves or their children. Still others face criminal prosecution.

It’s a story that’s been difficult to ignore and one that has drawn a worldwide audience. It seems odd, then, that a man who has charged himself with writing a theatrical production based on the events in Postville would have spent the last seven months, as he put it, “with his head in the sand.”