Remembering 9/11

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Good morning. It’s September 11. We will never forget. Epoch News Post 09.11.26 Ivan Pentchoukov   My high school was across the street from the Twin Towers. After 25 years, I’m sharing my memories from that day.    Before that, here are today’s top stories: President Donald Trump on Thursday evening addressed a crowd in Dallas, touting his administration’s achievements on the closing night of the two-day midterm convention, laying out a flurry of proposals that he said Republicans would pursue in the coming two years. President Donald Trump said he is providing $500 rebate checks to nearly 1 million people who he said were “wrongly overcharged” through the Affordable Care Act—President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, known as Obamacare. The night before, Trump promised a $5,000 dividend check to every adult in the U.S. if Republicans win the midterm election in November. Supporters at the first Republican midterm convention told The Epoch Times that to triumph in November, the party should emphasize its economicwins while challenging what they called the democratic socialist pitch of “free things.” Three people narrowly avoided being trafficked to China, where they allegedly would have had their organs forcibly removed, after being lured by fake online postings offering illegal work, according to prosecutors in the northern Taiwan city of Taoyuan. 🍵 Health: Protein is your body’s primary repair engine. However, finding your personal magic number takes more than a glance at a food label. Your needs vary depending on whether you are sedentary, fit, or older.

9/11 Visitors watch over the reflecting pool at the 9/11 Museum and Memorial during the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, in New York, on Sept. 11, 2021. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images) The Day Has Come Deep in my bones, I still remember the impact of the jetliners.   The tremor that shook the windowless building of our high school across the street from the twin towers felt like a minor earthquake.   Mr. Capo, our energetic accounting teacher, stopped the lesson mid-sentence and sat down at his desk. The class fell quiet.   How did the jitters hush a class of teenagers who would usually take over if a teacher disengaged? Did the vibrations that traveled down the steel beams of the north tower, into the ground below, and up to our room carry in them the last heartbeats and agony of the souls that perished above?   The principal’s voice on the intercom broke the silence.   “We are going to shelter in place,” he said, likely not realizing that none of us knew what was going on. The top two floors of the building had windows, and he saw what we didn’t.   If it was quiet before, now it was ominous. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the desk.   The school trembled again, sharply this time. The south tower was just 500 feet from our building at 100 Trinity Place. I didn’t believe in the unseen at the time, but that tremor carried with it a cold, electric pulse of anxiety. As I kept my eyes closed, images flashed before me of feet clad in heels, and sneakers, and black leather oxfords running in terror over the polished floor of the mall beneath the towers.   I knew the spot where all these feet rushed by. I passed by it every morning with the crowd of commuters who poured out of the turnstiles from the A, C, and E trains. I had bought strawberry-banana smoothies from Mrs. Fields Pretzel Time here after school. I wonder whether the lady who worked there made it out alive.   The principal was on the intercom again. “Line up against the wall outside the classrooms,” we were told. We filed out and stood in silence with our backs to the walls. Messages crackled over the radios of the security guards, and we were told to go down the fire escape.   The stairwell had steel safety bars separating us from the outside. A surreal rain of ash and paper came down steadily, on and on. It had wafted onto the landings and the stairs.   As we came out onto Thames Street, we were met with the figure of a soot-stained, ash-covered firefighter, collapsed in a motionless heap on the curb, staring into space. After years of risking his life, after rushing into a burning skyscraper, what did he see that stunned him so? From stories from those who were near the buildings that day, I think that I know.   The teachers corralled us down Thames Street toward Greenwich Street, where the burning towers would come in full view and where I would experience what psychologists call peritraumatic dissociation and micropsia. Instead of seeing the full view of the disaster, my field of vision became a black canvas, in the center of which a tiny black-and-white television showed the footage of the towers burning. I had the sense that I could turn its controls to change the channel.   My buddy Mohammed patted me on the back and shook me out of it. I now saw the towers burning in full frame, debris snowing down, fire and smoke roaring. The school staff hustled us away, downtown on Greenwich Street toward Battery Park.   The English teacher told a group of us that this was a terrorist attack and that planes had crashed into both towers. Mohammed and I had a bright idea. We'd split from the group and go see the airplanes sticking out from the other side of the buildings. We broke off and headed to Broadway, which was abandoned except for our gym teacher, his hands on his waist.   He asked where we were going. We told him about our plan. I thought that he might join us.   He said, “You guys are [expletive] stupid.” He may have saved our lives. In roughly the amount of time it would have taken to walk to Ground Zero, the south tower collapsed.   We watched the dust wave race up Greenwich Street toward the park, and then we were engulfed, and everyone panicked. We ran into the park, feeling ahead of us as it was hard to see. The class clown, Freddy, followed another kid who crawled under a bench.   We grasped around the park until we found the river and sat there with nowhere to go to flee the cloud. As the dust settled, the Statue of Liberty rose in the distance. I had an intense fear that they would hit the statue next.   Someone said, “This is war.”   Small ships and ferries began to arrive and pick up some of the crowd stuck in the park. The only way out was by water.   Mohammed lived in Queens, and I lived uptown. None of the ships were going our way.   So we stuck around. We watched the second tower fall, and another cloud of dust engulfed the park. We made face masks out of our T-shirts. A man with a van showed up and passed out water, Band-Aids, and gauze. All of the ferries were going to New Jersey, but after a while, The Screamer, a tourist speedboat, pulled beside us and the captain asked whether we'd like to get on. I asked where they were going. The captain looked at me like I was the most ridiculous kid on Earth and said, “Chelsea Piers.” We got on.   The eight-or-so of us were all covered in the dust and ashes from the towers. The captain gave us life vests. He said he would go slow for us and steered uptown. The Screamer sailed in silence.   I walked east on 23rd Street and caught the subway home to Washington Heights.   I still remember the tears of our chemistry teacher. Before the first tower collapsed, we ran into him, a small-statured man who was passionate about his job. He was leaning against a wall with two streams of tears steadily running down his face and wetting the top half of his shirt. I asked him why he was crying. He said he'd realized that hundreds of people had died in the towers that day.   It would be a long time until my psyche let a genuine emotion like this surface. I dealt with the shock mostly in nightmares in the years that followed. When our building was dug out of the rubble six months later, I looked the other way while ducking through the crowd of gawkers who came to see the pile.   I still can’t bring myself to visit the 9/11 Memorial. I sense that when I look at the reflecting pools, I will be like my chemistry teacher for the first time. After 25 years, I feel the day has come.

Love For His People Ministry was founded in 2010 by Steve & Laurie Martin. Charlotte, NC USA

Back to Jerusalem. Soon and very soon.

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Steve Martin and David Lauka - soon and very soon.

“Direction - Get Some” - new book by Steve Martin

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Amazon for $5.95 paperback

Click here:  https://a.co/d/00iBJ5k9

In these times of the unexpected and the unknown, it is good to have the Solid Rock on which to stand. To have His direction, the Lord Jesus (Yeshua), and His Word is necessary for our lives these days.

Publishing life’s journey, for others to follow, has been a joy to share with you. This book contains some of what I have experienced.

A few of these messages were written while with the Christian Friends of Israel ministry team from Jerusalem; I have included them as they were sent out via email.

I hope you are blessed and encouraged, and that your walk with our Lord is strengthened in your reading time.

And…I included photos and images which I enjoyed taking and creating!

Buy now on Amazon: paperback for $5.95

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Steve Martin Book Collection

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     ALL AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

In hardcover, paperback, audio and e-book versions.

(His other 29 published books also available on Amazon.)

Travel on until you get there. Walk With Me, Steve Martin (Song by Leland)

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Walk With Me as Leland sings, “Where You Are.” Beautiful, Lord.

Steve Martin

Charlotte, North Carolina

"Carry My Bags" by Steve Martin

 

Carry My Bags

Totally devastated. After 14 years of service in the ministry, in which I was called “part of the family”, in April 1999, I asked a very personal question to the founder of the ministry, “Can I go with you on your next international trip?” His answer came back without hesitation, “What would you do, carry my bags?” My heart sank.

I knew then that I was leaving this work. The Lord had another place for me. And He did, showing His faithfulness as He always does throughout this whole time.

Looking back on that time, when my heart’s desire was to travel, not just for the sake of traveling, but to do more than sit behind an administration and accounting desk, while taking the leaders to the airport and back 400 times over those years, I knew the Lord had more plans for me to accomplish. My heart was burning for something more.

In the summer of 2026, a trio of friends from Jerusalem, the co-founder of Christian Friends of Israel, Sharon Sanders, and two staff members, will be flying to the USA to hold meetings in Texas, California, Colorado, Montana, and more. I have been asked to accompany them on that journey, as a driver, the worship leader, and the book table manager. I am looking forward to it.

And I will be glad to carry their bags, as they are all older than my 71 years. Thank You, Lord.

And oh yes, speaking of international travel. Since that moment in 1999, when I left the ministry after giving my six-month notice, I have been to Israel 30 times, China, England, Ireland, Trinidad-Tobago, and more.

The Lord gives us the desires of our hearts. After all, He is the One who puts them there.

“Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4, NASB

Carry on!

Ahava and Shalom,

Steve Martin, Love For His People

“Carry My Bags”, Message #19, 04.03.26

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Birds - they sure do abound. Beautiful creations.

 

Birds - photos I have taken over the years.

Steve Martin

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Susita Israel Park over Sea of Galilee. A Roman fortress. Walk With Me, Steve Martin

Windy but fun atop the mountain overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

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