The Burden

Hi, I'm Joanne Vichner, Memaw with It's Storytime Memaw, an answered prayer for stories that point children to God on the Truth Network for kids. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network.

The following program contains sensitive content, listener discretion is advised. Previously on Lantern Rescue. Welcome to Lantern Rescue, a ministry program dedicated to bringing light into the darkness of human trafficking. It's time to light the way to freedom. This is Lantern Rescue. We tell the stories, we talk about rescues, and we empower you to do something about it.

William Wilberforce once said, Let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. Boy, do we have a treat for you today on Lantern Rescue. And Mark, we got an amazingly special guest.

It's actually in the studio with us right now. Yeah, man, this is one of our heroes. I'm going to introduce you for a second. Okay, so this is one of our heroes. This is an ally to the US from Afghanistan, and he has been instrumental in so many ways.

And especially most recently, since August, he has been instrumental in extracting and rescuing a lot of people, a lot of persecuted people and those who are oppressed. And so we're not going to mention his name. We're just going to let you know that he actually is right here in the studio with us. We've been having meetings together. And so, brother, go ahead and say hello. And we'll call you Shaheen for the show. Okay, we're grateful that you're here.

Hello, everybody. And my name is Shaheen. I was born in Afghanistan, and I owe a lot of my life to America. America is like my second home. I have done a lot of services in different agencies, law enforcement, especially after I was working with America since 2017, and then going on to 2015. And then after that, I was supporting a lot of things.

Things you can't talk about. Yeah, sir, you have been, as I say, an ally to the US. I know much of your life has just been in a war, you know, it's been in a fight.

Yeah, that's true. I served proudly. I did it for some ransom or salary, but it was my passion to just be close with America.

America is really very close to my heart, especially all the patriot people that I have met. We worked shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan. And after the Taliban collapsed, unfortunate collapse, I rolled my sleeve up and I tried to bring people from different entities like Christians. I was Jewish, and of course, Afghan, to evacuate them and bring them to a safe place with the support of our American friends. Jadi, you know, one of the things accomplished is that you were the primary instrument to move the last Jewish community out of Afghanistan. I was the one who moved the last Jewish who was remaining in Afghanistan, Afghan Jewish. I took him to a safe place in Pakistan.

And he's now in Turkey living his life. Robbie, we're talking about things today. I mean, I'm just nervous.

He's not so nervous as I am. But this is an individual who represents a team of people, our team of people who, man, when we say they've moved people, this is the only human smuggler who's on our side. We hunt down human traffickers normally. This is the one that we're not hunting down, we're working with because he's smuggling and has moved people at death's door.

We may talk about things that we might have to bleep out a little bit. After the collapse of Afghan Republic, when the Taliban came in, I spontaneously became the human trafficker. I was saving lives. I mean, I took them from a different border.

I was sneaking them. So I'm not a real human trafficker, but I did a lot of work and plus, I had a good opportunity with the support of some of my American friends and brothers. I had delivered a lot of food to the starving people. I think I did for almost 2,000 families, food delivery for 2,000 families. Plus, I did like 5,500 people's medical support supplies.

Yeah, we put that word out. We've been telling the Americans of the starvation problem in Afghanistan and Ukraine has captured so much attention right now that Afghanistan has gotten a little bit forgotten and the reality is that people are starving. Shaheen here and we just recently did also a medical treatment where this man, I don't want to call him a warlord, but let me tell you, that's about what he is to be able to do what we've done and that is to set up posts all around Afghanistan and to treat people. We got doctors who volunteered under his supervision their time and we treated women and children.

It was about 3,500 people and we did that in partnership with another foundation, so it was good. In different locations, very, very new remote areas that nobody could go there, but I took our friends, doctors, voluntarily go with us and we put like medical cams and we had the medicine that some American fellows helped us with and we delivered them to the right people, the people that they were serving and they couldn't go to doctor. Rather than, if you took $20,000 worth of medical supplies and just brought it into that country and just handed it off, it would get resold and misused. Under Shaheen's supervision, and actually he mastered that plan, it was, hey, let's set up posts, let's bring doctors in and let's give them a medical care assessment, just like a doctor.

You go to your doctor appointment, do a physical. And so they came in and then we dispersed the medical supplies and treatments to those individual people. And so, you know, that was brilliant and outside of this man in this room, I don't think that could be done in Afghanistan. It's incredible the favor, the wisdom, the clandestine nature and capabilities of this hero right here, really. One thing I guess if someone with a lot of leverage listening my voice right now, I took everybody out, but I just stuck with my family there. So I just want to be some sort of facilitation to bring them back to America because they're, I can go back and forth because I'm kind of you guys' soldier. I'm an American soldier and I'm taking, I will not bring you guys down. I work with you, for you guys, with all my honesty and loyalty. So if you are listening to my voice, please support my program, Feeding Economic People in Afghanistan, because I'm telling you, my message is very transparent.

I take everything there because so far, I'm not my American friend, like, think that I might be stealing from them. I just take everything transparently to the right people, apart from other people that they advertise a lot, but the reason they do nothing. Let's lead up to that because you and I have worked together to extract people and set them up. But then, you know, the reality of those starving and the medical treatments that needed and your willingness to risk your life continued to do that.

But let's back up a little bit. You know, last time we were together in my house, you know, we chatted and I got to even know you better, man, and got to know about your family. Would you take the time to maybe just share a little bit, we have a break in this show, okay, but if you could just tell me about, tell the general public here about your childhood and your life and how God led you through life to where you are now. Yes, so I was born in Afghanistan and I could not go to school a lot of times, I only did from school because of the poverty and then I came to America in 1997 where I had a heart surgery. How did you, you had to have a heart surgery, how did you get here to the US as a child? I was from America and he was the president of the Pittsburgh University, now I think he's died, so he sponsored me and I came to Pittsburgh Medical. Time out, how incredible that some guy sponsored you to save your life, not knowing brother, we know on the military side of your life to the extractor side, like you have saved tens of thousands of people including US soldiers in the soft community, how incredible that is, right?

I have a lot of notes from the different generals and everybody that they, in every note with the recommendation literally give me, everybody has stated that Shaheen saved our lives and I really did, like a family and they are all now backing with their families, but I was like their soldiers, I was protecting them. So how old were you when you came for the heart surgery? How old were you? I was 23 years old. 23, so at 23 at least, you had surgery here in the US, it was on your heart?

My heart, yeah, it was called the VSD, which was another word, I forgot, but it was a VSD, then after that I had some numbness in my left side, so I went to the surgeries. In that time, you know, your family member that means the most to you in life I know is, besides your wife and child, tell me about your mother and the relationship you've always had. Yeah, my mother means a lot to me, like she's everything, I have sacrificed my life for her, I dedicated my life for her, so that's why I didn't run away in those US airplanes, evacuation airplanes, because my mother could not make it to the airport. So I'm just, I'm trying to serve her, but my little baby, she's six months now, my wife was pregnant when this collapse happened, this shameful collapse happened.

I had no choice but to penetrate them and sneak them out of the border to Pakistan, so we are trying, I'm trying to make a way to bring them here. They are my right, because if somebody has the privilege to bring their family to America, that could be me, because I have worked from 2007 until the end. I was there for them, I didn't even expect any back salaries or anything, but I would just like work with a medical family, and if you want a proof I can bring from my program manager to just come to you directly and tell about my character while I was working with them. I didn't give them a feeling that they are home away, I guess all the time for them.

I'm sure it will help your family in the next step. I'm sure you're like me, just going, wow, like, oh my goodness, God. You know, you can see his hand all over this situation and the favor, right? That's just unbelievable. So I'm sure you're going to want to stay tuned because we got, oh man, so much more coming up for you here on Lantern Rescue.

Stay tuned. Lantern Rescue is a USA-based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former U.S. Special Operation law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems, such as genocide, terrorism, and human trafficking.

As a nonprofit charity, they offer services free of charge to their host nations. Human trafficking has grown into the second largest criminal activity in the world, reaching an estimated $150 billion in annual activity. Lantern Rescue has developed rapidly to combat trafficking. Lantern operates through a trained international network in order to rescue women and children from sex and labor slavery and facilitates holistic aftercare services.

They're gearing up for operations right now, and you can go to lanternrescue.org to see how you can support them financially. The following program contains sensitive content. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome back to Lantern Rescue. What a special episode we have today.

I know you, we don't want to take up any time. Just go right back to, you know, what's going on here, Mark. You know, I have a lot of relationships with foreigners and people in my life, and we entertain even those people in our home. But, you know, a few months ago, we were honored to have you in our house. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I will never forget something you said to me, okay? Because you said it with such passion. You know, you were sitting on my couch.

We're just quiet. And you look over at me and you said, brother, you have the burden. And I said, yeah, and then you told me what that burden was, and I listened to you because you're right. The burden is, it's on a few people, and it is that you can't live this life without trying to help somebody else.

And I'm not blowing me up or anything like that. I'm just saying to have a kindred spirit from a person in Afghanistan to look across and his spirit communing with mine and to say, you have the burden. And this man has the burden, Robbie. He has every right to be out of that region and could be living here and not care one thing.

But, yeah, he continues to stay in that region, go back and forth and between different countries to orchestrate and make things happen. That is wisdom from you, brother, okay? Thank you.

Thank you so much. Because some people don't have the burden. Like you said, you said a lot of people, you said it in your dialect and your way, you said they can just go to work, they can just come from work, they can just live their life, and they don't care about anything. Yeah, of course, yeah. But I'm not like that. Believe me, audience, respectful audience, that I live for others. I just forgot myself. Even though my physical situation is not suitable, but I'm telling you, if you just come and ask for my history, I work for a lot of dangerous missions for Americans.

And that was my passion. I work from Blackwater to the military to everything, and I proudly have a good relationship with all of them. And I want that America has its ways there, the dignity. When people talk bad about America, how they live, believe me, I don't feel good because America is my friend. So if the Afghans are saying, in any country, they say, well, America is just a bull out, and we don't notice you guys. I feel very bad when people talk about that. So I hope we have our dignity back there, and I'm there for you guys.

Again, I don't want to brag a lot about myself, but I'm telling you, I'm like a civilian soldier there. It's interesting you use that word, the burden, because those who, they would properly say that describes it. Because you do want to, sometimes you wish you could sleep more, wish you could travel less, wish you could enjoy hobbies, wish you could, your mind could be set on things that are just lighter to carry. But you can't, can you?

You have a burden. You see the faces of the children. Yeah, I was, believe me, Mark, you were witness that how many people have we evacuated.

Like, believe me, I'm not saying that this is what is really what. There were a lot of people that I evacuated, Christian children, and I can bring the picture to Rabi if we want to. And the last person, not the last person, but he was the last Afghan Jewish that I took him on with a lot of the risk. It was almost the second week of the Taliban. At that time, Taliban were brutal, they didn't know anything.

They were still brutal. But I took him out from a very, very long way, Pakistan, and he's now in Turkey. So, you know, you bring up something I want us to maybe chat a little bit about. There's not a lot of Christians in Afghanistan, as much as maybe Americans realize, but there are Americans. And there are some who have, they've just been able to be extracted, right, and moved out.

I can do two things. The people I brought out to Pakistan, they are still there in Pakistan. They are living in misery. Yeah, they are. There are some other people that are inside Afghanistan that are hidden. Yeah, because it's hard, if you're a Christian, it's hard in Afghanistan, it's hard in Pakistan, it's hard in India, it's hard everywhere in that region of the world, you know. And believe me, they are in a way, the people I took out, believe me, they were like in a food crisis.

They were like very tiny when I came out, when I received them from this side of the border. But there are people inside Kabul, inside Kabul, especially our Hazara brothers. And again, Mark is here and Ravi is here. If you need my service, please protect those people, let me know. Let them know that they will protect me. But we have to do something. We should not live for ourselves.

Because the world is not forever. We are going and we have to put something behind. Yeah.

I did my part, Roy. So, wow, you know, as I listen, you know, when you say you're helping these people get them out, I mean, is there some, can you give our audience a little sense of what an operation like that kind of looks like? You come in in the middle of the night, you go in, you know, what is it like, I picture this poor Jewish family. I can't even imagine how horrible that would be to be in Afghanistan and to be Jewish right now. And I'm sure they're hiding out like wherever in the world. And so, somehow or another, you find out where they are, then what happens? There are no more Jewish.

There are only one person Jewish that you're talking about. When they're Christian, they are still there. And when we go, so they are there and we can, not in the middle of the night, but we have to take them in the daytime and take them out. I took care of them in the shower first and then I took them to Islamabad. So, they are now there and I'm feeling very sad for them because they had been promised that they will be evacuated to America or Canada.

But what I'm hearing now, they are still there. That's what's difficult. That's another reality.

So, once we move them, what we do is we rent them an apartment for three months and give them food for a family. And family units are, they're big. They're eight to ten people. They're not two or three. They're always, you know, multiple children, those kind of things.

It can be even more because it can be twenty people, you know. We lean on Shaheen and help to feed these people in these months. The difficulty is a lot of them left a dangerous situation where their life was, their houses, all kinds of situations, threatening from the Taliban to a place where they're hoping they're going to get to move further because of their applications or their process or, you know, their visa situation. But reality is, they're just backed up.

They're tremendously backed up. I mean, how many, there's a hundred and fifty thousand refugees at least and it's just in Islamabad. More and more. Could be more now, yeah. I mean, that's just in one.

Not talking to the valley and other places. Yeah, after we just talked about the collapse. Yeah.

More than maybe two, almost two million people. Totally, yeah. But I'm not here for begging you guys, for the bigger, but I'm just telling you it's all the responsibility of all of us that we had those people left behind.

It is. You know, right now we have Afghans from special forces who desperately need moved and I'll just be honest, Ravi, we need funding to move on. We need another organization or a sponsor or a caring family to say, all right, what is that going to be and, you know, what can we do? We are roughly about a hundred people that their lives are in danger. Very much, yeah.

And if anybody is listening to my voice in the audience, if they are able to already get put together some funding for Mr. Mark here or contact Ravi. They are dying, man. They are living in the hiding and I barely made passport for them.

They are still there. I have to, we have to spend money on them to take them out of this place. So you can see that, I mean, you've got a crazy situation in the world where so many people, their hearts are on what's going on right now in the Ukraine, but here we have just an unbelievable situation.

These people, these special forces obviously risk their lives for a lot of American, right? Or now in this situation where they desperately need our help right now, obviously all of us listening can pray that God would open up a door somehow to provide for this other need that's just gigantic in a world that inflation is grabbing hold of people and all sorts of stuff's going on. So man, I mean, we need to be praying and if God puts it on your heart, oh, I know a guy, okay? Well, let's get it figured out how we get those people to mark or whatever and get some traction to, you know, to help. You can tell the man's heart that these are people that he probably worked with for years and years. You know, like you mentioned, we have about 100 particular case, family cases that we know if they're not moved, they're going to be murdered. People are looking for them, like even when they had to make a passport, they could not go to the passport office because they were scared to the Taliban will guide them.

What I did, I used my network and put money and I sent the biometrics machine to their home to fingerprint them instead of taking them to the passport office. But that's all me and Mark could do. We need your help beyond that point. And I'm sure you guys are generous people because Jesus Christ was generous and he'd saved a lot of lives and I'm sure that you will not bring down. I know in Afghanistan, Ukraine, it's all human being, so we have to have some equality.

Everybody is a human being and everybody is beloved to God. And my brother, we're not giving up, are we? We're not giving up, are we? We are not giving up, okay? We have not forgotten Afghanistan and we've not forgotten those who are oppressed there and those in persecution and we are entering into, now we're going to do an assessment of the region, Ravi, and we're going to assess are there remaining Christians and what's the condition, okay? We're not giving up and maybe I should call Glenn Beck and ask for some of that $33 million they raised, but we're not going to quit.

We're going to do this assessment and figure it out. I myself know about 100 Christians that I brought them to Pakistan and they are now in the middle of nowhere. I personally know that, I guarantee you guys, if you just jump in, believe me that God will be very happy. Well, I cannot say more because I cannot push you, but the thing is that we have to bring them, just help them and help them. Sorry, I'm not very intellectual person, I'm just kind of a field guy, so excuse my grammar.

No, you're fine. Yeah, it's a good timing, you know, when God gave you the opportunity to help others, this is something that we should do. I'm very happy with what I did with Mark and some other American organizations, bringing people out.

I had two sides, one I was in the combat and the other one I was living life, so I'm very proud of being in touch with America, America is a great country, a great nation and believe me, I have travelled everywhere, I tell everybody that, you know, America is like a family to every, the world, not only for America, America is a family of the world. So, I wish you all the best and thanks for a good time to listening. So, I'm sure as you're listening, I mean, you can see here's a man with such a passion that, you know, this is worth dying for, for him. In other words, he goes in there every day as does Mark and, you know, in different areas of the world, but for him, these are his people and this is his need. So, let's just commit to pray, like, God, what can I do, here I am, what's my role in this and what can we do to help these folks that are making this assessment and keeping us aware of what's going on in the world, right Mark?

Yeah, please reach out to us and we'll be transparent, we'll let you know the steps, when it's happening, when they're being moved, everything, when they arrive safely to the first safe house, when they get to their final destination, we'll do all of that. So, you've heard me on the show so many times, the listeners have, that I talk about the heroes overseas and you're hearing directly from one here. Yeah, what an honor to be with you guys today. God bless. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, brother. This is the Truth Network.