NRB Chronicles - 2015 Classic: Adopt A Holocaust Survivor

We are on the floor of the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, and I love these impromptu interviews.

It's more than amazing to see the way God reaches out to people across the world, and we have a very unique situation. We have Susan Hagee with us. She is the president of serving Holocaust survivors in Israel.

That conjures up all sorts of things, but Susan knows it best. Essentially, you're working with folks that literally have survived the Holocaust at this point in time. They must be fairly elderly.

They are. The average is about 83 to 85 years old. We do have some pretty old ones. We have one that's 100.

Wow. To survive that and still live to 100, that takes some staying power, I would think. Well, it does, but I think that what it is is they're still in the survivor mode. They have never left that mode.

The adrenaline kicks in, and it never left. So they're still living, and they're living on because they're still living in the past. Inside their head is like a DVD going on, and it tells the whole story of everything that happened to them. They can tell me the date, the weather, the smells. They can tell me all the details of what happened to them. Well, before we get to their stories, which I know we're going to hear a few of those, I'm really curious about your story.

How does God put that on somebody's heart? You speak English really, really well, so I'm guessing you're not from Israel. No, I'm not. What happened? I was actually very active in the movie theater industry. I had worked my way up into the corporate end. I was working in Texas, except that I knew that that wasn't where God wanted me to be, and I got pretty miserable.

So crying a lot and everything, just finally I asked my Bible study to pray for me to have a clear answer what I should do. So we did. That was on a Wednesday night. Thursday morning I was fired. Be careful what you pray for, yeah.

That is correct. So now I had no job. I was in a bit of a panic, and someone offered me a free trip to Israel just to think about what I wanted to do next.

So I went. I never wanted to go to Israel. I never had any interest. Really? I didn't.

Nothing. I was very happy in the church here. So I went, and I spent two weeks. I did not plan on God going along. He spoke to me the whole time, and I had dreams at night. I had visions in the morning, and I never had that before.

That was brand new. I was terrified. By the time I got on the plane to come home, I just asked God one question.

What do you want? He said, I want you to have the compassion of Jesus. I thought it was easy. He didn't ask me to go to Africa, so I said okay. By saying okay, I stepped into obedience to Him and went into what He had for me to do. And I cried all the way home.

Compassion requires tears. So I cried for a year, and finally He had someone call me from Israel that I knew, and they said, guess what? We found out there's Holocaust survivors in our city. And with that statement in September of 2003, I actually felt my heart being squeezed. It was a physical feeling, and I heard myself say, I have to go to Israel. And when I hung up, I said to God, what do you mean I have to go to Israel?

So now I'm mad. And I was brought up to obey, and was brought up to believe in your higher authority. I said to go, I go. I told Him I'd go for six months. I gave Him that much time.

And then I'm going home. But I went very angry. I was still angry when I got to Israel. And I only had $50.

I couldn't get another job after I lost mine. God made sure of that too. And I got there. He provided everything for me. And I asked Him, now what? And He told me, I want you to go and see the survivors in this city.

Hug them, kiss them, love them, tell them I love them, and tell them you do too. Well there was one thing in this whole thing, I had told God a long time ago, I'll do anything for you, just please don't give me old people. So instead He gave me the oldest in the world. So now here I was going to visit these old people, and I'm supposed to tell them I love them. I was very angry. But I went in to see the first one. And when she told me her story, she was shaking so much from the terror of telling it again.

And some of them, it's the first time. I reached out and I touched her. It was just a touch. And I fell absolutely in love with the Holocaust survivors. And it became my passion. Because I know that's what God made me for.

And if you take my DNA and you put it underneath a supernatural microscope, it has Holocaust survivors written right on it. And this is my passion for my life. And I will do anything for them to bring them relationship, and to bring them honor.

And that is what we're for. So, I mean what a remarkable, and it's so God to do, I mean I can hear that throughout what you're talking about. But I would imagine you're going to Israel and you are talking to Holocaust survivors that they are very Jewish. And are you Jewish as well? No, I'm not.

Okay, how does that, what is the interaction there? The first question they ask me is, are you Jewish? And I say no, I'm not. And they say, you know since you're not Jewish you don't have to do this.

Did you know that? And they're explaining to me how there's a commandment, a mitzvah that the Jews have to do. But because I'm Gentile I don't have to, do I know that?

It's not required. And when I say I know it's not required, but I'm doing it because I love you and because God does. That hits them more than if it was someone Jewish. Because it's not done by command, it's done by love.

Wow. And that's again, so God to feel that. And so now can you put a face on this for us?

Because when we think of Holocaust survivors we think of Anne Frank or whatever the situation. But can you just perhaps tell us one story of you know that wow, God okay this is why you have me here, right here. This was the situation.

If nothing else ever happened, I know this was the one. We went to pray for a woman named Anna and she had been in the Red Army, not by choice, and she was a medic. So that meant you carried a medical bag in one hand and a gun in the other and she was at the front lines. And so if somebody got shot she bandaged them up and then she picked up her gun and kept going. Well she was shot and she was captured and put into a ghetto until the end of the war. She came to Israel and when we met her she was bent over at the waist. Just like the woman in the story of Jesus that she could not stand up. But Anna was the same thing.

And she was in pain. So we asked if we could pray for her. We always ask. Most of them say yes, that's fine. Some of them say, well I don't believe. It doesn't matter, we do.

Oh okay, it's alright then. So we prayed for her. Came back to see her about five weeks later. And when I saw her inside door was open and she was running through the house. She opened the door, grabbed us, pushed us down on the sofa, ran back to her room and came back out in a bright pink dress. She stood up very straight and very tall and she began to sing. She had been a professional singer and hadn't been able to sing for years because she was bent over and you cannot breathe then. And she knew that it was our prayer. So she got on their grapevine and she called and she told a few more. I went to see a woman named Rosa.

Rosa began telling me her rotator cuff was torn. Oh you know that? You saw the doctor? Yeah.

What's he want to do? Operate? Are you going to operate? She gave me a funny look and said, no you're going to pray for it.

Of course I am, I'm sorry. So I prayed for it and the next week in town she yelled my name. I looked across the courtyard and she's going this way. Today, now that was seven years ago, today when I see her she moved to another town. She sees me walking, she turns around and tells everybody around her how I prayed for her shoulder and it was healed. Word of testimony.

And this is what I am finding out. Each one of these people are touched in such a way. It was also the entrance of my being able to go see one of the ladies that I loved probably the most, Brana Slava. If you'd like her story I can tell that to you. I see some other folks are actually lining up on this. Okay. But the stories you've told us are more than amazing and I know that our listeners would want to take part in what you described to me when we first started talking. That you are out trying to find pen pals, folks to communicate.

Tell us about that. We have an adoption program. They don't come to live at your house. You just get to write to them. Most times they do not write back. This is a mitzvah.

This is something you get to do for the Lord. Because they love the letters. We translate everything that's sent.

People from all over the world are writing to them right now. They want your picture. They want a brochure of where you live. They want to hear about your pets and your kids and everything else. They live their life vicariously through you.

And it builds such a relationship. If you have the chance to go over to Israel and meet them, they are thrilled to meet the person who's been writing to them and loving them and praying for them. We have seen the lives change of the survivors. So you, listening today, can adopt an Israeli Holocaust survivor.

And in order to do that, it's www.ahi.il-il.org. Of course, we'll have that at KingdomPursuits.com. We're going to make that happen. And I got to tell you, you are one amazing lady, Susan. And I know that we will have some future conversations. God bless you. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you very much.