We Called Him Emmanuel - A personal journey through the loss of an unborn child

Who was Jesus?

It is built on a double betrayal: Born into a bourgeois Georgian family in Tbilisi, Georges moved with his parents to Paris following the collapse of Georgian independence in From the start, he struggled to find his place, drifting through a series of wretched jobs until, after being fired from a Bordeaux garage in , he began working for the German Economic Services as a translator.

After the German withdrawal from France in , that act of collaboration was enough to earn him a visit from a group of machine-gun-carrying men in an official-looking car. He was never seen again. It was more than offending my mother, it really was defying a ban.

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He first went there in , on the trail of a Hungarian soldier who vanished during the second world war, only to be discovered in a mental hospital. In this hymn, he reassures those who are right with God that they have nothing to fear. We respect your privacy and never sell, rent, or loan our lists. So when the shepherds and wise men gather and worship the Baby, they are worshipping God himself. That is certainly how Jal has lived since escaping his past as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan , 20, or so young children left alone in a war zone, where he later became AKwielding soldier — at the age of eight. Just before Jesus ascended into heaven, he spoke to his disciples:.

He first went there in , on the trail of a Hungarian soldier who vanished during the second world war, only to be discovered in a mental hospital. The partial echoes of his grandfather's fate, and the intoxication he felt in rediscovering the Russian he had spoken as a young child, drew him back. He raised money to spend a month there with a film crew, waiting for something to happen, shooting footage of passing trains and finding himself more and more adrift from his own project.

Things carried on in this way until an event that shocked the crew, and the film itself, to its foundations. This poor girl was assassinated in this awful fashion, with her son.

I can't blame myself for that, it's nothing to do with me — but still it's true that despite everything her death was very fortunate for the film. I have no idea what this film would have been if she hadn't died. As a book began to take shape, it became clear that he needed to investigate not only his family history, but also his love life, something that he now says he has "trouble justifying rationally, in truth".

His decision to put them together was, he says, "totally intuitive and irrational. In the end the link is me. No one was remotely hostile to my mother — I think, despite everything, when there's something which you feared and which happens and nothing happens, there's a certain relief — but that's my opinion. So there was a crisis, and then it passed.

He's just finished a performance in the auditorium during which he told the students about his past. The concert at Harbourfront's Fleck Dance Theatre is raising funds for his own charity, Gua Africa , which builds schools in East Africa and gives scholarships to young Sudanese refugees, and Matthew House, an organization that provides shelter for asylum seekers in Toronto. Emmanuel Jal tells a Toronto school about his refugee experience using stories, raps and spoken-word Photo: That's what made me want to have a gun. And when you have a gun, you have respect and you can eat.

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You can just walk into any village and haul your gun, and get food," he says. The only part that is not fun is when you lose your friends. You think they're going to come back tomorrow but that's it. Kids don't understand death. He was eventually rescued by a British aid worker and smuggled to Kenya, where he wound up living in a Nairobi slum after the worker died in a car accident. But this was where he found his calling by combining hip-hop music and political activism, which led to a hit song in Kenya.

That was really powerful.

"People forget the resilience; [refugees] are human beings that have survived."

As he slept fitfully, and angel came to him in a dream to assure him, "What is conceived The wonderful promise made through the Christ-child Immanuel is that God promises 4 Moses was told to personally confront the most powerful king on the face of the earth So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. We hope you enjoy this Advent devotional booklet, Emmanuel - God is With Us, written by personal reflections that reflect the diversity of the congregation. The Blessings on you, on those you love, and on your journey of faith. . complications, and being close to death, plus loosing her husband at.

Unable to return to his homeland, Jal made it to the UK in , where he remained for several years, releasing the album "War Child" as well as a documentary of his life with the same name, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Audience Choice Award. An autobiography followed the the next year. Jal arrived in Canada in , where he soon found himself co-starring in "The Good Lie," a film about Sudan's Lost Boys that co-starred Reese Witherspoon and had its world premiere in his new hometown's Toronto International Film Festival.

He landed some songs on the soundtrack, too, including "Scars," his duet with Furtado. He has since opened up a cafe in Toronto called Jal Gua, which helps support his charity, and launched a dietary supplement for vegans, also called Jal Gua. It means "walk in peace" in the Naath language and contains a blend of Sorghum and Moringa, thousands-year-old staples of African cuisine. He still runs his own record label — this spring he performed at the SXSW music festival's ContraBand Showcase, featuring artists from countries included in Donald Trump's travel ban — and mentors young refugees who came to Canada as unaccompanied minors and live at Matthew House.

Canada is saying, we have a lot of immigrants, we have space for you — come.

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That was really powerful," he says. But even though the neighbour was not really welcoming, Canada stood by what they believe in.

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Emmanuel Jal promoting his film 'The Good Lie' in Of course, he is aware that not all Canadians have been on the same page when it comes to accepting refugees, but he blames that mostly on misconceptions. But people forget the resilience; they are human beings that have survived.

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And the journeys they have overcome, we can learn a lot from it; we can learn courage, we can learn faith, we can learn resistance, we can learn endurance, we can learn loyalty. We can learn so much from each and every refugee.