‘Thanks to You, I Have My Daughter Back’

At long last, a happy ending for H., a young woman from a religious home who’d gotten herself into very serious trouble.

At the age of 20, H. got involved with a missionary cult that wreaked havoc on her soul. She began to regularly attend the cult’s meetings, which aimed at one thing: getting her to convert out of her religion.

At one point, H. was attending meetings daily, basking in the warmth and sense of belonging she felt in the presence of the missionaries. Her family got wind of the dangerous situation when they discovered Christian symbols in her possession. Her parents were at a loss as to how to hold on to their daughter and keep her from slipping away from her people forever.

Desperate, the parents reached out to Yad L’Achim for help. The counter-missionary organization dispatched an experienced team that contacted H. and guided her parents as to how to handle the situation. The chief concern was that the parents not do or say anything that would cause her to cut off relations

Under Yad L’Achim’s guidance, the parents’ attitude toward their daughter did a 180-degree turn. Instead of confrontations and quarrels, there was warmth and understanding. The atmosphere in the house was calmer, more peaceful, setting the stage for the long-awaited change in the relationship between H. and her parents.

Two months ago, the breakthrough came: H. stopped attending the cult’s meetings, telling her parents that she no longer had time for them. As the days passed, she opened up to her family about her new, more positive attitude toward Judaism, and her understanding of how much it meant to her.

“The atmosphere at home has changed beyond recognition,” H.’s mother told the Yad L’Achim counselor with whom she has been in daily contact. “A year ago, I thought my daughter was strange and bad. Today I feel like I have been blessed to get back my precious daughter.”

Yad L’Achim calls on parents who find themselves in similar situations not to cut off ties with their daughters. “Our experience shows that the more the parents maintain contact with their daughter, the greater the chances of her returning to the path. Every one of our daughters must be showered with warmth and love and made to feel welcome in her home,” a Yad L’Achim official stressed, adding that the organization’s emergency hot line is open 24 hours a day, for advice, assistance and rescue.