title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Thomas Luke Macfarlane was born on 19 January 1980, in London, Ontario. His father Thomas was the Director of Student Health Services at the University of Western Ontario, and his mother Penny is a mental health nurse at a London hospital. Macfarlane attended London Central Secondary School with twin sister, Ruth, and older sister Rebecca. Macfarlane went to school at the Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts, then later studied drama at Juilliard in New York City.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane had an early role playing opposite Cynthia Nixon in Robert Altman's miniseries "Tanner on Tanner" on the Sundance Channel. He subsequently had leading roles on the 2005 FX series "Over There" (playing PV2 Frank "Dim" Dumphy) and in the 2009 two-part miniseries titled "Iron Road".


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane first notable role was as Scotty Wandell on ABC's "Brothers & Sisters", husband to Kevin Walker (played by Matthew Rhys), one of the "brothers" of the show. Macfarlane's other notable television roles include Jason Howell in the Canadian sitcom "Satisfaction", Rick Lincoln on NBC's "The Night Shift", Chaplain Hopkins on PBS's "Mercy Street" and the starring role of D'avin Jaqobis in Syfy's "Killjoys".


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane has also starred in TV movies, such as Hallmark Channel's "The Memory Book", "Christmas Land"," Maggie's Miracle Christmas", "The Birthday Wish", and "The Mistletoe Promise" (2016).


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane was one of the four leads in "Juvenilia" at the Playwrights Horizons Theater from November 14–December 21, 2003. He played the lead role in the American premiere of the play "Where Do We Live", staged at the Vineyard Theatre in May 2004. The production was cited by the 2005 GLAAD Media Awards for Outstanding New York Theatre: Broadway and Off-Broadway. He also appeared with Jill Clayburgh and Hamish Linklater in the off-Broadway production of "The Busy World is Hushed", again at Playwrights Horizons, in Summer 2006. He reprised his role of Thomas for the L.A. Premiere at the Skirball Cultural Center from February 7–11 of 2007.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane was part of the one-night celebrity performed staging of Howard Ashman's unproduced musical "Dreamstuff". The musical was re-imagined by Howard's partners Marsha Malamet and Dennis Green and performed one night only at Los Angeles' Hayworth Theatre as part of the Bruno Kirby celebrity reading series, directed by actor Michael Urie. Luke starred in the show alongside Eden Espinosa, Vicki Lewis, Fred Willard and David Blue.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane starred in the world premiere of stage drama "Reverberation" in February 2015 at Hartford Stage in Connecticut.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane was the lead singer and a songwriter for the band Fellow Nameless, which began in his 8th grade along with some of his classmates at Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts under the name of Slipnaught, a name they randomly chose from a dictionary because they did not have a name for the band when it came time to perform on stage. Fellow Nameless came from Slipnaught mainly because the band members hated the original name, and so, Fellow Nameless was born at London Central Secondary School. Fellow Nameless has produced one underground album, which was a half-studio, half-live CD album, and they recorded an additional ten songs that never got put out including three songs that were recorded for a development deal with Maverick Records. They played a showcase for Danny Strick A&R of Maverick Records and in the end got passed over. The once thought of as defunct London, Ontario based band, Fellow Nameless, later had two incarnations without Macfarlane as lead singer. The first incarnation came in the second quarter of 2004 with the creation of Van A Primer and a new singer, Matthew Pearn. Their most recent incarnation, as of March, 2006, has three of the remaining band members under the new band name of Cancel Winter.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane came out as gay during an interview with "The Globe and Mail" on 15 April 2008. On 12 June 2018, Macfarlane was naturalized as an American citizen.


title: Luke Macfarlane

text: Macfarlane plays the cello, and this skill was used in the Hallmark movie "Chateau Christmas". He also plays the trumpet.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: The Accountant is a 2016 American action-thriller film directed by Gavin O'Connor, written by Bill Dubuque and starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Jeffrey Tambor, and John Lithgow. The storyline follows Christian Wolff, a certified public accountant with high-functioning autism who makes his living uncooking the books of criminal and terrorist organizations around the world that are experiencing internal embezzlement.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: "The Accountant" premiered in Los Angeles on October 10, 2016, and was theatrically released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on October 14, 2016. Receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film grossed $155 million worldwide. It received praise for the action sequences featuring pencak silat, an Indonesian martial art.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Christian Wolff is a young man diagnosed with autism. His mother wants to send him to Harbor Neuroscience, a treatment center, but his father disagrees. Unable to handle Christian's needs, his mother abandons their family. His father begins training him and his brother Braxton in various martial-arts while also encouraging Christian to acclimate himself to stimulus that triggers him rather than avoiding it.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: In the present, Christian operates a small accounting office in Plainfield, Illinois, that serves as a front for his money laundering enterprise. His criminal clients contact him via an unnamed woman, who also organizes his business. Chris is hired to audit the firm Living Robotics after the company's CEO Lamar Blackburn and his sister Rita learn of accounting irregularities. They assign in-house accountant Dana Cummings to assist Wolff as she discovered the issue.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Meanwhile, Treasury Director Ray King meets with a data analyst named Marybeth Medina who has a criminal record as a juvenile but failed to disclose this on her employment application. King warns Medina she faces prison if he chooses to reveal the information, and he assigns her the task of finding Wolff's real identity before King retires in a few months. She uses this information provided by King along with tax records to locate Wolff's office.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Wolff reviews more than a decade of the company's financial records in one night and finds that $61 million has been embezzled. He informs Rita of the total but admits he does not know who the thief is. That night, Living Robotics CFO Ed Chilton is forced by a hitman to overdose on his insulin. The next day, Lamar pays Wolff the rest of his contract money for the audit and tells him to leave.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Hitmen attempt to kill Wolff but he easily subdues them; one reveals that Dana is the next target. He arrives at Dana's apartment in time to stop more hitmen from killing her. He takes her to his storage unit, which contains an Airstream RV filled with artwork and valuables that he has accepted as payment. He then hides Dana at an expensive hotel and goes to confront Rita but finds her murdered, causing him to suspect Lamar is the thief.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: King, Medina, and a group of agents search Wolff's home. After everyone else leaves, King tells Medina what he knows of Wolff and reveals that he began getting tips from Wolff. He asks Medina to take over when he retires and to continue accepting Wolff's information. She refuses, unable to justify taking tips from a murderer like Wolff. The phone in the empty house rings, and Medina answers. Wolff's partner gives her a tip about Living Robotics.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Wolff goes to Lamar's mansion, where a team of hitmen await. He fights his way inside but is shocked to find his brother Braxton is the one protecting Lamar. The brothers fight and then reconcile, and afterwards Lamar appears and tries to justify his criminal actions. Christian kills Lamar and makes arrangements to meet up with Braxton in a week before leaving.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Another set of parents visit Harbor Neuroscience. They meet Justine, the daughter of the clinic's director, who is revealed to be Wolff's partner. Medina accepts her new role as Wolff's contact and speaks at a press conference on the Treasury investigation into Living Robotics. Dana receives a framed copy of "Dogs Playing Poker", but discovers an original Jackson Pollock painting hidden underneath it. In the final scene, Wolff is shown driving off to a new town with his Airstream in tow.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: On November 12, 2014, "Variety" reported that Anna Kendrick was in early talks to co-star in the film, alongside Affleck. Later that day, J. K. Simmons was also announced as being in talks to join the cast. On November 14, 2014, Jon Bernthal was also in talks. On January 6, 2015, "Variety" reported that Cynthia Addai-Robinson was added to the cast. On January 14, 2015, Jeffrey Tambor and John Lithgow were added to the cast of the film.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Principal photography began on January 19, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia. On March 16–20, filming was taking place at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Filming wrapped on April 2, 2015.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: On July 9, 2015, it had received graphic novelization published by Vertigo, a limited comic-book imprint owned by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film's official trailer was released on YouTube on May 12, 2016. It features the song "Everything In Its Right Place" by Radiohead.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: The film was released in the United States on October 14, 2016. Before that, Warner Bros. had scheduled it for January 29, 2016 and October 7, 2016. It held its European premiere in London on October 17, 2016.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: "The Accountant" was released on Digital HD on December 27, 2016, and on Blu-ray and DVD on January 10, 2017. Between January and March 2017, the film sold 463,367 DVDs and 313,279 Blu-rays for a total of $19.2 million. In April 2018, the MPAA reported it was the top-rented film of 2017 for both disc and digital.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: "The Accountant" grossed $86.3 million in the United States and Canada and $68.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $155.2 million, against a production budget of $44 million.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: "The Accountant" was released alongside "Max Steel" and "", and was expected to gross $20–25 million from 3,332 theaters in its opening weekend, although the studio was projecting a conservative $15 million opening. The film made $1.35 million from its Thursday-night previews, more than Affleck's "Gone Girl" ($1.2 million) in 2014. It grossed $9.1 million on its first day and $24.7 million in its opening weekend, finishing first at the box office and was the second-highest debut for a thriller of Affleck's career, behind "Gone Girl" ($37.5 million). In its second weekend, the film grossed $13.6 million (a drop of 44.8%), finishing fourth at the box office.


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 52% based on 282 reviews, with an average rating of 5.67/10. The website's critical consensus reads: ""The Accountant" writes off a committed performance from Ben Affleck, leaving viewers with a scattershot action thriller beset by an array of ill-advised deductions." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on reviews from 45 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 84% overall positive score and a 64% "definite recommend".


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Vince Mancini of "Uproxx" gave the film a positive review, writing, "It's transparent in its attempt both to pimp a future franchise and give autistic kids their own superhero. There's a genuine sweetness to the latter that converts me on the former. Headshots, math problems, and pained social interactions? Sign me up. Of the two movies Ben Affleck has been in so far this year, "The Accountant" and "", "The Accountant" has by far the most franchise potential." Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying: "Madness abounds in "The Accountant", an intense, intricate, darkly amusing, and action-infused thriller that doesn't always add up, but who cares, it's BIG FUN."


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" panned the film, stating: "This thrill-free thriller...piles up plotlines like an overbuilt house of cards that comes crashing down at the first well-earned guffaw of ridicule."


title: The Accountant (2016 film)

text: In June 2017, a sequel was announced to be in development, with Gavin O'Connor and Bill Dubuque returning in their respective roles as director and writer. Affleck was to return in the starring role. In February 2020, Affleck reiterated his desire for a sequel, also noting the possibility of a television series based on the character.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: The family of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, is a prominent American family active in law, education, activism and politics. Obama's immediate family circle was the first family of the United States from 2009 to 2017, and are the first such family of African-American descent. His immediate family includes his wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha Obama.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's wider ancestry is made up of people of Kenyan (Luo), African-American, and Old Stock American (including originally English, Scots-Irish, Welsh, German, and Swiss) ancestry.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is an American lawyer, university administrator, and writer who served as the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is Barack Obama's wife, and was the first African-American first lady. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Michelle Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and spent her early legal career working at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her husband. She subsequently worked as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and the vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Barack and Michelle married in 1992.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle campaigned for her husband's presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She returned to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and again during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she delivered a speech in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, and fellow first lady, Hillary Clinton.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: As first lady, Michelle Obama sought to become a role model for women, an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity and healthy eating, and became a fashion icon.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack and Michelle Obama have two daughters: Malia Ann (), born July 4, 1998, and Natasha Marian (known as Sasha ), born June 10, 2001. They were both delivered at University of Chicago Medical Center by their parents' friend and physician Anita Blanchard. Sasha was the youngest child to reside in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. arrived as an infant in 1961. In 2014, Malia and Sasha were named two of "The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014" by "Time" magazine.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Before his inauguration, President Obama published an open letter to his daughters in "Parade" magazine, describing what he wants for them and every child in America: "to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world".


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: While living in Chicago, the Obamas kept busy schedules, as the Associated Press reported: "soccer, dance and drama for Malia, gymnastics and tap for Sasha, piano and tennis for both". In July 2008, the family gave an interview to the television series "Access Hollywood". Obama later said they regretted allowing the children to be included. Malia and Sasha both graduated from the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., the same school that Chelsea Clinton, Tricia Nixon Cox, Archibald Roosevelt and the grandchildren of Joe Biden (when he was Vice President) attended. The Obama girls began classes there on January 5, 2009; Malia graduated in 2016. Before the family moved to Washington in 2009, both girls attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory School.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: In his victory speech on the night of his election, President Obama repeated his promise to Sasha and Malia to get a puppy to take with them to the White House. The selection was slow because Malia is allergic to animal dander; the president subsequently said that the choice had been narrowed down to either a labradoodle or a Portuguese Water Dog, and that they hoped to find a shelter animal. On April 12, 2009, it was reported that the Obamas had adopted a six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog given to them as a gift by Senator Ted Kennedy; Malia and Sasha named the dog Bo. The White House referred to Bo as the First Dog. In 2013, the family adopted a second Portuguese Water Dog named Sunny.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: As a high school student, Malia Obama spent a portion of the summer in 2014 and 2015 working in television studios in New York and Los Angeles. She spent the summer of 2016 working as an intern in the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spain.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: During the week June 26, 2016, to July 3, 2016, Michelle, Sasha, Malia, and Michelle's mother Marian Robinson went to Liberia to promote the Let Girls Learn Peace initiative, for which the United States has provided $27 million in aid. They met with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia and the first elected female head of state in Africa. Then they went to Morocco, where they had a panel with Freida Pinto and Meryl Streep moderated by CNN's Isha Sesay in Marrakesh and delivered a substantive amount of money to aid 62 million girls lacking access to formal education. They proceeded to Spain where Michelle delivered a message about the initiative.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: In August 2016, Sasha began working at Nancy's, a seafood restaurant in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the fall of 2016, Malia went on an 83-day trip to Bolivia and Peru. In February 2017, Malia started an internship for Harvey Weinstein at The Weinstein Company film studio in New York City. In August 2017, Malia started attending Harvard University. Sasha graduated from Sidwell Friends in 2019 and began attending the University of Michigan in the fall. Sasha has since transferred to the University of Southern California, and Malia graduated from Harvard in 2021 and is now working as a writer on Donald Glover's new Amazon series "Hive".


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama was raised by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and maternal grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. He often referred to his family during his candidacy and two terms as president.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's maternal heritage consists mostly of English ancestry, with smaller amounts of German, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Swiss ancestry. Research by a genealogy team at Ancestry.com, published in 2012, stated that Obama is likely descended from the African slave John Punch through his mother's Bunch line, with generations of African Americans who gradually "married white" and became landowners in colonial Virginia. The Bunches later moved to Tennessee; in 1834 a daughter moved to Kansas, where Obama's mother was born four generations later.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's mother was born Stanley Ann Dunham. She became an anthropologist, specializing in economic anthropology and rural development. She earned her PhD degree from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and worked with the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and Women's World Banking, to promote the use of microcredit in order to combat global poverty. The Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships at the East–West Center (EWC) in Honolulu, Hawaii, are named in her honor. Obama has said that his mother was the dominant figure of his formative years. "The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Stanley Armour Dunham is the maternal grandfather of Barack Obama. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II, enlisting just after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. He and his wife Madelyn Dunham raised Obama in Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to Obama, Stanley is related to six US presidents: James Madison, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. He died in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is buried at the Punchbowl National Cemetery.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Madelyn Dunham (née Madelyn Lee Payne) was Obama's maternal grandmother who worked in banking and became vice president of a bank in Hawaii. Obama grew up with her and remembered that when he was a child, his grandmother "read me the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and told me about the men and women who marched for equality because they believed those words put to paper two centuries ago should mean something."


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Charles Thomas Payne is Madelyn Dunham's younger brother and Obama's great-uncle. He was born in 1925. Payne served during World War II in the U.S. Army 89th Infantry Division. Obama has often described Payne's role in liberating the Ohrdruf forced labor camp. There was brief media attention when Obama mistakenly identified the camp as Auschwitz during the campaign. In 2009, Payne spoke about his war experience: Ohrdruf was in that string of towns going across, south of Gotha and Erfurt. Our division was the first one in there. When we arrived there were no German soldiers anywhere around that I knew about. There was no fighting against the Germans, no camp guards. The whole area was overrun by people from the camp dressed in the most pitiful rags, and most of them were in a bad state of starvation.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Payne appeared in the visitor's gallery at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, when his great-nephew was nominated for President. He was the assistant director of the University of Chicago's Library.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Ralph Dunham was Stanley Dunham's older brother and Obama's great-uncle, he served in the U.S. Army as an assignment and personnel officer during World War II. He landed at Normandy's Omaha Easy Red Beach on D-Day plus four, and moved with troops in the fighting through France, Italy and Germany.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Eleanor Dunham, Obama's great-aunt, was the younger sister of Stanley Armour Dunham and Ralph Dunham. Married to Ralph Lee Berkebile. She was the youngest daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham Sr. and his second wife, Martha Mae Stonehouse. She retired from civil service as an executive secretary.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Margaret Arlene Payne, Obama's great-aunt, was the younger sister of Madelyn Dunham and Charles Payne. She was a professor of nutrition who taught at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1980–1990). She wrote numerous research articles and two books.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's family said that his maternal great-grandmother, Leona McCurry, was part Native American. She reportedly held that as a "source of considerable shame" and "blanched whenever someone mentioned the subject and hoped to carry the secret to her grave". But her daughter Madelyn Dunham (Obama's maternal grandmother) "would turn her head in profile to show off her beaked nose, which along with a pair of jet-black eyes, was offered as proof of Cherokee blood". To date, no concrete evidence has surfaced of Cherokee heritage in the McCurry line.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's family said that his paternal great-grandmother, Ruth Dunham, died November 26, 1926, from ptomaine poisoning. She resided in Topeka, Kansas.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: A maternal 3rd great-grandfather of Barack Obama, nicknamed "Fully". Born circa 1829 in Moneygall, King's County, Ireland, he emigrated to Ohio via New York in 1850, making him the most recent immigrant on the maternal side of Barack Obama's family tree. Fulmoth married Charlotte Holloway and raised a family which included three daughters (including Mary Ann). She and two of her sisters married three Dunham brothers. Kearney and his wife are buried in Fairview Cemetery in Labette County, Kansas. Descendants placed a headstone there in 2014. Around the same time, a photo of him was discovered. Barack Obama visited Moneygall in 2011. In 2014, "Barack Obama Plaza", a service station and visitor center, was opened in Moneygall. In 2015, a photograph of Kearney was discovered and made publicly available. In 2018, statues of Michelle and Barack were erected in Moneygall.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Lolo Soetoro, Javanese given name: "Martodihardjo", was the second husband of Ann Dunham (married on March 15, 1965) and stepfather to Barack Obama. He is Maya Soetoro-Ng's father. After his divorce from Dunham, Soetoro married Erna Kustina. They had two children, Yusuf Aji Soetoro (b. 1981) and Rahayu Nurmaida Soetoro (b. 1984).


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. She has a half-brother and half-sister, Yusuf and Aya Soetoro, from her father's second marriage. She is married to Canadian-American Konrad Ng, with whom she has two daughters, Suhaila and Savita. Maya Soetoro-Ng is a teacher in Hawaii.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Konrad Ng is Barack Obama's brother-in-law. He is of Overseas Chinese descent, and his parents are from Kudat and Sandakan, two small towns in Sabah, Malaysia. Ng and his younger brother, Perry, were born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Perry Ng works for the University of Ottawa. He married Maya Soetoro-Ng at the end of 2003 in Hawaii. They have two daughters, Suhaila and Savita. Konrad Ng is a U.S. citizen. He was an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's Academy of Creative Media. From 2011–2015 he was the Director of the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Program. Since 2016, he has been the Executive Director of The Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu. He studied philosophy at McGill University and cultural studies at the University of Victoria before getting his PhD degree from University of Hawaii at Manoa.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Ng studies "how minority and diaspora communities use cinema and digital media to engage in artistic and cultural representation and preservation, and community mobilization". From 2011 to 2016, he served as director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Robert Wolfley, born in 1835, is one of Obama's maternal third great-grandfathers. He served as a private in Company A, 145th Ohio Infantry during the American Civil War. He died July 17, 1895, and is buried in the Olathe Memorial Cemetery in Olathe, Kansas.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: According to Ancestry.com's research in 2012, using a combination of historical documents and yDNA analysis, genealogists found that John Punch, the first documented African slave in the Colony of Virginia, has been documented as likely an eleventh great-grandfather of Obama through his mother, Ann Dunham, and her Bunch ancestors. With intermarriage, there were eventually both white and African-American lines of descent from Punch; some Bunch descendants were classified as white by the early 18th century. Other Bunch descendants were considered free people of color. Ralph Bunche, U.S. minister to the United Nations, is thought by historian Paul Heinegg to have likely been an African-American descendant of the Bunch family via South Carolina and Detroit, Michigan.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Jonathan Singletary Dunham, born in 1640 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was one of Obama's maternal eighth great-grandfathers and is his earliest ancestor known to be born in North America.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Obama's family in Kenya are members of the Jok'Obama, a clan belonging to the Luo people, the nation's second-largest ethnic group. Linguistically, Luo is one of the Nilotic languages. The Obama family is concentrated in the western Kenyan province of Nyanza.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Paternal grandfather to Barack Obama, he was born Onyango Obama. (One source gives 1870–1975 as his dates of birth and death, possibly based on his tombstone in his home village. Barack Obama relates finding in 1988 a British document, based on a 1928 ordinance, recording his grandfather as 35 years old. The date of the document was estimated to be about 1930, which would mean that his grandfather had been born around 1895.) The Luo are given names related to the circumstances of their birth, and "Onyango" means "born in the early morning".Onyango was the fifth son of his mother, Nyaoke, who was the first of the five wives of his father, Obama. Barack Obama relates how his step-grandmother Granny Sarah (Sarah Onyango Obama) describes his grandfather: "Even from the time that he was a boy, your grandfather Onyango was strange. It is said of him that he had ants up his anus, because he could not sit still." As a young man, Onyango learned to speak, read and write in English, the language of British colonial administration in Kenya. Onyango worked as a mission cook and as a local herbalist. He joined the King's African Rifles during World War I. In 1949, Onyango spent at least six months in Kamiti Prison. He was tried in a magistrates' court either on charges of sedition or being a member of a banned organization. Records do not survive; all such documentation was routinely destroyed after six years by the colonial administration. Onyango was then subject to torture due to suspicions that he was an associate of the Mau Mau rebels. In his memoir, Obama recounted family descriptions of his grandfather's shocking physical state when released from prison:


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: "When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice." For some time, he was too traumatized to speak about his experiences. His wife told his grandson Obama: "From that day on, I saw that he was now an old man." Onyango was permanently scarred, suffering pain and requiring assistance in moving until his death. Although previously he had worked closely with the British, Onyango became bitterly anglophobic after his experiences in Kamiti Prison. According to his third wife, Sarah, Onyango had converted from tribal religion to Roman Catholicism early in life. When Seventh-day Adventist missionaries visited the Kendu Bay area many people were baptized into the church, including Onyango. When he later converted to Islam, he took the first name "Hussein". She said that he passed on the name of Hussein to his children, but not the religion. Onyango is sometimes referred to as Mzee Hussein Onyango Obama. The word "mzee" (meaning "elder") is a Kenyan honorific. And to this day the Obama family in Kenya is divided between Seventh-day Adventists and Muslims.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Also known as Akumu Nyanjoga and Sje. She was Barack Obama's paternal grandmother, and the second wife of Hussein Onyango Obama. She had three children with Onyango: daughters Sarah and Auma, and son Barack (Barack Obama's father). Her father was named Njango or Njoga, and she was born and raised in the Western Kenyan village of Karabondi.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: In his memoir "Dreams from My Father", Obama wrote that Akumu was miserable in her marriage and abandoned Onyango Obama and her children with him. She subsequently married again and moved to Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Her name "Akumu" means "mysterious birth". Her mother conceived her after having given birth to another child and before resuming her menses. Akumu took the name "Habiba" upon her conversion to Islam in her second marriage, to Salmin Orinda, a Muslim from Wagwe, near Homa Hills, South Nyanza. A photograph of her holding her son, Barack Sr., on her lap is on the cover of her grandson's memoir. (See image at right margin.)


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Aunt of U.S. President Obama and elder sister of his father, daughter of Hussein Onyango and his second wife, Habiba Akumu Obama. (She should not be confused with her stepmother Sarah Onyango Obama, also often called just Sarah Obama, the third wife of Onyango.)


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama Sr., Barack Obama's father, was the son of Onyango and his second wife Habiba Akumu Obama. Educated in the US at the University of Hawai'i and Harvard University, he returned to Kenya, where he became an economist with the government. He served in the ministries of transportation and finance. Obama Sr. married three times, and he fathered a daughter and at least four sons in addition to Barack II.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Aunt of U.S. President Obama and younger sister of his father, born to Hussein Onyango and second wife Habiba Akumu Obama.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Sarah Onyango Obama was the third wife of Obama's paternal grandfather. She was known for short as Sarah Obama; she was sometimes referred to as Sarah Ogwel, Sarah Hussein Obama, or Sarah Anyango Obama. She lived in Nyang'oma Kogelo village, 30 miles west of western Kenya's main town, Kisumu, on the edge of Lake Victoria. (She should not be confused with her stepdaughter of the same name, Sarah Obama, a daughter of Onyango's second wife Akumu.)


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Although she was not a blood relation, Barack Obama calls her "Granny Sarah". Sarah, who spoke Luo and only a few words of English, communicated with President Obama through an interpreter.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: On July 4, 2008, Sarah Obama attended the United States Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, hosted by Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador in Kenya.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, she protested attempts to portray Obama as a foreigner to the United States or as a Muslim, saying that while Obama's grandfather had been a Muslim, "In the world of today, children have different religions from their parents." Sarah Obama was "a strong believer of the Islamic faith", in her words.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: In November 2014, Sarah Obama received an award from the United Nations for the work of an education foundation that she headed, as a part of Women's Entrepreneurship Day.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Kezia "Grace" Obama (also known as Kezia Aoko) was born c. 1940. She was Barack Obama Sr.'s first wife; she married him in Kenya in 1954 before he studied abroad in the United States. They had at least two children together: Abongo [Roy] and Auma; and also claimed Bernard and Abo Obama as sons by Barack Sr.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: She lived in Bracknell, Berkshire, England, until her death in 2021. On March 22, 2009, Kezia Obama made a guest appearance on the British television show "Chris Moyles' Quiz Night". Her sister, Jane, is the 'Auntie Jane' mentioned at the very start of "Dreams from My Father;" she telephoned Obama in the US in 1982 to tell him that his father had been killed in a car accident in Kenya. She died on April 13, 2021.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama's half-brother, also known as Abongo or Roy, was born c. March 1958, the son of Barack Obama Sr. and his first wife, Kezia. Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, he earned a degree in accounting from the University of Nairobi. The half brothers met for the first time in 1985 when Barack flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to visit him. They were best men at each other's weddings. The American Obama brought his wife Michelle to Kenya three years later, and they met with Malik again while meeting many other relatives for the first time.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Malik lives in the Obamas' ancestral home, Nyang'oma Kogelo, a village of several hundred people, preferring its slow pace to that of the city. He runs a small electronics shop a half-hour's drive outside of town. Although much of the Obama family has dispersed throughout Kenya and overseas, most, including Malik Obama, still consider their rural village on the shores of Lake Victoria to be their true home. They feel that those who have left the village have become culturally "lost". A frequent visitor to the US, and a consultant in Washington, D.C., for several months each year, Malik has dual citizenship in Kenya and the United States.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: During his brother's 2008 presidential campaign, Malik Obama was a spokesman for the extended Obama family in Kenya. He dealt with safety and privacy concerns arising from the increased attention from the press.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Malik ran for governor of the Kenyan county of Siaya in 2013. His campaign slogan was "Obama here, Obama there" in reference to his half-brother who was serving his second term as the president of the United States. Malik garnered a meager 2,792 votes, about 140,000 votes behind the eventual winner. Prior to the 2016 United States presidential election, he stated that he supported Donald Trump, the candidate for the Republican Party. He attended the third presidential debate as one of Trump's guests.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama's half-sister, born c. 1960, to Kezia, his father's first wife. As of July 2008, she was a development worker in Kenya. She studied German at the University of Heidelberg from 1981 to 1987. After her graduation at Heidelberg, she went on for graduate studies at the University of Bayreuth, earning a PhD degree in 1996. Her dissertation was on the conception of labor in Germany and its literary reflections.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Auma Obama has lived in London. In 1996 she married an Englishman, Ian Manners, although they have since divorced. They have a daughter named Akinyi (b. 1997). In 2011, Auma Obama was interviewed for Turk Pipkin's documentary "Building Hope" and was the subject of a German documentary film "The Education of Auma Obama".


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: In 2017 Auma Obama was honoured with the fourth International TÜV Rheinland Global Compact Award in Cologne. At the award ceremony, she received the bronze sculpture 'Der Griff nach den Sternen' (Reaching for the stars), solely made for the award, by artist Hannes Helmke.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Said to be Barack Obama's half-brothers, Abo, also known as Samson Obama, was born in 1968 and Bernard was born two years later in 1970 to Kezia Obama. In "Dreams from My Father", Obama wrote that his Obama relatives doubt that Abo and Bernard are the biological sons of Barack Obama Sr.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Born Ruth Beatrice Baker in the United States around 1937, the daughter of Maurice Joseph Baker and Ida Baker of Newton, Massachusetts, who are of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. Ruth Baker was a 1954 graduate of Brookline High School in Brookline, Massachusetts, and a 1958 graduate of Simmons College in Boston with a degree in business. She was a suburban elementary school teacher when she met and began dating Barack Sr. in Cambridge in June 1964, a month before his return to Kenya in August 1964. She followed Obama Sr. back to Kenya five weeks later, and married him in Kenya in a civil ceremony on December 24, 1964. She later became a private kindergarten director in Kenya. She had two sons with Barack Obama Sr.: Mark and David. She and Barack Sr. separated in 1971 and divorced about 1973. Since she remarried when her sons were young, they took their stepfather's surname, Ndesandjo, as their own. Her third son, Joseph Ndesandjo, was born c. 1980 in her second marriage.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama's half-brother, born c. 1965, son of Barack Obama Sr. and his third wife Ruth Baker. Mark Ndesandjo runs an Internet company called WorldNexus that advises Chinese corporations how best to reach international customers. Mark was educated in the US, graduating from Brown University; he studied physics at Stanford University, and received an MBA degree from Emory University.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: He has lived in Shenzhen, China, since 2002. Through his mother, he is Jewish. He is married to Liu Xuehua (also spelled Liu Zue Hua in some reports), a Chinese woman from Henan Province. He is an accomplished pianist and has performed in concert.In 2009, Mark Ndesandjo published a semi-autobiographical novel, "Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East". He published a memoir in 2013, entitled, "Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery". In it, he accused their father Barack Sr. of abuse.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama's half-brother (also known as David Opiyo Obama), son of Barack Obama Sr. and his third wife, Ruth Baker, an American. He died in a motorcycle accident several years after his father's death in a car accident.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Youngest half-brother of Barack Obama, born c. May 1982, son of Barack Obama Sr. and Jael Otieno. (She has since moved to Atlanta, Georgia as a full-time resident.) George was six months old when his father died in an automobile accident, after which he was raised in Nairobi by his mother and a French stepfather. His mother took him to South Korea for two years while she was working there. Returning to Kenya, George Obama "slept rough for several years", until his aunt gave him a six-by-eight foot corrugated metal shack in the Nairobi slum of Huruma Flats.As of August 2008, George Obama was studying to become a mechanic. He received little attention until featured in an article in the Italian-language edition of "Vanity Fair" in August 2008 during the US presidential campaign. This portrayed him as living in poverty, shame, and obscurity. The article quoted George Obama as saying that he lived "on less than a dollar a month" and said that he "does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation" out of shame at his own poverty. In later interviews, George contradicted this account. In an interview with "The Times", he "said that he was furious at subsequent reports that he had been abandoned by the Obama family and that he was filled with shame about living in a slum".


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: He told "The Times", "Life in Huruma is good." George Obama said that he expects no favors, that he was supported by relatives, and that reports he lived on a dollar a month were "all lies by people who don't want my brother to win". He told "The Telegraph" that he was inspired by his half-brother. According to "Time", George "has repeatedly denied ... that he feels abandoned by Obama". CNN quoted him as saying, "I was brought up well. I live well even now. The magazines, they have exaggerated everything – I think I kind of like it here. There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges." George Obama and the British journalist Damien Lewis published George's story in a 2011 book called "Homeland". George also appeared in the 2012 film, "", an anti-Obama documentary.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: At times using a variation of the name of his father, Onyango Obama, Omar Okech Obama is a half-uncle of Barack Obama. Born on June 3, 1944, in Nyang'oma Kogelo, he is the eldest son of Onyango and his third wife, Sarah Obama. He moved to the United States in October 1963 when he was 17 years old as part of Kenya president Tom Mboya's Airlift Africa project, to send promising Kenyan students to the US for education, particularly undergraduate and graduate school. Once he arrived in the country, his half-brother, Barack Obama Sr., found him a place at a boys' school then known as Browne & Nichols, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He later dropped out of school and changed his name to O. Onyango Obama. He has operated a liquor store in Framingham, where he resided as of March 2011. Barack Obama lived with Onyango in the 1980s while a student at Harvard Law School in Cambridge.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Omar Okech Obama was subject to a deportation order in 1989. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was given a new deportation order in 1992. He was arrested on August 24, 2011, for driving under the influence, or DUI, and was held in jail until September 9, 2011, on a federal immigration warrant. The "Boston Herald" reported in August 2011 that Obama had had a valid Social Security card "for at least 19 years". On November 30, 2012, the Board of Immigration Appeals remanded the immigration case to the Executive Office for Immigration Review for reconsideration of the original order of deportation, which was issued in 1986 and re-issued in 1992.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: An immigration judge ruled on January 30, 2013, that Onyango Obama would receive a deportation hearing. Onyango's attorneys said that his defense at the December 3, 2013, deportation hearing would be a reliance on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, because Onyango had resided in the U.S. since before January 1, 1972, the cutoff date of the 1986 amnesty. At the hearing, Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro ruled that Onyango was eligible for permanent residence and would receive a green card.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Zeituni Onyango, half-aunt of Barack Obama, was born May 29, 1952, in Kenya. Onyango is referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama's memoir "Dreams from My Father". She entered the US in 2000 on a temporary visa with her son who was going to school; she applied in 2002 for political asylum due to unrest in Kenya and ethnic conflict. This was denied in 2004, but she remained in the country illegally. Her presence was leaked to the media during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. She was granted asylum in 2010. She died on April 7, 2014, from complications caused by cancer and respiratory problems.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Barack Obama has called his wife Michelle Obama "the most quintessentially American woman I know". Her family is of African-American heritage, descendants of Africans and Europeans of the colonial era and antebellum eras. Michelle Obama's family history traces from colonists and slavery in the South to Reconstruction to the Great Migration to northern cities, in her family's case, Cleveland and Chicago. Each of her four grandparents was multiracial. Some of Michelle's relatives still reside in South Carolina. Extended family from her mother's Shields ancestors also reside in Georgia and throughout the South.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle's earliest known relative on her father's side is her great-great grandfather Jim Robinson, born in the 1850s, who was an American slave on the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina in the Low Country, where African Americans developed as the Gullah people and culture. The family believes that after the Civil War, he worked as a Friendfield sharecropper for the rest of his life. He is said to have been buried there in an unmarked grave.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Jim married twice, first to a woman named Louiser, with whom he had two sons, Gabriel and Fraser, Michelle Obama's great-grandfather. A daughter was born to the family, but her name has not been discovered, and she is believed to have died as a child. His second marriage to Rose Ella Cohen produced six more children. Fraser had an arm amputated as a result of a boyhood injury. He worked as a shoemaker, a newspaper salesman, and in a lumber mill. Carrie Nelson, Gabriel Robinson's daughter, is the keeper of family lore and the oldest living Robinson at 80 years old in 2008.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: At least three of Michelle Obama's great-uncles served in the military of the United States. One aunt moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she worked as a maid. She cooked Southern-style meals for Michelle and her brother Craig, when they were students at Princeton University.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: The earliest known relative on her mother's side is her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Shields (1844–1938), who was held as a slave on a farm in Clayton County, North Georgia. Her master was Henry Walls Shields, who had a 200-acre farm near Rex. He would have worked along with his slaves. Melvinia became pregnant at about age 15 and had a biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields, born into slavery about 1860. Melvinia did not talk to relatives about his father. Based on DNA and other evidence, in 2012 researchers said the father was likely 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, son of Melvinia's master. After the Civil War, Dolphus Shields moved to Birmingham, Alabama. Charles later became a teacher and married a white woman. Michelle Obama's extended family has said that people didn't talk about slavery time while they were growing up. Michelle Obama's distant ancestry also includes Irish and other European roots.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: On June 26, 2012, a monument to Shields was erected in Rex, with an inscription summarizing her life and "a five-generation journey that began in oppression" resulting in her descendant becoming First Lady of the United States. A year later, the monument was vandalized and knocked from its base, but was quickly replaced.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Marian Lois Robinson (born Marian Lois Shields, July 30, 1937), is descended from Dolphus Shields and his wife. She is now widowed, but had married Michelle's father, Fraser Robinson, on October 27, 1960. Robinson was formerly a secretary at Spiegel catalog and a bank. While Michelle and Barack Obama were campaigning in 2008, Robinson tended the Obamas' young children. She continued to help care for them while living in the White House as part of the First Family; she was the first live-in grandmother since Elivera M. Doud during the Eisenhower administration. Some media outlets dubbed Robinson as the "First Granny". Marian took Sasha and Malia to school daily.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle Obama's father, born August 1, 1935, died March 6, 1991, married Michelle's mother, Marian Shields, on October 27, 1960. Robinson was a pump worker at the City of Chicago water plant.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, was born in 1962. From 2008 until 2014, he served as head coach of men's basketball at Oregon State University.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle Obama's paternal grandfather was born on August 24, 1912, in Georgetown, South Carolina, and died on November 9, 1996, aged 84. He was a good student and orator but moved from South Carolina to Chicago during the Great Migration to find better work and living conditions than in the South, where Jim Crow had been imposed and blacks were disfranchised. He became a worker for the United States Postal Service. He married LaVaughn Johnson. When he retired, they moved back to South Carolina.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Michelle Obama's paternal grandmother (February 6, 1915 – September 17, 2002) and married to Fraser Robinson Jr. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, to James Preston Johnson (1880–1920?) and Phoebe (1879–1920?).


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Robbie Shields Terry (born Robbie Lee Shields; July 3, 1908 – June 1, 1983) was Michelle Obama's great-aunt: her mother's father's sister. In the 1940 census, she was listed as head of household, with Marian Shields listed as niece. Michelle Obama, in her memoir, "Becoming", introduces Robbie and her husband, Terry, in the first chapter. Her nuclear family moved into a small apartment on the second floor in their house while she was still a young child. Robbie was Michelle's piano teacher as well as nearest neighbor. When she died, Robbie, a widow, left the house to her mother, Marian, and father, Fraser Robinson, who moved downstairs. Subsequently, Michelle moved into the second floor apartment while working at the law firm Sidley & Austin. When Barack Obama settled in Chicago after graduating law school, he moved into this same apartment.


title: Family of Barack Obama

text: Capers C. Funnye Jr. is Michelle Obama's first cousin once removed: his mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson; August 22, 1930 – April 16, 2000), was a sister of Michelle Obama's paternal grandfather, Fraser Robinson Jr. He is 12 years older, and Funnye and Obama grew to know each other as adults in Chicago, where both were involved in community organizing, along with Barack Obama. He is one of America's most prominent African-American rabbis, known for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and African American Jews. He converted to Judaism after 1970, during years of activism when he regarded Christianity as having been imposed on slaves.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: 90 Day Fiancé is an American reality television series on TLC that follows couples who have applied for or received a K-1 visa, available uniquely to foreign fiancés of U.S. citizens, and therefore have 90 days to marry each other. The series debuted on January 12, 2014, and has run for 9 seasons.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: The series has eighteen spin-offs, including "90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After", which documents past "90 Day Fiancé" couples after their marriage; "90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days", which follows couples who met online but have not yet started the K-1 visa process; and "90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way", a series where the American partner moves to their partner's home country instead of vice versa. The original series and its spinoffs are collectively referred to by TLC parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, and some others, as the ""90 Day Fiancé" Universe", or simply the "90 Day Universe".


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: The show is based on the K-1 visa process. This visa allows the fiancé from a foreign country to travel to the USA to live with his or her prospective American spouse. The purpose of the K-1 Visa is to provide time for the couple to make arrangements and have a marriage ceremony. Each couple is required to sign documents stating their intent to marry as part of the visa process. If the couple does not marry within 90 days, the beneficiary must leave the country. The couple may face language barriers, culture shock, the stigma of being thought of as a "mail-order bride", and skepticism from friends and family.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: "90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?" is a documentary series on TLC and a spin-off of "90 Day Fiancé". The series was announced in August 2016 and follows six couples from previous seasons of "90 Day Fiancé", documenting their relationships post-marriage. The series debuted on September 11, 2016, following the premiere of season 4 of "90 Day Fiancé". The first season concluded in November 2016 with a two-part "Tell All" special and an announcement that they had been renewed for season 2, which premiered on June 25, 2017. The third season premiered on May 20, 2018; season 4 premiered on April 28, 2019; season 5 premiered on June 14, 2020; and season 6 premiered on April 25, 2021. Season 7 is set to premiere on August 28, 2022.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: In November 2016, TLC announced a second spin-off series titled "90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days", which premiered on August 6, 2017. It chronicles the stories of couples whose relationships started online meeting in person for the first time. The second season premiered on August 5, 2018; season 3 on August 4, 2019; season 4 on February 23, 2020; and season 5 on December 12, 2021. Casting for season 6 had already begun by the end of season 5 despite the show not yet being renewed.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: In March 2017, TLC announced a spin-off series, "90 Day Fiancé: What Now?", available only on TLCgo. Updates about "90 Day" alumni were initially released online on July 30, 2017, then combined into episodes and aired in a two-part special on September 17 and 24. The 2018 edition was also first uploaded online and this time was a three-part special over July 15, 22, and 29. Unlike the previous two seasons, season 3 contained five full episodes. The fourth season was made up of seven episodes, which were released between April and June 2020. As of August 2, 2022, the show has not been cancelled or renewed.


title: 90 Day Fiancé

text: "90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way" was announced in May 2019 and aired on June 3. The spin-off is dedicated to couples where the American partner marries their partner abroad and moves to their country.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah ( ; , meaning "My God is Yahweh/YHWH"; Greek form: Elias ) was, according to the Books of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, a prophet and a miracle worker who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Ahab (9th century BC). In 1 Kings 18, Elijah defended the worship of the Hebrew God over that of the Canaanite deity Baal. God also performed many miracles through Elijah, including resurrection, bringing fire down from the sky, and entering heaven alive "by fire". He is also portrayed as leading a school of prophets known as "the sons of the prophets". Following his ascension, Elisha, his disciple and most devoted assistant, took over his role as leader of this school. The Book of Malachi prophesies Elijah's return "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the ", making him a harbinger of the Messiah and of the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. References to Elijah appear in Sirach, the New Testament, the Mishnah and Talmud, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and Baháʼí writings.


title: Elijah

text: In Judaism, Elijah's name is invoked at the weekly Havdalah rite that marks the end of Shabbat, and Elijah is invoked in other Jewish customs, among them the Passover Seder and the brit milah (ritual circumcision). He appears in numerous stories and references in the Haggadah and rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian Talmud. According to the Hebrew Bible, Elijah will return during the End of Times.


title: Elijah

text: The Christian New Testament notes that some people thought that Jesus was, in some sense, Elijah, but it also makes clear that John the Baptist is "the Elijah" who was promised to come in ; . According to accounts in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Elijah appeared with Moses during the Transfiguration of Jesus.


title: Elijah

text: In Islam, Elijah or Ilyas appears in the Quran as a prophet and messenger of God, where his biblical narrative of preaching against the worshipers of Baal is recounted in a concise form. Due to his importance to Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, Elijah has been venerated as the patron saint of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1752.


title: Elijah

text: According to the Bible, by the 9th century BCE, the Kingdom of Israel, once united under Solomon, divided into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah (which retained the historical capital of Jerusalem along with its Temple). Omri, King of Israel, continued policies dating from the reign of Jeroboam, contrary to religious law, that were intended to reorient religious focus away from Jerusalem: encouraging the building of local temple altars for sacrifices, appointing priests from outside the family of the Levites, and allowing or encouraging temples dedicated to Baal, an important deity in ancient Canaanite religion. Omri achieved domestic security with a marriage alliance between his son Ahab and princess Jezebel, a worshipper of Baal and the daughter of the king of Sidon in Phoenicia. These solutions brought security and economic prosperity to Israel for a time, but did not bring peace with the Israelite prophets, who advocated a strict deuteronomic interpretation of the religious law.


title: Elijah

text: Under Ahab's kingship tensions exacerbated. Ahab built a temple for Baal, and his wife Jezebel brought a large entourage of priests and prophets of Baal and Asherah into the country. In this context Elijah is introduced in 1 Kings 17:1 as Elijah "the Tishbite". He warns Ahab that there will be years of catastrophic drought so severe that not even dew will form, because Ahab and his queen stand at the end of a line of kings of Israel who are said to have "done evil in the sight of the Lord".


title: Elijah

text: No background for the person of Elijah is given except for his brief characterization as a Tishbite. His name in Hebrew means "My God is Yahweh", and may be a title applied to him because of his challenge to worship of Baal.


title: Elijah

text: As told in the Hebrew Bible, Elijah's challenge is bold and direct. Baal was the Canaanite god responsible for rain, thunder, lightning, and dew.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah thus, when he initially announces the drought, not only challenges Baal on behalf of God himself, but he also challenges Jezebel, her priests, Ahab and the people of Israel.


title: Elijah

text: After Elijah's confrontation with Ahab, God tells him to flee out of Israel, to a hiding place by the brook Chorath, east of the Jordan, where he will be fed by ravens. When the brook dries up, God sends him to a widow living in the town of Zarephath in Phoenicia.


title: Elijah

text: When Elijah finds her and asks to be fed, she says that she does not have sufficient food to keep her and her own son alive. Elijah tells her that God will not allow her supply of flour or oil to run out, saying, "Do not be afraid ... For thus says the Lord the God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth." She feeds him the last of their food, and Elijah's promise miraculously comes true.


title: Elijah

text: Some time later the widow's son dies and the widow cries, "You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!" Elijah prays that God might restore her son so that the trustworthiness of God's word might be demonstrated, and "[God] listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived." This is the first instance of raising the dead recorded in Scripture. The widow cried, "the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth."


title: Elijah

text: After more than three years of drought and famine, God tells Elijah to return to Ahab and announce the end of the drought. While on his way, Elijah meets Obadiah, the head of Ahab's household, who had hidden a hundred Jewish prophets from Jezebel's violent purge. Obadiah fears that when he reports to Ahab about Elijah's whereabouts, Elijah would disappear, provoking Ahab to execute him. Elijah reassures Obadiah and sends him to Ahab.


title: Elijah

text: When Ahab confronts Elijah, he denounces him as being the "troubler of Israel" but Elijah retorts that Ahab himself is the one who troubled Israel by allowing the worship of false gods.


title: Elijah

text: At Elijah's instruction, Ahab summons the people of Israel, 450 prophets of Baal, and 400 prophets of Asherah to Mount Carmel. Elijah then berates the people for their acquiescence in Baal worship: "How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him."


title: Elijah

text: Elijah proposes a direct test of the powers of Baal and Yahweh (both Asherah and her prophets disappear from the story entirely): he and Baal's prophets will each take one of two bulls, prepare it for sacrifice and lay it on wood, but put no fire to it. The prophets of Baal choose and prepare a bull accordingly. Elijah then invites them to pray for fire to light the sacrifice. They pray from morning to noon without success. Elijah ridicules their efforts. "At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, 'Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.'" They respond by shouting louder and slashing themselves with swords and spears. They continue praying until evening without success.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah then repairs Yahweh's altar with twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Elijah digs a trench around it and prepares the other bull for sacrifice as before. He then orders that the sacrifice and altar be drenched with water from "four large jars" poured three times, filling also the trench. He asks Yahweh to accept the sacrifice. Fire falls from the sky, consuming the sacrifice, the stones of the altar itself, the earth and the water in the trench as well. When the people see this, they declare, "The he is God; the he is God." Elijah then orders them to seize the prophets of Baal, which they do, and Elijah kills them. Then the rains begin, signaling the end of the famine.


title: Elijah

text: Jezebel, enraged that Elijah had killed Baal's prophets, threatens to kill Elijah. Elijah flees to Beersheba in Judah, continues alone into the wilderness, and finally sits down under a shrub, praying for death. He falls asleep under the tree; the angel of the Lord touches him and tells him to wake up and eat. When he awakens he finds bread and a jar of water. He eats, drinks, and goes back to sleep. The angel comes a second time and tells him to eat and drink because he has a long journey ahead of him.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah travels for forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb, where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. Elijah is the only person described in the Bible as returning to Horeb, after Moses and his generation had left Horeb several centuries before. He seeks shelter in a cave. Elijah is told to "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the , for the is about to pass by." There is a powerful wind, an earthquake and fire, but Yahweh is not in any of them. Then a gentle whisper comes to Elijah. Yahweh sends him out again, this time to Damascus to anoint Hazael as king of Aram, Jehu as king of Israel, and Elisha as his replacement.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah encounters Ahab again in 1 Kings 21, after Ahab has acquired possession of a vineyard by murder. Ahab desires to have the vineyard of Naboth of Jezreel. He offers a better vineyard or a fair price for the land. But Naboth tells Ahab that God has told him not to part with the land. Ahab accepts this answer with sullen bad grace. Jezebel, however, plots a method for acquiring the land. She sends letters, in Ahab's name, to the elders and nobles who lived near Naboth. They are to arrange a feast and invite Naboth. At the feast, false charges of cursing God and Ahab are to be made against him. The plot is carried out and Naboth is stoned to death. When word comes that Naboth is dead, Jezebel tells Ahab to take possession of the vineyard.


title: Elijah

text: God again speaks to Elijah and sends him to confront Ahab with a question and a prophecy: "Have you killed, and also taken possession?" and, "In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood." Ahab begins the confrontation by calling Elijah his enemy. Elijah responds by throwing the charge back at him, telling him that he has made himself the enemy of God by his own actions. Elijah tells Ahab that his entire kingdom will reject his authority; that Jezebel will be eaten by dogs within Jezreel; and that his family will be consumed by dogs as well (if they die in a city) or by birds (if they die in the country). When Ahab hears this he repents to such a degree that God relents in punishing Ahab but will punish Jezebel and their son: Ahaziah.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah's story continues now from Ahab to an encounter with Ahaziah (2 Kings 1). The scene opens with Ahaziah seriously injured in a fall. He sends to the priests of Baalzebub in Ekron, outside the kingdom of Israel, to know if he will recover. Elijah intercepts his messengers and sends them back to Ahaziah with a message "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" Ahaziah asks the messengers to describe the person who gave them this message. They tell him he was a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist and he instantly recognizes the description as Elijah the Tishbite.


title: Elijah

text: Ahaziah sends out three groups of soldiers to arrest Elijah. The first two are destroyed by fire which Elijah calls down from heaven. The leader of the third group asks for mercy for himself and his men. Elijah agrees to accompany this third group to Ahaziah, where he gives his prophecy in person. Ahaziah dies without recovering from his injuries in accordance with Elijah's word.


title: Elijah

text: According to 2 Kings 2:3–9, Elisha (Eliseus) and "the sons of the prophets" knew beforehand that Elijah would one day be assumed into heaven. Elisha asked Elijah to "let a double portion" of Elijah's "spirit" be upon him. Elijah agreed, with the condition that Elisha would see him be "taken".


title: Elijah

text: Elijah, in company with Elisha, approaches the Jordan. He rolls up his mantle and strikes the water. The water immediately divides and Elijah and Elisha cross on dry land. Suddenly, a chariot of fire and horses of fire appear and Elijah is lifted up in a whirlwind. As Elijah is lifted up, his mantle falls to the ground and Elisha picks it up.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah is mentioned once more in 2 Chronicles 21:12, which will be his final mention in the Hebrew Bible. A letter is sent under the prophet's name to Jehoram of Judah. It tells him that he has led the people of Judah astray in the same way that Israel was led astray. The prophet ends the letter with a prediction of a painful death.


title: Elijah

text: This letter is a puzzle to readers for several reasons. First, it concerns a king of the southern kingdom, while Elijah concerned himself with the kingdom of Israel. Second, the message begins with "Thus says YHVH, God of your father David..." rather than the more usual "...in the name of YHVH the God of Israel." Also, this letter seems to come after Elijah's ascension into the whirlwind.


title: Elijah

text: Michael Wilcock, formerly of Trinity College, Bristol, suggests a number of possible reasons for this letter, among them that it may be an example of a better known prophet's name being substituted for that of a lesser known prophet. John Van Seters, however, rejects the letter as having any connection with the Elijah tradition. However, Wilcock argues that Elijah's letter "does address a very 'northern' situation in the southern kingdom", and thus is authentic.


title: Elijah

text: While the final mention of Elijah in the Hebrew Bible is in the Book of Chronicles, the Christian Bible’s reordering places the Book of Malachi (which prophesies a messiah) as the final book of the Old Testament, before the New Testament gospels. Thus, Elijah's final Old Testament appearance is in the Book of Malachi, where it is written, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."


title: Elijah

text: Scholars generally agree that a prophet named Elijah existed in the Kingdom of Israel during the reigns of Kings Ahab and Ahaziah, that he was a religious figure of great personal dynamism and conservative zeal and the leader of resistance to the rise of Baal worship in Israel in the ninth century BCE.


title: Elijah

text: In the opinion of some scholars, however, the biblical presentation of the prophet cannot be taken as historical documentation of his activity. The biblical texts present his career through the eyes of popular legend and subsequent theological reflection, which consider him a personality of heroic proportions. In this process his actions and relations to the people and the King became stereotyped, and the presentation of his behavior paradigmatic.


title: Elijah

text: Jewish legends about Elijah abound in the Aggadah, which is found throughout various collections of rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian Talmud. This varied literature does not merely discuss his life, but has created a new history of him, which, beginning with his deathor "translation"ends only with the close of the history of the human race. The volume of references to Elijah in Jewish Tradition stands in marked contrast to that in the Canon. As in the case of most figures of Jewish legend, so in the case of Elijah, the biblical account became the basis of later legend. Elijah the precursor of the Messiah, Elijah zealous in the cause of God, Elijah the helper in distress: these are the three leading notes struck by the Aggadah, endeavoring to complete the biblical picture with the Elijah legends. His career is extensive, colorful, and varied. He has appeared the world over in the guise of a beggar and scholar.


title: Elijah

text: From the time of Malachi, who says of Elijah that God will send him before "the great and dreadful day", down to the later stories of the Chasidic rabbis, reverence and love, expectation and hope, were always connected in the Jewish consciousness with Elijah.


title: Elijah

text: Many Christian Church fathers also have stated that Elijah was a priest. Some rabbis have speculated that he should be identified with Phinehas.


title: Elijah

text: According to later Kabbalistic literature, Elijah was really an angel in human form, so that he had neither parents nor offspring.


title: Elijah

text: The Midrash Rabbah Exodus 4:2 states "Elijah should have revived his parents as he had revived the son of the Zarephathite" indicating he surely had parents.


title: Elijah

text: The Talmud states "Said he [Rabbah] to him (Elijah): Art thou not a priest: why then dost thou stand in a cemetery?"


title: Elijah

text: A midrash tells that they even abolished the sign of the covenant, and the prophet had to appear as Israel's accuser before God.


title: Elijah

text: In the same cave where God once appeared to Moses and revealed Himself as gracious and merciful, Elijah was summoned to appear before God. By this summons he perceived that he should have appealed to God's mercy, instead of becoming Israel's accuser. The prophet, however, remained relentless in his zeal and severity, so that God commanded him to appoint his successor.


title: Elijah

text: The vision in which God revealed Himself to Elijah gave him at the same time a picture of the destinies of man, who has to pass through "four worlds." This world was shown to the prophet by God through symbolism: in the form of the wind, since the world disappears as the wind; storm is the day of death, before which man trembles; fire is the judgment in Gehenna; and the stillness is the last day.


title: Elijah

text: Three years after this vision, Elijah was "translated." Concerning the place to which Elijah was transferred, opinions differ among Jews and Christians, but the old view was that Elijah was received among the heavenly inhabitants, where he records the deeds of men.


title: Elijah

text: But as early as the middle of the 2nd century, when the notion of translation to heaven underwent divergent possible interpretations by Christian theologians, the assertion was made that Elijah never entered into heaven proper. In later literature paradise is generally designated as the abode of Elijah, but since the location of paradise is itself uncertain, the last two statements may be identical.


title: Elijah

text: At Jewish circumcision ceremonies, a chair is set aside for the use of the prophet Elijah. Elijah is said to be a witness at all circumcisions when the sign of the covenant is placed upon the body of the child. This custom stems from the incident at Mount Horeb: Elijah had arrived at Mount Horeb after the demonstration of God's presence and power on Mount Carmel. God asks Elijah to explain his arrival, and Elijah replies: "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away". According to Rabbinic tradition, Elijah's words were patently untrue, and since Elijah accused Israel of failing to uphold the covenant, God would require Elijah to be present at every covenant of circumcision.


title: Elijah

text: In the Talmudic literature, Elijah would visit rabbis to help solve particularly difficult legal problems. Malachi had cited Elijah as the harbinger of the eschaton. Thus, when confronted with reconciling impossibly conflicting laws or rituals, the rabbis would set aside any decision "until Elijah comes".


title: Elijah

text: One such decision was whether the Passover Seder required four or five cups of wine. Each serving of wine corresponds to one of the "four expressions of redemption" in the Book of Exodus:


title: Elijah

text: I am the Lord, and "I will bring you out" from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and "I will deliver you" from their bondage, and "I will redeem you" with an out-stretched arm and with great acts of judgment, and "I will take you" for my people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians."


title: Elijah

text: The next verse, "And "I will bring you" into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord." was not fulfilled until the generation following the Passover story, and the rabbis could not decide whether this verse counted as part of the Passover celebration (thus deserving of another serving of wine). Thus, a cup was left for the arrival of Elijah.


title: Elijah

text: In practice the fifth cup has come to be seen as a celebration of future redemption. Today, a place is reserved at the seder table and a cup of wine is placed there for Elijah. During the seder, the door of the house is opened and Elijah is invited in. Traditionally, the cup is viewed as Elijah's and is used for no other purpose.


title: Elijah

text: Havdalah is the ceremony that concludes the Sabbath Day (Saturday evening in Jewish tradition). As part of the concluding hymn, an appeal is made to God that Elijah will come during the following week. "Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Tishbite, Elijah from Gilead. Let him come quickly, in our day with the messiah, the son of David."


title: Elijah

text: The volume of references to Elijah in folklore stands in marked contrast to that in the canon. Elijah's miraculous transferral to heaven led to speculation as to his true identity. Louis Ginzberg equates him with Phinehas the grandson of Aaron. Because of Phinehas' zealousness for God, he and his descendants were promised, "a covenant of lasting priesthood." Therefore, Elijah is a priest as well as a prophet. Elijah is also equated with the Archangel Sandalphon, whose four wing beats will carry him to any part of the earth. When forced to choose between death and dishonor, Rabbi Kahana chose to leap to his death. Before he could strike the ground, Elijah/Sandalphon had appeared to catch him. Yet another name for Elijah is "Angel of the Covenant"


title: Elijah

text: References to Elijah in Jewish folklore range from short observations (e. g. It is said that when dogs are happy for no reason, it is because Elijah is in the neighborhood) to lengthy parables on the nature of God's justice.


title: Elijah

text: One such story is that of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. The rabbi, a friend of Elijah's, was asked what favor he might wish. The rabbi answered only that he be able to join Elijah in his wanderings. Elijah granted his wish only if he refrained from asking any questions about any of the prophet's actions. He agreed and they began their journey. The first place they came to was the house of an elderly couple who were so poor they had only one old cow. The old couple gave of their hospitality as best they could. The next morning, as the travelers left, Elijah prayed that the old cow would die and it did. The second place they came to was the home of a wealthy man. He had no patience for his visitors and chased them away with the admonition that they should get jobs and not beg from honest people. As they were leaving, they passed the man's wall and saw that it was crumbling. Elijah prayed that the wall be repaired and it was so. Next, they came to a wealthy synagogue. They were allowed to spend the night with only the smallest of provisions. When they left, Elijah prayed that every member of the synagogue might become a leader.


title: Elijah

text: Finally, they came to a very poor synagogue. Here they were treated with great courtesy and hospitality. When they left, Elijah prayed that God might give them a single wise leader. At this Rabbi Joshua could no longer hold back. He demanded of Elijah an explanation of his actions. At the house of the old couple, Elijah knew that the Angel of Death was coming for the old woman. So he prayed that God might have the angel take the cow instead. At the house of the wealthy man, there was a great treasure hidden in the crumbling wall. Elijah prayed that the wall be restored thus keeping the treasure away from the miser. The story ends with a moral: A synagogue with many leaders will be ruined by many arguments. A town with a single wise leader will be guided to success and prosperity. "Know then, that if thou seest an evil-doer prosper, it is not always unto his advantage, and if a righteous man suffers need and distress, think not God is unjust."


title: Elijah

text: The Elijah of legend did not lose any of his ability to afflict the comfortable. The case of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai is illustrative. Once, when walking on a beach, he came upon a hideously ugly man—the prophet in disguise. The man greeted him courteously, "Peace be with thee, Rabbi." Instead of returning the greeting, the rabbi could not resist an insult, "How ugly you are! Is there anyone as ugly as you in your town?" Elijah responded with, "I don't know. Perhaps you should tell the Master Architect how ugly is this, His construction." The rabbi realized his wrong and asked for pardon. But Elijah would not give it until the entire city had asked for forgiveness for the rabbi and the rabbi had promised to mend his ways.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah was always seen as deeply pious, it seems only natural that he would be pitted against an equally evil individual. This was found in the person of Lilith. Lilith in legend was the first wife of Adam. She rebelled against Adam, the angels, and even God. She came to be seen as a demon and a witch.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah encountered Lilith and instantly recognized and challenged her, "Unclean one, where are you going?" Unable to avoid or lie to the prophet, she admitted she was on her way to the house of a pregnant woman. Her intention was to kill the woman and eat the child.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah pronounced his malediction, "I curse you in the Name of the Lord. Be silent as a stone!" But, Lilith was able to make a bargain with Elijah. She promises to "forsake my evil ways" if Elijah will remove his curse. To seal the bargain she gives Elijah her names so that they can be posted in the houses of pregnant women or new born children or used as amulets. Lilith promises, "where I see those names, I shall run away at once. Neither the child nor the mother will ever be injured by me."


title: Elijah

text: In the New Testament, Jesus would say for those who believed, John the Baptist was Elijah, who would come before the "great and terrible day" as predicted by Malachi.


title: Elijah

text: Some English translations of the New Testament use Elias, a Greek form of the name. In the King James Version, "Elias" appears only in the texts translated from Greek.


title: Elijah

text: John the Baptist preached a message of repentance and baptism. He predicted the day of judgment using imagery similar to that of Malachi. He also preached that the Messiah was coming. All of this was done in a style that immediately recalled the image of Elijah to his audience. He wore a coat of camel's hair secured with a leather girdle. He also frequently preached in wilderness areas near the Jordan River.


title: Elijah

text: In the Gospel of John, when John the Baptist was asked by a delegation of priests (present tense) "Art thou Elias", he replied "I am not". Matthew 11:14 and Matthew 17:10–13 however, make it clear that John was the spiritual successor to Elijah. In the Nativity of St. John the Baptist in Luke, Gabriel appears to Zechariah, John's father, and told him that John "will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God," and that he will go forth "in the spirit and power of Elijah."


title: Elijah

text: At the summit of an unnamed mount, Jesus' face begins to shine. The disciples who are with Him hear the voice of God announce that Jesus is "My beloved Son." The disciples also see Moses and Elijah appear and talk with Jesus. This apparently relates to how both Elijah and Moses, the latter according to tradition but not the Bible, both were translated to heaven instead of dying. Peter is so struck by the experience that he asks Jesus if they should build three "tabernacles": one for Elijah, one for Jesus and one for Moses.


title: Elijah

text: There is agreement among some Christian theologians that Elijah appears to hand over the responsibility of the prophets to Jesus as the woman by the well said to Jesus "I perceive thou art a prophet." Moses also likewise came to hand over the responsibility of the law for the divinely announced Son of God.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah is mentioned four more times in the New Testament: in Luke, Romans, Hebrews, and James. In Luke 4:24–27, Jesus uses Elijah as an example of rejected prophets. Jesus says, "No prophet is accepted in his own country," and then mentions Elijah, saying that there were many widows in Israel, but Elijah was sent to one in Phoenicia. In Romans 11:1–6, Paul cites Elijah as an example of God's never forsaking his people (the Israelites). Hebrews 11:35 ("Women received their dead raised to life again...") refers to both Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarephath and Elisha raising the son of the woman of Shunem, citing both Elijah and Elisha as Old Testament examples of faith. In James 5:16–18, James says, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," and then cites Elijah's prayers which started and ended the famine in Israel as examples.


title: Elijah

text: In Western Christianity, Elijah is commemorated as a saint with a feast day on 20 July by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Catholics believe that he was unmarried and celibate.


title: Elijah

text: In the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, he is commemorated on the same date (in the 21st century, Julian Calendar 20 July corresponds to Gregorian Calendar 2 August). He is greatly revered among the Orthodox as a model of the contemplative life. He is also commemorated on the Orthodox liturgical calendar on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers (the Sunday before the Nativity of the Lord).


title: Elijah

text: Elijah has been venerated as the patron saint of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 26 August 1752, replacing George of Lydda at the request of Bishop Pavao Dragičević. The reasons for the replacement are unclear. It has been suggested that Elijah was chosen because of his importance to all three main religious groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina—Catholics, Muslims and Orthodox Christians. Pope Benedict XIV is said to have approved Bishop Dragičević's request with the remark that a wild nation deserved a wild patron.


title: Elijah

text: Prophet Elias is commemorated by the Catholic Church on 17 June. He is also commemorated by Eastern Orthodox Church on April 14 with all saint Sinai monks.


title: Elijah

text: Elijah is revered as the spiritual Father and traditional founder of the Catholic religious Order of Carmelites. In addition to taking their name from Mt. Carmel where the first hermits of the order established themselves, the Calced Carmelite and Discalced Carmelite traditions pertaining to Elijah focus upon the prophet's withdrawal from public life. The medieval Carmelite Book of the First Monks offers some insight into the heart of the Orders' contemplative vocation and reverence for the prophet.


title: Elijah

text: In the 17th century the Bollandist Society, whose declared aim was to search out and classify materials concerning the saints venerated by the Church, and to print what seemed to be the most reliable sources of information entered into controversy with the Carmelites on this point. In writing of St. Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem and author of the Carmelite rule, the Bollandist Daniel Papebroch stated that the attribution of Carmelite origin to Elijah was insufficiently grounded. The Carmelites reacted strongly. From 1681 to 1698 a series of letters, pamphlets and other documents was issued by each side. The Carmelites were supported by a Spanish tribunal, while the Bollandists had the support of Jean de Launoy and the Sorbonne. In November 1698, Pope Innocent XII ordered an end to the controversy.


title: Elijah

text: Since most Eastern Churches either use Greek as their liturgical language or translated their liturgies from the Greek, "Elias" (or its modern iotacized form "Ilias") is the form of the prophet's name used among most members of the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite.


title: Elijah

text: The feast day of Saint Elias falls on 20 July of the Orthodox liturgical calendar (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, 20 July currently falls on 2 August of the modern Gregorian Calendar). This day is a major holiday in Lebanon and is one of a handful of holidays there whose celebration is accompanied by a launching of fireworks by the general public. The full name of St. Elias in Lebanon translates to St. Elias the Living because it is believed that he did not die but rode his fiery chariot to heaven. The reference to the fiery chariot is likely why the Lebanese celebrate this holiday with fireworks.


title: Elijah

text: Elias is also commemorated, together with all of the righteous persons of the Old Testament, on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers (the Sunday before the Nativity of the Lord).


title: Elijah

text: The incarnate Angel, the Cornerstone of the Prophets, the second Forerunner of the Coming of Christ, the glorious Elias, who from above, sent down to Elisha the grace to dispel sickness and cleanse lepers, abounds therefore in healing for those who honor him.


title: Elijah

text: O Prophet and foreseer of the great works of God, O greatly renowned Elias, who by your word held back the clouds of rain, intercede for us to the only Loving One.


title: Elijah

text: Starting in the fifth century, Elias is often connected with Helios, the Sun. The two words have very similar pronunciations in post-classical Greek; Elijah rode in his chariot of fire to heaven just as Helios drove the chariot of the sun across the sky; and the holocaust sacrifice offered by Elijah and burned by fire from heaven corresponds to the sun warming the earth.


title: Elijah

text: Sedulius writes poetically in the fifth century that the "bright path to glittering heaven" suits Elias both "in merits and name", as changing one letter makes his name "Helios"; but he does not identify the two. A homily entitled "De ascensione Heliae", misattributed to Chrysostom, claims that poets and painters use the ascension of Elijah as a model for their depictions of the sun, and says that "Elijah is really Helios". Saint Patrick appears to conflate Helios and Elias. In modern times, much Greek folklore also connects Elias with the sun.


title: Elijah

text: In Greece, chapels and monasteries dedicated to Prophet Elias (Προφήτης Ηλίας) are often found on mountaintops, which themselves are often named after him. Since Wachsmuth (1864), the usual explanation for this has been that Elias was identified with Helios, who had mountaintop shrines. But few shrines of Helios were on mountaintops, and sun-worship was subsumed by Apollo-worship by Christian times, and so could not be confused with Elias. The modern folklore is not good evidence for the "origin" of the association of the sun, Elias, and mountaintops. Perhaps Elias is simply a "natural patron of high places".


title: Elijah

text: The association of Elias with mountaintops seems to come from a different pagan tradition: Elias took on the attributes and the locales associated with Zeus, especially his associations with mountains and his powers over rain, thunder, lightning, and wind. When Elias prevailed over the priests of Baal, it was on Mount Carmel which later became known as Mount St. Elias. When he spent forty days in a cave, it was on Mount Horeb. When Elias confronted Ahab, he stopped the rains for three years.


title: Elijah

text: A map of mountain-cults of Zeus shows that most of these sites are now dedicated to Elias, including Mount Olympus, Mount Lykaion, Mount Arachnaion, and Mount Taleton on the mainland, and Mount Kenaion, Mount Oche, and Mount Kynados in the islands. Of these, the only one with a recorded tradition of a Helios cult is Mount Taleton.


title: Elijah

text: Among Albanians, pilgrimages are made to mountaintops to ask for rain during the summer. One such tradition that is gaining popularity is the 2 August pilgrimage to Ljuboten on the Sharr mountains. Muslims refer to this day as "Aligjyn" ("Ali Day"), and it is believed that Ali becomes Elias at midday.


title: Elijah

text: As Elijah was described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as Elijah the Thunderer ("Ilija Gromovnik"), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun in popular beliefs. Perun is also sometimes conflated with the legendary hero Elijah of Murom. The feast of St. Elias is known as "Ilinden" in South Slavic, and was chosen as the day of the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising in 1903; it is now the holiday of Republic Day in North Macedonia.


title: Elijah

text: Once Jesus, the prophet Elijah, and St. George were going through Georgia. When they became tired and hungry they stopped to dine. They saw a Georgian shepherd and decided to ask him to feed them. First, Elijah went up to the shepherd and asked him for a sheep. After the shepherd asked his identity Elijah said that, he was the one who sent him rain to get him a good profit from farming. The shepherd became angry at him and told him that he was the one who also sent thunderstorms, which destroyed the farms of poor widows. (After Elijah, Jesus and St. George attempt to get help and eventually succeed).


title: Elijah

text: Elias has other pagan associations: a modern legend about Elias mirrors precisely the legend of Odysseus seeking a place where the locals would not recognize an oar—hence the mountaintops.


title: Elijah

text: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints acknowledges Elijah as a prophet. The Church teaches that the Malachi prophecy of the return of Elijah was fulfilled on 3 April 1836, when Elijah visited the prophet and founder of the church, Joseph Smith, along with Oliver Cowdery, in the Kirtland Temple as a resurrected being. This event is chronicled in . This experience forms the basis for the church's focus on genealogy and family history and belief in the eternal nature of marriage and families.


title: Elijah

text: In Latter-day Saint theology, the name-title Elias is not always synonymous with Elijah and is often used for people other than the biblical prophet. According to Joseph Smith,


title: Elijah

text: The spirit of Elias is first, Elijah second, and Messiah last. Elias is a forerunner to prepare the way, and the spirit and power of Elijah is to come after, holding the keys of power, building the Temple to the capstone, placing the seals of the Melchizedek Priesthood upon the house of Israel, and making all things ready; then Messiah comes to His Temple, which is last of all.


title: Elijah

text: People to whom the title Elias is applied in Mormonism include Noah, the angel Gabriel (who is considered to be the same person as Noah in Mormon doctrine), Elijah, John the Baptist, John the Apostle, and an unspecified man who was a contemporary of Abraham.