Hope in Lebanon
O ur mission team returned from Lebanon where we served with our 3 Life Center ("LC") partners in the Beirut area, the Bekaa and the Tripoli area. We brought a mixed ministry team that served in parallel with each other.
Throughout the week across all of our Life Centers, our medical team was able to serve 200 patients, our children's ministry team worked with 148 children, our Business Team provided Business Plan/Entrepreneurship and Character/Leadership training to about 126 people.
Bekaa Life Center
Medical Ministry
Our medical team served at all 3 LCs locations where we saw 200 people come through our clinics. We had a smaller medical team than usual, so we couldn't see as many patients as we normally have in the past, but we adjusted. Having the LCs now well equipped with medical treatment rooms makes it much easier to provide these services compared to the older days when we were serving in the refugee camps themselves.
Baby whose hand was caught in a sewing machine
We also did a Children's Health Awareness session for mothers whose children were at our Children's Program.
Children's Health Awareness session
Children’s Ministry
There are so many children all throughout Lebanon whose lives have been spent as refugees living as strangers in a strange land. Some children that grew up in Syria or Iraq may have witnessed death and destruction, including deaths of their own family members. Other children were born in this country, not knowing their home countries at all, but have been rejected by the host country.
Over the years of getting to know these children, I've been wanting our teams to minister with lessons that would speak to their situations.
Our Children's Ministry team conducted lessons around the themes of "You Are Brave - God Is With You" and "God's Kingdom Welcomes All" with the Bible lesson from Jesus' parable about the Wedding Banquet. The team incorporated lessons, skits, music, crafts and other activities.
Children's Craft
Business Seminars
Development and Sustainability for the persecuted and impoverished is a core value for us.
In the past, we've done English and Computer classes, but we decided to do something different on this trip, but something we've done in many other countries - training on writing a simplified Business Plan.
Our Business Team adapted to a wide variety of audiences - from refugees studying sewing or barbering who want to setup their own small shop in the camps, to Lebanese looking to do e-commerce business or incorporating the latest AI technologies. We had some very lively brainstorming sessions with eager students.
Entrepreneurship Class for Refugee Women
We also did training sessions for Young Adults, ministry leaders and Business participants on our Character/Leadership curriculum.
Character/Leadership session at our North Life Center
Home Visits
Not too long ago, I would bring teams here and we would conduct our medical clinics in the refugee camps using people's tents as our clinic spaces. It was very hard. The last few years, we've been able to use dedicated Life Center spaces and that's made it significantly easier to do our clinics.
However, I didn't want our teams to lose sight of where people are coming from so I asked our partners to arrange home visits on this trip.
So we did more than a dozen home visits altogether. Here are 2 families:
Alawite Family
After the overthrow of the Syrian regime a year ago, I heard that our Lebanon LCs began seeing Alawite families for the first time.
Knowing this, I wanted to meet an Alawite family. In the Beirut area, my Field Partners arranged for us to meet this precious family with 3 children. The children had been part of our Children's program the day before and they had the artwork from the day taped on the walls. The father shared that when militants came to his town, they began slaughtering many people including his 2 brothers. They immediately fled with basically the clothes on their backs. It was a sad role reversal.
The mom had heard about the LC and so she went there at first looking for nursing training. But she began signing up for all the different activities in the LC and became very hungry for the spiritual classes as well. She loved everything that the LC offers. Now the whole family has been ministered to by our LC teams.
Alawite Family
Family That Has Rebounded from Trauma
A few years ago, I met a young lady, "Sarah", at our LC in the Bekaa. She had shared how she was traumatized as a child because she saw her sister and cousin killed by ISIS.
This year, I wanted us to visit her home in the camps where we met her mom and surviving brother.
After the murders in their family, the family fled to Lebanon. Here, she found a church and was touched by the love there she encountered. She came in contact with our LC team here and they've ministered to her and her whole family in physical, material and spiritual ways.
"Sarah" became a student at our health assistant program at the LC and after graduating, she started working at our Medical LC.
Family that has rebounded from Trauma
We are very encouraged by the tremendous work being done by our Lebanon Life Centers.
Thank you for your prayers and support for all of our ongoing work and partnerships here.
Please consider one time or even better, monthly support for the work WCF is doing in the unreached, underserved and persecuted parts of the world.
God bless,
Jerry
