We’ve reached the middle of another hot summer and, with that, the middle of another year of English classes for Syrian refugee and local students living in the mountains.

This year has been more “normal” than years past when we faced COVID closures or restrictions. We are thankful the Lord brought over 130 students the first week to our classes! By God’s grace, we have more volunteer teachers than years past, and could split into three distinct sessions covering the entire K-12 range. This is more than in recent years, but the Lord has helped the team to handle the increase well!

More Kids, More Classes But More Opportunities

We have an absolute beginners class of young children learning their ABCs and how to read basic English words. We have the intermediate class learning new vocab words, sentence structures and basic conversation. We have the advanced class focusing on reading comprehension, conversation and more robust grammar rules (like the difference between adverbs and adjectives – even some of us Americans struggle with that!). Overall the kids are grasping the English instruction well this summer, and making good advances.

Our classes are three times a week, they are always free to kids who want to come, and they always include Truth being shared alongside English. While we want to help and bless the kids with improved English skills to prepare them to succeed in the coming academic year, we also want to impart to them more eternally-lasting benefits.

There are a lot more kids to teach this year than last, but it’s also meant more opportunities that we pray the Lord would help us all to make the most of!

Preparing the EAP Kids For 2023/2024

Many of the students attending are also kids that are sponsored to attend the local Christian school via the Education Assistance Program. Because the higher level instruction in the main Christian school that EAP sponsored kids attend is done in English, giving them a better grounding in this language over the summer helps them to succeed overall. We’ve had people on our team have to extensively tutor high school kids on certain math problems not because they didn’t get the math, but they couldn’t understand the instructions for the math problem in English! Knowing English helps them greatly.

We are not a school (our English classes are just a temporary two-month “summer camp” approach) but our long-term hope for these kids is to keep helping them attend and succeed at regular schools in the area via the EAP and summer English classes.

The alternative is often exploitation as child laborers (we’ve treated 10-12 year olds for inguinal hernias from lifting too many heavy boxes at the stores they work in) or a future limited by a lack of being able to read, write or do basic math. The EAP is geared towards helping these kids stay in school. Without the many individual sponsors the Lord has moved to help these EAP kids, few would be in school and almost none would be attending the higher-quality Christian school in the area. Thanks to any reading this who are currently helping a child stay in school!

Pray For The Remainder of our Summer English Classes!

Keep praying for the English teachers and students. It can get hot in the summer in the Middle East, especially without working AC in the buildings due to a lack of reliable electricity! But the kids and teachers faithfully press on despite. We want the classes to be a blessing not just to the EAP kids we know well from years of interactions and sponsorship, but to also provide opportunities to meet and share with new kids coming from the community to attend. Thanks for praying!

Thank you again for your prayers and support. This is a work bigger than any of us, but not bigger then God or His church! If you wish to be involved in any way, you can support TGI via our site, sign up for our relief updates e-mail newsletter to better know how to pray, or contact us if you are interested in knowing more about how to be personally involved.