As we enter the middle of another summer here in the Middle East, we ask for prayer for all that is going on, and offer thankfulness to the Lord for all His help and provision in the months behind us.
The Middle East is going through a generational shift right now, with dramatic changes occurring that will shape this region for the next century. The ministry and church we work with out here is like a little boat in a stormy sea as things toss and turn around us. We are thankful that the Lord is our sure anchor in any storm. Though the external situation is highly fluid right now, the Lord remains on His throne and there is peace for His children amidst these times.
Things were certainly tense during the two week period recently that included ballistic missiles flying overhead from Iran, but thankfully that situation seems to have resolved to an uneasy truce for now. We are thankful that unlike last summer, there is currently no fully active war here in our host country. We are praying it may stay that way and this place could remain the place of refuge it has been for so many in the Middle East with nowhere else to go for safety.
New Refugees Continuing to Flee The Turmoil In Syria
The ministry to the poor and the refugees continues on out here amidst the ongoing instability. Since the last update, we’ve still continued to see a steady stream of new refugees of different ethnic minority backgrounds enter into these mountain areas seeking refuge from the turmoil in neighboring Syria. We are doing our best to help those in greatest need with bread, bedding, medical and other needs as they become known.
The situation has gotten bad enough in the southern regions of Syria that we are seeing families return here to the mountains that we used to know years ago. They used to be a part of the community here but returned to Syria as the situation improved some years back. Now they have fled for their lives once again from their homeland, and returned here as refugees a second time.
This experience is unfortunately becoming more common for people out here from ethnic minority backgrounds. Pray for continued open doors and opportunities to help these displaced families coming into the mountain regions.
A Successful End of the School Year and the Start of English Classes
We are also thankful that the Lord provided for another school year for all of the EAP (Education Assistance Program) kids, some of whom graduated kindergarten, middle or high school and will be moving on to other studies. The local Christian school that teaches the majority of the EAP sponsored children had a festive graduation ceremony for them, attended by parents and relatives.
The children were beaming as they received their certificates for completing various milestone grades like High School, Middle School or Kindergarten.
With the end of the school year, that also means we’ve begun the summer English classes. For the next two months, we will be regularly hosting English classes throughout the week for refugee and local children of all grades. All classes are free and open to the community, and many children not in the EAP program attend as well. So far in the first couple weeks we’ve had around 110-120 children coming each time to the classes.
This year we’ve been able to add one more volunteer teacher to handle a small beginner/intermediate class. This gives us four class levels in total, from the youngest Pre-K students all the way up to the advanced High School/Middle School children. Pray for the teachers, all of them are volunteers doing this for the Lord and for these kids. It is a hot and tiring work throughout the summer months, but we’ve seen the Lord bless it in the past with many opportunities to serve these children and share truth with them.
A Season of Medical Emergencies & Surgery Needs
We’ve also had a steady procession of medical emergencies and surgeries from poor locals and refugees that we are thankful to be able to help with. Here are a few of the more critical cases we’ve helped with in recent months:
- A little girl who got her foot caught in the rear wheel of a motorcycle and severed her Achilles tendon. The trauma was significant and required immediate surgery to try and save her from being crippled the rest of her life. Thankfully the surgeons were able to reattach the tendon and close up the several inches wide gash in her heel. She is recovering well and beginning to walk again. This little girl also comes to our EAP English classes in the summer.
- An elderly Syrian man who recently fled for his life from the coastal areas and suffered a severe bulging hernia from the strenuous journey. When he arrived to our area and met us, he had an almost baseball-sized hernia protruding from his lower abdomen, and was in imminent risk of intestinal strangulation. Thankfully the Lord provided for the surgery costs and he is currently recovering well after the operation a few weeks back.
- A refugee woman with persistent uterine bleeding that came near to death. We’ve known this woman for years, and a previous doctor had been trying to treat her condition first with medications. The treatment failed and she began worsening. She lost a significant amount of blood and was in a critical condition until getting her into the ER to stabilize. She’s now received a hysterectomy to definitively stop the bleeding, and is recovering this week. Her children also regularly come to the English classes.
- An elderly refugee woman who had gone blind from cataracts received surgery to be able to see again. We were able to coordinate with a surgeon to operate on one eye that was the worst off, and she is beginning to be able to see again after the surgery. We are thankful to be able to help her. Please pray for her as she will likely need surgery on the second eye as well.
- A middle-aged woman receiving ongoing chemotherapy for an aggressive breast cancer. We’ve been providing regular treatments for her at a local hospital for several months. Her outcome is not certain, but there is some hope the chemo is working. She has a young daughter, and she is very anxious regarding the future. Pray the Lord might work in her and give her lasting peace, whatever the outcome of the medical treatment is.
These types of medical needs are costly, time consuming, and take up the majority of the efforts of some volunteers out here. But they are worth the effort! They are often life-saving and life-changing interventions that we see the Lord use time and again to open further doors for the Truth to go forth. Pray for that to continue to be the case!
The requests for medical help and assistance with medications continues to increase as well, as the cost of living here keeps rising due to the ongoing after-effects of the devastating wars in this region. To help handle the increased needs in the community we’ve resumed basic medical screenings/vitals checks on a monthly basis with referrals for further testing/diagnosis with local physicians. Pray for those opportunities as well as a continued witness for good amongst the local community.
Mid-Summer Farm Harvests & Distributions
With everything else going on, we are thankful the Lord continues to provide for the ongoing work at the farms and the bakery. The daily distributions of bread continue on, as well as the dispersal of harvested crops from the farms. The labors of the spring plantings are paying off with a fairly robust summer harvest.
We just had an abundant sweet corn crop that came in better than expected this month. This is the first year we’ve been able to grown corn well in the thick clay soil of the mountains, so we thank the Lord for that. We also had a healthy lettuce crop at the start of summer. We still have a large crop of tomatoes, squash and cucmbers beginning to come ready. Other crops this summer include okra, eggplants, peppers, pumpkin, blackberries and raspberries.
We are continuing our practice of distributing the produce of the harvests to local families in need, with our current distro list still averaging around 80 families a week. Despite several older families on the list leaving in recent months to return to Syria, the list is quick filling back up with newly displaced families from other ethnic backgrounds coming and seeking help.
Pray for cooler weather or some rain, as we are currently experiencing a bit of a drought with the wells running very low at all the farms already. We typically have sufficient water through early August at the main farm, but due to several dry winters, the water table is quite low already before summer even begins. With the water demands increasing in the mountains, there is a community-wide water issue, and we’ve had to begin paying to truck water in to keep the crops from dying.
Thank You for Praying in Uncertain Times
While it can never really be said that things are quite peaceful or stable in the Middle East as a whole, there have definitely been past seasons of much greater stability than what we are experiencing now. These are very uncertain times, as old regimes crumble and new orders emerge.
What will come out of the current chaos and collapse in the region is not fully clear to anybody really. Only the Lord knows. We pray that somehow this spiritually dry and thirsty land once again becomes an oasis of truth and light for the world, as it once was in the days of the Apostles shortly after our Lord’s death and resurrection that occurred not far from here. This has been our desire from the very beginning. We pray that the thirsty ground would one day become springs of water abounding unto the glory of the Lord. Nothing is impossible for God, not even in this part of the world.
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