Trips Blog

by Julie Burgess for the team

You know you are in a difficult part of the world when the flag that flies changes along the road from one set of colors to another and you have not left the country. We began the day where the Syrian flag flies and headed north and east about sixty miles to where Kurdish colors are flown. Land is contested here; it is relinquished involuntarily and yet it is relinquished.

Standing in the National Presbyterian Church of Qamishly this morning in the area of Syria known as Jazeera, we listened to the pastor, Rev. Firas Ferah, tell the story of losses through the years of war. Approximately fifty percent of the Christian families have left this area. They have relinquished their homes for other places like Sweden or Australia. The question was asked, “Why do they leave?”

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by Carlos Emilio Ham

The Lord has blessed me providing the opportunity to visit various countries, many times. I have been to Lebanon and Syria before when I was serving at the World Council of Churches, and I have met over the years numerous groups from the United States of America, but this occasion of visiting these countries with a delegation of The Outreach Foundation is indeed a unique one. I am very positively impressed on how this Foundation takes so seriously its outreach mission of sharing the good news of the gospel of God’s kingdom with the people, particularly in a desperate situation, in these lands.

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by Jack Baca, for the team

It is 7:00 o’clock Wednesday morning. I wake up thinking about all the day will bring and wondering just a bit if everything will go as planned. I’m in a hotel room in downtown Beirut, now a familiar place that feels like a home away from home because of three previous trips here in the past three years. My mind wanders back a few days to a gathering of leaders in my church back in southern California who have come together to discern where God may be leading us in the coming years. This morning, though, I’m wondering where God may lead us in the next 18 hours. And I’m praying that God will show up and help our group of ten elders, pastors and church members accomplish something that some of us were unable to do 13 months earlier. Our plan today is to drive from Beirut to Damascus, and then to fly to Qamishli, a small city tucked in the far northeastern corner of Syria, just a few miles from Turkey and Iraq. Last year some of us were not even allowed into Syria but now we are trying again.

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by Julie Burgess, for the team

Whatever you do, don’t travel with The Outreach Foundation. 

I know. Those are shocking words to open up the day one blog for a trip with The Outreach Foundation but stick with me for a few paragraphs and hear the words of one who is making her fifteenth trip with Outreach. In the end, you will know that if you love Jesus, you will not heed my words, but instead you will wonder why you stayed at home for this trip! So gird your loins. Steel your heart. Prepare to enter holy ground with this team.

I finished a course in the history of Christian spirituality last fall where I studied many traditions through 2,000 years of our faith. One of those streams of spirituality was the one defined by St. Vincent de Paul, whose work with the poor and marginalized of his time allowed him to experience the “privileged presence of grace.”  The poor became his masters and teachers; in his words, he turned the medal or coin over and saw the face of Jesus.

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