Partner Updates

Crossing the mountains from Latakia brought us to the old city of Hama. A warren of tightly packed streets led us to the unobtrusive front door of the National Evangelical Church, founded in 1869. This was the first visit for all of us.

Stepping through the front door, we entered a courtyard where the ghosts of laughter and children playing seemed to surround us. The church operated a highly respected school here in Hama for many years until it was closed by the government in the late 1960s. The old classrooms are gathering dust today, but it does not take much to imagine this place filled with life.

Read More

Mathilde and Firas, two bondservants of Christ Jesus, were sent to shepherd God’s people in the Al-Hasakeh Governorate in the far northeastern corner of Syria. This tip of the country is bordered by Turkey in the north, the Tigris in the northeast, Iraq in the southeast, and the Euphrates in the southwest. It is a contested region, forgotten by much of the world, where Turkey has annexed a swath of the north and the Kurds have declared it an autonomous region. It is to this impossibly difficult region that Mathilde, Firas, and their families were called.

Read More

Of Peppers and Praise

For as the earth brings forth its growth, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up amongst the nations… Isaiah 61:11

Spring is here and many of us are delighted to anticipate the planting of our gardens. I live in an urban townhouse but my small balcony allows for a long, narrow planter that will soon be overflowing with basil, thyme, and rosemary. If your context is suburban, fast-growing zucchinis and tomatoes are likely in your plans. Have a bit of acreage? Sweet corn and lettuce will enliven your summer picnics' enjoyment, no doubt.

Garden analogies, like the one from Isaiah, are quite numerous in Scripture because this was the ubiquitous context for the original audience. In fact, the book of Genesis had not even completed its second chapter before God is planting a garden and dropping “man” in it to tend to it. But what is a “hobby” for us can be life-sustaining for others. Recently, our major partner in Lebanon---the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon---wrote to ask for help in funding a project which would assist 250 middle-class families from their congregations in Lebanon in planting vegetable gardens because they could no longer afford the cost of food. This once thriving nation had been brought to the verge of economic collapse by a convergence of the pandemic, government corruption, and the explosion in the port of Beirut last August.

Read More