Home of Hope Beirut - June 2021 Update

Raghida Al Assal is the joyful, dedicated executive director

Because the children at Home of Hope are under Protective Services, we cannot post pictures of their faces. But we looked deeply into many of their tender eyes and give thanks to God for this haven of Healing and Hope.

The children sometimes act out their emotional upheaval in destructive ways such as breaking their beds. These new ones (which Outreach helped to secure) have fared well – the staff encouraged each child to help build their own with the carpenter and they are now proud of what they made!

A team from The Outreach Foundation (Jack Baca, Julie Burgess, Mark Mueller, Nuhad Tomeh, Marilyn Borst) just returned from a 2-week journey to Lebanon, our first post-pandemic trip. We traveled to encourage our partners there who have been through so much over the past 19 months: a collapse of their government and the economy; the pandemic and its necessary lockdowns; the cataclysmic explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4th which left over 200 dead, 6,500 injured and 300,000 homeless. One of the partners we visited was a shelter for abused and abandoned children. Julie Burgess shares her experience here….

Glass doors at the entrance are shattered by family and traffickers trying to reclaim these children, to put them back to work on the streets, selling flowers or gum or their bodies, to make money that does not benefit the children.

At Home of Hope, it may take years of working with them through counseling, psychotherapy, regular meals, schooling, and vocational training to move them to an understanding of this place as their home, instead of the prison they initially thought it to be. It is a hard journey, but dedicated staff like director Raghida Al Assal, are people of hope. This is a residential facility. Raghida lives here, and so do her two teenage children. Although after four years there she is moving on to the next thing God has in store for her, her love for these abandoned and abused children is clear.

This ministry opened its doors for us to see the newness of freshly painted walls and beds made by the children, but also the scars it bears from their anger which they have let out on walls and doors. How do you move them from anger to a feeling of family? Love. By letting them come to Jesus through the hands and feet of residential staff who teach and counsel. It is the only way and it takes time. This is the work of the kingdom.

Although the stories are hard to hear, there is also hope. It was evident to us in the artwork covering a lot of the walls we walked by. Many of these paintings were of the natural world: mountain views, forests, celestial bodies, even a butterfly, that marvelous symbol of transformation. They were all signed with only a first name. One tender young man is fourteen years old, and in four years has had one of those amazing transformations. [We met him but cannot share his name or photo to protect him]. Working through their process, he has had vocational training in barbering and has become the most sought after by staff for his skill in cutting hair. Shyly smiling in the presence of American strangers, he looked us in the eyes and did not turn away.

A judge once asked Raghida, “Why should you care!?!” Jesus – the Home of Hope – answers, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. May the prayers we raise for and with them rise to the God who does not slumber.

Julie Burgess, West Hills Church, Omaha, Nebraska

Read more about Home of Hope Beirut HERE.

THE NEED
The Outreach Foundation is seeking gifts totaling $20,000 to help set up new workshops for skills development, provide food relief in the midst of Lebanon’s unstable economy and allow for small improvements to the old building currently occupied by Home of Hope. You may make a gift HERE or by sending a check to our office.