Partner Updates

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.  Matthew 25:35-36

Some parts of this passage are easier to live into than others. If you periodically bring canned goods to a food pantry, you have fed him. If you ever donated money in the wake of a natural disaster to provide potable water to victims, you gave him something to drink. Made a Goodwill drop off with old clothes? You kinda clothed him, I guess. And who hasn’t visited someone who was sick or injured in the hospital. But HAVE we ever invited in the stranger? The Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk opened its doors to 70 unfamiliar people fleeing ISIS in the summer of 2014 – and half of them are still there. And then there is that prison thing….

This update is provided by Rev. Haitham Jazrawi, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk, Iraq. It is a powerful reminder of how our faith can sustain us in the midst of unimaginable loss and brokenness.    
-Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development

Since late summer 2017, the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Kurdistani Peshmerga Forces, aided by the U.S. Air Force, have been able to regain control of the Nineveh Valley and much of its surrounding towns. The capital of Nineveh Province, Mosul, was finally “liberated” from ISIS in late July. I use the term “liberated” very loosely in this sense because, in reality, Mosul hasn’t been so much liberated, as it has been obliterated. Western Mosul, also known as the “Old City,” is practically rubble; it’s easier to count the buildings that remain standing than the ones that have been destroyed.

Stories of families running as bullets rained left and right became the norm. Sometimes children laid in the rubble and used the bodies of their dead parents to shield themselves until the armed forces were able to pull them out of harm’s way. I still remember the sight of a mere five or six-year-old little girl; her face made the rounds on Iraqi television stations. She had clung onto her dead mother’s body in the street for three days in the hope that mom would wake up and save her. These are but a few of the sights that are burned into our memories from this past horrific summer.