URGENT...Child Sponsors Needed

Update 3-14-2010: Well, this will be the final entry in a three-part thread which started in urgency back in December.

The Acts of God after-school program for refugee children had lost its funding, and the program was in jeopardy. We put out the call for people to sponsor children and to donate.

It appears we have seen another act of God. The Church of the Nazarene in the Netherlands has given over $10,000 to Acts of God and a number of other churches and individuals have in the past three months donated enough resources along with our regular donors and sponsors for the Damascus Church of the Nazarene to run the program through December 2010. We give thanks for everyone who responded, and to the Lord who prompted. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.

Holistic child development is the major focus of NCM in the Middle East. Our four schools in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were, honestly, started over 50 years ago to pave the way for churches to be planted in strategic cities. The schools continue serving children because dedicated administrators and teachers continue to have a vision for playing a huge part in the healthy development of children and youth. Please take a moment to say a short prayer of thanks for these people who invest a lot of sweat and tears in our schools and the lives they touch. Say a prayer that we will not lose our vision of mobilizing the church for holistic ministry.

Our schools operate 75% on tuition and 25% on donations. Private schools located in poor neighborhoods ensures we will struggle monthly to pay bills and salaries. Please keep the schools in mind when you feel the need to donate to something worthwhile. You can give to the schools by using the Support our Schools link to the right.

Below is a poem by Dorthy Law Nolte which I found in Too Small to Ignore by Wess Stafford:

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
By Dorothy Law nolte, "Children Learn What they Live"

UPDATE 1-12-2010: Happy New Year everyone! I made this appeal in December, and 27 people signed up to sponsor a child! I am happy and grateful. Our need and goal is 100 sponsors. So...just wondering...if you read this, will you please sponsor a child or get one person to sponsor a child. It is a great cause. THANKS!! The original blog from December with information about the Damascus After-School Project starts now:


The Damascus Church of the Nazarene and 135 Iraqi refugee children and youth need our help. Four days a week the students come to the Damascus church and the small adjoining school for 3 1/2 hours of chapel, food, and classes (English, math, Arabic, discipleship, computers). It gives the children something to look forward to, and it gives them hope while they wait with their families to be relocated.

The Program is called, Acts of God, because it began as, well, an act of God. The Damascus church knew they needed to provide this program for the students, who are unable to attend regular schools due to their refugee status and because the older students are too far behind in their grade level. Many have not been to school in 5 years. God provided the right people, resources, and strength to get the ball rolling two years ago. We feel the program needs to continue until all of the refugees have a safe place to go, and it costs the Damascus church $2500 a month.

Now...we can support these children through Nazarene Child Sponsorship. It costs a sponsor $25 a month, and we need 100 sponsors to join us now in order to keep this important program of intervention and enrichment in place.

You can help by:

1. Going to the Nazarene Child Sponsorship website and searching for kids in Syria

2. Calling toll-free 866-247-9399 and ask to sponsor a child in the Acts of God program in Syria

3. Making a one-time donation by clicking on the Acts of God link on the right of this page.

4. Getting one of your friends to help, too.

This week, one of the Acts of God students told Nancy, the director of the program who was threatening to kick him out for not behaving like he should, "Look, you can either have me here or I will be on the streets." She told him, "OK, you can stay. But I am watching you."

Nancy is tough when she needs to be, but the students know that without her vision and compassion there would be no Acts of God for them. Nancy knows when to show love and when to lay down the law. Her staff of church members also are skilled at getting the kids to respond to their leadership, nurture and care. Recently, I was amazed to hear the youth give their testimonies of how the Lord had helped them stop using drugs, how knowing Jesus is one of the best things that has happened to them, and how they know the church reached them at a critical time in their lives.

If you would like more information you can email me at reugreen@gmail.com. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Middle East Nazarene Schools Start a New Year

The Nazarenes operate four schools in the Middle East for children in grades K-10. They are private schools serving low-income families (a portion of the students are refugees) which, to be honest, poses daily challenges for our directors and administrative boards. The schools may just be our best-kept ministry secrets. About 800 children from many backgrounds are in our care 5 days a week getting large doses of smarts and hearts. What I mean is...we work hard to provide a good education in a way that tells the kids they are loved and valued by God, their teachers and the church.

Why do parents who are struggling financially pay for their children to attend our schools? The public schools are improving their infrastructure, but the classrooms are still a bit crowded. Each year, the private schools in Jordan have been losing children to the public schools. Nazarene schools have lost their share of students, but often times the parents will bring their children back and say something like, "Please enroll my children again. I don't know how I am going to pay, but all I know is I like the way they behave much better when they are in your school."

I like hearing those stories, and I also like it when 11th graders move on to other schools and report back that they are some of the smarter kids in their new classes.

We have a scholarship program to help children attend our schools through Nazarene Child Sponsorship. Anyone can sponsor a child for $25 a month, and it gives the child about a 20%-30% break on their tuition. Every little bit helps. This week I read a letter from a student telling his sponsor that he started a new life in Christ this summer at a Nazarene youth camp.

Also this week one of our Christian education teachers told me that 13 new students in her 7th grade class renewed their faith in the Lord.

So far, I would say it has been a good year. Please pray for our 4 schools in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan...for the students, staff, and directors...to build on these recent blessings. And check out the video about the schools, here:

Hurting, Healing and Hoping in Beirut

Tragedy struck the Church of the Nazarene last September in Beirut, Lebanon. Rev. Raja Nwaisser died of a heart attack in a combined church service in front of most all of Lebanon’s Nazarene church members as well as a large number of visitors. It happened as Pastor Raja was baptizing the second person in a line of seven people ready to give witness to their new life in Christ. Pastor Raja was only 40 years old, and he is survived by his wife, Seta Kejelian, and two daughters, Glory (6) and Holy (4). He was pastor, Bible College President, NCM Coordinator and former Lebanon District Superintendent (D.S.) for the Church of the Nazarene.

We are all baffled by God’s planning and timing in all of this. Nazarenes in the whole Middle East are now in the process of grieving the loss of this talented, beautiful servant of God.

Nine month’s after the memorial services for Pastor Raja, Andrew Salami, Lebanon’s D.S., and Seta asked NCM to help guide the church as they continue to grieve individually and collectively as the body of Christ. When we asked ourselves, “Who can help us in this task?” Rand and Phyllis Michael immediately came to our minds.

Rand is Associate Professor and Program Director of Marriage and Family Therapy at the George Fox University’s Graduate Department of Counseling and his wife Phyllis is Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Warner Pacific College in the Portland area. Rand and Phyllis have been partnering with Middle Eastern Nazarenes for the past 25 years, and they spend most of their summers passing on their wisdom and skills to leaders in many different areas of the world.

The Michaels shared with me that around February they had decided to turn down every ministry request for the summer of 2009… unless someone from the Middle East called. About a month after they sealed their pact, we appeared in their outlook inbox asking for their help.

Rand and Phyllis flew to Beirut the last part of May and held 4 sessions at the church, helping us understand the typical and unique responses to grief, how to be helpful to people who are grieving, and how to move on with daily living while working through our grief. Between seminars, Rand, Phyllis and Tom Gray (who is on staff with us in the Middle East and is a professional clinical counselor and PhD candidate in counseling education) met with many people who wanted to speak in private with a professional counselor.

When Rand and Phyllis finished their last session on specific ways people can help others by empathetic listening, many of the church leaders expressed an interest in receiving more training so that they can provide proper emotional support for people in the community. It seems that there is a great need for counselors in Beirut, and people are hungry for help.

Perhaps this is why…Two generations of Lebanese people have suffered a long civil war, a war and occupation by its neighbors, and political as well as religious strife. The Lebanese are wonderful, resilient people, but events of this magnitude produce festering wounds that affect individuals and families at a deep level.

Consider this… Marlene Mshantaf (NCM Coordinator in Beirut), who managed the logistics of the counseling event, is the assistant principle of the Nazarene Evangelical School which serves 160 children in grades K-9. When I peeked into her office and commented that she looked really tired, she replied, “Yes, I am. We are trying to finish all of our final exams for the children early this year because next week there is an important election and depending on the results we are not sure if there will be a war or not.” It seems every trip I make to Lebanon there is a rumor of a possible war starting. The country is full of people who have endured war in their lifetimes and are often expecting new outbreaks.

Earlier we asked Marlene to tell us what it was like to live through 16 years of civil war. She started telling a story about the time the killing was so fierce that she had to live in a shelter for a whole month without leaving. The shelter was home to 2,000 people sharing one bathroom and very little food. She gave only a few details, then she stopped, apologized, and said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

This is the context in which Nazarenes in Beirut are building communities of faith. What impact could a church in Beirut have if leaders were trained in lay counseling skills to help people understand the circumstances that brought them to their present “life troubles” and help them make changes in their life outlook and behaviors?

Rand and Phyllis Michaels have developed just such a series of courses to train community mental health advocates. The finished a cycle of training last summer in China, and we are studying the possibility of training people in the Middle East.

And we need this not just because of the trauma in Beirut…but also to help Iraqi refugees, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Iraqi’s who just yesterday endured 6 church bombings, children in our schools who are living in a society which is changing rapidly, and ministers and teachers who experience burnout due to the stress of serving this population.

Want to help us do this? Feel free to comment and ask questions…right here on this blog. Go for it.

First Work and Witness Teams to Nazarene Schools

Two work and witness teams visited Jordan in April 2009 to do maintenance projects at our two Nazarene Schools...one in Amman and one in Zarqa.

Amman: A team from the Chicago area led by Ken Silvers was the first team to do a project at the Ashrafiya Nazarene School in Amman, Jordan. The team was big (25 people) and were big-hearted as well. In a nutshell, here's what they did:

• Gave 14 heating units to be installed in classrooms so children no more have to freeze during the winter months.
• Painted classrooms and hallways.
• Installed and painted an outside safety rail, keeping children out of the traffic in front of the school.
• Painted a long stairwell down to the playground.
• Installed false ceilings in 4 classrooms.
• Made curtains for 4 classrooms.
  

Zarqa: A team consisting of regional leaders and their families hosted by Lindell and Kay Browning (about 35 people) worked three-days at the Zarqa Nazarene School. Here's what they did:

• Painted hallways and about 9 classrooms.
• Installed a partition wall between the KG and higher grades.
• Installed a new window to provide light in the stairwell.

The added benefit teams bring is a breath of fresh air to the community. Many Jordanians have commented to me that they were inspired to see people having so much fun and getting a lot of satisfaction out of volunteering. Nadia Malkawi, the Amman School Director, said that the best thing the team provided was challenging our way of thinking ... that when people work together they can accomplish great things and build good friendships.

Twenty students from the Amman school joined the team for two days of work. One of the parents said that they had to cancel a picnic because their son insisted on working at the school with the "foreigners". Many people in the community have asked me when the next group is coming (as if we have them lining up). We hope another team will sign up to come soon. There is so much to do.

I was so busy I did not take any pictures...so if people have them, please send them to me and I will try and post them.