Giving our best

In Lebanon, there is not a culture of purchasing second-hand items as a cost-savings method for acquiring new-to-you clothes, shoes, furniture or household items. People want the things they own to be new, one local friend told me. So, it's actually a bit ground-breaking that our Nazarene church there has opened a second-hand store that sells clothing, shoes, bags for just a few dollars each as a way to meet the needs of the huge influx of destitute refugees who have flooded into the country from Syria, and to a lesser degree, Iraq.

I had to chance to visit the Karibe store and warehouse to see this ministry in action. The shop gives the church members a way to further support people who desperately need assistance, such as distributing big food packages to people who have registered for help.

The shop is set up in a space that was donated to them by a Catholic abbey, which had empty space available and was happy to support this work.

When we got to the warehouse areas, the church leaders showed me large boxes filled with donated clothes, toys, belts, bags, shoes and more. They were sent in huge crates from several countries in the West to help the church get Karibe started.

While I wandered through the room, shooting pictures of the items waiting to be displayed upstairs in the shop, I noticed a corduroy jacket with very visible stains on the light-colored material. I pointed this out to the volunteers.

They said, "Yes, in fact about 20 percent of what we receive in the shipments is not fit to be sold to our clients. The items are damaged, stained or not in good condition."

"Twenty percent?" I repeated, appalled.

"Yes. And we had to pay $5,000 to get the shipment through customs. And yet, we cannot use up to 20 percent of it, maybe more," I was told.

One of the women showed me a pair of shoes of which the leather exterior was peeling horribly.

Although I had not personally participated in the donations of these items, I felt embarrassed. I imagine that further back in the past I may have donated items I would not be proud to find in these boxes today. (Wasn't it the same thing all those times when I cleaned out food from my cupboards that I didn't want, like canned peas and kidney beans, and put them in the food drive box at church -- mainly as a way to just get rid of them? I didn't spend time thinking about who would receive them and if they'd want to eat them any more than I did.)

Looking at these ruined clothes, I tried to assume the best. Perhaps there was a mistake somewhere in collecting these items, or those who packed up the shipments didn't have time to carefully sort through before sending them on. But I thought about the $5,000 that the church had to pay to get the clothes out of customs, and how much of that money was essentially wasted on worthless clothing.

I've been reading the Old Testament lately, specifically Genesis, Exodus, and I'm about to head into Leviticus. There are many laws set down by God that clearly illustrate his high standards. In every facet of life, he gives us his best first, and he expects from us our very best in return.

When he asked his people for sacrifices, he expected them to give every firstborn animal of their livestock, as well as the first fruits of all their harvests. Every animal sacrifice thereafter should be without blemish. It should be healthy, whole, and perfect. People weren't going to get away with giving him their cast offs -- animals or crops that they would be happy to do away with while keeping the best for themselves. He gave them his best and he wanted them to give their best in return. Centuries later, he gave all of us his best: his Son.

As we share with others, we follow this same standard when we give items we ourselves would be proud to wear, or use, or decorate with. A rule I've heard for donating tangible items is: If YOU wouldn't use it, don't donate it.

Thanks to the many nice items that have been donated, this church in Beirut has a large shop space filled with very good, gently used clothing and shoes for adults and children. I even saw a beautiful wedding dress. Through this ministry they are making face-to-face contact with people and starting to establish relationships that will allow for more service to them in the future, and hopefully life-transforming journeying together in the hard road of life. Some will come to know Jesus personally and join a supporting, loving church family.

This is what comes when a church gives its best to its community.

Spring

Autumn is my favorite season. As someone who has not much interest in flowers and plants, I have traditionally had little use for spring. But I've welcomed spring with a new joy in the past few years, and it's not just because the winters are incredibly long in northern Europe.

Several years ago, when we lived in Germany, the country's meteorologists reported that due to historically rainy weather patterns, they had recorded the darkest winter since they'd been keeping such measures of sunlight. As someone who is afflicted with mild seasonal depression when I lack consistent exposure to sunshine, this made for an awful winter. It was unfortunate that at the same time, I was using a new migraine-prevention medication that I did not realize had depression as a side effect.

For the first time in my life, I experienced what clinical depression feels like. Since I didn't realize it was medication-related, or that the winter was going to have much less sunlight that usual, I had no idea why I was depressed or if it would ever end. My only desire each day was to go to bed and stay there. I longed to simply be unconscious. I had no pleasure in anything (except eating sugar and, thankfully, running/walking).

I struggled to go to work, and to think clearly about my tasks, and to concentrate long enough to complete them. All day I thought about my bed, and each night I went to bed earlier and earlier, because there was nothing I was interested in doing except sleeping.

In March, we traveled to Colorado where we planned to spend two months on a speaking tour in churches. I eagerly looked forward to being in my home state, which boasts 300 days of sunshine a year. I also had learned about my medication-complication and adjusted that accordingly.

However, spring had not yet come to Colorado Springs when we arrived. Having been gone more than 18 months, I had forgotten how brown and dry and desert-like the city is in winter. There was no color anywhere. It was so ugly and depressing.

I was walking one day, in early April, in my parents' neighborhood, praying to God about my depression and longing for some kind of change. I noticed that buds were starting to appear on the trees and bushes. The brown branches were becoming a bright green. Flowers were poking up from the soil in people's yards. Everywhere, I saw the signs of life and spring. As clear as if someone were standing next to me, I heard the words in my mind, "I can do the same for you."

I knew in that instant that God had spoken to me, and He was giving me a promise that this difficult season in my life would pass, and I would experience new life. I was filled with awe and wonder at this very unusually clear message from God. His voice to me is often much more subtle.

I clung onto that promise for weeks until my depression ended. And I continue to remember that encounter with the living God who sometimes, for His own wise and good reasons, allows suffering, yet promises and gives new life, new creation, in His own perfect timing.

I also take comfort in the fact that our God is a God who has chosen to suffer, to experience hurt and heartache and loss and grief because He chooses to be in relationship with fallen humans who continually hurt and reject Him. And thus, he suffers with us when we suffer, and does not leave us. When I suffer, I realize I am not suffering alone. I know that going through that winter of depression has made me a more empathetic person, and also has helped me learn a bit better how to face and push through suffering, rather than try to run away from the pain or ignore it.

As the trees and flowers are again blooming here in Manchester after another long, sometimes dreary winter, I am reminded of that day in Colorado when God spoke His promise to me, and delivered. I know I can trust God, and I know He is with me.

-- Gina

Aisha's story

A few weeks ago, Andrew and I traveled to the Middle East to visit local Nazarene leaders, hear their stories, and also offer a short writing training. During our visit, I visited several refugees. Here is my account of one of the stories I heard.

Aisha* is a Syrian refugee who has invited me to her home to hear her story. I have no idea of the dramatic escape and near-death experiences she and her husband are about to tell me.

She is a smiling, plump woman with a friendly, round face wrapped in a dark grey head scarf. As we walk to her neighborhood, our friend Manila*, who will interpret the interview, says, “We’re going into a (slum) area, so don’t take any pictures until we are inside her house.”

We dodge passing vehicles and weave through double-parked cars along the curbs. Manila tells me that these slums are home to a mixture of many different nationalities, Egyptians, Syrians, Armenians, Iraqis and Lebanese. They are all poor, and the impoverished area has the expected amount of crime. The road is broken asphalt, covered in fine, white dust. Someone has put the remnants of an old Turkish rug into a pothole to soften its impact. The streets are closely crowded in by tall apartment buildings, with businesses on the ground floors. Electrical cables stretch chaotically from building to building. Here and there a large cross is suspended among them. It’s a busy Friday afternoon, and many people are out shopping or selling.

I ask Aisha where she comes from in Syria. She answers in Arabic: the countryside, near a large city.

“We had a very large house, very spacious, two floors, and a lot of land. We grew many things, and we had a lot of animals. In the end we even bought a camel,” Manila interprets for me. “Two days ago friends sent us pictures of our house, and it’s all destroyed. Everything is gone.” She says this matter-of-factly. “It’s nothing, all the wealth of Syria is nothing compared to finding Jesus here in Lebanon.”

Tears spring to my eyes.

“Now I am faithfully following Jesus,” she adds.
 
We turn off the sidewalk as Aisha opens a door in the wall between shops. We go up a flight of tiled, dirty stairs. In Aisha’s first floor apartment, we come through a narrow passageway, almost too tight for me with my backpack, into the one main room that she shares with the 10 other people in her family.

The square room, with unnecessarily high ceilings and scuffed walls, is encircled on the floor with three twin mattresses and a futon. A window in the wall is marred by a web of cracks radiating out from a central punched-in spot.

A large, round man, wearing a black track suit, is lying on his side on one of the mattresses. Two small children – a boy and a girl – are on another mattress, engrossed in smart phones. Smiling, the man, her husband Amir*, stands up to shake our hands and welcome us. They gesture for us to sit on the futon.

I realize that all 11 of them sleep and live in this room. I think about the contrast between the large farm they left behind, their two-story house, and now they’re living in this city slum, crammed into one room. I can’t imagine how difficult the transition has been for them.
 
After we are all seated and comfortable, Manila tells them why we want to hear their story and asks if they have any security concerns. They only don’t want their photo taken, “because we will get killed,” Amir says.

“Our life in Syria was beautiful, simple,” Aisha begins. “We had a farm with all types of animals, a two-story house. It was on nine acres – 9,000 square meters. The house, on its own, was 1,000 square meters. The land, we inherited from our parents and grandparents, but the house we built. We built it when I was pregnant with Farah* (who is now 14 years old).”

“At the beginning of the war, someone offered us $400,000 for the house and land, but we said no because we didn’t think we would leave the house. We didn’t want to sell,” Amir says. “When the planes started to bomb, we just left. We didn’t take anything with us, neither the house or car, not even one cup of tea. We took nothing.”

They had a second house some distance away and so they fled with their children there. They lived there for a year and a half, but Amir said it was like being “primitive people.” They couldn’t use their electricity, because if they turned on lights at night, planes would bomb the house. They had an electric pump for their water well, but couldn’t use it. So they lowered pails into the 60-foot well and raised them up by hand.

“We wanted to be warm. We would find anything: plastic bags, old wheels and put it in a tin and burn it to be warm. So life was a daily struggle.”

After 18 months like this, the war moved into their area, so they decided to run to Lebanon.

It was 7 a.m. They hired a taxi for $5,000 to carry their large family to the border of Lebanon. All along the road, there were military checkpoints controlled by different warring factions, or by the government army.

“I was crying all the way, covering my eyes, saying, ‘Oh Lord, oh Lord, if we pass an opposition checkpoint, he could say, ‘take one of the girls,’” Aisha says, covering her face at the memory.

According to the couple, it seems that militants were said to claim girls and young women as they tried to pass through the checkpoints.

“I was afraid for my daughters,” Amir said.

At one checkpoint, a guard was examining their identity cards and then said he wanted to see their 12-year-old girl. “Her picture looks older,” the guard said. “She doesn’t look 12.” While he studied her ID, another soldier came to the car and tried to goad Aisha and the other family members into saying something against the government, perhaps as a pretext to arrest them. The family refused to answer.

Fortunately, the soldiers let them go, and the family passed through many more checkpoints, the taxi driver going as fast as he could. They traveled 14 hours to the northern Lebanese border.

“I was so relieved when we reached the border,” she said.

However, at the border, the Lebanese soldiers tried to turn them away, although Amir said they had been invited by family who were already in Lebanon. 

“Where will [they] put you, 12 people?” the guard asked. “You can’t enter.”

Yet, the guard continued looking at the names on the list of family members. He stopped when he read the name, “Issa,” which is the Arabic name for Jesus. “Who is ‘Issa’?” the guard asked.

They showed him the young boy. The guard then said, “For his sake, I’m going to let you in.”

They were finally out of Syria. But the worst was not yet over. Fighting had broken out in the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli, which they had to pass by to get to Beirut, further south.

“This happens sometimes, in Tripoli,” Manila explain.

The traffic was bad because everyone in the area was trying to escape the fighting. Many roads were closed. Their youngest child, a 6-month-old boy, began vomiting.

“We hadn’t eaten anything that day, the driver was going very fast to escape the armies,” Amir says. “And then we came and there was also fighting in Lebanon. I thought, ‘We won’t make it through this day alive.’”

The taxi driver tried to take the road that hugs the coast along the Mediterranean Sea, south toward Beirut, but now it was 9 p.m. and everything was dark. He got lost and somehow wandered into a Lebanese army checkpoint. Amir says he thought the army was about to shoot them because they were trespassing into army controlled territory. But the driver frantically explained they were refugees trying to get to Beirut, so the soldiers redirected them and the family reached Beirut at 3 a.m.

Aisha takes up the story. “We came to my sister’s house [in Beirut]. She has five boys, so there are seven people in her house. And we were 12. We were too many people in the house for a long time.”

Her sister, Yasmin*, had reached Lebanon just four months before. Yasmin's husband, who had gone ahead of his wife and children to Lebanon, ended up abandoning them for a woman he met in Lebanon. Yasmin came alone, afterward, with the boys and has been raising them as a single parent since.

For one year the two families were crammed into a one-room apartment, about the same size as the one we are now sitting in. They divided the room, so each family had half. 

That was three and a half years ago, in 2013.

Yasmin was struggling to care for her five sons. When she heard that an evangelical center run by the Baptist church was distributing food packages to refugees, she went to receive one. Aisha went with her. While there, some of the people said, “We want to pray for you.”

Aisha was surprised. “I know how to pray, I don’t need you to pray for me,” she told them. “I’ve come for the food.”

But Aisha became curious about these Christians.

“I would like to know how these people pray, how they act,” she thought to herself. “Also, my husband was sick and wasn’t able to work. I needed help.”

So, she began to visit the center every Saturday. There she met Jabir*, the Nazarene pastor of a Syrian congregation that has been formed near Aisha’s neighborhood. She saw that there was a women’s group that would meet and pray for each other, and talk about their experiences of how God was answering their prayers.

“I became curious to know who is this Jesus? What are these women doing?”

Aisha attended regularly and asked many questions. “Why do they say we need faith in Jesus even if we do good works? Are good works not enough to save us?”

Amir was concerned about his wife’s visits to the group. But he didn’t forbid her, and Aisha enjoyed the meetings, so she kept going. Encouraged by the other women, she also began reading the Bible and prayed with them. Eventually, Amir also trusted the group and Pastor Jabir.

During this time, Amir became more and more ill. He says that doctors told him blood was disappearing from his body. Manila and I aren’t clear on what he means, but we think he was having internal hemorrhaging.  The hospital had run tests on him, and when Aisha returned to find out the results of his tests, the doctor asked, “Where is your husband now?” She said he was at work. The doctor said, “How can he be at work? He should be on a bed, dying.”

Until then, Amir was still getting around, but he would become so weary after walking just 50 meters he would be forced to sit and rest. He was always exhausted. The doctors urged him to the emergency room, where the staff gave him blood transfusions. But he kept mysteriously losing blood, although there was no obvious blood loss that anyone could see.

Aisha continued meeting with the believers, although she herself did not yet believe. “I would tell them, please pray for my husband. I was asking all the Christians to pray for my husband.”

When Amir seemed at the point of death, he was rushed to the hospital, and given four pints of blood. But now his body was refusing the blood. The doctors decided to insert a scope into his abdomen to look for internal hemorrhaging, suspecting that Amir had some type of cancer.

Aisha sat outside her husband’s room and began praying, her faith in God strengthened by meeting with the believing women and Pastor Jabir.

“I forgot everyone around me, I was praying, ‘Lord, they say cancer. I believe your word and I know you’re stronger than this and I trust in you.”

Amir says that at this same time, “I was lying there, and the doctor was looking at the test results and rubbing his eyes. I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m a goner.’ Then the doctor said, ‘What type of human are you?’” Amir asked, “What do you mean?” The doctor replied, “It’s as if someone has taken all the old stuff in your body and made everything brand new. It’s as if you just exited the manufacturer. The picture shows there’s nothing wrong with you.”

The doctors decided to test Amir’s bone marrow to look for other diseases, such as a blood disease. The test would cost $600. They didn’t have $600. They could go to an alternative clinic where the procedure would cost $300. They didn’t have that, either. So the doctor told Aisha to take her husband home. “Create a nice, romantic atmosphere for him,” he told her. “In two to three days he’s going to die.”

“I brought him home. I was depressed, I felt like I was choking. There was no solution,” she says.  She was a young woman, only in her 30s, with nine children. She was also a destitute foreigner, and now she would lose her husband.

Aisha went to the evangelical center to see Jabir. She told him that the doctors had lost hope.

Jabir said, “Do you trust God can heal him? Let’s pray for this.”

“I was choking,” Aisha recalled. “The words of the doctor were ringing in my ear, saying, ‘Take him home. There’s no hope left for him.”

Then, a man came and took Amir back to the hospital, giving the $300 for the bone marrow test. It was so painful that Amir filled the room with his screaming. For 15 days he waited at home for the test results and ate nothing. The test result wasn’t even expected back before 21 days and everyone thought he would die before then.

“I sat by my husband at home and told him not to give up hope,” Aisha says.

Jabir came many times to visit.  He asked Amir, “Do you believe in the Lord?” Amir answered, “Of course I believe.” Then Jabir told Amir about Issa and how He saves. “I thought about this, and thought it makes sense,” Amir says.

Aisha continues: “Jabir told me we should pray. Up until then, I would go to the meetings, but I wasn’t a believer. Now, I knelt down and prayed the salvation prayer. I said to Jesus, ‘I accept you into my life. I give you my life and my husband’s life.’ I felt my husband was also giving his life to Jesus.’ When we gave our lives to Jesus, Jesus gave His blood to Amir.”

In a few days, he began to feel better. When the results of the test came back, the doctors reported that they found nothing wrong with him. Baffled and intrigued, the doctor asked if he could do another bone marrow test for his own satisfaction, and would pay for it himself.  Tired of the tests and experiments, Amir refused, and yet he continued to recover and was fully and inexplicably healed.

I remember their story about how the guard let them into Lebanon because they had a son named Issa. I ask them, “If you didn’t believe in Issa before, why did you name your child this?”

“It’s like God chose this name,” Amir answers. Before Issa was born, Aisha had given birth to a son, followed by five girls.

“We were sitting and we were reading … at home. My [oldest] son said, ‘I need to go to sleep now.’ He fell asleep, then woke up in the morning and came to us and said, ‘Mom’s going to have a baby and you should call him Issa.’ I said, ‘Your mother only gets girls, it seems.’

Their son replied, “I had a dream where a guy wearing a white robe came to me. I asked my grandpa, ‘Is this Moses?’ He said, ‘No, it’s Lord Issa.’ And then Issa touched my shoulder. I felt a burst of colors, like a rainbow.”

Later, when Aisha became pregnant, she gave birth to a boy. So the parents named him Issa.

“We believe Issa will come at the end of days and be the judge of the earth. We didn’t know we need to believe in Him now so that when He comes as a judge, He will take us with Him,” Aisha says. “Now we know that He came for us and was crucified for us. We believe that through the blood of Christ, we can be covered. And we know that our eternity was not secure before. Even if we did good deeds, we didn’t know if we will go to heaven or hell. But now, through our faith in Christ and believing His word, we know that we have eternal life. We have a weapon we hold and He protects us from all evil.

“I don’t mind that we lost all our wealth. We found Jesus, which is priceless.”

Aisha and Amir say that it’s not even enough to know Jesus themselves. They feel compelled to share this with others who don’t know Him. She has begun serving with Pastor Jabir in the church he has organized out of refugees who have also decided to follow Christ.

“Once, when we had a big meeting at church, I went up and shared my testimony and said, ‘Me and my family, we want to serve the Lord,’” Aisha says. “And now I’ve been for a while sharing Christ with others, talking about Christ. I want to tell people about Christ, not just know Him personally.

“Two days ago I saw the pictures of the buildings which are broken down [their houses]. Although we were sad because we lost our houses, we thank God, because He has have given me back what I have I lost, repaid me with His Word, with God’s Word. God has repaid us of all the riches in Syria, all our treasures in Syria, He has repaid us with His Word, and God’s always with us, whenever we need anything. God is with us.”

*Names and specific details omitted for security