Refugee Appeal - December 2020 Update
Lebanon
…an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. Mathew 2:13
With a global pandemic raging, they no longer get front-page billing. But in this Christmas season, it is well worth remembering that the Babe born in Bethlehem was one, for a time: a refugee.
These refugees whom The Outreach Foundation has served since 2012 and whom you have supported, came into Lebanon from Syria during the long war and from Iraq, beginning in 2014 because of ISIS. They have been cared for by our partners in tender, life-giving ways. Here is one of their stories…
The St. George Assyrian Church of the East in Sed El Baouchrieh, a working-class suburb of Beirut, has been the heart of the Assyrian Christian community in Lebanon for decades. But in 2015, the community received hundreds of families fleeing from ISIS in northeastern Syria. Their stories, like that of Margo Mussa, age 81, were frightening: 'They were slaughtering humans like goats,” she said. “They've kidnapped entire families…”
Over the subsequent years, some families were able to return after ISIS had been vanquished, but many could not because their homes were destroyed and they had no resources for rebuilding or for fear that the threats to their fragile communities were not yet over.
Families with young children enrolled them in St. George’s school (Lebanon’s education system is 70% private, so public education is basically closed to refugees) but few had the income to cover even the token tuition charges. The Outreach Foundation has stepped in to help parents like Fadi Badal, a widower and father of three who is without work in the collapsed economy of Lebanon. Most families are in a long queue to immigrate but most of those avenues are now blocked by politics or by the pandemic.
The “Flight Into Egypt” is not a popular Christmas card image and, to much of the world, these refugees are invisible (at best) and a burden (at worst). But they are known and loved by our Lord---he was, after all, one of them---and so they must be by us, as well…
In Advent Hope,
Marilyn Borst
Associate Director of Partnership Development
Read more about the Refugee Appeal HERE.
You may make a gift to the Refugee Appeal HERE or by sending a check to our office.
Many Syrians fled to the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. The Outreach Foundation supports the ministry of Together for the Family whose volunteers are “suited up” and ready to bring Christmas cheer to children of refugee families as funds become available.