Outreach's 40th Anniversary: Letters from Friends #2
Dear Brothers and Sisters of Outreach Foundation,
Happy 40th Anniversary! Usually, anniversaries are related to age. For adults, birthdays remind them that they are getting older. The more we celebrate our birthdays, the more we are told that we are moving away from physical health, independence, and a brighter future. I am sixty years old, and I started to realize what that means!
However, it is different for this 40th anniversary of your blessed organization. As you are crossing your 40th, Outreach Foundation is more healthy, more fit, more independent, and more achieving. Why? Because it is not an individual. You are a Community of Faith and Mission. With these ingredients, the older you become, the younger you are. Each one of your team has put many years of his/her life to keep the Outreach Foundation young and healthy. It is the example of Jesus, “Though He was rich, yet for your sakes, He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”
As you celebrate the 40th anniversary, we will celebrate with you our 10th TOF/NESSL anniversary. In August 2009 our dear Marilyn Borst landed in Beirut with the renewed mission as TOF Middle East coordinator. Since then, NESSL knew a unique meaning of Christian partnership with Outreach. A partnership that cares not from afar. Since then, we experience real encounter on the level of grassroots. Since then, we met people who were ready to be among us and travel with us to war environment and danger. With The Outreach Foundation, bureaucracy is replaced with human encounters and physical presence. Through the years of war in Syria, Outreach revived our hope in a better future with God, despite the suffering and pain. Not only buildings were rehabilitated and raised, but also souls and hearts. All that because of Christ and for the sake of Christ.
Thank you for each one of you -- executives, coordinators, board members, staff, churches, and individuals who are involved. May God bless you all.
As you light your 40 candles, remember that ten of them already enlightened our community for a better future with the Almighty. Happy Anniversary.
Joseph Kassab
General Secretary
National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon