Partner Updates

Posts in Middle East

Bethlehem Bible College - July 2015 Update

Bethlehem Bible College - July 2015 Update

Grace and peace to you from the Land of Christ, the very place that Jesus came to earth to be born, to live and die and pay the ultimate sacrifice for the whole world. But also from the land of resurrection and Pentecost. God has honored Bethlehem Bible College to be the only Palestinian Arabic training college in the whole country, where leaders and students come to learn and be equipped for the work of the Kingdom and for advancing the cause of Christ not just locally but also globally.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationJuly 8, 2015Bethlehem Bible College, Israel

Musalaha-A Ministry of Reconciliation - June 2015 Update

Musalaha-A Ministry of Reconciliation - June 2015 Update

Dear Friends,

For the first five centuries of Islam, Jews and Muslims had relatively good relations. This changed when the Mamluks replaced the Ayyubids in the mid-13th century. Under Baybars' Mamluk rule, Jews were forbidden to enter the Temple Mount or Abraham's Tomb in Hebron.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationJuly 1, 2015Musahala, Israel

Syria Relief Update - June 2015

Syria Relief Update - June 2015

Tucked up into the far northeast corner of the country sharing borders with both Turkey and Iraq, the Hasakah Governate is one of 14 provinces in Syria. Rich in oil and grain production, it has been the stage for intense fighting between government forces and various opposition groups, including ISIS. It is also home to three Presbyterian congregations: Qamishli, Malikiya and Hasakah (city). The province is geographically isolated, as of late, because ISIS controls the main travel routes which connect it to the rest of the country. The National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon – The Outreach Foundation’s partner and main recipient of your generous gifts to the Syria Appeal – sent a delegation to meet with these churches in May.

Middle East, Projects, Important NewsThe Outreach FoundationJune 4, 2015Syria Appeal, Syria

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq May 2015

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq May 2015

In March, I was in Northern Iraq with a small team from The Outreach Foundation – Staci Graham, Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta; Rev. Mark Mueller, First Presbyterian Church Huntsville, AL; Ben McCaleb, First Presbyterian Church San Antonio. We had traveled there to visit partners, especially the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk, who have been receiving funds from The Outreach Foundation for their ministry with fellow Iraqis displaced by ISIS from Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Plain.

Middle East, Projects, Important NewsThe Outreach FoundationMay 20, 2015Iraq Appeal, Iraq

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq - April 2015

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq - April 2015

A three hour drive north of Erbil, not far from Dohuk, is a camp set up for some of the 23,000 Yazidis who had been driven from the city of Sinjar, north of Mosul, by ISIS. You can all probably remember the scenes (like the one to the left) of these beleaguered souls – almost 50,000 of them – who had sought refuge at the top of a mountain last August awaiting rescue. Several thousand men had been killed and young girls were taken as sex slaves...it is a staggeringly evil story.

Middle East, Projects, Vulnerable ChildrenThe Outreach FoundationApril 23, 2015Iraq Appeal

Syrian Relief - April 2015 Update

Syrian Relief - April 2015 Update

Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation…Habakkuk 3

For the past three years, the first half of that Habakkuk text has been all too true for our Presbyterian family in Syria – constant war and an even-more-frightening evil that is ISIS have wreaked havoc and caused destruction and deprivation and displacement. Many of you have stood by the Church with your support and prayers from the beginning of their ordeal, even as others have joined them in solidarity along the journey.

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationApril 16, 2015Syria Appeal, Syria

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Baghdad

Fun and games with kids in the parking lot is an event often seen at churches. But this is Baghdad, after all, and those kids lined up for the zany competitions – and with unexpected smiles on their young faces – had experienced traumas unknown to all of us. For it was their families who had been driven by ISIS from Mosul and the surrounding Christian villages just a few short months earlier. Inside the church, their parents gathered, grateful that their children could experience a bit of lightness in an otherwise unsettling “new normal.”

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationMarch 12, 2015Iraq Appeal, Iraq

Syrian Christians Need Our Help

Syrian Christians Need Our Help

STAND WITH ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS IN EASTERN SYRIA WHO ARE…
...hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
On Tuesday, February 23, ISIS attacked 35 Assyrian Christian villages on the Khabur River in the Hasakeh province, northeast Syria. Christians were killed defending their own villages. At least 373 were kidnapped. More than 200 are still missing. Churches were destroyed. And 3,000 Assyrian Christians fled from their villages. They are now in homes and shelters in the cities of Hasakeh and Qamishli.

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationMarch 3, 2015Syria, Syria Appeal

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update for the Iraq Appeal: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Lebanon is not a very large country. Its land mass is about the size of Connecticut, in fact. The narrow southern strip, which borders Israel, has experienced a lot of conflict over the years. With a highly visible presence of both Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army, it is also home to five communities of Presbyterians – all of them pastored by the Rev. Fouad Antoun, who grew up there. Some of those communities have fully functioning churches, like the large one in Marjayoun. Others have only a handful of Presbyterian families remaining who are visited, periodically, by Rev. Antoun and come together to worship in their small, historic churches on a rotating basis.

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationFebruary 11, 2015Iraq Appeal

Evangelical Theological Seminary - January 2015 Update

Evangelical Theological Seminary - January 2015 Update

Dear Friends,

New Year greetings from all of us at ETSC. Following the January 1-10 Coptic Christmas holiday break, the January term began on January 12th.

Good news arrived on January 5th at ETSC in the form of a note from Marilyn Borst, Associate Director for Partnership Development at The Outreach Foundation. “I am delighted to report that through the efforts of Rob Weingartner, we have secured $10,000 to assist Saleem Ferah in his studies there.”

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationJanuary 28, 2015Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt

Syria Relief Update - December 2014

Syria Relief Update - December 2014

I have just returned from leading another mission-vision trip to the Middle East. Twelve pastors, elders and mission leaders from Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Georgia and California spent a week in Lebanon with me and with The Outreach Foundation’s consultant Rev. Nuhad Tomeh learning of the work and witness of fellow-Presbyterians there (through the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, Near East School of Theology and the National Evangelical Church of Beirut). Seven of those travelers continued on into Syria where we worshipped, wept and celebrated God’s faithfulness in five Presbyterian churches there (Homs, Fairouzeh, Amr Hosn, Yazdia and Lattakia).

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationDecember 12, 2014Syria Appeal, Syria

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Dear Partners in Christ's mission,

It might not seem too remarkable, when, for a local church, a group of refugees from another country show up not far from your city and your congregation decides to reach out to them. But what if your own country had also been in midst of war for years, resources were thin, 75% of your congregation had immigrated and the roads to reach those refugees were dangerous…would you still feel the call? That question has been faithfully answered by the Presbyterian Church in Qamishli, Syria, after they had learned of 1,500 Yazidi families who had been driven from their homes on the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq by ISIS.

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationDecember 12, 2014Iraq Appeal, Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Located in a poor Christian suburb of Beirut – Sad al Bouchreih – the Our Lady Dispensary (OLD) has just received $17,500 from The Outreach Foundation. In seeking to meet the needs of some of the thousands of Christian Iraqi families who were driven out of the northern part of Iraq in recent months and have now made their way to Sad al Bouchreih, the OLD is, quite literally, dispensing hope. This is an area where Syrian Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox communities predominate and where migrant workers and displaced persons have made a precarious home for decades.

Middle East, ProjectsThe Outreach FoundationNovember 6, 2014Iraq Appeal

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Before 2003, it was the largest Presbyterian Church in Iraq with a membership of over 1,000. But a decade of deadly sectarian fighting, which has plagued the capital with “routine” car bombings, has taken its toll on the Christian population here – as elsewhere in Iraq. And emigration has brought about a significant loss of Christian presence. This reality makes it all the more remarkable that Rev. Farouk Hammo decided about five years ago to make his way back to Iraq when he learned that the Arab Presbyterian Church in Baghdad was without a pastor. It had never been his intention to stay when he traveled to Australia to pursue his second career call, preparing for ministry. But when government offices in Baghdad were destroyed in the first Gulf War with the records for many citizens like Farouk who were studying abroad, he found himself in limbo. He was unable to secure permission to return to his homeland, until persistence and special interventions paved the way a few years ago.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationOctober 16, 2014Iraq Appeal, Iraq

Syria Relief - September 2014 Update

Syria Relief - September 2014 Update

“Exuberant” would be the first word which comes to mind when you meet Rev. Ma’an Bitar. Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Mhardeh (Ma-har´-day), he follows in the footsteps of his father, who was pastor there before him. Located about 20 miles northwest of Hama on a major and strategic road to the nearby mountains, this village of about 23,000 is almost completely Greek Orthodox, except for the 1,200 Presbyterians who call it home. And for the last few months, it has been caught in the cross fire of the sundry wars raging inside Syria.

Middle East, Projects, MissionariesThe Outreach FoundationSeptember 25, 2014Syria Appeal, Syria, Marilyn Borst

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Dear Partners in Christ's Mission,

ISIS has driven Christians and other minorities from their homes in the northern part of Iraq and prohibited them from taking anything with them but the clothes they are wearing. Few of us can imagine what it must be like for the thousands displaced by the actions of ISIS. But if we could imagine that, we might be praying mightily that there would be someone out there who has taken seriously our Lord’s injunction found in Matthew 25. And those prayers would have been answered if we had shown up – destitute and despairing – at the Presbyterian Church in Kirkuk.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationSeptember 10, 2014Iraq, Iraq Appeal

New Church Development in Egypt - August 2014 Update

New Church Development in Egypt - August 2014 Update

Depending upon where you want to draw the boundary lines, you are looking at about nine million people – making Cairo not only the largest city in Africa but in the entire Arab world. The Presbyterian Church in Egypt has a vision to see the Church greatly expanded in that strategic city and has 22 New Church Development projects currently under way there. One of those can be found in a brand new master-planned “satellite city” which is already home to over 250,000 people: Obour City.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationSeptember 2, 2014New Church Development in Egypt

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

Update: Solidarity with Christians in Iraq

August 25, 2014

On June 10, ISIS entered Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. Before 2003, Mosul was home to 35,000 Christians and one of the five Presbyterian churches in the country. The Nineveh Province, in which Mosul is found, includes the largest concentration of Christians (many in small villages), churches and monasteries (some dating back to the fourth century). Many other ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Yazidis (a special target of ISIS), also made their home in Nineveh Province.

Projects, Middle EastThe Outreach FoundationAugust 26, 2014Iraq Appeal, Iraq