We made it! We arrived at about 3:30pm local time (7:30am EST) on Friday. By the time we made it to the convent we had 30 minutes to put our luggage in our rooms and freshen up and get back on the van to go to dinner. We grabbed swarma at a restaurant - chicken or beef - along with an avacado smoothie if we wanted it (I did - so good!!). Then we travelled to a local church for a 3 hour service in Arabic (after not sleeping for around 36 hours). :-) We recognized many of the songs during the worship time, and people came up afterwards to let us know how much it meant to them for us to visit. They provided a translator and cordless headphones to receive the translation, but it was still a little difficult to understand. The funniest translation was the description of an older Sarah in the Old Testament as 'saggy'. Even the translator chuckled at that one :-) Needless to say, most of us slept very well last night!!
This morning we awoke to a breakfast of cucumbers, tomatoes, hummus, corn bread, tortillas, yogurt, and apricot sauce - different but yummy! Then we had a team meeting beginning with worship and prayer. One of our translators, Timothy, then shared about growing up in Iraq and joining the war only to see his best friend (who was a Christian) shot right next to him during a skirmish. That event caused him to buy a Bible where he eventually left the Muslim faith to become a Christian. His wealthy and devout Muslim family were extremely upset about this, and after escaping several attempts on his life by his father he finally left everything (including a successful grocery business) to come to Lebanon. Wow.
Our host couple who used to live in Dallas are Kim and David Morter. Kim shared about the 'domestic help' aka human slavery that goes on here in Lebanon. There are agencies that take girls from poor nations such as Ethiopia and Sri Lanka and promise them a better life if they come here. Then they sell them to families who take the girls' passports away and keep the girls here as indentured servants. The suicide rate among these girls is very high, so if there is a balcony on the house the owners have to put bars up to keep the girls from jumping off and killing themselves. Wow again.
After those eye-opening accounts we talked a little about the orphanage we are going to visit. We wrote verses and encouragement on the first page of some journals we are going to give the girls, and then put together gift bags for them.
We just finished lunch, and I'm not sure exactly what happens next but I wanted to try to get this update out as soon as possible! Please pray for Timothy and the 'domestic help' we learned about today, and also please pray for Nicholas who is not feeling well and has been sleeping off and on all day so far.
Below are some pictures I took. The first is of Beirut as we were making our decent into the airport yesterday:
Next is arriving at the airport (Kim is the lady standing in the middle) and then on the bus:
I noticed several fast food restaurants on our way through Beirut to the convent yesterday, including Hardees, McDonald's, and this Burger King below. How about that Sushi Burrito place next door - I wonder how that tastes?
Here is the lunch spread we had today - it was yummy! Apricots, nectarines, and plums grown right here on the property, along with salad, some type of veggie lasagna dish, hummus, and then a chicken and vegetable dish. The 2nd picture is the view from the cafeteria that you couldn't really see in the first picture - how about that?
Thank you Christy and Dianne for your comments!! Love hearing from you! And thank you all for your prayers! Tomorrow we are going to one of the Syrian Refugee camps. Honestly, I'm a little nervous as I understand we'll have to go through 2 checkpoints, but I also believe this is the main reason God led us here, so please be praying. I believe we'll be mostly with the kids there, having like a mini- kid's camp, so pray we connect with them and love on them with God's love. Thanks so much!!
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