The Outreach Foundation

Hope Came Down

Dancing in circles photohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZPFxHbWJv0

Hope came down and pitched its tent, in our midst, went where we went. Hope came down for you and me, hope came down and we could see, with the longing of our hearts…Hope came down.

Since the summer of 2000, when I made my first trip as a member of a short-term mission team from West Hills Church to Germany, I have been humbled to travel almost every year in this capacity. I have made three trips to Germany, two to Cameroon, two to the Czech Republic, one to North Omaha and I have also been part of the South Omaha VBS team at Iglesia el Buen Pastor four times. I have had my heart expanded in so many ways by these travels and adventures with the living Christ. I have met the family of God – our family! – in all these varied geographic locations.

Four years ago I met Marilyn Borst from the Outreach Foundation. In these past four, short years, I have been to Lebanon and Syria three times and Iraq three times. Never in my wildest imaginings (and mine can be pretty wild) did I ever think I would be walking with the church in the Middle East. But as it says in Jeremiah 29:11 (a scripture I chose for my wedding service), “For I know the plans I have for you…”

God knows the plans he has for us. We just need to lean into them and trust him.

I have been blessed beyond abundance by these travels. I married a man who would also follow this call, Steve, who has been on many of those trips. Together we have welcomed three young German women into our home and family to experience life together as they ministered to our youth here at West Hills. We have seen a brother in Christ through the seminary in Cameroon: Joe Mbiy will be ordained this December in the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon. We have been blessed by our faithful brothers and sisters in the Czech Republic and have seen how they care for those with disabilities and addictions. We have been part of a communion service in Basrah, Iraq, where none had been held since the loss of their pastor. We have also been back to Basrah to participate in another communion service with their new pastor, a graduate of the seminary in Cairo that is supported by mission dollars from West Hills.

All these journeys have been meaningful, joyful, participatory and ground for spiritual growth.

But how do we give back?

Coming back home this past January from Lebanon and Syria, God gave me a vision. We had been to a refugee camp that hadn’t existed just eight months before in Zahle, Lebanon. It was a camp containing thousands of families who had fled from the war in Syria. It was actually one of TWO camps that hadn’t been there the year before. While in the camp, we were surrounded by the most delightful, joyful children. What did they have to be happy about? And yet they sang this song: “Yesterday we lived in a house, today we live in a tent. But tomorrow we will live in a house again.” They could see something we surely could not. The hope of a child, seeing not with their eyes, but with their hearts.

And that was the beginning of this vision. The vision was to make a music video that could be shared through social media, and in the sharing people would be moved to donate to the churches who are meeting the ever-increasing needs of people fleeing from wars and losing their homes, their places of worship and their livelihoods. In this instance, you won’t have to dump a bucket of ice water on your head to take the challenge.

I reached out to two very gifted people here at West Hills Church to help me with this vision. Mike Geiler (http://mikegeiler.com/) took the words of a poem I wrote and crafted a beautiful song, Hope Came Down, and then had it professionally recorded and mastered. Arlo Grafton, a master at his craft of videography, took 67 images from my trips and put them to Mike’s music. The final video is now on YouTube and I hope it is shared widely by people like you. The vision will be fulfilled when people click on the links to donate funds to projects already set up through our denomination in support of the church’s work in Syria, Iraq and in Gaza in Israel.

ECOs in World Mission designated for partner churches:

Iraq – Assembly of Presbyterian Churches in Iraq: http://www.presbyterianmission.org/donate/E051722/

Syria – Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon: http://www.presbyterianmission.org/donate/E340202/

Gaza – Ahli Arab Hospital (Episcopalian Church of the Holy Land): http://www.presbyterianmission.org/donate/E862371/

There were several scriptures guiding me in this project that were part of this vision. As I shared with Arlo in an email several weeks ago:

And when I came home and looked at the pictures I saw the dear smiling faces of the clergy who were with us. The pastors in that area have visited the camps many, many times, carrying the love and the joy and the hope of Jesus into a place where he is so desperately needed. And I couldn’t help but think of the scripture I had heard so often from John 1:14, “The word was made flesh and dwelled among us,” or as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “he moved into the neighborhood.” And I of course remember George phrasing it like this: “He pitched his tent with us.” His glory – his shekinah – his tent was right in the middle of ours. There it is: Hope came down.

And those children were hopeful! And the passage from Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is being sure of what you hope for, certain of what you do not see.” And those kids were singing that tomorrow they would be in their homes again. I couldn’t see it, but they could! That is a hope-filled faith and that is what I want to honor with this video.

From the beginning of the church, you can discern this from some of Paul’s letters, the churches in Asia that he had started, the church in Rome even, were collecting money for the church in Jerusalem which was so oppressed. This video seems like a 21st century way to get the word out to the churches that our brothers and sisters in distant lands are suffering and they are not letting their suffering get in the way of reaching out with the love of Christ to care for those who are suffering alongside them. This video is an appeal for help! And help is so desperately needed. There are millions of refugees and internally displaced people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza in Israel.

And that is the story. That is what happens when you follow the call to walk with the living Christ. As it says in Joel 2:28 “I will pour out my Spirit on every kind of people: Your sons will prophesy, also your daughters. Your old men will dream, your young men will see visions. I’ll even pour out my Spirit on the servants, men and women both.” (The Message) And sometimes even your old women, like me, will see visions.

I have indeed. Hope came down.

Hand in hand

Holding hands on wedding dayThere we are on our wedding day, May 18, 2002. Gosh! We look so young you can’t even tell we are 43 and 44 years old (she said while wearing her rose-colored glasses). I remember that day like it was yesterday!

For both of us, it was our first – and we have pledged! – only marriage. First time for two folks in early middle age. Steve’s parents were married when his mom was only 19 and Chuck was 25. My mom was 23 and my dear old dad was 27. It seems so young to me!

So there we are, standing in the church for pictures on the big day, and I love this one because we are holding hands. We get teased often at church for our PDAs: public displays of affection. We often hold hands, stand arm in arm, and even exchange kisses. It’s still first love for me. It always will be.

We did meet at church, in Sunday school actually. I sat in the front row with Jana, and Steve sat in the last row. He used to tease us for being “teacher’s pets” and I accused him of flinging arrows at our heads from the back row…figurative arrows. Somehow we were friends who liked to tease each other and then we ended up on the adult education committee together. Our families joined together with other friends after church for lunch on Sundays at Arby’s. Our pastor George and his wife Pam were part of that group. After we got engaged, George shared the story of how he woke up in the middle of the night after having dreamed that Steve and I would be married someday. He woke Pam to tell her, too. Oddly enough, it was before any of the rest of our “keeping company” started. He just had a vision and I have always loved that story.

Anyway, how we eventually ended up going out that first night is another story for another day. It involves a letter from me and then a returned letter from him. It’s not fodder for an HBO mini series, but I am sure there will be a movie about it someday. Steve will be played by Kevin Costner and I will be played by…me.

The first night we went out was exactly one year before that wedding picture: May 18, 2001. We met at Delice, a bakery/bistro in Omaha’s Old Market area. He had a cup of coffee and I had a Diet Coke. We each paid for our own. I had nothing else to compare this to as I told Steve, “This is my first date. With a man. Ever in my life. Did I tell you I was 42?” That was the truth!

After our caffeine intake, we decided to walk a bit farther into the market for dinner at the Upstream Brewery. And that is when it happened: he reached out for my hand. And for the first time at the advanced spinsterly age of 42, for the very first time, (did I stress that enough?) my hand was nestled into the larger hand of a man who was not my father, not my uncle, not my grandpa. And I will never forget the wonder of that feeling. I can close my eyes and see us walking down Howard Street, hand in hand, and thirteen years have melted away. I knew then and there I would marry him someday, so it was funny when George told us of his dream.

I also experienced my first kiss that evening, but this story is not about that either. It’s about holding hands.

At dinner that evening, Steve ordered a burger and I ordered a salad. My whole self was just in shock that I was even there, and I was so enthralled that I just couldn’t eat, so Steve finished mine. But that was the end of the meal. The beginning went something like this. Steve said, “Should we say grace?” And I just nodded, knowing I couldn’t say anything. He reached his hands across the table and took both of mine in his and thanked God for our meal.

And we have never done it any other way.

After that first date (I only use that term because it’s easier. We never considered that we were dating, just keeping company.) the story got out quickly that we were a couple. We tried to keep it just to ourselves for a while because it was new and special, and frankly, I think we were both a bit scared. But once we were discovered, it was wonderful to be so easy with our PDAs, especially holding hands. We started sitting together in church and when it was time for prayer, somehow we just reached for the other’s hand and held them until the “amen.”

And we have never done it any other way.

I think of how many times we have prayed hand in hand like that in the last thirteen years. So many meals. So many church services. Weddings. Funerals. We have prayed for our family members in their joys and sorrows; we have prayed with and for our friends in theirs as well. We pray with our small group when we gather to share lives and learn more about our God. We have prayed on trips to be with the church in Germany, the Czech Republic, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. We have prayed for peace, over and over again.

I know when we join our hands like that, God meets us right there as we pray.

praying hands in DamascusAnd so this picture means so much to me. We were in Damascus, Syria, in January with The Outreach Foundation. We had traveled to Lebanon to be with the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon along with other global partners of NESSL. Sixteen of us made the short journey to Damascus to be with the church in a country that had been at war for almost three years. They still are, and we continue to pray for them even now with the news of the impending U.S. participation in a plan against ISIS. Oh! How we pray for peace.

While we were in the church service that day, surrounded by the members of the Damascus congregation plus the refugees who had fled other parts of Syria to be there, we bowed our heads in prayer as we have done so many times. And we reached out our hands to each other as we have done so many times. And somehow that caught the eyes of a photographer and this photo was posted on Facebook.

If there is only one picture that you can pick to describe the life you have shared with that one person you know God picked for you personally, this is the photo I would pick to tell the story of Julie and Steve. And they are not the hands of Kevin Costner.

They are Steve’s, and they are mine. Hand in hand.

The Lord’s Prayer

Arabic Lord's Prayer

Every night for as long as I can remember, (and I can remember a long, long time back!) I have prayed the Lord’s Prayer before going to sleep. It used to come in a long litany of prayers starting with, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” and ending with “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…” And in the middle of all of those prayers came my own personal petitions of, “God bless this and God bless that. God protect him and her…” through multiple verses and choruses until I had named every family member, every cousin, aunt, uncle, friend… It was usually a very long time before I could actually fall asleep.

But the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father” as I called it, was the main point for me. The words of that prayer have brought me comfort in sorrow. They taught me a new way to pray one night, as if I really meant it. The night Jana and Susan were hit by that train 31 years ago, I finally listened to my heart as I said the words, “Thy will be done.” Did I really mean that? And it forced me to come to God in total humility as I prayed for his will to be done in the lives of my two sisters. I didn’t pray for their survival or a perfect recovery or that they would be without pain. I prayed that “thy will be done” and for me to accept that, even if they didn’t survive. That was one of the biggest lessons in my life.

The words of that prayer have joined me in community. I have prayed it in English while others around me were praying in Spanish, Italian, Czech, German and Arabic. I have been in the midst of the body of Christ all over this globe and been amazed at the wonder of its poetic meter. No matter what language the body was praying in, we always ended our phrases at the same point. Miraculous? Maybe. Purposeful creation? I’m pretty sure!

The first time I went to Lebanon and Syria, Dr. Emily Brink, one of our faithful women, brought us some songs to learn that they would sing in Arabic in the church. One of them was “Abana in Heaven,” the Lord’s prayer in Arabic. This is how I imagine we will all sing it in heaven someday:

I close my eyes and I’m there. Hauntingly beautiful, isn’t it?

But it was in Iraq this past March that someone else gave me an even more wonderful picture of this prayer, and so I would just close my post today with the blog I wrote that day in Basrah as we were preparing to leave our family there once more.

The Bread We Need (March 19, 2014)

We have come through our last full day in Basrah with an ending culminating in the centuries old tradition of baking naan, the Arabic flatbread served with schwarma. Bread. It is served at every meal. Daily. And it was the focus of Meryl’s devotion this evening. The Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-18: so familiar! Say it with us now, Give us this day our daily bread.

Meryl led us through several translations of this line from the familiar one above from the Greek to the one they use here in Arabic: Give us our bread sufficient for the day. It’s interesting how the focus changes from one of time to one of amount; the difference between a western understanding and an eastern understanding. And when the Greek is translated backward to Syriac, so close to the Aramaic which was the language of Jesus, it comes out this way: Give us today the bread that doesn’t run out. It’s the promise of sustaining life. It’s a prayer to deliver us from fear. It’s the vision of the great banquet with Messiah. It’s communion.

From our visit with the Chaldean church earlier this week, to our visit with the dear Armenian Orthodox Abuna (Father) Turkum today, to every moment with the Basrah Evangelical Church, it has been a time of holy communion.

Basrah crossThe benediction for today came at the end of our schwarma – our communion – this night. We shared words of gratefulness, words of love – the words that families share when they don’t know the next time they will gather. Hugs all around! Kisses galore! One more backward glance at sweet new babies, playing children, nodding elders. And as we left this place with gifts in hand and hearts full of pictures and stories, we walked one more time under the light of the cross at the top of the church. May it shine in this place for generations to come.

Inshallah

500 a day

That was my journal entry for Nov. 11, 2011, while in Basrah, Iraq, and it became the first poem from my journeys. It is mostly how I journal now on those trips.

That was my journal entry for Nov. 11, 2011, while in Basrah, Iraq, and it became the first poem from my journeys. It is mostly how I journal now on those trips.

My friend Barbara and I had a great discussion in the summer of 2011 about our proposed further travels to the Middle East with Marilyn and The Outreach Foundation. We had been to Lebanon and Syria the summer before and were so excited to return, maybe even helping to plan another women’s conference that would include sisters from Iraq. We would meet at a location in eastern Syria for that to happen…and then the war broke out in March, 2011, and the trip didn’t.

Feeling so called to go back and learn from and about the church, I asked Marilyn if there was another trip going that I could participate in and she said, yes. Iraq. She was taking a group of people to Iraq because elder Zuhair had said it was safe now for us to come as American Christians. Wow. Just wow.

We had been introduced to an Iraqi refugee while we were in Damascus that 2010 August named Edward. We had the most amazing conversation about our foreign policy as Americans and our hubris in invading his home. His home was near Baghdad and he was so insistent upon returning there with his family that they did not register as refugees with the UN so they could be sent somewhere safer to begin again. He wanted to go home. To Iraq. It was Edward’s face I saw and Edward’s voice I heard and Edward’s longing to go home that put no pause in my answer when I said “yes” to Iraq.

And so Barbara and I talked. She had been in Iran with Marilyn. (“Come and See.” That was the theme of that trip!) As we roomed in Beirut that hot summer of 2010, she told me the safest place to be was in the call of God. She also said she would travel to the gates of hell with Marilyn. Fearless and faithful, that is Barbara. She’s got the lion’s heart for justice and a Free Palestine sticker on her bumper. I love her, and she goes out with Micah 6:8 on her heart like me.

And so we talked about this trip, a trip to a country torn apart (again) by a war our country had gifted to them to take out their leader. (You can argue with me about whether that was good or bad, but you can’t deny the consequences for the minority Christians and Yazidis and Turkomen who are now paying a very high price for taking out that dictator, whom we supported at one time. Go figure.)

This trip would be for eight days and that included the getting there and the coming home. It was really six days on the ground in Basrah, but we were gone for eight. The cost figured out to be $4,000. $500 a day. We laughed about the ways we could spend that easily on a long weekend or a lovely trip to Rome or Paris. But this was $500 a day to Basrah, Iraq, and back. And we said we didn’t know a better way to spend this money and we went.

We went with those four pastors who served communion at the church for the first time in over two years. We spent time listening to a woman from Mosul – Hana, later we would meet her sisters on a second trip – whose brother the church elder had been killed by Islamic extremists. We heard about the amazing ways the church ministers in a place where it is hard – but historical – to be a Christian. They have kindergartens where 98% of the students are Muslim and they teach their parents how to pray! They have elder homes to care for those seniors left behind when their families move to safer places. They have radio ministries to share God’s love in the reading of his word and his comforting presence when people call in to the shows seeking answers.

That's my trip journal for four trips to the Middle East. The spine is busted from stuffing it full of inserts of hymns, printed prayers, photos and bios of my teammates, devotionals I've led and other memories on paper too important to discard.

That’s my trip journal for four trips to the Middle East. The spine is busted from stuffing it full of inserts of hymns, printed prayers, photos and bios of my teammates, devotionals I’ve led and other memories on paper too important to discard.

My journal is full of these stories. It’s full of sheets of paper that people gave to me: hymns in Arabic, prayers in Syriac, photos and biographies of those I travel with and those we traveled to be with. The binding is broken but its contents are precious reminders of the Body of Christ that I am connected to. In the bigger picture of the body, I am probably the tear ducts and I will accept that description. I’m not the brain and I’m not the best hands and feet, but I can weep. And I do. A lot.

It was on that trip that I started journaling in verse. And it was that thought of $500 a day that poured out of my pen one morning with Barbara. And it still drives me today when I think about where I can spend the resources that God puts in my hands.

$500 a day (2011, Basrah, Iraq)

Where would you go for five hundred a day?

Would you go to the mall and spend ’til it’s done?
At Macy’s and Penney’s, Starbucks and Pier One?
Ten crisp new polos and brand new Air Jordans,
Lunch at Panera’s, a latte, the tall one.
Home again later with bags full of new
With your five hundred, is that what you’d do?

Maybe to Vegas you’d fly with a friend.
The news brings you down; to cheer up why not spend?
The night and the day there are both oh so bright.
The spinning and rolling and dealing delight.
For three days you bask in the decadent fun,
Fifteen hundred later, you’re back. It’s all gone.

No! I’ve got it! To Paris and then on to Rome!
You’ll stay a bit longer before coming home.
The Tower Eiffel, the Louvre with her Lisa,
The forum, St. Peter’s, and then… off to Pisa! T
he wine and the pasta, the chocolate, the cheese,
On five hundred a day, the living’s a breeze.
Take a cab here and tip like a king.
Life is a banquet; it makes your heart sing.
Your tour is over, your wallet is empty.
Back to work and to dreaming…Tahiti sounds tempting.

What we’ve done on this trip to spend the same money
Is fly off to Basra. I know, it sounds…funny.
We’ve followed a call to meet with God’s faithful
And discovered his light in the midst of the rubble.
This city is large, there’s a million times two.
Our corner is small, and it feels cramped too.
From the fourth floor you can see quite a ways,
There are taxis and mosques, in the distance, a haze.
Looking straight down at the view of the street
there’s a guard with a gun and all the cars beep.
The few steps we take when we leave from this place
Lead to the church, where we’ve passed our days.
We’ve gathered to learn, and to worship, and pray;
We’ve gathered as family; we’ve watched children play.
We’ve broken the bread and dipped in the hummus,
In fact, every day, they’ve overstuffed us!
In all of the talking and laughing and tears,
We’ve drawn closer to Him who calms all our fears.
We’ve heard many stories not seen on our news.
It’s not very pretty, and yet we must choose
to take every moment to listen, to learn,
to take it all home and then to discern
how to bring it to you and then how to share it.
The weight is enormous! Just how will we bear it?

But that is the wrong thought, and this is the right:
“Your yoke it is easy. Your burden is light.”
You carried the cross for the sake of us all.
You ransomed your children with grace from the fall.
When we choose to pick up our cross and to follow,
You don’t promise us ease, or a safer tomorrow.
You ask us to sell all and give to the poor.
You ask us to love and to care for our neighbor.
Sometimes that love will come at this cost:
Five hundred a day. It doesn’t seem much.

So what would you do with this bounteous treasure?
What would you use for your unit of measure?
Would you shop ’til you drop? Would you show up to be seen?
Would you archive your memories on an iPad…or dream
of a journey that follows the missio dei,
Would you give up your treasure to follow the way?
What would you do with five hundred a day?

Faithful Women

 

(Back) Wendy Moore, Sue Jacobsen, Kate Kotfila, Emily Brink; (standing in middle) Mary Caroline Lindsay, Assis Ibrahim Nsier, Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, Rev. Nuhad Tomei, Marilyn Borst, Betty Saye; (kneeling) me and Barbara Exley

(Back) Wendy Moore, Sue Jacobsen, Kate Kotfila, Emily Brink; (standing in middle) Mary Caroline Lindsay, Assis Ibrahim Nsier, Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, Rev. Nuhad Tomei, Marilyn Borst, Betty Saye; (kneeling) me and Barbara Exley


I had some great friends growing up: through elementary, junior and senior high school and college. One of them goes back with me to the third grade! I have made many friends in my adult years, too, through church, quilting guilds, a community choir and the Omaha Press Club shows I’ve done. But today I am thinking of a group of women who joined together for a special trip back in August, 2010.

Faithful women, that’s what our group was called. Marilyn Borst of The Outreach Foundation assembled us from various places, mostly the Atlanta area. Wendy Moore, Betty Saye, Mary Caroline Lindsay, Barbara Exley,and Sue Jacobsen joined me from Omaha, Emily Brink from Michigan and Kate Kotfila from New York on an exploration of the church in Lebanon and Syria. I have never traveled like that before, with a group of people I had never met. I knew Marilyn from one encounter at a church staff retreat in Omaha, but we connected over a subject that few others want to discuss with me because my passion gets inflamed and I become a bit, shall I say, too much to take?

I talked about something that is in the news every day: how horribly we treat those that aren’t like us, seeing only differences and finding ways to dehumanize them. Then, I was talking about our ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how we came to wage them. Marilyn understood where I was coming from and at the end of the day said, “I like you. I think you should come with me to the Middle East.” And that is how I got there with this amazing group of faithful women.

That is me and Barbara in front of a cedar tree in the mountains above Beirut, red-faced due to the heat.

That is me and Barbara in front of a cedar tree in the mountains above Beirut, red-faced due to the heat.

She put me together with Barbara. And now three and half years later, we are simply “Roomie” to each other. We’ve stood on the altar at Baalbek and been baked by the sun god on a day when it was 115 degrees…and there was no shade! We have walked the street called Straight in Damascus under that same heat during Ramadan, when it would have been more than impolite to take a drink of water when no one else was. We have visited with amazing clergymen in Aleppo, Mahardeh, Damascus, Beirut, and met with others who came to those places to see us. We have cried buckets of tears and raised countless lamentations and prayers for what they are living through now.

That's Kate and me in the back of the bus, eating our famous lunch of rice and lamb shanks with no utensils. Our job was to take care of the trash and hold up all those suitcases!

That’s Kate and me in the back of the bus, eating our famous lunch of rice and lamb shanks with no utensils. Our job was to take care of the trash and hold up all those suitcases!

But back on that trip in 2010, we were a group of church ladies exploring our sister churches in Lebanon and Syria at a very hot time of year: August! Most of us got sick at one point or another and we took turns caring for those who were down. Baked and boiled potatoes were good remedies. We laughed on our bus rides back and forth from Beirut to Byblos, Baalbeck to Damascus, then to Aleppo and back to Dhour Choieur in Lebanon. We shopped at souks and tourist stops, buying countless scarves, prayer beads and spices. We we served bottomless cups of tea and coffee and endless sweets. And all the time we were taking in the pictures of destruction around us from prior wars, learning about what had happened in these places and how the church reacted, served and gave witness. We were on holy ground.

And what I had known all the time I found to be absolutely true on that trip. We may all have differences, we are individuals after all. But we all have this in common: we are human beings made in the image of a loving God, and he said we were very good and I believe him. And I had found traveling companions – faithful women – who knew it and believed it too. And having traveled with them that far, I would go even farther. To steal a phrase from my dear Roomie, I would travel with them to the gates of hell…and the devil better look out!