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NOVEMBER-DECEMBER
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Hassan, standing, in the area were he lives |
On the right, two of the students in their area during Christmas holiday. |
The dispensary now has its own legal electrical connection. The challenge now is to prevent our electricity from being pirated by the neighbors! We bought a small used refrigerator which allows us to keep the vaccines on site. Bassam, one of the neighbors who helped us regularly, is now "hired" ($7 or Euros per week) as a watchman and to care for the small 20 m˛ yard. He takes his responsibility very seriously and, in these troubled times in the region, it is reassuring to have him on site during our working hours.
On 21 November, we were all very saddened by the murder in Sidon (40 kms, 30 miles south of our suburbs) of Bonnie, an American missionary nurse. She cared for pregnant women from a nearby Palestinian camp and was the innocent victim of local political and religious hatred. We were more than 500, committed Christians involved in ministry in Lebanon, to pray together for reconciliation in this country during Bonnie's memorial service in Sidon.
Beyond the immediate horror and sadness, this crime had consequences for our work. Dr. H., fearing similar acts in Beirut, stopped his work at the dispensary. After three weeks, however, a surgeon friend was able to convince him to resume until his departure for the USA, planned for mid-February. It is a true challenge (Tahaddi !) for our Lebanese Christian friends to work in this Sabra-Chatila area. Fear and hatred are so easily awakened after the horrors of the war experienced during their childhood. Please pray for Dr. H. that he might work with peace in his heart and pray for the security of all of us.
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Hassan in dispensary |
We are worried about young Hassan, 11, with a serious heart condition after acute rheumatic fever (see October update). He needs a complex and regular treatment. His family is without housing, they are currently living in a shack in the Bekaa valley, where the winters are very cold. He comes each week by bus to receive medicine and milk from the dispensary. We are looking for "sponsors" for Hassan in order to continue giving him milk and medicine, and for putting some funds aside for a future heart operation. If you have the possibility of supporting Hassan regularly($10-20 or Euros per month, for one year, renewable or not), please contact us or contact Tahaddi France who will transmit your commitment.
During this wintertime, we are lacking children's antibiotics. We purchase these on the local market, but, apart from those for very small infants (Amoxicillin 125), we find nothing generic at low cost. A French pharmaceutical group which had donated good quantities of medicine last year, has stopped giving this year. Thanks for your prayers for other supply sources.
At the close of this first quarter, 59 children still cross the doorway of our little school, in spite of the month of Ramadan during which children are awakened at 4:00 am to eat and often “forget” to wake up at 7 am to come to school, and then they stop coming altogether.
To avoid late arrivals, we advised our morning group to buy an alarm, very inexpensive to buy in the neighborhood. In the morning, several came late … with the alarm clock in their hands! They didn’t know where to put the small hand of the alarm clock nor to make it ring!
Pray for Zeina (12) and her sister Roukaya (11), both in the second year of our program who had to stop school to take care of housecleaning, watching their brothers and sisters and the newborn while their parents worked. We have not given up hope to find a solution so that these girls might continue the good work they’ve been doing at school.
On December 16, the inauguration of our new school took place, an occasion for the mobile telephone company Cellis to publicize their large monetary gift to our work. The CEO and various Cellis executives were present, as well as reporters from the two largest Arabic newspapers in Lebanon. It was raining, which revealed even more the extreme poverty around the dispensary and the school. This impressed our guests who discovered these miserable conditions for the first time. One of the news articles published later was entitled: “A rose in the midst of an expanse of poverty”.
After the usual speeches, gifts were distributed to the students and a used computer was given to the school. But beyond the gifts, it was an official recognition that we received and we marvel to see how God has provided, again this year, for our needs.
Thank you to all those who contributed, some of you for several years, so that these children might go to school and learn healthy living instead of dragging their inactivity behind them in the streets !
TAHADDI WISHES YOU A HAPPY AND BLESSED YEAR 2003 !
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Tahaddi © 2003 |
