Rescue Iraq

A Visit to Manal's Village

A man stands at a gravesite. The little girl by his side sheds tears in the early morning fog of the Iraqi countryside. He has just revealed to her the harsh reality that 10 of the freshly covered graves house her mother, her father, and 8 siblings. The other 9 contain her neighbors, friends that were like family, violently silenced in one split second just after midnight on September 10, 2009.

Manal’s father heard a large truck and walked out the front door of his house to investigate. Why would such a large truck come to their mud-brick village, miles from the nearest city, at such an hour?

In their curiosity, the whole family followed, with Manal lagging behind. An instant later the truck lit up in a ball of fire blowing a 10 foot crater into the ground. Shards of metal spread in every direction, the engine itself landing over 200 yards away.

The suicide bomber from nearby Mosul along with his explosive counterpart took 19 lives in the Kurdish village and wounded another 30. They leveled 34 homes and damaged another 100.

I visited the village yesterday to see for myself this somber sight and to check on Manal.

It’s been nearly 2 months since the bombing. The crater is now filled with water from early autumn rains.
What is left of the homes can be easily mistaken for junk piles with hardly one brick found on top of another. Walking where Manal’s house once stood, I spy a large crankshaft.
The villagers tell me that the bomber had loaded tons of scrap metal on top of the explosives to enhance the explosion.

Demonic minds with demonic wills.

Manal’s great uncle is a prominent man in the community with a large family of his own, an aging man who recently had a heart attack. I enter his home. He sits me down next to him and asks, “Why has God created good men and bad men?”

Philosophy and religion seem to be the main trade of this isolated village. As in some bygone era, the elders spend their days talking about their faith as the world passes them by.

Twenty men wait with narrowed eyes to hear what this spiffy, young American in his western attire had to say.

When I answer the first question, there are nods and shakes of the head, some saying, “Good answer, good answer.” Then the next question came.

“There was a man who was perfect in keeping all the laws of his religion, yet his behavior towards others was wrong and demeaning. Was he a righteous man?”

For the first time, it dawns on me why Jesus told so many parables and stories. These men fill their days discussing “fine points of their “law,” desiring answers to life’s deepest questions. To enter into their deductive reasoning debates would take endless hours and would seem, unlikely to cause them to think in any way other than their forefathers.

Stories, like pictures, have the potential to strike to the heart, to create doctrine rather than just hedge it in, and to force us to come to grips with truths that bypass our minds and settle themselves on our very souls. No wonder Jesus spoke to them thus:

There were once two men who went up to the place of prayer. One was a religious leader in the community and the other a tax collector. The ‘pious’ one prayed: “Father, thank you that you have made me a righteous man, not like the heathen, robbers, evildoers, or like this tax collector. I fast, give alms to the poor, and pray 5 times a day. Thank you, Father, that I am a good man.”

The tax collector hearing the man’s prayer felt ashamed knowing that he was not good, he beat his breast not daring to so much as look up to heaven and declared, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted,” Jesus said. Luke 18:14

While we talk, I keep looking at two pictures that hang on their wall behind the aged man. One of Jesus, crucified on the cross. The other is of Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, the father of Shia Islam.

Manal’s great uncle must see my perplexed look. He motions with his hands, pointing first at Ali, making a slashing motion across his throat. Then he points at Jesus, slapping his cheek on one side then turning and striking the other.

A glaring juxtaposition, yet they didn’t seem to observe any contradiction in revering both.

As the conversation continues, Manal’s uncle now speaks. “You know, we believe in Jesus. We believe that He died to save the world of its sin, but we also believe in the Koran and that Mohammed was a Prophet. Islam is good and right. It’s just that the people that follow it are not good.”

It seems as if the conversation has come to an end, leaving me wondering if I should finally ask the question that beckons. The pause lengthens. I ask, “Why doesn’t your faith produce good people?”

Perhaps in the days to come there’ll be more opportunities to ‘open up the book’ with him and share more stories that have shaped the lives of millions and millions throughout history, bringing sense to this fallen world in which we live, where idle philosophizing has fallen short.

Manal seems to be doing well. However, shrapnel still makes it way to the surface of her skin, like bad memories not to be forgotten. But it doesn’t seem to affect her countenance. She looks much better than she did 6 weeks ago when I saw her in the hospital, shell-shocked, with bandages all over her body.

We will follow Manal’s life and her new family with great interest and with prayer. Why don’t you say a prayer for her too: that God would silence the nightmares that haunt her; that God would grant her joyful thoughts of her lost family; that He would protect her and encourage her heart with hope for the future. Amen.

For more on the Wardek Village bombing click here.

Neighborhood Children

While we were at the project site a few days ago we got a chance to meet some more of the neighborhood children that had just let out from the school next door.

They are enjoying clamoring over our dirt piles, sliding down the slippery rock piles, and walking along the wall that separates our project from the school. Here are a few pics:

          

New 'Project Profile Flyer' for Iraq Project

Download our Iraq Project Profile Flyer to get an overview of our work in Northern Iraq and how you can be involved in partnering with us to rescue orphans and widows in this land.

Click here to Download Iraq Project Flyer

First Annual Conference - Erbil, Iraq

Today, we opened World Orphans' First Annual Conference in Erbil, Iraq for the benefit of the orphanage directors of Iraqi Kurdistan with the help and support of Lake Pointe Church of Rockwall, Texas. It's a 3 day affair seeking to help some 20 professional care-givers to nearly 1,000 orphans better understand and meet the needs of the children in their care.

Caty Sarkes of Cairo, Egypt who has spent the past 20 years in counseling roles for women and children (educated in the United States and Australia) came to give the lectures that have already received praise from the Minister of Social and Labor Affairs who attended one of the sessions.

He said that the subject material was of great interest to him as it involved his select discipline of study and remarked that the session was simply "Fantastic!"

Thank you, Caty, for pouring out your heart that they might better do the same.

Please be in prayer over the next couple of days as we seek to infuse into their lives a love which only God can give for the orphans in their care.

    

Not a Typical Day

I got up this morning just like any other day without a hint that I would experience anything out of the ordinary. Boy was I wrong.

Before the lines at the mechanic's could get too long, I swung my car in to have my carburetor cleaned out. It’s a monthly occurrence these hot summer days as the dust envelopes the engine’s components and makes life a bit difficult if you’re a carburetor, not to mention if you’re a member of the Animal Kingdom.

After a quick taxi ride home, Abdullah arrived to pick me up so we could go to the hospital to visit a very special little girl. Her name is Manal.

Just last week, Manal was living with her extended family of 11 in a small village outside of Mosul. Her world came crashing down in one fell swoop as a suicide truck driver with tons of explosives decided to end his life, and in the process leaving Manal suddenly alone.

Shrapnel shredded her once peaceful world in an instant, leaving her body torn and scarred, but even more tragically it left her without one living member of her family. In a split second her family of 11 irreversibly became just 1. An orphan now, she’s barely coming to grips with the event as she continues to receive treatment for her wounds. But how long will it take for her soul to heal?

As we were returning from the hospital Abdullah received a phone call from a friend asking for help in distributing some baby food and fortified rice to a small village not too far from Manal’s.

We joined up with the expedition and made our way to the borders of what the Defense Department calls “the worst area in Iraq” – Mosul.

As we were driving there, a new friend from Kirkuk, Martin, a Chaldean believer, began to describe to me the latest stories coming from that tension filled city.

Turns out just yesterday a local Chaldean Christian pediatrician, was just released from his captors following the paying of a $100,000 ransom.

He was captured by insurgents over 2 weeks ago. Men from Mosul followed him home from work one night and in a moment, overpowered him and dragged him into their car. The man screamed and happened to be heard by his neighbor, who came running out of his house thinking that perhaps one of his children were being abducted.

Without even thinking he charged at the car that held the kidnapped pediatrician. Struggling for a second with the driver, he was shot dead in the street. This happened to be Martin’s friend’s father.

At first the abductors demanded a half a million dollars from the pediatrician’s wife. They told her, “You’re a woman. Go beg at the mosque or the church,” revealing that this business left any notion of religion behind long ago. As they bargained for his life, eventually the kidnappers agreed to $100,000.

Told to come to Mosul to give the ransom, the doctor's father-in-law found himself accosted by men getting out of cars right in view of a police vehicle. They demanded the money and the next day the doctor was released.

Gripped by these two stories that shot my 'typical' day to pieces, we finally arrived at the small village to distribute the baby food and rice. Sitting in the mayor’s office as we waited to get permission, my phone lit up revealing a call from outside the country.

I picked it up.

It was a friend from Istanbul. Jumping into the fray of Christian persecution throughout the Middle East as a reporter for Compass Direct News, my friend had just learned about the episode with the Chaldean pediatrician and called to learn if I had any more details about the abduction.

I handed the phone to Martin and he repeated the sad story.

After running out of baby food at the local village hospital, we high tailed it back to Erbil.Dropping off Martin, I met another new friend named Yakup – not his real name.

Yakup shared another typical story on this atypical day.

An Arab from Karbala, in southern Iraq, he escaped with his wife and children in 1991, just before the Gulf War, finding refuge in Sweden. In 2003, he met the Lord. Unable to reconcile with her husband’s new faith, she left him taking their 4 children with her.

Now, he has returned to Iraq alone, working with Life Agape to help bring the light of Jesus to this darkened part of the earth.

By this time, the lunch hour had long since evaporated, but bread was passed around anyway as we sat and shared our lives on this “more typical than we’d like to admit” day here in Iraq. And the day wasn't even half over.

Moving Forward

This week we met with the mayor of Soran to touch base and finalize our plans for our project.

We were introduced to one of his chief engineers, took another tour of the land together, and talked about a timeline to begin building. World Orphans approved last month a budget of $500,000 to build a community center, a playground along with 2 orphan homes.

After continuing to pray and seek God, listening to Godly counsel, and allowing our ideas and dreams to take on some solidity, we have decided to move forward sensing God’s hand in this project to rescue orphans, to strengthen the influence of the local church, and to impact this community for the cause of Christ.

This project will be the first of it’s kind in a region that lies on the Turkish and Iranian borders of Iraq. Soran, itself, is 18 miles from Iran and 24 miles from Turkey.

The map below shows the topography of the region with the geographic proximity of Iran and Turkey. This is a satellite view of the city of Soran with our land labeled. The surrounding land comprises 250 government built homes for orphans and widows who lost their fathers in the war with Saddam and other civil strife.

A general plan we are considering for our project is shown below with the yellow areas revealing existing buildings: a primary school with the rector’s house and a post office.

As mentioned above, on this upside down “T” land we will be building a community center, a playground and gathering area, as well as 2 or 3 orphan homes. Across the street from the land is the main medical clinic for the neighborhood.

Here is a design we are considering for the Community center: The idea to build a community center in this neighborhood was first proposed by the mayor himself. He said that housing isn’t the problem, the greater need is for vocational training for hundreds of orphans and widows that have been marginalized in the society by the loss of their primary bread winners.

Many youths have been known to take off into the mountains to join the PKK rather than face the humiliation of living without a father or find a way to change their circumstances.

Considering the entire continuum of care that World Orphans seeks to be a part of, this community needs love, support, and education to help them get their feet on the ground and moving forward with the broader society.

Our plan is to build a place that can provide literacy training, computer and music classes, English lessons, and other vocational courses as well as provide a meeting hall for special celebrations, festivals, weddings, and other functions for the local people.

In these ways we hope to impact the community where they need it the most through the partnership of Western and indigenous churches seeking to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a land of desperation.

We will be beginning a fund raising campaign in the coming weeks. Please pray and consider how you might be a part of redeeming a people, a land, a culture that less than 10 years ago was facing extinction at the hands of Saddam.

Thank you for standing with us as we seek to reach a village to touch the world.

Greatest Need

Two weeks and two continents ago in another lifetime, I was in Iraq meeting with the pastors of the Kurdzman Church discussing with them and 4 representatives from Lake Pointe Church what their greatest need was, and how they might help them.

According to the local pastor the greatest need of the church in Northern Iraq is Christian education for the families -- to simply be educated on how to raise their children rightly, to love their wives and husbands as the Bible teaches, and to function as Godly families in a culture that for too long has taught them just the opposite as many cultures do.

Just a few hours later we were sitting down to tea with a representative from the largest Evangelical Protestant church in the Middle East with a master's degree in Biblical counseling and social work. She and her husband discipled many of the leaders of that church and stand as true pillars in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. She was returning to Egypt that evening. Her name was Kathy.

Kathy explained that she would like to return to Iraq in a few months working with WO to organize a seminar for the social workers in the government run orphanages throughout Kurdistan. Teaching them Biblical principles of counseling that would touch the lives of the workers and the orphans already in their care.

Fast forward to yesterday, where in another quirk of God's timing, Kathy shared her same vision with Paul, Mike and Scott in her home church in Cairo. As we began talking, we realized how we could not only teach and train the social workers but also provide the church with the training that it was longing for.

Ultimately, we would love to see the churches in Northern Iraq begin teaching and counseling the orphans in the government run orphanages as well as those they've 'adopted' into their care. However, in the writing of this, we're dealing with a church made up largely of first generation believers just beginning to create a Christ-like culture in the midst of their hostile surroundings.

Turns out, Kathy's primary specialty is in inner healing, a step we must all go through before we can become the tools that God wants us to be - extending a hand to the hurting around us.

Pray with us as we make plans for a fall seminar for the church, followed closely by a training workshop for the directors and workers in the government orphanages from 5 major cities in Northern Iraq. Our plate here at World Orphans-Iraq is suddenly becoming full. Praise the Lord for all the work He is doing in and through us.

Ground Breaking Ceremony

Yesterday we had a wonderful time in Soran breaking ground on our first project in Iraq. Joining me was a team from Lake Pointe Church and Rod Vestal from World Orphans. Rod and I were chosen to be the first ones to push the spades deep into the soil officially beginning Project Soran. After a time of prayer the spades went into the ground, a crowd gathered from the local community, speeches were exchanged, cay glasses filled, and candy distributed to all the children in the village. Check on the photo album in the left column for more pics of our time. 

Mosul District

Yesterday, we got an opportunity to travel with a team from Lakepointe church to two villages in the Mosul district. One of them was a Kurdish village and the other was an Arab village.

In the Kurdish village we saw what was once a school but was now just a heap of rumble due to Saddam's determined campaign to eradicate the Kurdish people.

The children in both schools were overjoyed to receive the packages that we brought compliments, again of Samartian's Purse.

They just lined up, waited for each one to get a package, and then, at a word from the instructor ripped into their gifts throwing paper this way and that and laughing all the time.

It was really fun to snap some photos of their joyful faces more of which you can see here.

Khaladza Massacre

We've come to learn that you can't go two weeks around here without some reminder of the plague that came in the form of the late Saddam Hussein, and how his actions spelt the death of untold thousands of Kurds in Northern Iraq.

This past week we joined with 350 families affected by the April 24th, 1974 chemical and tactical bombing of a city known as Khaladza where thousands of people and over 170 schools were completely wiped out.

The Governor of the region invited us to come and introduce ourselves as representatives of World Orphans at this sacred assembly.

At the end, the Governor and I helped distribute over 400 shoe boxes from the States arranged through the wonderful work of Samaritan's Purse.

Slowly, bit by bit, we're developing further and deeper relationships with these men of the mountains accustomed to seasons of mourning.