Rescue Iraq

Progression of the Land

Tomorrow we're pouring

Please say a prayer for us as we really get this project 'grounded' with tons and tons of concrete poured into the earth starting tomorrow morning.

Here's a few pics of how things looked on Wednesday as they started putting the rebar into the soil.    

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:

          

Taking Shape

On April 1, 2009 we signed an agreement with the local government that gave us stewardship of 1 acre of land in the Freedom Martyr's Village in Soran, Iraq. Up till now, we have not had a chance to take full advantage of this tremendous opportunity, but this weekend all that changed.

Here is a pic of the land on April 1, 2009.

The spring rains make everything look pretty around here, but as of last weekend the land looked liked this.

Not so pretty with piles and piles of extra dirt, we had a lot of work to do.

Here's our contractor with Abdullah and a few of the neighborhood boys -- their school in the background.

But, like I said, this all changed this past week. The land was cleared and dug out for the foundation of the community center as things seem to be taking shape.

 

Praise the Lord with us as we take this important step. Your prayers will be most appreciated as we seek to provide a place, a platform really, upon which we can serve the needs of the orphans and widows of Soran, Iraq.

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

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.

Answers to Prayer (Part 3)

You'll always remember pictures like this as they mark crucial steps in your life and in the life of major endeavors the Lord presents before you.

Perched above the Bosphorus, one of the most beautiful waterways in the world - I'm actually writing this from the 20th story of my hotel room overlooking the Nile River - we listened to Oruc's plans (3 different ones) and settled upon one of them -- his favorite, actually.

After discussing how we would proceed, we took this photo signifying the beginning, we hope, of a wonderful friendship with Oruc, as well as marking the start of Project Soran just 1 week after our ground breaking ceremony in Iraq. And that is a major answer to prayer. Praise God!

We'll be sharing Oruc's plans with you in the coming weeks after we've run a cost analysis to make sure the design we've chosen is affordable and have signed a contract with Oruc. Just to give you an idea of our plans, I took these photos that give you a feel - a reflected image you could say - of that meeting. Thank you so much for your prayers! [for more pics of our time click on the photo album above left].

Answers to Prayer (Part 2)

You know I've just realized that potentially all my blogs could be entitled "Answers to Prayer". God is so ready to direct our steps if we'll only stop to listen. Our prayers (most of them anyway)are really His prayers prayed through us, to Him, then fulfilled in His Almighty Power and Gracious ways. It's just awesome to be used of the Lord to perform His will on earth. May His guidance continually mark our ways and our lives.

So, as I mentioned in the previous entry I gave Oruc our plans and was tentatively wondering if this was really going to work out. As the day approached for us to fly to Istanbul, I shot him an email asking him about his progress. He said that he was ready to meet with us, but when the day arrived our cell phones wouldn't work.

With a little help from our hotel in Istanbul, we finally got through to Oruc to meet with him at the Dolmabahce Palace that afternoon. Istanbul is such a neat place to do business.

The reason this meeting had such significance for me has to do with the enormity of the project, the funds that we'll need to accomplish our goals, and the fact that I work on the other side of the world, far, far away from HQ in Colorado.

I have been working with WO for just over 16 months now, and "I" have come up with a project that will basically dwarf all other WO projects in projected costs, fulfilling a function that is relatively new in the way WO has traditional functioned, and in a region that they have never worked before.

As you can probably imagine it was quite important for us to make sure that we were all on the same page. And the only way to really do that would be for Paul, Mike, Scott, and Rod to either be in Iraq, or at the very least to meet with the architect that is planning the project. Turns out our day couldn't have been planned any better.

Meeting up with Oruc at the Dolmabahce Palace, he invited us to the hotel terrace of his business partner and engineer. Now, we're talking. Perched above the Bosphorus with a terrace cafe all to ourselves we asked Orcu to show us his plans...

Answers to Prayer (Part 1)

One of our main prayers these days has been for God to show us the people that He wants us to work with on our project in Soran; of crucial importance at this stage have been the architect and engineers.

About a month ago I was driving to work with a long list of things to do running through my head, when I felt the Lord direct me to go visit a friend. We’ve all been there. Struggling to get our ‘duties’ done when God shreds our lists to pieces and says, “Hey, I’ve got a better plan.” After battling with the ‘sanity’ of my mind and trying to dissuade myself from that still small voice, I finally acquiesced.

Walking in to my friend’s business I was greeted heartily as to be expected in our society. Then, he instantly took me upstairs and said, “I’ve got a friend I want you to meet.”

Ten minutes later, his architect shows up and sits down next to me. His name is Oruc. It means ‘fasting’ in Turkish, and being the clever man that I am, I asked him, “Oh, you must have been born during the month of Ramazan.” He said, ‘yes’ and off the conversation went.

Oruc, you see is a Turk. He was leaving that evening to return to Istanbul where he runs an architectural and engineer firm that does a lot of business throughout Iraq. My friend had shown me some of his work earlier, and I had been quite impressed. At this point, I began to realize why the Lord might have directed me to stop by.

I opened up my computer and began to share with Oruc our vision for our project in Soran. I showed him the layout of the land that the government gave to us and our first draft sketches of our community center and homes.

I told him that we were looking for an architect, and if he would like to accept the challenge, then we would consider his drawings along with a couple others. Because I knew that I would be traveling to Istanbul with the leaders of World Orphans 3-4 weeks later, I thought how convenient this encounter just might have been.

Pulling the flash drive out of my computer, I easily transferred all the documents and photos that Oruc would need to begin working on the project. We quickly exchanged phone numbers and before I knew it, our plans were moving forward more swiftly than I could have imagined.

Go God!

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.