My Hope

  Finding community with other Horizons' staff at a game night. Fitting in It’s hard to believe that we’ve now been in Lebanon 3 months.    Most days it doesn’t feel like we’ve been away that long.    We still feel very much like newcomers, both in the neighborhood and as part of Horizons.    Lebanon has churches, though not many when compared to the population.    There are believers here reaching out to those who have never heard the gospel, but the laborers are few.    Still, I wondered, where will we fit, what will be our role.   How will God use us as we cross both language and cultural barriers? And yet, God has already given us glimpses of ways we can come alongside those already here.    There are gifts and strengths we have that compliment the gifts and strengths of others.    He keeps reminding me, we are here by His design- and His plans are perfect! Today I listened to a woman share the ways that...

  Old Brain Made New! Arabic makes my brain hurt on a daily basis.    It’s hard thinking about everything in the masculine, feminine or plural.    I’ve (almost) gotten used to reading from right to left and the different forms the letters take depending on where they’re located in the word.      It’s tricky and complicated working between different dialects since we’re living in Lebanon but ministering to Syrians and while most words are the same, many are not.      It’s also complicated working between formal Arabic and dialects.    Formal Arabic is used in most written texts, particularly religious writings, but is not spoken by the general public.    Just imagine that everything was written in the style of the King James Bible (or older) but spoken as we do now.    I tell you this not to complain, but rather to give a glimpse into why Arabic is considered one of the hardest languages for native Engli...

Our neighborhood is different than most in Lebanon.    Generally speaking in Lebanon neighborhoods classify people…by faith, socio-economic levels, and cultural backgrounds or ethnicities.    Ours classifies too, but only by socioeconomic level.    Unlike most, we are surrounded by Muslims and Christians, both orthodox and evangelical.    We live on the outskirts, in a building that would probably be classified as gentrification.     We’ve been told that 80% of our neighborhood was foreign born, primarily moving in as refugees.      The buildings bear the marks of the civil war decades ago.    Other areas around Beirut were hard hit too, but many of them have been rebuilt.    Nabaa hasn’t had that luxury.    The walls bear the marks of bombs long gone with no repairs in sight.     It isn’t just war that has quickly aged the area.    The winds blowing through have ...

  Do you ever have those moments where you walk away and realize what you actually should have said to someone?    I’m not even talking about a quick comeback.    Just the words that would have gotten your message across clearly.     That is how it has felt with language learning.    I walk away from people and then it dawns on me what they’ve said to me or how I could have responded.    I know with time the words will flow more naturally, but for now, if the words are ordered differently than I’m used to hearing them, it throws me.    (Conjugation is something even more difficult). Sadly, it isn’t just with Arabic either though. We went to a New Year’s party at the pastor’s house and played a game.    They wanted to include us, so someone offered to translate so we could give clues…. And I still froze.    (Granted, there’s a good chance I would’ve frozen in the States too, but I especially felt li...

There’s are some trees down that we can’t get ourselves and we were waiting to talk to the insurance adjuster to see what would be covered. I asked the girls if they knew what insurance was… Hannah replied, “Yes, it’s that bill you pay every month.” Most times it feels like nothing more than another bill to pay. But when you need it, you’re thankful you’ve been paying into it every month. I was talking to a friend of mine about some of the destruction and devastation at Mexico Beach. She shared that from some of what she’s heard there are lots of people who didn’t have the right type of insurance. They’ve been paying the bill every month, but their loss won’t be covered. I get it. If your house has been around for years, you think it’s withstood the test of time. Confession: I also sometimes agree to the terms and conditions of things without always reading the fine print. I don’t know how insurance can cover the losses of farmers with orchards or timbers and it’s more tha...

  Here's the oak that fell right next to the house.  You can see the size of the roots compared to Victoria.   Crisis We feel like over the past week and a half we’ve had a very small glimpse into what so many people experience worldwide on a daily basis.    Except we didn’t.    As we sat inside with the winds whirling around we jumped up every time we heard a loud crash to see where the next tree had fallen… but we didn’t fear bombs leaving a shell of our home.    We spent a week trying to make things work with limited electricity… but we still had plenty of food in the pantry and a generator to run the fridge.    We had to ration water… but only for flushing the toilets.    We walked out the next day to survey the damage… but overall as powerful as the storm was, lives were spared.      I got a text after the storm passed asking if we could take a package to Lebanon and someone would try to get it over to ...

  We’re getting really close to being able to buy tickets and head over!!!    As our time here is quickly coming to a close, we’ve been spending time with friends and family.    The girls and I went on a trip with my parents to see my brother and sister-in-law recently and I’m thankful we got to see them and other friends and family along the way.     On our way back, we were planning on stopping at a park outside to break up the trip.    When the weather forecasted storms and our windshield wipers confirmed them, we decided to change our plans.    The girls still needed a break from the car and we thought the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham might be the place to go.    It brought me both hope and heartbreak.      This monument was for the children's march after which thousands of children were thrown in jail. I watched more of my girls’ innocence chipped away as we went through the exhibits.  ...