February 2005
Baghdad, Iraq

Dear Friends in Christ:

Greetings from Baghdad at the beginning of Lent. I arrived here last Saturday to visit our churches and to end the current phase of the Middle East Council of Churches’ programs in Iraq. Our work will need to be lower-key in the immediate future due to the insecure security situation and a shortage of funds.

On Sunday, I worshiped with the Presbyertian Church of Baghdad where I brought greetings of solidarity and support from our sister Presbyterian churches outside of Iraq. The church that week was restarting their activities after having been put on hold for the last 3 months due to the security situation. The programs of woman’s gatherings, Sunday school and prayer groups at the Church are now back re-organizing themselves; it’s a good sign. However good this sign is, there are still many signs of despair mixed with those of hope. I was reminded of the reading for the first day of Lent, this text being Joel 2:12, “…even though there is this despair, there is hope for a better future.”

While people were waiting for the election results, some people were optimistic and others were not. I was reminded of the passage from Isaiah 58:8 about how light will shine again and that the glory of the Lord will come again, and that His hope will spread again among his people. One Catholic priest said to me, “Give us 3 to 4 months and we will have peace.” A bit later, a taxi driver said to me, “It’s over, no hope, especially for the Christians. I would have left the country yesterday if there was a slight hope that I could make it in a country outside.”

Most of the Christians in Iraq are Catholic, so they all celebrate the western calendar. This means that most of the Christians in Iraq have begun to observe Lent. For Christians, especially in this part of the world, the Lent season is a time of fasting, repentance, and preparing one’s self to understand the suffering and the resurrection of Christ. Suddenly, the idea of resurrection truly hit me; there is no resurrection without suffering. It became obvious to me, that this was the message I could share with my sisters and brothers in Christ here in Iraq, and that this was the reason why I was here with them at this point in time.

One basic concern for all of the Christians not only in Iraq, but in all of the Middle East, is that there will one day be no more Christians left here. It is believed that they are not only the custodian of the sacred places for others to visit, but a living church which represents and demonstrates the faith and the heritage of Christianity.

The Christians here believe that they should be supported by other Christians from all around the world so as to maintain the Christian presence and witness in the birth place of our faith.

Another big concern for Christian communities in Iraq is the new generation of children who are at risk in this vulnerable situation. The churches and families are trying to give alternatives to the violence, lack of security and ambiguity of the future. But all they hear around them are car bombs, shooting and talk of the troubling situation in which they live. They need to have and be involved in positive alternatives. They only dream of a peaceful quiet life, but they risk their lives as they go to school everyday or have a short period of play with their friends. These children often don’t even have the ability to watch television, because of the frequent outages of the electricity.

In the midst of all of this, the MECC has continued its relief programs in Iraq and Jordan. In Iraq, during the last three months, three programs have been implemented:

• Assisting 1,000 displaced families from Falluja with relief items and hygiene supplies.
• Providing school kits to 1,000 child aged 5-15 years.
• Providing supplementary food to four hospitals in Baghdad.

As for Jordan, the MECC has continued to provide food parcels and sanitary napkins on a monthly basis to the two refugee camps located on the Jordanian/Iraqi border. These camps are for those who fled the Iraqi war during March 2003. The first camp is currently hosting 150 Palestinians who lived in Iraq until the outbreak of war. The second camp is currently hosting 750 Iranian Kurds. The MECC has also distributed winter clothes for children aged between 1 and 18 years old during the coldest weather this past January.

Jordan has received the above-mentioned refugees, and many more that have already left the camps, in a re-settlement program. These people were thinking that they would only stay for a period of a few months, but unfortunately, they are now stuck as no country has accepted them. Due to this reasoning, and the harsh weather conditions of the desert, the MECC has continued to support them by providing their daily bread.

Any support that you may be able to offer to the MECC ministries in Iraq and Jordan would be highly appreciated in this current difficult time. If any further information is wanted, we are always happy to provide whatever we can.

My prayer to you, as you go through this season of Lent, is to think of the suffering of the Iraqis and to pray for their resurrection as a people and as a society. Re- read with me and pray over the text of Isaiah, 58:12 for our sisters and brothers in Iraq, both Christian and Muslim.

Rev. Nuhad Tomeh

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 167