What
will you do with your summer?
By Jonathan Miles
Dear friends,
When I last updated you, I was waiting in Amman, Jordan for visas to enter Israel with four-year-old Mustafa (pictured above), and 15-year-old Janan, the two Iraqi children who came out with me from the Baghdad airport after I flew in with Thafir’s parents.
Shevet Achim has rented an apartment in Amman, where for three nights I attempted to host Janan and mother, and Mustafa and grandmother. It was a challenge! These families have probably never had a male serve them anything in their lives, much less a foreigner. So each time I offered them something to eat, I was politely told, “No, we’re not hungry.” And only on our second day did I realize I had not given them any sheets for their beds. I phoned my wife Michelle in the US to tell her that her gift of hospitality is sorely missed. Finally for the last two nights of our wait they went to stay with our friend Lisa and her baby girl Michaela. Lisa’s husband was conveniently away in Baghdad, so at last everyone could relax and open up.
Early Tuesday morning we were able to leave by taxi for Israel. Things
went smoothly at the border crossing, and I was blessed to realize that
people on both sides are getting used to the idea of Iraqis coming to
Israel. At the hospital Mustafa fit in right away and began playing actively
with other children. But echocardiography and then catheterization revealed
his heart condition is much more difficult than first thought. The artery
to his left lung is missing, so he is living off one lung. Surgery, if
attempted at all, is high-risk and the hospitalization could be lengthy,
just what the doctors in Israel did not want after their trials with Bayan
and Thafir. But rather than turn Mustafa away, they are sending his data
to Germany and hoping to refer him to a center there.
Janan and her mother struggled with fear. Even before arriving at the
hospital, I heard many times the proposal that “we go back to Iraq.”
The first night in Israel we stayed at a children’s home near the
hospital along with a large group of children from African countries.
Janan wouldn’t enter the home until all the others had gone to sleep,
and even then she sat up all night for fear, she said, that she would
be attacked.
But Janan’s medical exams were in fact encouraging. She is very weak and blue, and doctors judge that her long-neglected condition would likely take her life within the next year if untreated; but with surgery they believe her life can be saved and in fact dramatically changed. They’ve spoken with her of the hope that she can marry and have children, something Janan (who has practically never been outside of her home) could scarcely have dreamed of. Her heart condition is part of a syndrome that has also left her with a severely deformed left ear, and we’ll need to look into options for restorative surgery in order to complete this touch of God’s grace on her life.
I hope you can sense what a life-changing experience it is for us to be messengers of God’s love into life situations that seemed to be hopeless. During the summer months we have invitations for up to 15 Iraqi children to travel to the US for donated surgeries, and God willing we could see that many travel to Israel as well. Each of these families will need someone to walk with them through the process I’ve just described. How will you invest your summer vacation this year? With support and guidance from local Christians, you could fly into the Baghdad airport and bring out a child and mother.
A minimum of two week’s time is required, as well as finance, not only for personal air travel to the region (approximately $1500) but also to fly child and mother to the US (approximately $2000) or to help underwrite surgery in Israel ($2500).
I do hope that many will consider this seriously. The opportunity is so great that only a collective effort of the body of Christ can effectively respond. Please write to me for further details.
“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works” (Hebrews 10:24).
Jonathan Miles
Coordinator
Shevet Achim/Brothers Together
www.shevet.org
