Loved Not Their Lives
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from Jerusalem in the Lord Jesus.
Brian, Erich, and I are just back from a trip into Iraq which was blessed in many regards. Firstly I am thankful that the three of us are able to return to our families. Drivers on the Amman-Baghdad route fly along at 100 mph, and on the trip out our driver missed a curve at 3:30 a.m. and we went off the road, spinning around for quite a while but not overturning. Considerable damage was done to the exterior of the car, but none of us were harmed. Even a flying teacup only grazed my forehead. Brian's wife Shoshi was awakened in Jerusalem about an hour before this happened with a feeling of anxiety, and called on our US office manager Donna (the only other one of our staff awake at that hour) to pray with her for our safety.
And we are all sobered by the news that at the same time we were in Iraq four Southern Baptist workers were killed there by gunfire directed at their vehicle. They too are blessed, to be counted among those who loved not their own lives unto death (Revelation 12:11). They have given the region a picture of what true martyrdom is, and theirs is not the last blood that will be shed if the church is serious about taking Jesus into the Muslim world.
Our goal was to prepare for more Iraqi children to come into Israel for heart surgeries. The father of Bayan, the first Iraqi baby to come to Israel, is helping to organize a group of children from his region. He took us to the city of Tos, where Brian's decision to have a haircut nearly turned the town upside down. Here's an excerpt from his narrative:
Having heard that the barbershop was a social gathering in Iraq, I was keen on experiencing it. We did. While the young barber was clipping away, in appeared a father with his seven year-old boy with clubbed fingers due to a hole in his heart. They had heard a doctor was in town. A few minutes later a young father brought his two-year old daughter Fatima with multiple complex heart defects (pictured). Her eyes seemed older and to speak of pain. Another child was brought and the barber shop was full of people, talking, hoping, for healing.
Afterwards, we went in search of an internet connection and the word continued to spread. Within a few minutes of arriving, more children and parents crowded the room in which we were waiting. For more than two hours, we were visited by all sorts of cases requiring treatment. And by the time we left late at night, more than a dozen children with their parents had come by hoping for medical treatment and healing! Their hope and faith was a testimony of their desire for physical wholeness. How a haircut afforded the opportunity for hopeful medical healing surprised us all.
The next day in Baghdad Brian found great favor at the Iraqi passports office, resulting in the unprecedented issuing of 26 travel documents in one day for these children and their parents. At the same time Erich and I delivered to the heart center in Baghdad a system which will allow doctors to post children's echocardiograms directly to the Internet. This should allow doctors at donor hospitals all over the world immediate access to the information they need before inviting a child for surgery. A company called icardiogram.com donated the software, server and accessories, and we were blessed to give up the beautiful Macintosh laptop which I used to edit the video about Bayan's journey to Israel. We’re trusting God to provide a replacement when we need to be video capable again.
Almost unbelievably, just as we were ready to leave the hospital another newborn came through the door with transposition of the great arteries. This is the condition we encountered on each of our last two trips to Iraq, which led to the emergency evacuations of first Bayan and then Thafir to Israel. This time it was a one-month-old boy named Ali. We correctly surmised that our hospital partners in Israel would not be ready to accept another complex transposition after the death of Bayan and while still treating Thafir. But here the recent opening to heart centers in India came into play; as I write Ali and his mother are in the air en route to Chennai for a donated surgery.
Tomorrow I am due to fly back to the US, stopping at a conference of international heart organizations in Washington DC to share about our opportunities to help Iraqi children. I am thankful for the prayer which is behind us as these events unfold; daily I realize that only God's grace is making things work. We do not yet have funds on hand to cover either my travel to the US or the flight of Ali and his mother to India, which together total $1995. If any are able to participate in this, I'd be grateful for an e-mail so I can assure our trusting travel agent that help is indeed on the way.
With thanks,
Jonathan Miles
Shevet Achim
www.shevet.org
