The Merhebs
Life here is a real challenge, it is harder than Bangladesh but in a different way however, we hold onto the promises of God and the vision He gave us for this country.
At the school, we teach 5 different classes and there is about 30 students in each class, they are between the age of 14 and 17. We also do 2 chapels a week for about 250 different students for each chapel. 80% of the students are Muslims and the remaining are mostly catholic. There are a few born again believers in the school, and we face a lot of opposition, the most important is resistance and rejection to what we teach, the disrespect, mockery, discipline in classes. We know what provokes this kind of reaction, and we are aware it is not simply against us but against the truth and the Word of God and His son Jesus.
The vision the Lord gave us is to evangelize and train our converts, we are praying and believing. We have seen a building that can be really suitable for a training facility and dormitories. The building costs $ 300.000, which will meet an immediate need, a facility we can use. Please pray for this to come about.
We are also praying for the Lord to open up other doors for us in making contacts with other laborers in this area of this world, which is slowly happening. As Anne has told you we will be using the “Magdalena” movie as a tool to reach the Muslim women here and will seek to report out progress.
As for the family, Anne is slowly adjusting. She is taking Arabic and making some progress. Her team and I teach the classes at the school. Jonathan is doing excellent in class with friends... He has never been that motivated to learn either. He is more willing now to even learn French and begs Anne to read in French, after all his other work in Arabic and English is done. He also wants to learn music. Debora has a couple of good friends her age in her class, one of them is a missionary kid. She is also learning very well the Lebanese language and she is a very active girl. As for Rafaela she still cries every morning before going to school. She is very attached to her mom. It is a lot of change for her.
As you know we are in the process of buying an apartment. It is not very far from the school. It is a small apartment that has only two bedrooms but we can add a 3rd one to it later. We have to come up with a lot of finances in the next 18 months. We have borrowed some already, Anne’s father is helping us with a good amount and for the rest we have to trust God. We cannot get a bank loan since we are missionaries, so we are trusting God.
Winter has just started here and we had our first rains for the season. We have also been having a lot of criminal fires. People think that Syrians or Palestinians are doing it as revenge against Lebanon. Many Pine and oak forests, olive and citrus fields were burned to ashes.
Well, thank you again for your much needed support and prayers. We appreciate this a lot. Thanks and greet Church of the Good Shepherd for us.
We love you guys and be blessed.
