An Update from Lebanon
NAMES HAVE BEEN KEPT ANONYMOUS FOR SECURITY REASONS. ORIGINALLY SENT IN APRIL SO THE BABY NEWS IS A LITTLE OUT OF DATE.
Dear brothers and sisters,
Blessings and greetings to you once again from Lebanon!! We hope you are doing well and thank you so much for standing with us in prayer over the last couple of months. We have felt very loved and supported!
Ok, here’s our latest news, and I’ll start with baby news because I know that’s what you most want to hear about!
Three becomes four!
In just over a week we will be receiving our baby daughter. Woohoo!! Can she really be arriving so quickly? Yes she can! In eleven days T is scheduled to have her C-section delivery at a local hospital in Beirut. That day marks 38 weeks of pregnancy and also happens to be my birthday. Wow what a birthday gift!!! We are having regular check ups with our doctor and both baby and mummy are doing very well. T’s ever-expanding womb is rather imposing but she holds it with elegance and panache! Our son is very excited to see baby sister. We gave him ‘new baby’ stories from the Berenstain Bears and Little Critter series, which hopefully have helped him prepare for being a big brother. Bless him! We have just about settled on a name, and have decided that her first name will be English but her middle name will be Arabic, in honour of the country and culture that God has led us to serve Him in.
A Home Called Beirut
Since mid-January we have been settling into our new abode and are very happy here, praise God! Yes, we have made the big move! A dream of many years, and finally we are living in the city we have worked and prayed towards. By God’s grace we have rented out a three-bedroom apartment in a quaint and quirky neighbourhood in central Beirut. It happens to be a place that R did a lot of ministry in after the huge explosion of 2020. The flat is on the sixth floor and the first day we arrived the power shut off just as we were going up in the lift. So, we needed two of our new neighbours to open the outer door and lower a step ladder down so we could climb out. Not the way we’d planned to take up residency but a great chance to get to know some of the building’s fellow residents! Our three-year old took the whole incident very much in his stride – little trooper! Two months on and we have been able to furnish the flat and are feeling very comfortable here.
Reaching Out
Alongside settling in, we are starting local ministry here and have been officially commissioned as a new location within our organization. Praise God we have had some lovely opportunities already since our arrival. We are getting to know all the local churches and R has been blessed with several teaching opportunities in them and also the local schools. At the church we attend we are both helping pioneer a new children and youth ministry. We are doing follow up with people R met and ministered to after the Beirut explosion and are very blessed by how much gratitude they continue to express for the help we gave them. Aside from our flat, we have rented another flat directly above us which we hope to use for ministry activities and hosting outreach teams.
We have a dozen neighbours in the building and we have been visiting them one by one to get to know them and hopefully witness to them in good time. T continues with her Arabic study, which provides her with a good excuse to visit people and practice with them. She has also become part of a mums’ prayer and outreach group linked to our son’s school, as well as continuing to serve once a week at an educational centre in the mountains east of Beirut.
The Biggest Gainer!
After six months of being on his special diet, R’s weight is now 64 kilos and he is only three kilos away from reaching his ideal. Gaining weight is harder than you think! Overcoming R’s weight loss (due to food intolerances) has been a long journey with many ups and downs; but thankfully we have seen real progress. He has lost five kilos of ‘bad weight’, i.e. waste material from his intestines, and gained eleven kilos of good weight (healthy fats and muscle tissue) - a net change of 16 kilos. It’s a slightly funny situation with him weighing himself every day and getting very enthused if he’s gained weight; and equally deflated if he has lost it. He has had to be very disciplined in sticking to the diet, and now thankfully he is slowly being able to reintroduce some of the things he was intolerant to until now.
Life in a Crazy Place
We love this country very much and living here certainly does have its challenges and quirks. Here’s just one of them – electricity. So we have electricity about 11 hours each day, cut into four blocks: 6-7am, 9-11am, 2.15-3.15pm and 5.30pm til midnight. This all comes from a privately owned neighbourhood generator which charges exorbitant fees for a very unreliable service. As we live on the 6th floor and T is heavily pregnant, the biggest effect this has on life is with the lift / elevator. You need to time when you leave and arrive at the house to see if you can use the lift. If you leave or arrive near the cut off time you have to decide if you want to risk taking the lift and possibly getting stuck, then hoping one of the neighbours is around to get you out. Our son’s school finishes at 3pm and it’s a 12-minute drive from there to our house – so each day is a race to make the lift. About two-thirds of the time we make it, and only once have we got stuck – which our boy found very funny! When the lift is out we get lots of exercise on the stairs – T included! The worst is when you’re in a rush and you come down all the stairs only to reach the car and realise you left the keys in the flat. Arrggghh!!! Oh and did I mention you’re all welcome to come visit us any time and stay in the 7th floor flat! haha. Please note this is humorous anecdote and not complaint. Having electricity at all is a huge blessing when one considers what people in Ukraine and elsewhere are going through. Also due to the economic crisis, many people here can’t even afford a generator and rely on the 1-2 hours daily of state electricity as their only power supply.
And now for some prayer…
Please do pray for:
The safe arrival of our baby and our adjustment to life as four.
And thank God for:
The renewal of both our residencies and T getting her Lebanese driving licence! Woohoo!!
Lots of love and hugs and blessings to you all! God be with you.
R and T