Dio non allontana

What remains is hope 

We are so sorry for not having shared some of our last and very beautiful experiences in Lebanon with you! But strangely, although our weeks in Lebanon have changed our lives, our very lives back home took us with them quite quickly on our return back to Europe, and although we have shared all our beautiful experiences to a lot of friends and family here, we did not find the time to share some final thoughts about our stay with you. So, we are very sorry for this long delay, but even more happy to live through some of our beautiful experiences again together with you.

Before saying thank you at the end, we would like to dedicate the first part of our last post on this blog to describe our last days in Lebanon and some of their beautiful moments, as well as a lot of photos that we have not managed to show you earlier.

Here you go - enjoy!

Maghdouché: Our home

Some more impressions from our home village, Maghdouche 

The village church from outside 

Everything that remains from a former Protestant church in the village 

On a tour through the village with our friends from the students' pastoral 

The Basilica of Maghdouche, close to the grotto where - according to a legend - Mary waited for Jesus preaching to the people of Saida (Sidon) and Sour (Tyrus). 

Ain al Hilweh: So close and so far

The Palestinian refugee camp Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's biggest camp: This entrance is only 500 meters away from our home, but we do not know how people live there, how they feel. 

Already when founded in the 1940s, it hardly provided enough space for everybody. How must it be now, when - according to current estimations - around 400,000 people live here? 

Very regularly, there are armed fights in the camp: This is the view out of our window during the violence in our third week in Lebanon. 

Fratelli: A feast for peace

We cannot say goodbye to you without describing our last week in the Fratelli summer school.

Lots of activities with the children 

"Catalan football" 

Our friend Eli, one of the teachers of the Fratelli summer school, during a musical activity with the children 

Florian and a small number of his fans

Who is my friend? 

Preparing breakfast for 250 children 

An exemplary home of our children and their families. 

Next to the wonderful teachers, volunteers, and other helpers of the Fratelli school, we were blessed to get to know some more very inspiring people. This priest has been living in Syria and Lebanon for many years and knows the region extremely well. 

One evening during that week, we three realised that actually, after having had lots of sharings about various different values with the children, knowing them already a little bit better, having spent hours with them, we did not know almost anything about the children's background and life circumstances, and nothing at all about their stories.

On that evening, we had come to the conclusion that maybe, this was even very helpful for the contact between us and the children - how would we have approached them differently if we had known about their experiences and their backgrounds? Wouldn't we have been prejudiced? Wasn't it good they could interact, play, speak with someone who didn't know their stories?

The next morning, as every other morning, we spoke about a value with our classes. Maybe you remember that throughout the month of August, we had spoken about love, friendship, respect, sustainability, and many other values.

This last week's value was peace. What an important though delicate topic for these wounded children!

We learned how to pronounce and write the word peace in different languages, the children explained us what peace means for them, we asked them why peace is important for them. On the summer school's last day, we danced and sang songs for peace.

In one of our classes, the children, their volunteers, and their teacher came to a sad conclusion: When violence wounds people, these people may sometimes try to cope with their understandable feelings of loss and pain by wounding somebody else who, in turn, may feel hurt and desperate, and may try to violate somebody new. All together, we realised that we can understand each of these persons' pain. But our incredible children also noticed that, if people continue wounding each other, peace will never be accomplished.

Suddenly, one boy raised his hand and asked if he could share something with us. Surprised, incapable to react, paralysed, and full of admiration for this courageous little boy, we then listened to him telling us the story of his family, his story of war. With an indescribable clarity, he explained us that his parental home had got bombed, that nobody knows where his uncle is. Soon, a girl stood up and told us her story as well. She had lost her entire family.

It was only after a number of testimonies of our beloved children, one more sad than the other, that we realised how much these children's longing for peace must be, and that we understood the magnitude of what they had said before: We can understand why people, wounded by others, want to hurt; but we know that new violence will not solve our problems and that peace is the bigger and brighter and better choice. Wouldn't these children have all the reasons to take revenge?

Instead, they demand justice and peace: Together, this class wrote a letter to all those who make war and to all those who destroy. Our children got all the ideas for its content on their own. All we did was to write down what they dictated us:

To all those who make war, to all those who destroy

We are the children of Syria and Lebanon.

We ask you to stop the war, because we want to live the childhood that you are stealing from us.

We want to go back to our country, play in the meadows there, wake up every morning by songs of birds and not by bombs' noises, we want to hunt butterflies and not be hunted by bombs. We want to see the beautiful landscapes of our country, not dead children in the streets. We want to smell flowers and not the smell of blood flooding our cities.

We want to rebuild our country, hand in hand.

Give us back the times in the past where there were peace, friendship, and love.

We have no words.

All we took home was hope. Hope for these wonderful children, for this beautiful country. And a hope that these children will keep their longing for peace until they are adults.

Merci, Fratelli! 

Merci ktir!

It is very hard to put into words what we have experienced in Lebanon during the four weeks we have spent there in August. The initial idea had been that we'd come to Lebanon to help in a social programme and, by this, maybe somehow try to live the gospel just by being close to people in need. But instead, above all, we became witnesses of an unbelievable amount of people who, indeed, do live the gospel day by day in their everyday life. We were so impressed by the commitment of the Fratelli brothers, the teachers, and the volunteers who spend all their time, energy and effort for the purpose of creating a place of love, peace, and joy for the Syrian refugee children whom they take care of. This program is so amazing and so important. There are no words to describe how impressed and touched we are by every single one's commitment, by how profoundly important it appears to be for the children of Saida and its surroundings, and by how much it gives to them. And when we tried to understand this power and magic present in Rhmeileh, as well as the little miracles happening there every day, these words of frère Roger came into our mind:

"I always wanted to take risks on me, chose the way which brings other people further, to live the gospel, to live Christ for the others. It is the word of the poor which often touches us the most. And I understood that if you want to go further in live, in the church, and in the community with Christ, it is so important to not avoid the big difficulties but to dive into what is indeed the hardest, and start a life of community right in the middle where the love is the center of all."

These words indeed accompanied us through all our way, especially while being with the children, and our time in Lebanon helped us to maybe understand these words' deeper meaning a little more. Probably and hopefully, this experience is going to have a remarkable impact on our lives and our decisions in the future.

We also have no words for the way the young people from the community JEC, Lebanon's students' pastoral, welcomed and accompanied us in Lebanon. The way you made us a part of your family and took care of us is just unbelievable.

Although it is already December now, it will probably still take months to really understand what we have experienced in your beautiful country.

And we can not describe how thankful we are - to all of you!

There is no day we do not think about you. And we love you!

We came to this country as pilgrims, and now we leave as friends.

Good luck, dearest Lebanon, and dearest friends!

Beirut on our last day all together.