Dear friends,
Amina* was desperate, alone, and vulnerable. Sharing a tiny Beirut apartment with several other families and separated from a husband searching for work in Turkey, she needed a safe place to leave her child while she looked for work. Somehow, she found the GROW Center, a preschool designed for the children of the most desperate – single mothers, migrant domestic workers, and refugees.
The GROW Center employs local Christian women who boldly exhibit the love of Christ. The Center’s teachers use Bible stories, Christian songs, and prayer time to share Christ and His love. While students develop cognitively, socially, and spiritually, parents receive positive mentoring from a social worker and staff, and the whole family receives quality health care and training from a nurse. Since the Center is staffed by local Christian women (some of them Syrian refugees themselves), it’s also training women how to run a business in their own country.
When Amina arrived and told her story she was overjoyed to hear that yes, there was a spot for her daughter in the two-year-old class. And then the Coordinator asked to pray for Amina in the name of Jesus Christ – for a job, an apartment of her own, and a job for her husband in Beirut, so they could be a family again. Amina, a Muslim, felt the love of Christ as she listened intently to the prayer. Several months later, she came back into the Coordinator’s office, beaming, to share the good news: a job for her, a job for her husband, and an apartment for the family! The power of answered prayer brought her husband to the Center later, where he too received prayer in Jesus’ name.
The GROW Center’s founder, Dr. Robert Hamd of EPC World Outreach, says Amina’s story shows how the Center’s early childhood development programs and adult mentoring programs make a huge gospel impact on the Syrian refugees, migrant workers, and underserved Lebanese communities of Beirut.
Our vision is to replicate GROW Centers in other underserved areas of Lebanon; we believe investing in early childhood development and adult mentoring makes good missional sense. If you would like to learn more about Philemon Project’s GROW Center ministry, check out www.thephilemonproject.org or email philemonproject@me.com.
*Amina’s name changed to protect identity
Written in coordination with Dr. Robert Hamd
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