On the Run—Giving New Hope to Syrian Refugees

Ninety-nine percent of Syrian refugees are living in the dirt - wet dirt. On the crowded streets of neighboring Lebanon, more than a million people have taken refuge under cardboard boxes and torn-down billboards. For the past 18 months, Saddleback has mobilized PEACE relief teams to meet the most urgent needs and share the love of Christ with those living in refugee camps.

The three-year-old civil war in Syria is an ongoing crisis of destruction and desertion. In the last year alone, 1,213 Syrian Christians were killed for their faith and the numbers keep growing. Now, a quarter of the Lebanese population consists of refugees living in the city of Beirut or along the Syrian-Lebanese border in “pop-up” camps they build themselves. Michele Haddad is one of the relief team leaders who sees first-hand how their living conditions go from bad to worse.  “People cross the border and use whatever materials they can find to build shelter,” she says. “It’s devastating to see people living this way.”

Everyday survival is an unknown for the refugees as they struggle to meet their basic needs. Without clean water, they resort to drinking the runoff from nearby fields. The majority of them are women and children who have lost fathers, husbands, and brothers to the war in Syria. In order to support themselves, women are forced into prostitution, and children as young as four become child laborers. Through donations, the relief teams at Saddleback provide funding for food, shelter, and Bibles in both Arabic and English. By sharing God’s Word with the refugees, they are filling the camps with hope that God can, and will provide for them.

The relief teams have even been welcomed into the homes of Christian refugees in the city and Muslim refugees in the camps. During the last PEACE trip to Lebanon, a group of Muslim refugees asked the team to share promises from the Bible with them and their families. “They ask us to pray for them because they know it is their only hope,” Michele says. And in Beirut, teams are building relationships with Muslim and Christian children by teaching them how to peacefully coexist through team-building games and activities. On their next trip, the relief team will come alongside their partners in the region and help them implement the children’s program they have developed for kids in the camps.

Beyond helping meet their physical needs, the PEACE relief teams are using God’s love to heal the spiritual and emotional wounds of a nation on the run. “Refugees know we can’t fix their problems, but they know that God loves them and cares for them,” Michele says. The teams originally set off on their trips with the goal of imparting God’s blessings on the refugees. In the end, it was the refugees who gave back an even greater blessing. While these resilient people were struggling for basic needs, they thanked the teams with hot cups of tea and coffee—a cultural custom symbolic of friendship and hospitality.

PEACE Relief teams will continue bringing food, shelter, and hope to the refugees as they take their fourth trip to Lebanon later this year. You can be part of what the PEACE Relief teams are doing for Syria and around the world by praying for teams on the ground, giving to relief efforts, and going on a PEACE Relief trip.

For more information on how you can PRAY, GIVE, and GO, contact relief@saddleback.com.