A wonderful and distinctive thing which happened this month was that our prayers were answered, and the church is now opened daily. With the presence of the pastor and me helping in the service, we now have a daily morning prayer time in the church to serve the region, to spiritually pursue the new believers, and to respond to anyone who is in need for a help or an advice. This way, we can easily access the church and be with people to pray together.
In this month, I had a meeting in the office of Dr. Andrew with brother Joe and sister Hanan, to make the arrangements to visit 100 Syrian families in our region. I wrote a list of the families living in the church area, and in association with brothers from England, we will visit 20 Syrian families to provide them with physical assistance and clothes. We thank God for the time he gave us to invest with these thirsty families for love, mercy, and compassion. I had already contacted these families to coordinate with them in order to meet the team in the specified days in which they will arrive to Jordan.
After the arrival of the team, we made plans for the program of the visits. We started with a prayer service from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. in the church, followed by visits to the Syrian families, where we divided ourselves into two teams to accomplish this task. In addition, I contacted two of the Syrian brothers to be with us during the visits because of their acquaintance with some of these families. Those who participated in these visits were: Dr. Andrew and his wife, Brother Joe, sister Hanan, and me, Sharif. These visits were very productive in delivering the message of Christ’s love.
We listened to these families explain their reason for fleeing their country, the depth of their suffering, and their true needs. The duration of each family visit was about half an hour. They were also informed that the goals of the team visits were the following: to show them the message of love, to pray for them, and to help them. After the completion of these visits, we will continue to communicate with them through the team that is located in Jordan.
These families felt an unusual joy because of the team visit, our listening to them, and our sitting and talking to them. Through these visits, we also felt that Christ’s message has reached them and that they had experienced His love to them.
One of the strange stories this month was about a person from a Muslim background. I had visited him three months ago and while we were providing his family some help, we also prayed for him and his home. After a certain period after this visit, we went again to visit him and ask him if he needs any help. He told me: “Brother Sharif, I want to see you and talk to you about a very important issue that occured during your previous visit to my house. My eyes were full of tears during your prayer and when you invoked blessing upon me, I felt an unexpected thing. I felt the touch of love, mercy, and compassion which I had not seen before, and the presence of light surrounding me, and I want to know the reason for these feelings.”
We sat down and started to talk about the message of salvation and the Great Commission: Jesus said, “Go to the whole world, teach them, and baptize them.” He was so happy and now I am following his spiritual needs because he is longing to know about the Lord Jesus and his atoning death on the cross. I explained to him that by accepting Jesus as the savior to his life, he shall have eternal life after death, and be reconcile with God where there will be no power of sin in his life. After that, he told me: “I want to be with you, helping you and the team in your visits to the Syrian families to encourage them and to deliver this message of love.” He quit his job for one week in spite of his vital need for this work to support his family. Both he and his friend joined us for one week and when I asked him how he will manage this matter, he told me that he will pray to God to help him. I also prayed to solve this issue and he and his friend have committed to help us for a whole week. Both of them were very happy and told me that they felt we are one family in Jesus’ name for the love he was given by the team.
After the travel of the team, he was very sad and told me: “Brother Sharif, I want to be with you any time you want to visit these families for follow up and support, because there are some of the families who had contacted me to visit them.” He also told me that it was strange to them when brothers from different churches in England visited these families to help them and that they left their homes and families to provide assistance to others.