Rebuilding the Next Generation — Healing Broken Hearts

Thank you very much for your support and prayers! The container arrived in Olive City April 28, and by May 6 it had cleared customs and the goods were stored in our warehouse.

The Broken Can Bring Healing to the Broken

‘And when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor 11:24)

Jesus broke His Body in order to heal our broken hearts. A broken Body can make me whole!

War has broken many families, injuring hearts and spirits. Their brokenness has made them victims. The pain and trouble make innocent victims angry, then bitter. Anger and bitterness work together as ‘optimum collaborators’ and create a vicious circle that causes more brokenness, more innocent victims … and the cycle goes on …

Nexus Center in Tree City is made up of workers with broken hearts — refugees with no home to return to. When we first came to know them, they had just recently lost everything. They were a group of completely broken people. But after they found Jesus, their lives were transformed. Even today, their brokenness and hurt are not totally healed, but the positive truth about them is that they are forgetting their brokenness as they go and bring comfort to those who are more broken-hearted than they!

The Olive City of today is probably the quietest and most peaceful it has been since the civil war began.

As our group of six traveled from the southernmost part of Olive City, Damascus, to northernmost Aleppo, we passed through village after wasted village, small towns, and even cities — all without inhabitant, utterly destroyed by war. But after twelve years of civil war, although there are pockets where war is still going on, this is the quietest, most peaceful time since Olive City’s civil war started.

In H City, a local person told me that six months before, there wasn’t even one shop open in their area, “But now,” he said, “you see there are a dozen or so different kinds of shops open doing business.”

I used to think the wounds of war would eventually heal and life would start going back to normal. But the wounds and the pain are going to need more than a little bit of time. One reason it’s going to take longer is that every day people see piles of rubble and all the buildings ruined by the war, and they are continually reminded of lost homes and family members. When will they be able to forget this horrible past? The shadow of war has not yet left this land.

The parents brought a four-year-old girl to us, asking us to pray for her. She’d experienced the recent earthquakes and had become so terrified that she had stopped speaking normally, even to the point of not speaking at all.

The main reason we had come to Olive City was to visit our family in Christ who had fled from disaster years before and gone to Tree City. We’d spent years there in Tree City with them, helping them with mental, physical, and spiritual problems. They’d received Christ as personal Savior and been baptized into Christ; but when they returned to their hometown in Olive City a few years ago, we didn’t know if their faith would survive whether they would continue to trust in Christ.

It took just three years for Jesus to change the world … only three years …

Hamoude was one of the members of the young people’s discipleship group in Nexus Center. At the time he came to the Center, he was just 12. (Now he’s 18.) At that time he couldn’t read or write, didn’t know English, and was a shy, introverted young person…

The three years he spent in Nexus Center were the turning point of Hamoude’s life: they gave him direction for the future. In those three short years, he learned to read and write Arabic, speak English, and studied the Bible. His life was completely changed – God ignited his dreams — we know that in Him, nothing is impossible!

Three years ago he returned with his family to Aleppo to fulfill his dreams and continue his studies.

“Excuses are lies wrapped in reasons.” — this was one thing Hamoude said while sharing with us.

– Hamoude is a wonderful testimony for the Lord in Aleppo and has become an inspiration to many young people there.

– His schoolteacher is amazed at his English……

– He works as an apprentice at an auto repair shop to help pay his tuition costs.

– He still stays in touch with the team at Nexus Center in Tree City — we are one family in Christ!

– He is on fire for the Lord, reading the Bible, studying God’s Word, and sharing the Gospel with others.

– Nexus’ team is still caring for him, staying in touch with Olive City and Hamoude, staying aware of what is happenings in their lives, praying for them.

– Hamoude has decided to attend university. He wants to be a doctor.

Olive City is still a nation at war,

so transporting relief goods inside the country requires official written approval from the government. Also, there are many, many checkpoints on public roads where military personnel are looking for the chance to extract bribes. In order that the goods arrive safely in the hands of disaster victims, we still need everyone to keep praying!

On May 12, Nexus Center in Tree City sent its first mission team to Olive City! Some of the seed we had sowed in Tree City fell on good ground, and it has sprouted and started growing! All the difficulties these young believers experienced didn’t discouraged their faith; rather they helped them understand the Gospel’s benefits even better! In the past, Nexus Center helped them and they received Christ. Now they’ve said we should establish another Nexus Center to help the broken people there in Olive City — people hurt by the war — because all the hard things in life don’t affect the Gospel’s power! Halleluiah! Nexus Center in Olive City will soon be set up — God is answering your prayers! God’s Kingdom is expanding!

Nexus Mission plans to send a second container to Olive City. May our Heavenly Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen!

Sincerely,

Candy, Johnny, Olivia, and Nexus Mission

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