Scott Elliot introduced last weeks Speaker – Rev Charles Finnie who has for
the past 22 years been Minister at Hawick Burnfoot Parish Church. He spoke about
his two visits to the Lebanon in recent years. On the first occasion he was part
of a team of six, at the invitation of a friend who had met the Pastor of the
Church of God in Beirut. The Pastor had asked for help to disciple people in the
Christian Faith. Other Churches in Europe and America also support the people in
Beirut.
People in Beirut have a different understanding of Church compared to our
country. The Church in Beirut has three floors – on a typical Sunday morning,
the top floor which holds 1,000 people is filled. In the afternoon the Nigerian
Church meets from 12 noon to 4pm, and in the evening 500 Ethiopian women gather,
with their men meeting on a week night. The middle floor has a School, together
with six rooms where the group stayed. The rooms also house one or two refugee
families needing food, clothing and looking after. Lebanon with a population of
5,000,000 takes in a maximum of 2,000,000 refugees from Syria. The Church goes
down into the refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley to do work with mums and
children. Other large refugee families, living in overcrowded conditions without
much privacy, come to Church for washing, cooking and food.
The team went to teach certain aspects of the Christian Faith, normally in
two hour seminars.
Charles then talked about the Lebanon – which could be quite lovely in the
eastern end which bordered the Mediterranean, but in other parts all you could
see was buildings. Beirut has no natural resources with all being imported. The
group were not allowed to go into certain parts of Beirut – flags on the
buildings at the end of the streets told them whether the area was Christian or
Hizbollah. The group were also not allowed to go into refugee camps in the Bekaa
Valley because the Lebanese government had decided to close them down and it was
not safe to go there. A general observation was of battle scarred buildings from
the 60’s and 70’s civil war, with poverty sitting side by side with great
wealth, in a country with no social security and no free health care
systems.
Seeing the poverty was the low point – the poverty of the people who had
fled from a war zone with nothing, to settle in a strange country, with no
extended family back up and no social network to give support. Whilst there are
International Aid Agencies present, these refugees still have huge problems.
Refugees from countries not bordering Lebanon have to go back to their country
of origin, or a country neighbouring where they are from, and apply through the
channels of that country. There are real difficulties for refugees from Iran and
Iraq who have left because of religious persecution (Sunni or Shia) - and
worse if you are a Christian.
The speaker then referred to the highlights – seeing peoples lives changed,
children in schools having food sponsored by Churches in Europe and America, the
Church in the ridiculous situation it finds itself but still surviving and
thriving. Peoples lives are changed because they are out of a war zone, or being
told they are going to Canada as refugees and where a group of families have
started a Church together, having found work and fitting in to their new
community.
Charles finished with personal stories of families having overcome some of
their health problems, including one young boy whose vital medication had been
funded by members of Burnfoot Church.
President Mairhi Trickett thanked the speaker most warmly for his excellent
talk. The President had earlier welcomed Dr Mark Phillips, a visitor from the
Langholm Club, on their “scatter” week.