Something Urgent to Pray for

What do you do when you have 62 impoverished Iraqis, half of whom may be deathly ill, with non-refundable plane tickets, flying into Jordan when they have not yet received a visa to be there, and need to be allowed into the country in order to receive evaluation and treatment, which unless received could spell their death in mere days?

I’ll let you know Monday…

A More Casual Note

My best friends at the moment are (in this order more or less):

• A very accomplished 2,013 to 2,015-year-old Jewish Rabbi (proud to call him friend)
  
  
• A woman who shared the awkward gift and task of being 7,000 miles away and also being the one whom I happen to be in love with
  
  
• A mentally challenged middle-aged Arab Christian man
  
  
• An emaciated 17-year-old Kurdish young man
  
  
• Half a dozen conservative Muslim mothers
  

Newsletter 5-20-09 Available for Download

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Crossing Jordan

I spend a lot of time waiting in this work; anxiously is an adjective that can typically accompany it. Now is not a particularly anxious waiting, I am sitting at the Beit Shean border crossing waiting for our Iraq coordinator to come across with his wife and her family. I anticipate them being held up perhaps not for having an Iraqi with them but for Americans to be living in and/or traveling from Iraq. But, I am sitting at the other end of the border and can say with a sigh of relief that for once this isn’t my problem. So I'm sitting here, and too under the weather to study, so I will write.

I haven’t had time to blog or send a newsletter out (working on it) due in large part because my responsibilities have been amped up, due both to necessity as well as to, at least what I'm told, is a confidence in my abilities. A few, couple,… time flies, it’s hard to remember, weeks ago was a test of this, when, on my own, I escorted two of our Iraqi patients Rasan and Bruska, and their mothers across this same border and delivered them safely to our Shevet house in Kerak, Jordan. The ordeal began about 7am and ended at 7…8…9 at night when we arrived at the Kerak house and got everything unloaded.

“Bureaucratic nightmare” is a term that continually comes to mind when talking about getting across these borders. There are perhaps a dozen windows to deal with to get into the Israel border itself, then the Israel border, then at the Jordan side, then getting out of the Jordan border. Vehicle wise, after a two hour drive from Jerusalem to Beit Shean one must get permission to bring their vehicle into the border to unload luggage (a particularly obscene amount in this case because Sheilan, mother of Rasan, had been in Israel for nearly a full year), then must park their vehicle outside the border after again securing permission to take the vehicle out of the border into Israel.

From there we go through Israel customs, get the usual confused looks as to why a young American man is taking two Iraqi women and their children into Jordan. All our paperwork is in order though so they haven’t stopped us yet…even though some of the Iraqis visas are months overdue by the time they leave. Saying something to the effect of “they were in the hospital having open-heart surgery they couldn’t make it to the visas office” has sufficed so far.

Then all the luggage and people must be loaded onto a bus which travels perhaps 200 yards across the Jordan River and into the Jordan border. Everything must then be unloaded from the bus where the Jordan border customs nightmare begins; every bag x-rayed, opened, every passport examined, visas issues, etc. Once all that is finished one must take a taxi from the Jordan border about a quarter mile to where the Jordan ends. We had to take 3 taxis to fit all the luggage. From there we all piled into another taxi which then drives to Kerak. I haven’t even gotten to going the other way from Jordan back into Israel. An American with 4 Iraqis leaving Israel isn’t so bad, but coming in security is much tighter, and in my experience, involves some kind of interrogation, intimidation, even with all the paper work in order.

The scenery on the ride to Kerak was beautiful, passing through the rolling hills east of the Jordan which would have belonged to the tribe of Gad, then hugging the Dead Sea for its length, then climbing up through a parched gorge of sedimentary salt rock and potash which finally reached Kerak in what would have been Moabite country. Our taxi driver was an interesting character, a believer, very friendly and kind, made the ride very pleasant and interesting. On the long drive we listened to a sermon (English being translated into Arabic), he helped me work on my Arabic, and when we arrived at the Shevet house in Kerak he stayed for dinner. There is a pretty impressive Crusader castle in Kerak, but unfortunately I was too busy to go to it, maybe next time. I noticed driving on the way to Kerak and in the markets in Amman there is a communal atmosphere there that is worthy of envy. At dinner time, all the roads are lined with people picnicking, perhaps more so given that it was a Friday but this is the cultural norm.

The stay in Jordan from Friday until Monday was nearly nonstop work. After getting through the border Friday, Saturday was another four hour drive from Kerak to Amman to get Rasan, Bruska and their moms on a plane for Iraq. The details aren’t especially interesting. This was one of the more difficult goodbyes, Sheilan had been with us so long she was nearly promoted to staff, she was here when I first arrived and everyone has watched Rasan both be healed through his multiple surgeries and also grow and develop like the joy a father must have watching a son learn to recognize them, learn their first words, learn how to clap and hold your hand. Bruska was also a difficult goodbye. She was an emergency case that probably would have died if we waited even a day longer to bring her. She had surgery immediately and was put into a medically induced coma afterward. From the time she was released from the hospital until she got on the plane home to Iraq I was largely responsible for getting her to all her appointments and I spent a great deal of time playing with her and getting her to do her exercises to combat the cerebral palsy from which she now suffers likely due to the lack of oxygen to her brain because of her heart condition. We made all of her exercises into games and she would often begin doing them spontaneously whenever I came around because she enjoyed doing them with me so much. After doing the exercises for a few minutes she would be laughing hysterically and could keep going long after I was exhausted. I made sure to do them with her on Friday night one last time before she left. There was so much about her that tugged on my heart, it was difficult to see her go.

The rest of the weekend was spent running errands like buying live chickens in the market where I observed that every man selling his wares who saw a child walking past would pat them on the head and say hello, the communal love for children was pleasantly conspicuous. More errands, carrying and chasing our Jordan coordinators children around (easily the most exhausting), and dropping off a baby crib to a mother in one of the Amman slums; but there were a couple moments that were at least somewhat recuperative. I ate some delicious American style pizza, which you essentially cannot get in Israel because of kosher rules and a lack of American brands. Also, in the midst of running back and forth across Amman I was able to stop in one of their large Western malls for about 15 minutes to go to Starbucks. There are no Starbucks’ in Israel, so I got the largest coffee I could buy and relaxed just long enough to enjoy it.



At any rate, I successfully managed the entire process. Got them there and on their way to Iraq, and brought two new Iraqi children, Mohammed and Hamza, now in Jerusalem, here for heart surgeries.

Ala'a's Progress

Ala’a was a little girl I brought across from Israel to Jordan on her way home during the first week I was in Israel. We had to take her to the border by ambulance, and I wheeled her weak little body through the border in a wheelchair, all the while hooked up to an oxygen tank I had jury-rigged to her chair. I remember especially carrying the 75lb oxygen generator machine through the border which she would need in Iraq, and having it inspected by every supervisor and their supervisor to make sure it wasn’t a bomb. Special arrangements had to be made with the airline for the plane from Jordan to Iraq because they feared liability if she died on the flight. I avoided asking the other staff much about her because from the look of her she was a failed case. One of the children on whom the surgery hadn’t been successful and who would now have to be connected to a machine for the rest of their life. I felt too sorry for her at the border to take a picture of her directly; she was so frail and weak, but so sweet and happy in spite of it all. As we were crossing the Jordan river on the border bus, a great flock of cranes took flight from the bridge out over the river, just behind Ala’a.

A couple weeks ago some of our staff visited her and her family in their home in Iraq. They took this footage of her. She is up and walking around, and was strong enough to serve them tea and chocolate. The family has sold the wheelchair and she now only needs to be on oxygen at night when she sleeps. I could hardly believe my eyes, every time I look at this video of her I can barely believe what I'm watching. Seeing the video myself helped me imagine what it would be like to be one of the characters in John 9 who struggle to make sense of the blind man’s healing. Praise the Lord for the life of Ala’a.

Dancing with the "Enemy"

Mohammed celebrated his 9th birthday today with us in Jerusalem. After a pleasant dinner with all the Shevet Achim staff and Hamza and family we decided to walk down the street to the local gelato ice cream shop. As we approached he shouted in English, “ice cream!” Once inside his face was nearly pressed against the glass trying to see all the flavors; he decided on a chocolate cone. By the time everyone was collected to sing Happy Birthday he had nearly consumed his entire ice cream. Mohammed climbed a stool as tall as he was, and all the Shevet staff and our Iraqi guests sang Happy Birthday to him.

While we were eating we heard some music playing across the street and noticed several people dancing, so we all decided to go over to see what the commotion was about. It turned out to be a number of Orthodox Jewish men dancing to some Hebrew music, a sight the Iraqis had certainly not seen before. After a few minutes of watching and some encouragement, Mohammed, defying any appearances of any heart difficulty, ran in and began to dance with them. In a few moments time he took the hands of one of the Jewish men and they began dancing together. It is not every day you hear about Israeli Orthodox Jews and Iraqi Muslims dancing together in the streets, but this child, when spinning in circles with this man was not weighed down with any of the thoughts that perhaps enter our minds. Instead, Mohammed took flight in the arms of a supposed enemy and thought to do nothing but smile and laugh.



Mohammed's father was told that his son's heart condition was inoperable, and it will kill Mohammed at any moment. He went to both Turkey and Iran, and the hospital that was supposed to take him here in Israel all said the surgery was too dangerous. However, through our connections, we were able to have a doctor at another hospital here perform an exploratory surgery today to see if they think he is operable. When the surgeons immerged they said, "...we can do it." this will be a high risk surgery, if it fails at any level, it will be fatal, if he does not get the surgery, it will be fatal. Please pray for Mohammed.