BLESSED

The Benevolent Lebanese Evangelical School for Special Education and Development

 Ghabeh Street no. 62, Karm El-Zeitoun, Achrafieh, Beirut - Lebanon

Newsletter Dated 4 October 2004

Dear Christian friends and partners,

The early days of the summer holiday brought some unexpected health problems for me requiring my hospitalization twice. I am much better now, praise God, and I apologize for the delay in sending my yearly newsletter.

The academic year 2003/2004 was another year of God’s wonderful blessings. Through the very kind help of our Christian partners and friends we were able to move ahead in both our programs (The Bartimaeus program for visually impaired persons and St. Luke’s program for special needs children). God looked after us and provided us with our needs and the school year was another delightful year through which everyone at BLESSED experienced God’s wonderful love.

The presence of Mr. Leonard Campbell, a mission volunteer from the Windsor Baptist Church – Belfast, invigorated our Christian witness and transformed life in our school. Work and discipline were accompanied  with joy and love, and the most powerful  Christian witness through the person of a mission volunteer who left home and loved ones to come and share the Love of Christ with our students, was an enormous encouragement to us all and a wonderful fulfillment of the most important purpose of our school.

With funds kindly donated by the Church Mission Society (CMS), Middle East Christian Outreach (MECO), The Farah Foundation, and Mr. Khalil Younes, we were able to make the necessary adjustment in our building for a dormitory (with facilities) for visually impaired girls. The repair work of September 2003 also included covering the kitchen walls with ceramic tiles and treating the damp problem in the roof of our building[1] and in our workshops. With that project the adjustments needed in our building to accommodate both our programs was completed. We thus were able to have a nice start for the academic year as everyone was finally in a comfortable room with adequate facilities, and the Bartimaeus girls had at last the privacy they very much needed.

The excitement for the Bartimaeus program had another dimension. The bakery training program in August 2003 was a great success. Mr. Leonard Campbell, the mission volunteer from the Windsor Baptist Church – Belfast, stayed the whole month of August training visually impaired students in bakery skills. His dedication, patience, and wonderful Christian character made him ideal for the job. His students loved him very much, and they were all eagerly waiting for his return in January 2004. The bakery program transformed the life of our students. They were doing something they loved and enjoyed, and it was giving meaning to their life. The fact that they were strictly trained, tested, and evaluated was a totally new experience to most of them. They adjusted and were eventually learning new skills, and that was an enormous achievement on their part with which we are greatly delighted and very thankful to Leonard.

There was also another addition to our Bartimaeus program. We started teaching music notation in Braille. We use a beginner’s course for teaching the recorder and incorporate it with lessons in music notation. As the students advance in learning to play the recorder, they are at the same time advancing their skill in reading Braille music. Some of our students found it extremely difficult; others did very well so we divided them into groups based on their abilities.

LES (The Lebanese Evangelical Society) through its chairman, Rev. Ghabi Bahnan, director, Rev. Dr. Issa Diab, and administrative committee followed up our work providing the support we needed and meeting our financial needs. LES covered the deficit in our budget and followed up all the official paper work with the ministry of finance, the ministry of internal affairs, the general security department (visas & residence permits), and other government departments. We are very grateful for their kind support.

The ministry of social affairs continued its support and cooperation with our school. Subsidy payments were on time and the paper work routine was very efficient. The ministry also held a training seminar for teachers working in boarding schools. Our teachers attended and benefited greatly. The ministry also covered the cost of transportation to the seminar which was a very kind and encouraging step. Their social workers continued to monitor our work through the regular inspection visits. We are no more worried about those inspections as they have become a very good opportunity for furthering our cooperation and sharing our needs with the ministry.

The most important event of the academic year 2003/2004 was the thanksgiving service for BibleLands 150^th anniversary held on Thursday June 3, 2004 in the Beirut Evangelical Church. Baroness Cathleen Richardson, Miss Mo Burnley, Rev. Daniel Burton, and a group of 31 persons from the U.K. who were on a pilgrimage visit to Lebanon also attended the service. The fact that we were not only reading about but actually celebrating this very important historic event meant a great deal to us. It brought the meaning of partnership to full realization. We felt that we are part of BibleLands, and we were delighted and honored to participate in this historic anniversary. We also attended the BibleLands' partners conference which was held in Al-Kafaat earlier on October 29, 2003. We met the new director Mr. Nigel Edward-Few and were also very happy to see the chairman Mr. Hugh Boulter. Baroness Cathleen Richardson and Miss Mo Burnley visited BLESSED on November 6, 2003. It was a special time for us as we were able to show them the wonderful transformation in our building that was achieved through BibleLands' generous support. We are ever so grateful to BibleLands for the very kind support they extend to BLESSED year after year.

DPF (Dhahran Protestant Fellowship) sent us donations totaling U.S.$ 3,500. The money was used for buying a new photocopying machine (Canon iR2200) which we badly needed. As our program for children with special needs is activity oriented, we do a lot of photocopying and our very old machine was in a very bad condition. Our teachers were delighted with the new machine as they were the ones who had to deal with the daily disappointments of the old one. It also helped us a lot with our office work. We express our sincere gratitude to our partners and friends at DPF for their dedicated support, and we praise God for Christian charity and love.

Rev. and Mrs. Schibild of the International Congregation of All Saints' Anglican Church in Beirut suggested that we send a team from our school on a Sunday morning to sell some of our workshop items. Randa Madani, Leonard Campbell, and Suheil Jabour took items from both our wool and cane workshops in addition to bread and scones from the bakery. They went to All Saints' Church on Sunday January 11, 2004. They were very kindly received and sold many items. Mr. Peter Speldewinde and Mrs. Peggy O'Neill surprised us with a very kind donation of one thousand U.S. dollars. We used this donation to buy all the items that were needed for the bakery. We express our sincere gratitude to Mr. Peter Speldewinde, Mrs. Peggy O'Neill, Rev. and Mrs. Schibild, and the International congregation of All Saints' Anglican Church.

Our school participated in the Holiday Bazaar 2003 organized by the American Women's Club of Lebanon at the Beirut Coral Beach Hotel on December 7, 2003. We were able to display products from our workshops made by students of the Bartimaeus program and items made by children of the St. Luke's program. We sold many items. The American Women's Club donated a 34 inch TV (Haier 34F8A-T) with stand (table) and a DVD player (Funai Digital DVD-LDV-200) to our school in June 2004. We express our sincere gratitude to the kind ladies of the American Women's Club for this wonderful gift.

Tuesday March 16, 2004 was the day for introducing students of LESBG (the Lebanese Evangelical School for Boys & Girls in Louweizeh) to the cakes, pastries, and breads of Leonard's Bakery. Leonard and his students worked tirelessly for many days in preparation for this day. The day started with the BLESSED group leading the two chapel services. We were well received by the very kind and enthusiastic students. During the recess they were offered scones, biscuits, and coconut fingers free of charge. We also sold all the bakery products we had for sale in addition to some woolen and cane items. LESBG helped us sell our bakery products by receiving us once a week through the last academic year. We express our most sincere gratitude to Dr. Stephen White, the school principal, for his warm welcome and strong support of BLESSED. We also thank the teachers and students of LESBG for their encouragement and kind support.

Miss Therese Khoury and her team of teachers continued to do an excellent job with our St. Luke’s program for special needs children. The new photocopying machine made life much easier to all of them. The program included a lot of activities and school trips. Our only problem was the fact the our school bus can only seat fifteen passengers which meant we had to divide the children into two groups doing the same school trip on two consecutive days. It worked well and everyone was happy. Children’s birthdays were celebrated in groups on a monthly basis. There were special celebrations at Christmas, Easter, Teachers’ day, end of school year, and many other occasions.

With regards to the teaching program, the older girls were included in the wool training program, and both older girls and boys were also included in the bakery program. Suheil Jabbour continued to teach the older boys simple carpentry skills. We also had classes from LES (Lebanese Evangelical Society) schools in Ain Zhalta and Louweizeh visit our school to spend time interacting with our children, and we had a joint school trip to the cedar woods in Barook.

Last year we noticed that our boarding department needed additional attention. We needed to carefully monitor the evening program. It was not easy on some of our teachers as the ministry of love is more difficult than the discipline of fear. New teachers always take it personally but they soon discover that this is the only way.  They either adopt the ministry of love or learn to live with it. The seminar of the ministry of social affairs also helped us improve on the quality of our care.

Our children were delighted with the visit of Vicky Leadbitter in April 2004. Vicky was a CMS volunteer who spent two years at BLESSED helping us with the St. Luke’s program. It was wonderful seeing her again. We thank her for her friendship and support of our school.

In addition to Vicky Leadbitter we had many visits from distinguished guest and friends. Baroness Cathleen Richardson and Miss Mo Burnley of BibleLands (November 6, 2003), Mr. Murray Pillner, MECO representative in New Zealand (November 12, 2003), an international group from the Bible Society (January 30, 2004), Rev. Nigel Schibild, vicar of All Saints' Anglican Church (April 5, 2004), Mrs. Myrtle Campbell, and Miss Angela Campbell (Leonard’s mother and sister) over the Easter holiday, Ruth McKelvey for a few days in April 2004, Rev. Pascal Hickel and his wife Michele accompanied with a youth group from St. Matthew's Lutheran Church - Strasbourg (April 27, 2004), the ecumenical bible study group of the French Protestant Church in Beirut (30th of April 2004), Mrs. Barbara Shaw and Rev. Philip Simpson of CMS (Church Mission Society) on Friday 17 of September. The visits of our friends and partners were a very important source of encouragement and support for us all.

Our student numbers last year were as follows:

The Bartimaeus Program for the Visually Impaired: 13 students

13 boarders

8 males and 5 female students (in addition to Miss Randa Madani and Miss Jouman Abd El-Bakki)

Average age: 28.6 years

Youngest: 19 years

St. Luke’s Program for Special Needs Children: 31 students

17 boarders and 14 day students

16 boys and 15 girls

Average age: 18.19 years

Youngest: 8 years

We have students from all denominations and faiths: Maronite, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, and Druses.

The most difficult thing is deciding not to accept a student back for the next academic year. Our criterion is that every student in our school must be benefiting from our program. There are rare cases of students loosing interest or becoming discipline problems. We direct them to other schools that can cater to their needs and we allow others to benefit from our programs. This is always very difficult for us, the students concerned, and their parents, but with the limited number of students that we can accommodate we think it is the right thing to do.

We are very thankful for the wonderful opportunity we have to share the Love of Christ with people with disabilities and their families. It is a very special and enjoyable ministry. We thank God for his great loving care, and we especially thank you, our very dear partners and friends. We want to especially thank the Society of Archbishop Justus, as this is the fifth year our website is kindly hosted on its servers.

May God bless you all.

Sincerely,

George D. Haddad

Rev. George D. Haddad

Beirut 4 October 2004.

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