Dear Christian friends and partners,
We have come to the end of the academic year 2002/2003, which was another year of God’s richest blessings on BLESSED. Through your prayer and support, we were able to move ahead, by leaps and bounds, executing one project after another, bringing improved care to our children and students.
We praise God and thank you for the shouts of joy and laughter we heard from our children, and the multitude of smiles we saw on their faces, as they enjoyed the newly implemented projects: the Sensory Room, the Soft Room, the Life Skills room, and the new Gym.
We praise God and thank you for the interest that stirred the hearts and minds of our visually impaired students as they learnt to use computers and reading machines; as they started to bake cakes, learn to use the dishwasher, washing machine, and microwave oven, and as they read the new Arabic translation of the New Testament in Braille.
We praise God and thank you because news about our very small school reached near and far in Lebanon, bringing us in contact with people and new friends, delighted to come and see our little contribution to visually impaired people and children with special needs.
We praise God and thank you for enabling us to pass the repeated inspections of the ministry of social affairs, through God’s loving care and your prayer and generous support.
We are happy at the end of this year for fulfilling our calling to serve our loving Lord and Savior through our care of 28 children with special needs and 13 visually impaired students; for having the facilities, through your kind support, to provide them with the care they deserve; and for operating at an acceptable budget within the means of our Lebanese Evangelical Society.
Our small school is blessed to have you as our partners and friends; blessed to have our dedicated team of teachers and employees; blessed to have Miss Therese Khoury with her Christ-like humility and love, blessed to have CMS mission volunteers leave family and loved ones in the U.K. to come and serve our Lord in our school; blessed to be, in a very small way, part of God’s plan for our land, which is in desperate need for his love.
Most of you probably followed our news through the year on our website, but for those who didn’t, I will go briefly through the most important events of the year.
Our excitement began last summer when Miss Barbara Shaw of CMS informed us of a kind donation of £ 2000 which we reserved for the gym project. We were also delighted to know that Vicky Leadbitter, the CMS Make a Difference mission volunteer who was with us the previous year, would be coming back for a second year.
We later received delightful news from Miss Mo Burnley and Miss Janet Blade that BibleLands was sending us a donation (£ 4000) for the soft-room project.
The Rotary Foundation delivered to our school in August 2002 a Tieman Twinkle Spectrum CCTV, two Poet Compact (Baum) standalone reading machines, three APC UPS systems, and a 17" monitor thus providing us with equipment we badly needed for our program for the visually impaired.
Our summer program (Colonie de Vacances) for children with special needs began on Monday September 2, 2002. It continued for a fortnight and included activities, games, and many trips. It was a great success. We also held a teacher-training seminar in September 2002 in preparation for the start of the new school year.
The school reopened on October 1 after the summer holiday. Vicky Leadbitter was back for another year of dedicated loving service. More excitement was to follow.
We received fantastic news from BibleLands of yet another donation. The Riverside Foundation was sending us a donation for US$ 14,250 (£ 9,059). That meant the implementation of all our projects.
The Soft-room, the Sensory room, and the Life skills room projects were all completed.
The gym project was completed on December 17, 2002. The Christmas program was held in the new gym (multipurpose hall) which also has a stage for special school activities. The playground gate was fixed and is no more a hazard to our children. The main gate was moved in, about one meter, in order to allow children and parents to shelter from the rain as they wait at the gate. Our telephone system was updated. People who call us can now dial the extension numbers directly. We can now open the main gate through the telephone system. An intercom was also installed at the gate. We finally have a fax machine at school accessible by dialing an extension (number 102) 24 hours a day. The last machine of the bakery project (the dough divider) was finally delivered to our school and was installed. An extra water tank was constructed and connected to our water supply. Two attics were added providing us with storage space for mattresses and pillows. The last bedroom with old cupboards was furnished with new ones. We achieved so much with your kind donations. They had the effect of the five loaves and two fish of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.
God was working his miracles in our midst, and was looking after the smallest details. With a kind donation from the mother of one of our children, we were able to buy new bedcovers for all our beds. This complemented the new tidy look of our school.
Our friends and partners at "DONOR" kindly sent us a donation of US$ 3.334, which was very timely. Our kitchen cooker-oven (over 25 years old) was dangerously leaking gas. A brand new cooker-oven was installed on March 13, 2003. Sabah, our cook, was delighted. She badly needed it as she was cooking for over fifty people this year. The new one has many safety features built in. We also installed a new gas piping system with security features of a sound alarm and automatic shut off in case of any gas leakage. We also equipped our building with fire extinguishers.
It was time for us to commemorate this special time in the history of our school and thank our partners and friends in a special way. We placed a memorial plaque at the entrance of our school in gratitude to all our Christian partners and friends who helped us reach where we are today. This was our way of saying: thank you and may God bless you.
"DONOR" sent us a second donation of U.S. $ 1500. We planned to use the money to install an extraction hood (vent) in our kitchen, but God had other plans. We called the local company, Solarco, asking them to send us a price quote for the extraction hood. They did send us one but they followed it with a phone call a few days later. They informed us that they decided to donate the hood to our school; we will only have to pay for the pipes and installation. So when our Index 4X4 Braille embosser broke down as we were embossing copies of the new Arabic translation of the New Testament, we had enough funds to pay for its repair (U.S. $ 550), and the rest of the second "DONOR" donation was reserved for installing the kitchen hood this summer.
MECO (Middle East Christian Outreach) also had a special treat for BLESSED this year. They sent us a kind donation of US$ 3347. The donation with the balance of the second donation from "DONOR" and a second donation from CMS of £ 2000 will go towards making adjustments in our building to enable us to receive more visually impaired girls next year. We will add extra facilities during the summer holiday in order to have one additional bedroom for visually impaired girls. We also hope to fix the water leakage and damp problem in our roof and in some of our workshops.
We added a part-time speech therapist to our team of teachers for the St. Luke's program for children with special needs. Previously, teachers used to provide speech therapy along their daily program, but as the number of children increased, it was clear that we needed extra help. Ms Dareen Fares comes two days a week to provide the necessary speech therapy to our children.
We are grateful to CMS and Vicky Leadbitter for her two years of dedicated service. As a precautionary measure, Vicky had to leave at the break of the Iraq war. We were all sorry to see her leave and everyone missed her wonderful contribution, Christian witness, and loving care. We wish her the best as she goes back to the U.K. to follow up her training and studies, and we thank God and praise him for her dedicated service, wisdom, and love.
We regret the fact that some of our partners had to cancel planned visits to Lebanon because of the war in Iraq, and we look forward to meeting them again when the situation permits. We fully understand their decision. We certainly do not want any of our partners to be in harm’s way.
We were honored to host a meeting of the directors of institutions of our Lebanese Evangelical Society on Friday June 20. We were also delighted to receive Mrs. Nicola Alexander, principal of the Lebanese Evangelical School in Ain Zhalta, accompanied with Miss Cathy Owen and the girls and boys of Grade 5 on Friday 13 June 2003. The bible study group of Mrs. Therese Sarkissian of the French Protestant Church in Beirut who visited our school on Friday 28 March 2003 were also among our distinguished guests this year, in addition to MECO leader in Lebanon, Rev. Peter Haes, and Mrs. Elizabeth Haes who visited BLESSED on Wednesday 26 March 2003, and a MECO (Middle East Christian Outreach) delegation comprising of nine people who visited BLESSED Tuesday afternoon May 6 with Mr. David Judson, a former director of our school. We were also honored to receive Rev. Dr. Austra Reinis, professor of Church History at the Near East School of Theology, who visited BLESSED Tuesday June 17.
Some of our partners were having difficulty communicating with us so we got a new email address. It is:
We ask you to communicate with us on this email address.
Our student numbers last year were as
follows:
The Bartimaeus Program for the Visually Impaired: 13 students
12 boarders and 1 day student
8 male and 5 female students
Average age: 32 years
Youngest: 20 years
St. Luke’s Program for Mentally
Challenged Children: 28 students
16 boarders and 12 day students
13 male and 15 female students
Average age: 18 years
Youngest: 9 years
We have students from all denominations and faiths: Maronite, Catholic,
Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, and Druses.
I want to conclude with a compliment we received from a mother of one of our children who was recommending our school to another. She told her: “It is an Evangelical school; the love of Christ is in it. It is Different! It is Different! It is Different!
Praise God and thank you for enabling BLESSED to be different!
Sincerely,
George
D. Haddad.
Rev. George D. Haddad.
Beirut July 20, 2003