From Lebanon

Monday night we held a recital in Beirut, it was an evening of meditation and prayer, organized by the group of the Invisible Monastery and the hearing impaired. Lots of people attended.

As you can see on the pictures, we sang, and the hearing impaired performed beautiful choreographic dances on the hymns we were singing.

 Carrying Christ in order to prepare for the Way of the Cross

 Gabriel Sassi, hymn writer and extremely talented singer was conducting the choir,

 Father Jean-Marie introducing Naji who give a testimony about his being physically challenged.

 May is blind but she’s a hymn writer and sings just beautifully

 evocational dances from the hearing impaired, so graciously performed

=World Day of Prayer =

An Ecumenical Movement of Informed Prayer and Prayerful Action

World Day of Prayer is a worldwide movement of Christian women of many traditions who come together to observe a common day of prayer each year, and who, in many countries, have a continuing relationship in prayer and service.  It’s always celebrated on March 7.

™  It is a movement initiated and carried out by women in more than 170 countries and regions.

™  It is a movement symbolized by an annual day of celebration – the first Friday of March – to which all people are welcome.

™  It is a movement which brings together women of various races, cultures and traditions in closer fellowship, understanding and action throughout the year.

This year the women of Guyana prepared the prayer services. I attended 2 of them, one at the NEST (Near East School of Theology)

and at the Greek-Orthodox church of St. Mary’s

The Middle East is on the front page of most newspapers every day. I thought you’d find this interesting.  It’s an animated map of the Middle East - 5000 years in 90 seconds. This is an amazing, constantly changing map of the Middle East  region, illustrating how various “empires” have risen and fallen in the past 5000 years-in just 90 seconds.Click on the link:

http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf

Teaching children is not that easy. But teaching notes to children, solfège , can indeed be fun, when the teacher is Joelle Bou Ghazale :) She’s just great in teaching them the notes ladder. Look at the pictures …it’s a real game:  someone goes up the steps and gets down again, in playing they know how to memorize the notes..

Please copy paste the link and watch it at youtube. Simply beautiful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLVRQCjh8c

    Last Saturday we hosted the local NGO SKOUN. They are specialists in drug prevention. Ms. Chantal Chedid, psychologist and working iwth them, gave the conference. Parents and some youth attended it. We hope to be able to give it to the youth also, since they are the people concerned. It was very interesting and Ms. Chantal dealt with all kinds of addiction, not just what we call drugs, but cigarettes, alcohol and the eastern Nargile waterpipe.

It has been a very long time since I wrote…too busy? Yes and no. Perhaps busy with sorting out of ideas regarding life and in particularly life in Lebanon. We hardly get the time to get over one explosion or another one pops up; and as to make things worse, we now had two earthquakes in one week, very well felt…especially the one of today.

We started fasting, way too early, just after Christmas, and in some countries the Orthodoxe and Western fasting doesn’t fall together, which means 2 good Fridays and 2 Easters: poor Jesus

Ayadina is doing great, in fact we have a conference tomorrow about drugs, given by the NGO Skoun. This conference was meant to be on Jan 19, but again the unstable situation of Lebanon, obliged us to postpone it. Let’s hope that parents will come tomorrow.

I also underwent a minor surgery at my left shoulder. This made me feel -however for a short period- , what it means to be dependent on others for primary needs. I do have many friends who are physically disabled, but experiencing something myself is totally different. It teaches me a lot..not at least humility.

Wishing you all a very special 2008 with God’s blessings, no killings, no war like they now have in Kenya, no dying children…In fact that’s all what we desire isn’t it?

I spent the last evening of the year with friends at church, with mass, adoration and of course a nice gathering afterwards.

As each year the pastor F. Jean-Marie Chami made a jewel of christmas evocation: These 2 pictures were taken on Christmas day.

  The 2 girls that are standing in front are deaf and they perform choreography on a hymn.

Yesterday night we had a Christmas dinner at Ayadina for the first group of 50 elderly. They danced and sang and our kids also sang Christmas carols for them, and of course Santa Claus passed by and offered them a small gift. My friends came and helped us with serving and logistics and all went well.
Tonight we welcome the second group…