International Family Missions

I have been looking forward to telling you about my friend Rihab.

This is going to sound pretty fantastical – it does to me too – but is anything too hard for the Lord?

I got to know Rihab three years ago and she is just one of those people you can’t forget – even before you know her testimony. Back then I saw her once or twice a week when she joined our van load to travel over the mountains to visit the refugee camps close to the Syrian border.

She is a nice looking Lebanese woman with a slightly different, almost ethereal sense about her. She can give you a steady look in the eye that feels like she’s peering right into your soul. She’s kind of quiet, but at the same time she is fun and can really laugh. And definitely no one would doubt that she belongs to the Lord Jesus.

“RIHAB” is the Arabic name for the biblical “RAHAB”.

Like her namesake, Rihab has a past. I don’t know a lot about it, but I’ve heard her story starting when she was living in a mental hospital.

She was broken, angry, mentally ill and on eight medications. One day a man came into the hospital and walked around, talking to the patients about Jesus and the freedom and salvation He offered. He infuriated Rihab and she wanted to throw something at him. But after he left she couldn’t quit thinking about what he said. Finally, almost defiantly, she said out loud, “All right, Jesus. If you’re really God then heal me.”

Rihab told me, “Right then Jesus came into my heart. I knew He did. And I could tell He healed me. I got up and walked out of the hospital. I was well. I never took any of the medicines ever again.”

If you had been me and heard that testimony, maybe you would have been as startled and uncomfortable as I was. I thought “Yikes. Every insane person ever would think that same thing and just get up and leave and stop taking the medicines they desperately needed because ‘God healed them’. And what about withdrawal from all those strong drugs?? Danger! Danger!”

But thank God…in this case, it WAS the Lord. He did something far greater than my natural, very limited mind could imagine. (I saw a lot of that there). He healed Rihab and He gave her a new healthy mind and life.

Rihab started serving Him with joy and hasn’t stopped.

She loved reading the Bible. She knew about Rahab and learned that Rahab was related to Ruth. She started telling everyone, “I am asking God to give me a Boaz.”

A mutual friend told me that when Rihab would talk about her prayer for “Boaz”, her friends would smile with her but didn’t say much. It was a lovely thought but she was a young believer and she just seemed so…vulnerable.

Time continued on. Rihab grew in Christ. She just kept on keeping on, serving God with needy people. She was beloved by Horizons International, and her testimony was pretty widely known.

That is how Hassan entered the picture.

Hassan is a well-educated man who was employed by the UN, traveling the world, mapping HIV data. He was radically changed, however, when he, a Muslim, became a believer in Jesus Christ. From that time he became dissatisfied with his job; he wanted to use his skills and experience for God’s Kingdom. He eventually quit his UN job and offered his services to Voice of the Martyrs, an organization whose mission is to defend the human rights of persecuted Christians.

After spending years abroad, VOM assigned him to Lebanon, his home country, and he returned as a Christian! He is now a field worker in Syria and Lebanon, gathering information for Voice of the Martyrs.

One of his assignments was to interview Rihab because Voice of the Martyrs had heard about her. So Hassan met with her, loved her story and thought he needed another appointment to hear more. After the second meeting Hassan told his boss, “You need to assign someone else to her case because I may have a conflict of interest. I really like her.”

They started dating. In six months they got engaged.

She and Hassan are newlyweds now. I went to visit them while I was in Beirut. They are a really lovely couple. Rihab told me, “After eight years, the Lord gave me my Boaz.”

I saw pictures of the wedding. It was beautiful – outdoors, overflowing with flowers. They had 300 guests including many from Horizons.

I heard about the wedding from several people who were there.

Hassan stood in front and gave his testimony to everyone. When he finished, Rihab was escorted down the aisle to him, but instead of music, she walked with a recording of the book of Ruth being spoken over her.

Do you have tears in your eyes yet?

I had a great visit with them and I got to know Hassan a bit. I sure like him. They want to serve the Lord together as much as they can. They have a cheery, decent-sized apartment (rare in Beirut these days). They have already begun using their extra room to bless traveling missionaries. They were bustling around before I left, gathering up the food Rihab had prepared to take to an impoverished elderly home in the city. Hassan shook my hand goodbye, and asked me to please remember to pray for them.

Gladly.

Will you also pray for their lives together? They have a beautiful story and it’s a glory to God. May He bless and protect them through all that life brings the two of them.

I have recently learned that the name “Rihab” is the Arabic word for “a spacious land”. That seems so fitting.

He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.

Psalm 18:19

Do you know Bill?

You are likely to have met him or at least heard of him if you are an IFM alumnus.  He went on an amazing sixteen outreaches with us before his death.

An unassuming man, he would have been shocked to know how much he affected the people around him, or what a profound life view I gained from knowing him. While I’ve been here in Lebanon, I’ve thought of him often, and I realize that he is still influencing me.

Bill didn’t take his first outreach with us until he was later in years.  He was a retired astrophysicist, a life-long bachelor, and he was also noticeably disabled.

Bill told us that he had been a pretty regular church attender, but with no real serious relationship with God. Then he had a stroke.

On his hospital bed with one whole side of his body weak and partially paralyzed, something changed in him.  He never told us the details; he was a very quiet man.  But he said later that he didn’t mind losing his favorite activities because of his disability. That life was over, and he had shed the things holding him back from God. We could see it too, the beauty of Christ in him in different ways throughout the rest of his life.

Bill started coming to our church prior to his stroke, brought by a family who had loved him for years.  One Sunday after Bill had somewhat recovered, Joe and I were surprised when he hobbled up  to us with a metal cane in one hand to steady himself, his other hand uselessly curled up against his body, and said, “I’d like to go on one of your mission trips to Mexico.”

Since IFM’s rallying cry was to welcome anyone called by God to go on an outreach  who didn’t”fit” the usual ones, we said (maybe a little hesitantly), “Sure, Bill.”

He loved the outreach. It was not an easy week but he managed and without complaint, and he flourished being put in the middle of a team of young families.

He needed assistance with lots of things – meals, the bus, his room. The IFM staff helped some but mostly it was the team that cared for him. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

Bill ministered in Mexico with us and didn’t miss a thing, and I remember him smiling all week.

He spoke Spanish, but only knew technical terms that he had used when collaborating with other scientists in Spanish speaking countries. Explaining the humble little wordless book in Spanish was a stretch for him, but he tried.

Our days in the colonia were the most challenging for him. He walked with us, cane in hand, laboring to drag his bad leg along the uneven dirt roads and fields. But he conquered it, visiting the people in their homes. When we did the Bible clubs he sat in a folding chair, always with Mexicans hanging out with him.  It was kind of a hoot.  I don’t think any of them could understand a word he was saying – but he was undeterred. He just kept pleasantly chatting with them.

The Mexicans were really taken with him.  They seemed touched and even honored that this man had traveled in his condition to visit them.  We saw it on their faces everywhere we went.

That was trip #1.  He went regularly after that – two or three times a year. He would light up when he talked about them. Those trips made a huge contribution to Bill’s sense of purpose and wellbeing.

But the big takeaway for me was seeing the fruit he bore in his weakness.  Bill could never “do” much on the outreaches. His value to the teams was always that he just “was” on the outreaches.

We could see the converse relationship between his weakness and his effectiveness especially as he got more feeble.  By his last outreach two team members had to hold him under his arms and literally carry/drag him almost everywhere we went in Mexico.

The teams he joined were more impacted by him as time went by.  Caring for a sweet-spirited man with physical needs brought out the best in them.  Every time.  And the more unsteady he got, the more responsive the teams were. More softening of their hearts. More chipping together to help Bill.

His ministry in Mexico became more powerful too. When an elderly American man travels hundreds of miles to get to your colonia and is clearly uncomfortable and so weak he has to be carried to visit you, you are likely to pay attention to what he and his group have to say!

I’ve carried that beautiful insight from Bill’s life with me a long time now, but the last two years have put a new dimension to it.

Weakness. Vulnerability.  No one’s favorite things… including me.  I am thankful for the health the Lord has allowed me, but alas, I am a bit older, and I now carry the heart and label “widow”.

I knew God was telling me to go to Lebanon, and yet it was those strikes against me that caused me to hesitate. I went anyway, and last year when I showed up here in Beirut for the first time and started meeting refugees, I suddenly saw the same look in their eyes that I had seen in the Mexicans when they met Bill!  That’s what reminded me of all this. The very same look!

I have delightfully discovered that those perceived limitations have been my most valuable assets in Lebanon.  I have literally laughed out loud walking by myself in the ghetto thinking about this.  God is so wise and amazing.

So take courage with your own weaknesses and limitations WHATEVER they are.  Do not disqualify yourself from anything if you sense God’s leading or even warming in a certain direction  Keep saying yes.

And thank you, Bill, for saying yes to God in the hospital and for the remainder of your days. I hope He shows you now how it rippled out way beyond your one fairly isolated life and brought Him such great glory.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9