Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. Psalm 127:1 NIV
By faith, May 4, 2024 will mark the start of a 5-year Capital Project to build the Hope Ministry Center in Ghazieh. Heart for Lebanon has been serving in Southern Lebanon since August 2016; right after the war between Hezbollah and Israel ended. In fact, Southern Lebanon is where our ministry was born – local and international volunteers coming together to help rebuild what was destroyed in that horrific July 2006 war.
Since then, God has given us favor among the communities we continue to serve; Lebanese, Syrian and Iraqi refugees, Bedouin tribes, and others in great need. We are experiencing an amazing growth in all our ministry programs. Most exciting and humbling is the response to the Gospel. In June of 2015, a worship community was formed and now Hope Evangelical Church Ghazieh is the home of an average of 450 worshipers on any given weekend.
We have been blessed with a beautiful property in Ghazieh. This site will host our new Hope Ministry Center. Like in Zahleh, we believe that this Hope Ministry Center will take our ministry to the next level. It will host our church community, our humanitarian response programs, our non-formal school, and our Hope on Wheels activities. Bible Study groups, Sunday School classes, discipleship training, Missional Leadership development, and character formation are some of the ministries that will be greatly enhanced once this Hope Center is complete.
More important, this Hope Ministry Center will consolidate all our Southern Lebanon ministry programs in one location eliminating a lot of waiting time and energy traveling from one location to the other. This Center will also provide a safer environment for our staff and our beneficiaries. It will increase the trust factor with the local authorities as they will identify our visible work with a place known and respected regional headquarters.
The engineering and architectural plans are nearing completion and most pre-construction work is done. But understanding the challenges ahead, our team saw it best fit to build a House of Prayer on our property. We know what lies ahead and are aware of the difficulties that we will encounter.
We realize that the enemy is not happy to see a ministry grow and flourish in such a tense location. Southern Lebanon is always in the news for something bad happening. Our desire is that this Hope Ministry Center becomes a beacon of hope from above. We want this House of Prayer to be the furnace where staff, ministry programs, neighbors, local authorities, the country of Lebanon… are covered by prayer.
Our heart’s desire is to see this House of Prayer, like the Upper Room, as a place to find refuge; as a place to go to and fall on our knees and lift both the workers and the work of the Kingdom in prayer. This House of Prayer is what you will see built first on our new property.
As previously mentioned, most pre-construction work has been done. A prefabricated guard house and steel gates both for pedestrians and cars are in place. All this work has been paid for.
Please join us in prayer for the future of the new Hope Ministry Center in southern Lebanon!
