Before the ceasefire last year, 800,000 Lebanese people were displaced to areas that are considered safer.

If attacks happen, people will be internally displaced this year, too.

Camille Melki with Heart for Lebanon says that southern Lebanon has “a very damp winter, (with) a lot of rain. Most of those families live in tent settlements or in makeshift homes, where it is very moist, and water gets into the house.”

At high elevations in the Beqaa Valley, many refugees and locals live in cold areas that will receive significant snow.

(Photo courtesy of Heart for Lebanon)

“Our team at Heart for Lebanon provides blankets, heavy coats, mittens, gloves, hats, anything that can help a family survive the harsh months,” Melki says.

Melki says, “If people flee and are living in the open air or in tents, that would significantly increase the risks (and) health hazards of being affected by the weather, as much as by the wars.”

Please join Heart for Lebanon in praying for peace as they work to fulfill needs this winter. Pray that needs will not become extreme.

“Everything we do, we give out, is given out and done unconditionally, but we also want to make sure that people who receive our aid know what drives us, what motivates us, what excites us, what takes us into the places that are hard and difficult to be in during conflicts,” Melki says. “Nothing motivates us except the compassionate heart of Jesus Christ towards those who are suffering the most.”

Please pray that this winter ministry will show the compassionate heart of Jesus Christ. Pray that it will lead to simple conversations that can turn into gospel conversations and will reach people who do not yet know God.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

The government’s response to recent protests on these issues has not been encouraging. In August, hundreds of protesters were arrested and at least 20 were shot and killed. More recently on Nigeria’s Independence Day (October 1), protesters were again arrested. That same day, seven people were killed by Fulani herdsmen in a village in central Nigeria’s Benue State — in an area that had already seen three attacks in the previous month.

Benue State highlighted in red. (Image courtesy of Himalayan Explorer via Wikimedia Commons, based on work by Uwe Dedering CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gideon Para-Mallam is a Nigerian minister who started the Para-Mallam Peace Foundation. He is also a leadership development catalyst with the Lausanne Movement. He believes persecution in Nigeria is becoming an existential threat to Christianity in the nation. 

Two of the challenges facing Nigerian Christians today are lack of collaboration and lack of resources. 

“The discouragement is not even coming from the persecution, per se. The discouragement is coming more from leaders who need to get together to craft a response that’s biblical,” says Para-Mallam. “That’s not coming.” 

This lack of a constructive, united response to the Islamic militant attacks has deeply frustrated younger Christians. 

Displaced and in need

The other challenge Para-Mallam notes is that when believers are systematically uprooted from their ancestral homelands, it leads to lack of resources.

Nigerian children. (Photo courtesy of Victor Nnakwe/Unsplash)

“In the last decades, the [form of] persecution [is] sustained in the sense that they’re uprooting Christians from their ancestral farmlands, their homelands,” Para-Mallam says.

“When you begin to uproot [a] large population of Christians from their ancestral homelands, it’s not a joke. Their houses are burnt, their farms destroyed, and on top of that they have no place to go. It presents the huge challenge of humanitarian response, and when that [need] is not met, it can be very, very discouraging.”

Now that you know, would you commit to praying for Nigeria?

“Pray for Christians to respond biblically to this persecution. Listen to the story of what’s happening in some of these places, because if you don’t hear, you don’t know, you won’t know how to bring the needed support in terms of collaboration,” Para-Mallam says. 

The Gideon and Funmi Para-Mallam Peace Foundation brings Muslims and Christians together to reflect on the important subject of peace. Learn more about their mission here.

“Our inspiration came from Matthew 5:9,” says Para-Mallam. “‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ — underscore makers, not peace builders, but makers — ‘for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.’”

Header photo of 2020 protests in Abeokuta, Nigeria courtesy of Tope. A Asokere via Unsplash.