Topic: Agape - A Glimpse at a Mission Ministry in Armenia
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My dear friends, I have recently returned from a trip to Armenia, where I visited a mission ministry known as Project Agape.  This ministry is an ecumenical effort, a collaboration between the United Methodist Conferences of North Carolina and the Armenian Apostolic Church.  It is hard to describe the level of need.  It is hard to convey the spirit and tenacity of those who suffer so deeply.  It is something that must be felt and smelled and experienced.  Yet, in this glimpse, I hope you may garner some sense of the Kingdom building that takes place, and some idea of the need that goes unmet. 

Shalom,

Nail-Bender in NC

… a man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that center into God, unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of a selfless love …                 Thomas Merton

… if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

                                                                                John the Witness

… Do you love me? … Feed my sheep. 

                                      Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God

Glimpses of Project Agape – A Ministry in Armenia

Spitak is a city devastated by earthquake, a community connected not simply through the relationship of blood, but through the horrific circumstance of death.  It is a city where over 1/3 of it’s population died, over 6000 people, mothers and fathers and children, sometimes whole families.  It is a community that labors to reach a point of life, that space where the nightmare of the past no longer overcomes the reality of today and the vision for tomorrow.  Here in this place of heartache, in the very center of the pain, children gather in new classrooms in a school which is a symbol of Christian connection, a connection from American hearts to Armenian hearts.  The children gather in a school that was built from the vision and dreams of neighbors from across the sea, dreams offered by a community of faith so very far away, but only a blink in the Kingdom.  Dreams offered when the our brothers and sisters of Spitak had no dreams.  The devastation that precluded dreams brought only nightmares.   But encouragement and connection came through the work of people who would not turn away, through the hope of those who said, "let us too, walk with you."  From the Spirit of those who lived in the midst of the pain and rose above the anguish to once again believe in life, dreams are born anew in the miracle of a school!  And yet, other students still struggle, still meet in dilapidated containerized classrooms where exposed wiring hangs like great tendrils across the ceilings.  Each day they gather in this battered dieing corpse of a building where the fume-laden air created by faulty heaters slowly suffocates them.  And each day they strain to discover hope through education even as they sit in these frigid, poorly ventilated metal structures.      

At the Agape Children’s Home, a child whose parents were brutally killed in a war which she does not remember and cannot understand, reaches her hand out to be touched, flesh to flesh, in a connection of holiness, in a life-giving moment of incarnation.  She along with dozens of other children reside in this place of hope, a home for children who would have no home.  Built not far from the Project Agape Christian Education Center, for many, the home is the last place of refuge.  For other children, children whose parents cannot afford to feed and house them each day, the home acts as temporary quarters.   These children return to the homes of their parents each weekend to be nourished in their own family environment.  Each night at the Agape Childrens’ Home is a night of communal dinner and games, and then a time for studies, activities with friends, and prayers.  It is a place of safety for those whom would surely perish.  And yet … other children outside the security of these walls, still need the touch of someone who will say, “You are safe here, you are protected.” 

In Lachin, the Agape hospital was built with gifts from brothers and sisters in whose reality exists in what would seem another world.  For in this town of 12,000, an area that knew civil war until 1995, there are no other hospitals and no other places of medical care.  Each year, this place of healing sees 700 patients.  The small staff of three doctors and a handful of nurses do the impossible.  With very little equipment and twenty beds, they care for those who would have no where else to turn.  Each year 70 new lives begin in this place of wonder.  Each year, without x-ray machines, without proper operating rooms, doctors set broken bones and perform surgery.  Each year, life is wrenched from the grasp of death.  On this day of our sojourn, a doctor sits with visiting friends, he tells stories … he waxes philosophically … he laughs and laughs, for in this instant, in this brief point of time, he does not have to cry.  In this instant, in this meeting of friends from across the sea, there is hope of more medicine and more bandages and more equipment and more life.  And yet … tomorrow, he knows he will again try to save people whose malnourished bodies are battered by disease, are consumed by pain, and who know the true loneliness of being forgotten by an apathetic world.    

The Agape Christian Education Center stands just down the mountain-side from the Agape Children’s Home.  To spend time in this place is to be in the whirl-wind of life.  In defiance of the pain of past conflict, this is a place where light shines into the shadows and proclaims a different reality.  It is new wine in new wine skins!  Children come to this place to dance and sing and learn.  Adults come to join in micro-enterprises of sewing and weaving.  In an area where the economy remains ravaged by the horror of recent war, women make gowns for Agape Hospital and clothing for the town’s people.  Their faces demonstrate the return of life … self-esteem and promise and possibility!  More enterprises are visioned – hope builds on and births more hope.   And yet ... most in Lachin have no jobs and have little hope.  The economic recovery is extremely slow, like a man recovering from a horrible disease, constant care is needed from those who are not diseased.  Faithful attentiveness is needed from those who have taken life in so that they might know how to give life out. 

In a non-descript place known as Bagaran, in a jumble of a hundred homes perched on the edge of nowhere, for the first time ever, clean cold water flows from faucets placed at strategic locations along a muddy road.  No longer are elderly women forced to struggle up the rocky mountain-side to reach the only water which is fit to drink.  A man turns the handle of the spigot and his hard weathered face, a mask of leather, breaks into a joyous smile which all the mud and all the struggle cannot diminish.  Water! The stream of life, the out flow of the Spirit of love.  And yet … deep poverty of a scratch-dirt existence suppresses aspiration and crushes the psyche, birthing spasms of pain which come from never having enough, enough of anything except toil and  sweat and debt and heartache. 

In the oldest of Christian nations, disciples, American and Armenian, come together in mutual celebration, a connection of Spirit and a proclamation of God.  And yet … in this bastion of Christian history, so many move about like walking cadavers, the look of sorrow in their eyes, and the presence of death in their souls. 

My friends, Project Agape is a proclamation of hope and a statement of faith.  As brothers and sisters in Christ, together Armenians and Americans have accomplished much.  However, there is still so much to do.  And yet … the need is still great, the circumstances are still dire.  Who will say yes to the need?  Who will stand beside those who would be forgotten?  Who will take the time to love?  If not us, then who?  If not now, then when? 

“… Do you love me?” the Voice inquires, “Do you love me?”  Project Agape in Armenia, it’s about love.  It’s about worshiping the one who says, “ … Feed my sheep.”   

If you would like to help Project Agape, you can contact Nail-Bender at nailbender@desperatepreacher.com

 Shalom my friends,

Nail-Bender in NC

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