Healing in Iraq comes with tears
At the Centre of Hope in Iraq, the healing process comes with tears.
Men in Iraq don’t cry, don’t show their grief, sadness. That is almost written in stone in the minds of Iraqi men.
But how not to cry in a country where crisis stumbled over crisis in the past decades? Wars, civil war, terrorist attacks, persecution, an economic crisis and all the individual crises Iraqi people went through.
28 year old Jubran is on a mission to help people heal from that trauma, and sometimes that comes with tears. Jubray is the manager of the Pool of Siloam Ecumenical Centre, a centre of hope that welcomes between 350 and 500 people of all ages.
Through all activities offered there, they want to help the participants to receive healing. The activities can be everything from football to a devotional time, from creative group activities to heart-to-heart conversations.
Jubran feels called by the Lord for the ministry. In 2014, when ISIS took over the Nineveh Plains region, about 120,000 Christians fled to safer places including Jubran’s city. “Soon we started an initiative to help those people. It started on Facebook, trying to mobilise people to help them. Those people hadn’t anything. So we started bringing to them what we had to help them.” This was the start of Jubran’s ministry, which eventually became the Centre of Hope.
All the workers in the centre are trained before they start working there. The centre receives children, men, women, and teenagers. “We offer many activities, but our main goal is to bring the healing message from the Bible. In all our activities we open the Bible.” Sometimes there are cultural hindrances. “In our culture, especially men are not meant to cry. We try to teach them that it is okay to cry. Even Jesus cried, we show that to them in the Bible. Jesus cried for example when he lost his friend. When He cried, it’s okay that we also express our feelings.”
At Jubran’s Centre of Hope in Iraq,
he encourages men to openly cry
as they heal from trauma.
he encourages men to openly cry
as they heal from trauma.
Jubran says that his staff is not just teaching this, they do it themselves too. “When we say that people should express their feelings, we have to do that in the first place ourselves. We cry with them. We cannot teach something that we do not do ourselves.”
“I see results of our work every single day in the lives of the people. We hope that this will only grow. I see it also in the lives of our staff. They show a great change in their lives since they joined in 2019. They are changed for the better.”
The staff take care of each other, as all hear almost daily the hard stories of the people who come to the center. “We hear so many things. We talk with each other, as those things affect us too. We ourselves need help, we’re like them [the people participating in the activities]. We help them, but we are helped too; it’s a kind of circle. It’s a complicated circle, when I give help to someone, I don’t know from whom I will get help when needed.”
“We hear many stories, children that lost both parents, parents who lost sons or daughters, persons who lost brothers or sisters because of bombing or accidents. But also all those who were displaced for a long time. Some struggled with questions like ‘Where is God?’, ‘If he exists, why doesn’t He intervene?’ Some even stopped believing. By using the Bible, we can help them to find answers, to discover why things are happening in our lives.”
Pray
When asked what Christians around the world should pray for him, Jubran answers, “That God will give me and others the power to help. That He will give us the patience and the love, so that we can give love to the people.” He adds, “There are no words that are enough to say how thankful I am to the donors of this centre. Because you help us, we can give help, give healing through the Bible. Thank you!”
Learn more
Our work in Iraq
Over the last eight years, Open Doors’ local partners have addressed the stigma on mental health care among the Christian community in Iraq. Now there are three functioning trauma care centres as well as a two-year counselling school for Christians in professions that encounter traumatized people.
Open Doors’ local partners will continue to walk beside the Christian community in Iraq. With your support we enable the local church to be a beacon of hope in this war-torn country. More than 30 caregivers currently take part in the two-year trauma care school. We also organize shorter trauma awareness courses, conferences and retreats for local Christians. The three trauma care centers that were set up with our help are also supported with practical resources.
Centres of Hope
Centres of Hope are active local churches that are supported with a number of hope-giving projects. The exact activities differ from between each Centre of Hope, but they include:
- Growing ministry towards women, youth and couples, and to strengthen discipleship efforts.
- Building healthy leaders and create trauma awareness, with members involved in tasks such as teaching and (pastoral) care.
- Inspiring Christians to find their prophetic voice and speak up about injustice.
- Building healthy incomes and livelihoods for Christians and reach out with Christ’s love into the community.
Larger programs, such as those for church leaders and the year-long trauma awareness course, are shared between several churches.
Centres of Hope provide what the Christians need right now: hope and new perspective. They need this to accomplish their dream of becoming a beacon of light in their societies.
There are currently 150 Centres of Hope in Iraq, and 287 more in Syria.
