MEET REVEREND ARA

“I used to be very involved in my church in Baghdad, when the main pastor asked me if I was interested in theological training to potentially lead the church after him. After much praying, I felt it was what God wanted me to do, so I came to Lebanon to study at ABTS (Arab Baptist Theological Seminary) from 2009 to 2012. At that time, I thought I still had plenty of time before I would actually have to lead the church myself.

But in 2010, when ISIS attacked the catholic cathedral in Baghdad, the main pastor of our church decided to leave Iraq for the United States and the church remained without a pastor. At that time, many Christians were trying to resettle in the West or seeking refuge in Lebanon, because they felt persecuted and they were scared. Who can blame them?

Now, there are less than 500,000 Christians in Iraq, when we were more than 1,5 million in the early 2000’s.

It was a very challenging time for me and I was unsure what to do. In 2012, I graduated from ABTS and I decided to return to Iraq and take over the ministry of the church, although I was not sure I was ready to do so!

In June 2014, ISIS attacked and took control of Mosul and by August, they had reached the villages of the Nineveh plains. This was the beginning of a civil war in Iraq which would last three years. As a result, many families from all ethnic groups and religions were displaced and living in miserable conditions.

This is when we knew, as a church, we could not turn a blind eye and we had to try to help as much as we could. So we started the relief assistance for all groups we were able to reach, regardless of their background or religion.

At times during the ministry, it was very dangerous to go outside Baghdad because ISIS controlled territories just five to ten kilometers away!

In this challenging context, we have been able to help displaced Shiites from the North (Tal Afar), Shabaks from the Nineveh plains, Syriacs, Catholics from Qaraqosh, Sunnis from western Iraq, and several Yazidi families.

Reaching the camps in western Iraq was hard because there was a lot of destruction and the camps were not organized. But God opened a door so we could distribute basic needs assistance. We had two distributions per month.

The displaced families there were from Sunni background, and entering those camps and seeing all this misery made us realize that Muslims are victims of ISIS, just like us. And they need God’s love and comfort, just like we do. We believe we have been showing them a little bit of God’s love through the food boxes. 

Most beneficiaries are very appreciative of the assistance and have a better image of Christians thanks to that. I go myself with the teams and meet with the people. I can see that it makes them feel valued.

Overall, things are much better in Baghdad now. It has been 3 years since the liberation of Mosul and the security is back. But we still have challenges and the needs continue to be overwhelming, with many displaced people not able to go back yet or having lost everything.”

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