It has been three months since I returned from God's mission trip to Lebanon.  The excitement of the trip still lives within me.  In the next few paragraphs I will have the difficult job of summarizing the trip into short written form.  I would like to start by saying, thank you!  To the people that gave prayers and financial support to God's mission in Lebanon, I am thankful for your participation.

The trip began as a team of seven individuals left Kansas City International. Airport on July 3rd.  Our team was made up of five men and two women that would  put on basketball camps all over Lebanon.  We arrived in Beirut, Lebanon, a little over twenty-five hours after we left K.C.I.  After a good night's sleep, we would spend the next couple of days getting to know local pastors, churches and people we would be working with over the next two weeks.  Our team took a tour of where the Celebration for Jesus would be held.  The Celebration for Jesus was an event full of worship music, preaching and getting a community involved with God.  The Celebration site held about three thousand people, and would be used each evening from 7pm-11pm for five consecutive days.  

After several meetings with local people, our team met another team from the U.S.  The team of eleven enthusiastic servants of God were from North and South Carolina.  Each team had two main goals, bring people to Christ and get people to come to the Celebration.  The participants were organized into four groups:  a basketball team, a group of ladies that would minister in women's prisons, a team to visit a local orphanage and finally, a co-ed group was sent to the street to spread the word.  

For the next seven days, the basketball team put on camps for young kids.  The basketball team spent anywhere from twenty minutes to two and one-half hours traveling by bus to our destination.  Every camp had the same atmosphere when we arrived. Several kids were ready to play basketball.  As temperatures were so warm, it was amazing that the kids would arrive with such excitement, yet with no water to drink for the day.  As the week passed, several faces at the basketball camps became familiar. Kids found out where the next day's camp would be and in some cases, they would walk several miles to come to attend.  Throughout the week, dozens of people gave their lives to Christ, and hundreds more came to the Celebration because of the outreach of the basketball camps.

As our camps came to a close, the team was exhausted.  Our busy schedule included daily basketball camps and church functions that lasted late into the evening. The week of the Celebration began, no longer were we simply a basketball team.  Setting up thousands of chairs and running sound equipment were among the many tasks our team was to assist with.  Once the Celebration was underway, our team helped with several different things.  There were thousands of people to usher in and out of the Celebration.  Each person would need a bulletin of events for that night and a song book.  Each evening of the Celebration there was a children's area, a small gym set aside to have a Celebration of Jesus for the kids.  It would take a minimum of four people to staff the games, stories, serve refreshments and lead songs in the children's area.  An additional team member was used to staff a prayer room in a nearby building.  Through the week of the Celebration, it was easy for our team to find something to do.  Each night the area for the Celebration would be full of people and each night there would be several people that would come forward to accept Jesus.

If you have never been overseas on a missions trip, the only idea of the land to which you are going to travel  is from the media.  The media had filled my head with images of Lebanon, so I prepared myself for a hostile environment with camels, rude people and desert as far as the eye could see.  What I found was a beautiful country full of wonderful people.  Our team stayed at a small hotel on the sea and in a twenty minute drive, we could be up in beautiful mountains.  The people of Lebanon were drawn to  Americans.  They would ask us all kinds of questions about the states and our lives.  This was a great opportunity to share  Christ with them.  I met people young and old and became great friends with them.  I formed a bond with the Lebanese people, not based on our differences, but based on our mutual brotherhood in Christ.  There were many times that the American team would travel to a church or basketball game and the Lebanese people would stand and clap for several minutes when we arrived.  Needless to say,  the American teams were welcome in Lebanon.

The last couple of days in Lebanon were spent speaking with small groups about our involvement in the area.  We hope to plant seeds for the 2004 Lebanon trip. Several of the other Americans were leaving to go to Syria for a Celebration for Jesus for two days.  As they prepared to leave for Syria, several members of the basketball team gave money we had left over from our expense account.  This is just what God wanted, as the Syrian team found out the cost of their trip had gone up substantially.  As a result of the Syria trip, twenty-seven people gave their lives to Christ.

The time had come to leave Lebanon and return to the states.  I wasn't prepared to leave the many friends and memories God had given me.  Friends that had nothing. No car, no family, just Jesus.  They had given up all they had as a Muslim to follow Christ and I was in awe of their sacrifice.  I questioned myself several times whether my faith was as strong as some of the Lebanese.  Our basketball team left Beirut and made the long journey back home with God's blessing.

Now, my vision is set to "Lebanon 2004."  In September, I traveled to North Carolina  to be a part of the first 2004 Lebanon meetings.  Mr. Boulos,  the head of the Lebanon trips, traveled to the states to speak at the meetings.  He informed people at the meetings that in 2004, God had given him the okay to travel back to Syria and onto Egypt and hold more Celebrations.  I had the opportunity to speak at one of the meetings and give the people a glimpse of Lebanon from my perspective.  In the meeting I spoke at, thirty-two thousand dollars was raised.  On Sunday morning I had the opportunity to be apart of three church services that had six thousands members.  This church will be giving money throughout the next year to "Lebanon 2004."  Shortly after I returned home from N. Carolina, I received an e-mail that another church in the N. Carolina area had given ten thousand dollars.  They also committed another ten thousand dollars before the 2004 trip begins next July.  

I am amazed as I see God move His people toward "Lebanon 2004." He is an awesome God!  The verse God has given me for 2004 is Amos 8:11  "The time is surely coming," says the Sovereign Lord, "when I will send a famine on the land - not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord."  I feel that time is 2004 and the place is Lebanon.  Not a time of famine of food, but a famine of the word of God being spread.  I would ask you to be involved in stopping this famine, whether it be with help in prayer, financial support or both.  "Lebanon 2004" needs your support. 

     God Bless-

           Chris L. Wier