The coffee we drink at All Souls helps people reclaim their lives. One of my favorite tasks at All Souls is brewing coffee early Sunday mornings. I do this along with a dedicated team who spend at least two hours every Sunday making sure our Catechesis Hour is well caffeinated. Our coffee draws us in […]

Returning to a familiar location for a mission trip brings some real perks. This was our third year serving in the Edgewater neighborhood, so there were a number of well worn paths. Most of our students had been on at least one of the two previous trips, so they knew about the building we were […]

Jennifer writes that her trip to Lebanon with Exodus was not a one-and-done excursion. How do we continue the mission? Every not-for-profit organization has a mission statement. For that matter, most for-profit corporations have mission statements as well. Maybe it’s to make the best hamburger the world has known. Maybe the mission is to create […]

Roy Stiff, a former member of All Souls, posts from Poland, where he is currently the Eastern Europe representative for the Global Church Movements ministry of Cru, which is still known as Campus Crusade for Christ or “New Life” internationally. In June, Roy married Agnieska, a Polish native. Their wedding service, as Roy describes it, […]

In her final post from the Bekaa Valley, Jennifer gives tribute to the local organizations caring for refugees, and how we can best partner with them. June 9 “Once there was someone who said such amazing things and did such wonderful things that people began to follow him. As they followed, he told them about […]

After spending two days with Syrian Muslim children, Jennifer asks some probing questions.   “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Day 2 of Kids Camp is in the books. One […]

Jennifer shares some poignant observations from Kid’s Camp on Mt. Lebanon June 7 “Teach your children well . . . .” (Graham Nash) “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) All Souls Vacation Bible School starts next week. In […]

June 6 In today’s post, Jennifer writes about the privilege of seeing God’s love at work in the Middle East. “Watch to see where God is working and join Him in His work.” (Henry Blackaby) The United States has a long history of viewing itself as the center of the world. For decades, and likely […]

Jennifer visits the ancient port city of Byblos and gains a sense of how Lebanon’s history  contributes to the current complexity of its refugee crisis. June 5 Today, we toured Byblos, an ancient port city an hour north of Beirut. Byblos has been continuously inhabited since about 5,000 BC and contains Phoenician, Roman, and Crusader ruins. Seeing the […]

In this, her first day at the refugee camps, Jennifer Merck details the sharp contrasts that depict Syrian refugee life in the Bekaa Valley. June 4 The year is 1984. Depèche Mode is the band: “People are people, so why should it be                         […]