The Christ Day in Iraq, Friday November 18th, went very well, actually much better than expected. Though it is in Arabic, you can watch a small report here to get an idea of what a triumph it was to get so many from different Christian traditions together along with many refugees and others from non-Christian backgrounds. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVVJ6Dbkis. One of the organizers describes what happened: 

“We had two types of meetings, a small one on Thursday for believers, and a big one on Friday for everyone. The second one was attended by very few believers and majority of nonbelievers.

Saying all that, the Lord did not leave us without a blessing/surprise! A Christian singer from another background, gave a very bold simple message about giving ourselves to the Will of God. He led all the audience to pray with him, surrendering their lives to the Will of God through Jesus Christ, and then sang a beautiful song about "the Lord is near to all those who call upon Him”.

It was just marvelous, seeing everyone bowing down and praying that prayer, including many nuns and a couple of priests together with all the audience, praise the Lord.

As we were planning, Christ Day is not just an event but a start of a new era of the Iraqi Church. The Lord showed us that there were many young people very much touched by what was going on. He showed us a need to start a youth ministry among them!    

Prayer concerns:

• To keep the good results of reconciliation and make progress for the prayer movement.
• To pray against the bad accusations/slander some people are trying to accuse us and the media company.
• To start a new ministry among the youth who participated in this event, Christ Day. They are about 350 people.”

Maher Barbary
Life Agape - Iraq