Greetings, blessings and peace from Baghdad. I am sorry I
have not written for a few days but life here has been rather busy and I have
also been at the Synod in Cyprus with Faiz, Nawal and Dawlat, our Church
Warden.
Cyprus Synod
Synod was wonderful as usual and it was great seeing again
our friends from the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf. We had as our speaker this
year Bishop Eugene of the diocese of Maryland in the USA. The main theme was
the issue of reconciliation, so it was very suitable.
(Picture: Faiz & Andrew)
Nawal leads our Mother's Union here in Baghdad and is the
wife of Faiz, lay pastor of St. George's. It was the first time she had been to
Synod and it was so good that she was able to meet the people of the diocese.
There was also somebody present who used to be a leader of the Mother's Union
in Ireland so that was also great.
I have said before that our Synod is very different from any
other I have been part of. It is truly wonderful. I came back a little earlier
than the others so I could do the services this weekend. The rest of the St.
George's team are now back and full of the joy of their experience.
Ash Wednesday
Coming back to Iraq was as wonderful as usual. I am going to
write soon a message about what G-d is doing here because it is so significant.
Today is Ash Wednesday and the Lent fast has started. We started it on Sunday.
Lent is a little longer in Iraq as we begin with the fast of Jonah.
On Sunday we burnt some of the old palms and had the cross
of Ashes put on each person's head. Some may be used to this practice in the
West but here it had not been seen before. It had a very profound effect. All
the Children were brought in from Sunday school for the cross so there were
well over a thousand people walking around with the ash cross on their head.
People who were not at the Sunday service have been coming since for their ash
cross.
BBC Radio 4 Programme
When I returned from Cyprus to Baghdad on Friday we had the
BBC with us for three days. Their team was headed by Edward Stourton and they
came to make a programme about the religious minority groups in Iraq. The
programme will be going out on Radio 4 and the World Service in April; it will give people a good taste to life at St.
George's.
On Saturday I was able to take Edward and his producer to
see Ayatollah Hussein Al-Sadr. This was a good meeting and the Ayatollah was
able to talk about how important the minorities were to Iraq as many were the
original people of this land.
The leader of the Mandians, who are the followers of John
the Baptist, also came over. He was interviewed for the programme and then came
to our Saturday service. He spoke and sent his greetings to our people and was
actually very pleased to see that we had Mandians with us and working at our
clinic. He had photos taken with our Mandians which includes young Havan who
draws the pictures for us.
Yesterday was my thirteenth Stem Cell treatment. I had the
stem cells taken from me and injected into my neck. Already I have seen a major
improvement in my balance. Please pray that unlike before that this improvement
with last. Today I am taking it easy and resting. This I have not really done
before.
Further Stem Cell Treatment
Dr. Majid is a friend who does this treatment on hundreds of
people. He is now preparing to leave his long standing position at the main
hospital in Baghdad and open a clinic in the safety of Erbil in Kurdistan. This
will allow people to come from other countries. I still find it difficult that
such simple and effective treatment is not available for MS in the West.
Please continue to pray for peace as we enter this time of
Lent.
Blessings,
Canon Andrew White
