After spending a school year teaching the children of Syrian refugees in the heart of Beirut, Columbus’ Julia Bowling has no hesitation about going back to work with a classroom of students there this fall.
Bowling has spent the summer fundraising, including selling pecan pies, to raise money to go back to teach a second year at the Beirut Bridge of Hope, in Lebanon.
She says she is ready for a new school year and to share her Christian faith in the midst of the war-torn Middle East with a group of kindergarten and first grade-age kids.
“My first class was 20 kids and it was a challenge,” Bowling said of her arrival in Lebanon a year ago. “Many of them hadn’t been in school and they had so much energy. They were not used to sitting in a chair. They definitely have a lot of spirit.”
Bowling was considering enrolling at Indiana Bible College close to home or the opportunity to teach a year in Beirut after attending a session about the Lebanon school at the Apostolic Tabernacle of Edinburgh. Beirut Bridge of Hope founders Toufic and April Azar and their family spoke at the church about the Syrian refugee crisis and the need to help families who had fled to Lebanon from Syria.
Syrian refugee children age 5 to 8 may attend the school to learn math, English and Arabic writing.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
