{"id":305996,"date":"2018-03-22T01:10:04","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T00:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/hope-in-sight-for-aleppo\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:36:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:36:43","slug":"hope-in-sight-for-aleppo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/hope-in-sight-for-aleppo\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope in sight for Aleppo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20180322-01b\"<\/a>The story of Jean and Vivian is a story of love, hope and courage.<\/strong> They met in Aleppo, Syria, in 2000 while belonging to the Focolare Movement. Vivian is a widow with a one year-old son who is totally deaf. Jean is a carpenter and socially active. Their common commitment to living the Gospel<\/a> and bringing the ideal of a united world to humanity brought them closer and, in 2003 they got married and have four children. Vivian\u2019s first son, Marc, was the motivation behind their adventure<\/strong>. Because of his need for special care, Vivian went to Lebanon where Marc would later follow and stay at a centre run by the Focolare: \u201cIt\u2019s really a foretaste of Heaven,\u201d he says. \u201cLiving the Gospel in daily life accompanies the whole educational process. The children grow up in this oasis of peace and develop their talents while overcoming their handicap. The dream began to grow in me of setting up an institute myself, in my own city of Aleppo.\u201d Jean supported him in his venture and, in 2005, their small centre was begun. Other larger ones would follow with larger capacity for up to ten children, all from poor families who couldn\u2019t afford the cost. The centre was always in deficit: \u201cWhenever we needed something,\u201d Jean recalls, \u201cwe\u2019d go in front of the crucifix and hand over our needs to Him. Providence arrived right on time every time.\u201d \"1395739130-720x0-c-default\"The breakout of the war in 2011 brought much death and destruction<\/strong>. Jean lost his carpentry, the centre wasn\u2019t having any financial input and many were living on help from the Church and humanitarian organizations. Many left the country and, even though Jean and Vivian were tormented at the thought, they bought tickets to go. But one thing became clearer and clearer in their hearts: they couldn\u2019t leave \u201ctheir\u201d deaf children and destroy that dream that had come true with so much effort. \u201cOn the night before our departure, I stepped into church,\u201d Jeans says, \u201cI had a deep conversation with Jesus, face to face, man to man. He seemed to speak in my heart and asked me not to go: what would the children now? I felt him posing this tragic question to me. I put my children in His hands. I went home and Vivian and I decided to rip up the tickets and stay in the city forever to be a help to the people who needed us<\/strong>.\u201d \u201cWe were hopeful that God would accompany and support us in all our future projects and especially in our family,\u201d echoed Vivian, \u201cand that\u2019s what happened.\u201d Now the centre is their second home<\/strong>, their children also take part in the life of the group and Jean works full time \u201cThis community has widened our hearts. There is no longer boy or girl, student or teacher, healthy or handicapped, Muslim or Christian. We live in the one love and beneath the same gaze of a God-Love, incarnate, living in our midst.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The testimony of Syrians Jean and Vivian, who have set up a learning centre for handicap children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}