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middle eastern partners

PC(USA) joins with Middle Eastern partners to serve traumatized refugee children

Posted October 17th, 2019

In Lebanon, a country “bursting at the seams” with refugee families, Scott Parker helps migrant children from Iraq and Syria unpack the trauma they have experienced. Parker, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ecumenical associate, delights in seeing children start coming to terms with their painful pasts, but he acknowledged that deep feelings they express can be unsettling to hear. One day while playing a game with puppets, Parker asked the children to pretend they were on a bus and something bad happened. An 8-year-old boy blurted out, “Oh, a terrorist just exploded a bomb on the bus!”