Each month we pray for two of our mission partners. During December we are praying for Playskill and Embrace the Middle East.

Playskill is an organisation which supports local physically disabled children and their families in free specialist playgroups. They have asked that we pray for:

• funding to meet rising costs and rising demand for the service
• all the children and their families that they would benefit from the playgroups / contact with therapists
• the new group opening in Hemel Hempstead in the New Year

Embrace the Middle East provides help and support to marginalised and vulnerable people in the Middle East. They provide support where there is injustice poverty and little or no medical care. They provide doctors and travelling medical units to remote communities as well as a nurse training school.  They work with disadvantaged children and those with disabilities providing both educational and recreational activities.  Families with disabled children are supported and encouraged as these children are frequently neglected. They have worked in the refugee camps both those new from recent conflicts and those that have been there for decades.

Rowena Worthington, EME’s Church Relationships Manager, who launched Gift Day for us back in September has sent us this fascinating message, which concludes with her three items for prayer:

“It has been about 3 months since I came to speak to you all about Embrace’s partners in the Middle East. The challenges across the region continue, but despite this, our partners continue to bring hope and help to those who need it most in their communities.

I recently travelled to Israel and Palestine, where we took a group of supporters to help support Palestinian farmers with the olive harvest. A colleague and I then stayed on and went to Gaza to visit some of our partners. It was a challenging visit, but truly inspiring. None of our staff had been able to visit Gaza since before the pandemic, so we hope that the visit was encouraging for both parties!

Gaza was quiet, but the situation in the West Bank is getting worse and will continue to deteriorate as a result of the elections – Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party are in the process of forming a coalition with the far-right Religious Zionism party. In the north, particularly Nablus and Jenin, there have been many accounts of violence and killings of Palestinians. Whilst we were there Israel brought in a new law banning anyone born in Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain and South Sudan from entering the West Bank. There are also new restrictions on academics wanting to conduct research in the occupied Palestinian territories. On top of this, intra community violence between Palestinian citizens of Israel is on the rise.”

This Christmastime, as we remember Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, we remember that he came to bring restoration to a broken world.

Please do keep the situation in your prayers, particularly the following:

• For the increasing violence in the West Bank
• For continued calm in Gaza
• For Jerusalem and Bethlehem as they prepare to receive Christmas pilgrims”

We are once again giving the offertory at our Midnight Communion and Christmas day service to Embrace, whose office is in Amersham, praying that these will be generous ones.