Aboud & Maryland  

Brothers in Christ

            Two years ago, a new relation was created between two peoples in two different countries but they are one in Christ. It’s between the Latin Patriachate School in Aboud and St. Mary’s school of Piscataway in Maryland. The beginning was through exchanging letters between 8th graders in both schools. Then, at the end of the last academic year we were more than delighted to host a group of our American friends headed by Mr. Rateb Rabie, the president of the Holy-Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, Inc (HCEF), and Mr. Duane Burchick, the HCEF program coordinator for the “Beacons of Hope” and child sponsorship programs for Christian education support in the Holy Land.

 After this visit, the relation was expanded to include all students in our school in all grades with their American counterparts in St. Mary’s of Piscataway and St. Michael’s of Silver Spring Schools in Maryland.

Since I’m the person who’s in charge of this new successful and fruitful program, relation and friendship in my school, I can say frankly and truthfully that I have noticed and touched how glad and excited my students were when they were asked to write to the American students for the first time or when they received their letters and drawings. In my opinion, it’s a good chance to create a unique friendship between the students and to exchange information about both schools and countries. Moreover; I feel it’s a good way to get the two peoples especially the youngsters closer from each other by knowing and understanding the other who’s different from us in language, culture and mentality.

Fr. Aziz and I are now engaged in a new joint endeavor with our American friends and are looking forward to enlarging this relation to become a full partnership between our Catholic community and Christian youth groups in Aboud with the Catholic community and Christian youth groups in Maryland. We are aware and convinced that this “if it happens” will be a very important step forward on the way to strengthen the relation between the youth, in particular, in both countries. We believe deeply that they will be the leaders of the society in the future, and they must achieve a full knowledge of the other in order to build the trust and love among them to become true Christians as our lord Jesus Christ wants us to be.

            We are so confident that our relation will be stronger by time and hope there will be other areas of corporation between our two parishes in the future. We hope that one of our brothers in Maryland will provide us with information about their parish, schools, and Christian youth groups.

            We will be happy if we get an answer to our article, or a subject to publish in the next number of our beloved magazine “The Voice of the City of Flowers”.

            At the end we would like to invite you to visit our web site of the magazine at this address: www.angelfire.com/pa/aboudyouth

            You can sign our guestbook or send e-mails, letters, subjects, news, etc.