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Glimpses of Project AGAPE – A Ministry in Armenia
… a man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that center into God, unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of a selfless love … Thomas Merton
… if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. John the Witness … Do you love me? … Feed my sheep. Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God
The
Agape Christian Education Center
stands just down the mountain-side from the Agape Children’s Home. To spend
time in this place is to be in the whirl-wind of life. In defiance of the pain
of past conflict, this is a place where light shines into the shadows and
proclaims a different reality. It is new wine in new wine skins! Children
In a non-descript place known as
Bagaran, in a jumble of a hundred homes perched on the edge of nowhere,
In the oldest of
Christian nations,
disciples, American and Armenian, come together in mutual celebration, a
connection of Spirit and a proclamation of God.
My friends, Project Agape is a
proclamation of hope and a statement of faith. As brothers and sisters in
Christ, together Armenians and Americans have
“… Do you love me?” the Voice inquires, “Do you love me?” Project Agape in Armenia, it’s about love. It’s about worshiping the one who says, “ … Feed my sheep.”
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that space
where the nightmare of the past no longer overcomes the reality of today and the
vision for tomorrow. Here in this place of heartache, in the very center of the
pain, children gather in new classrooms in a school which is a symbol of
Christian connection, a connection from American hearts to Armenian hearts, from
United Methodist hearts to Apostolic hearts, from your hearts to theirs. The
children gather in a school that was built in part from the vision and dreams of
United Methodist neighbors from across the sea,
dreams offered by a
community of faith so very far away, but only a blink in the Kingdom. Dreams
offered when the 
above the anguish to once again believe in life, dreams are born anew in the
miracle of a school! And yet, other students still struggle, still meet in
dilapidated containerized classrooms where exposed wiring hangs like great
tendrils across the ceilings. Each day they gather in this battered dieing
corpse of a building where the fume-laden air created by faulty heaters slowly
suffocates them. And each day they strain to discover hope through education
even as they sit in these frigid, poorly ventilated metal structures. 
At the
the Project Agape Christian Education Center, for many, the home is the last
place of refuge. For other children, children whose parents cannot afford to
feed and house them each day, the home acts as temporary quarters. These
children return to the homes of their parents each weekend to be nourished in
their own family environment. Each night at the Agape Childrens’ Home is a
night of communal dinner and games, and then a time for studies,
In Lachin,
this place of wonder. Each year, without x-ray machines, without proper
operating rooms, doctors set broken bones and perform surgery. Each year, life
is wrenched from the grasp of death. On this day of our sojourn, a doctor sits
with visiting friends, he tells stories … he waxes philosophically … he laughs
and laughs, for in this instant, in this brief point of time, he does not have
to cry. 
In this instant, in
this meeting of friends from the Carolina Conferences, there is hope of more medicine and
more bandages and more equipment and more life. And yet … tomorrow, he knows he
will again try to save people whose malnourished bodies are battered by disease,
are consumed by pain, and who know the true loneliness of being forgotten by an
apathetic world. 
come to this place to dance and sing and learn. Adults come to join in
micro-enterprises of sewing and weaving. In an area where the economy remains
ravaged by the horror of recent war, women make gowns for Agape Hospital and
clothing for the town’s people. Their faces demonstrate the return of life …
self-esteem and promise and possibility! More enterprises are visioned – hope
builds on and births more hope. And yet
for the first time ever,
clean cold water flows from faucets placed at strategic locations along a muddy
road. No longer are elderly women forced to struggle up the rocky mountain-side
to reach the only water which is fit to drink. A man turns the handle of the
spigot and his hard weathered face, a mask of leather, breaks into a joyous
smile which all the mud and all the struggle cannot diminish. Water! The stream
of life, the out flow of the Spirit of love. And yet … deep poverty of a
scratch-dirt existence suppresses aspiration and crushes the psyche, birthing
spasms of pain which come from never having enough, enough of anything except
toil and sweat and debt and heartache. 
And yet … in this bastion of Christian history, so many move about like walking
cadavers, the look of sorrow in their eyes, and the presence of death in their
souls. 
accomplished much. However, there
is still so much to do. And yet … the need is still great, the circumstances
are still dire. Who will say yes to the need? Who will stand beside those who
would be forgotten? Who will take the time to love? If not us, then who? If
not now, then when?