We are so excited to have a new staff member, Grace Teubl. Although she has been a part of our organization as a volunteer for a long time, she is now officially on staff.

When Grace was in college, she volunteered for three years with our Horizons team in Albany doing international student outreach. Her sister-in-law was the director of Albany Horizons at the time, and she got Grace involved, first as an intern, and later as the events coordinator. Since Grace had traveled internationally, she knew what it felt like to be out of place and in a strange culture, and she wanted to welcome these international students to America, make them feel at home, and share with them about Jesus. She wanted these students to know that Jesus Himself left the comfort of his home and family to live here with us, learn our culture and our language, and ultimately to die for us.

In 2014 Grace completed her work with Horizons in Albany and moved to India. As her trip in India was coming to an end, she started feeling a call to work with refugees. The verse God spoke to her was from Isaiah 58:10 “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.” Again, she felt compassion for people living in a strange culture far away from their home and family. Unlike the international students, though, these refugees had no home to return to. At first she started to look for work in the Albany region with refugees, but nothing was opening up. During that time, she learned some facts that blew her away. For example, that out of all the refugees who apply for resettlement with the UN, only 1% of them are ever successfully get resettled. She decided that she should find out where the other 99% were and serve there.

Grace asked a friend if she knew of any Christian organizations working overseas with refugees, and this friend referred her to Horizons International in Beirut. So in late 2017 Grace moved to Beirut for a 9 month internship. Since moving to Beirut we have been so blessed by Grace and all of her work. While in Beirut she went through an intensive Engaging Islam training, studied Arabic, and worked alongside locals in evangelism. But what she got most excited about and most involved in was working with the School of Hope. School of Hope is our school for young Syrian refugee kids and this is a huge need because of the many thousands of refugee kids that are getting no education in Lebanon. Grace has been a huge blessing in helping with the kids at the school. We are so looking forward to having Grace full-time and we cant wait to see what God has in store for her here in Lebanon.