Danish Group Visit

A Danish group comprising of 19 people from the city of Aarhus visited Schneller School on Wednesday October 19, 2011. They come from a church in Aarhus that looks after immigrant communities in their city. They stayed in our guesthouse for the night and the following day they visited the various department in JLSS. Six members of the group retuned to our school on Saturday 22 October and they stayed until Monday morning 24 October when they returned to Beirut. On Sunday 23 October they attended the Sunday service and they participated by singing a Palestinian peace hymn called: YA RABBA AL-SALAMI AMTER ALAYNA AL-SALAM (O Lord of peace, rain on us your peace). They also lead the children in doing handicrafts making spiders from wild chestnut fruits, matches, and threads. The children were delighted  with our visitors and were glad to hear from them about the work of their church in Aarhus with immigrant people that include many Arab children from various nationalities. The group included two old friends of the director from the time he worked with the Family Bookshop in Bahrain. Birgit and Lene were co-workers from the Danish Mission Society at that time and they taught in Al-Rajaa School for four years. This was around thirty years ago, and it was a wonderful reunion of old friends. The group also included Mary daughter of JLSS alumnus Johnny Saed. The group visited most of the touristic places of Lebanon. They also visited Palestinian camps where Mrs. Kanafani, who is a Danish citizen, has been running Kindergartens for children since her husband, Ghassan Kanafani, was assassinated in 1972. The JLSS guests were also taken to the cedar forest in the nearby Chouf region where they enjoyed a two hour walk in the most beautiful place in Lebanon. We thank our dear old friends and our wonderful visitors from Aarhus - Denmark for their wonderful visit, and we hope they will visit us again.