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The sun is high, but a cool breeze from Lebanon's Shouf Mountains comes through open windows and blows across the concrete living room. Sitting on plastic chairs in the sparse living room, the Hasroute family drinks thick Arabic coffee with their neighbors.

In the mountain village of Wadi Al-Deir, Lebanon, families are rediscovering caring, cooperation, and neighborliness after a generation of warfare. Nowhere is this rediscovery more evident than in the vibrant smile on the face of Menwar Wadih Hasroute, the family's head.

"This is the center: our house. After 11 years, I was able to return," Hasroute says. "The destroyers burned, bulldozed houses, and cut down the olive and lemon trees." But now a new season of replanting and rebuilding has begun for many Christian families, scattered by the internal warfare that divided Lebanon for 22 years.

Chatting and pointing proudly, the Hasroute family takes a group of guests through the restored kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The rebuilding has not only involved bricks and mortar, but there has also been the reconstruction of relationships between Christian Lebanese and Druze, as well as between villages and the national government. In differing ways, the international relief-and-development ministry World Vision, local Lebanese leaders, and the American and Lebanese governments have provided financial and personnel resources to help more than 400 Christian families driven from their villages return to their homes and begin the process of reconciliation with the Druze, the Lebanese minority group that forced Christian villagers to flee.

RECOVERING FROM DEVASTATION
From 1975 to 1991, Lebanon was ravaged by internal warfare, which also ensnared Syria and Israel, both of which still occupy a portion of the country.

In 1983, one of many bleak twists in the bloody conflict occurred. A sectarian wave of violence against Christian villages in the Shouf Province caused residents to flee from the shooting and destruction. Towns were obliterated, and the occupants fled.

Many Christian refugees settled in Beirut, where they eked out a living under desperate conditions. Other refugees, those who moved from place to place to avoid battles for control of Beirut, were already living in whatever confiscated housing they could find.

Hasroute, his wife, and their six children were given living space in a building in exchange for his services as janitor and guard. "We lived under the staircase," he says. "No one can ever know what it feels like to be displaced, to lose your home."

In 1991, the Lebanese government established the Ministry of Displacement to facilitate the return of homes to their rightful owners and to provide resettlement money to the squatters.

Government funds paid only for relocation, not for reconstruction. Many Christians from the mountain villages were seasoned farmers. Their property now consisted of burnt and axed trees, uprooted vineyards, scorched gardens, and demolished houses. They had little hope and almost no money.

PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN WITNESS
Jean Bouchebl, director of World Vision Lebanon, and George Deeb, a Lebanese political leader from the Shouf Province, met with government officials, urging them to assist Christians in rebuilding their villages and livelihoods.

Yet, Christian leaders were not content to work solely on reconstructing houses. They were determined to promote reconciliation and peace among conflicting religious groups. "It is relationship and Christian witness in practical ways that speaks to hearts," says Bouchebl.

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December 8 1997, Vol. 41, No. 14