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Restoring Hearts in Iraq
In a world where governments wage wars thousands of miles away, it’s difficult to imagine how individual Christians can live out the call of Jesus to be peacemakers. But in the wake of the Iraq War, Jeremy Courtney has found a way. As executive director of Preemptive Love Coalition, he helps provide lifesaving surgeries and medical training in the war-torn country. Through unique insights from his experience, he’ll share how peace and restoration often begins with a simple decision to say “yes.”
Through death threats and bombings to countless meals in Muslim homes across Iraq, Jeremy Courtney leads the Preemptive Love Coalition in an effort to eradicate the backlog of 30,000+ Iraqi children waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery after decades of sanctions, malnutrition and war-wrought environmental disasters.
Since its founding in 2007, the Coalition has accomplished what no other aide group has by living in Iraq, training local heart surgeons and nurses so that they have the skills necessary to eradicate the backlog of children born with life-threatening heart defects.
In addition to the Coalition’s success in the development of medical infrastructure across Iraq, the preemptive love creed has ignited countless human-scale stories of reconciliation between Iraqis and Americans, Muslims and Christians, Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shias.
Known across Iraq as a devout follower of Jesus Christ, Courtney and the Coalition work through postures of preemptive love toward a future in which “peace” is more than non-violence, but is instead forgiveness, reconciliation and a complete remaking of the world through healing.
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