Evangeline Hammond Ministry Update October 2025

Regional Update

We thank God that an official ceasefire between the IDF and Hamas armed groups was called on October 10^th and that many captives were released. However, the relief appears to be short-lived; more than 100 people have been killed in the weeks since by sustained drone strikes and shelling. Some humanitarian aid is being allowed into the area, but large aid organizations such as MSF and WHO are saying that the amount isn’t even close to enough. Food insecurity levels remain ‘catastrophic’. The UN’s most recent estimate is that ¾ of the population requires urgent emergency assistance. Please continue to pray for all vulnerable people caught in this conflict, and in particular the children who will bear the impacts of malnutrition for the rest of their lives.

Regardless of another formal ceasefire between the IDF and armed groups in Lebanon, there has been a recent uptick in airstrikes on south Lebanon, some believe in correlation with the ceasefire in Gaza. Just this past Sunday, a pastor and his family were travelling when the car next to them was hit by a drone strike. They were returning from a church close to the southern border that Khalil will also be supporting in the coming months. Please pray for protection.

More than 6 months ago, I began the process of applying to take part in a prison ministry alongside THIMAR’s partner helping migrant workers, called INSAAF. Just last month I was granted permission. Now I visit women in a detention centre for a morning every two weeks.

Most of the women there are migrant domestic workers in the Kafala (sponsorship) system who either outstayed or worked outside the limits of their visas, some out of desperation when their sponsors couldn’t pay their wages or their return flight home. Others have been arrested on prostitution charges. They are forced to wait until an organization or embassy finds a way to send them home. However, there are Lebanese women and women from neighbouring countries too, most waiting for a judge’s decision on their sentence, which can take months if the papers become lost between bureaucratic hoops. Lawyers can be predatory, charging upwards of $2000 (an impossible fee for most).

Women sleep 20 to a room crammed tight with bunkbeds, sharing a single toilet and water in a bucket to wash. They must purchase clean water to drink, otherwise they drink from contaminated taps. They leave the room only to collect meals, which they eat on their beds. There is a thin window at the top of the wall that lets in a trickle of natural light. I asked one woman who had been detained for 6 months how many times she had been allowed outside in the sun – she said twice. Bedbug infestations are common, and many are covered in angry red bites. There is no air conditioning or heating except in the guard’s offices; only a fan set up in the hallway circulates the air within the locked rooms. Medical care is limited to basic painkillers.

Several human rights groups have protested the conditions in Lebanon’s prisons. You can read more here and here

My first visit was overwhelming.