Faces of The Fellowship: Abir and Sharon
The Fellowship | October 22, 2020
Abir and Sharon, a married couple in Israel with a young family, met while serving in the IDF. Abir served in the special forces, while Sharon patrolled the Holy Land as part of the IDF police force.
After their service ended, the two got married and looked forward to a good life together. But life hasn’t been so easy.
Shortly after Sharon gave birth to their first child, Abir was walking home from a Shabbat blessing at a friend’s house. He didn’t see a large hole left at a construction site, and fell into it. Both of his arms were horribly broken. Even after many surgeries and much rehabilitation, the nerve damage and multiple fractures left his arms useless.
“I can’t hold the kids in my arms, can’t do even the simplest things!” Abir tells us. These arms that once protected the people of Israel could no longer hold his newborn child. “I can’t tell you how many crazy things I’ve been through when I was serving in the Army. I stayed in Gaza for 47 days! And then I became disabled after falling.”
Before his injuries, Abir had built his family a house. Now, he is unable to work, with no feeling or movement in his hands. Sharon lost her job during the ongoing pandemic, as did many of the couple’s relatives, allowing no safety net for this growing family.
But now The Fellowship and our faithful friends around the world have stepped in and created a safety net for the family. Thanks to our new Assisting in Fellowship project, struggling families in Israel – families like Abir and Sharon’s – receive help with food, medications, and other essentials they could not otherwise afford.
Sharon already has found hope because of this help from caring friends: “We’ll be remembering these days like a nightmare which we survived.”
And Abir, hopeful now too, looks forward to more than just survival. “Everything will be fine,” he says. “I’m not going to sit like this all my life. I’m preparing myself for another surgery which will help. I’ll become a normal person again, I promise!”