Hope for Nara’s People

About ten years ago I met a courageous Armenian woman, Nara Melkonyan, the director of Project AGAPE. Nara oversees humanitarian work for Armenians in Artsakh, the fiercely disputed region between Azerbaijan and Armenia that’s currently a world hotspot. I admire her for bringing hope to a region that has experienced injustice for millennia.

My first exposure to Armenian history was from an old book: Exiled—Story of an Armenian Girl, by Serpouhi Tavoukdjian. It gave a brief history of Armenia and of Serpouhi’s experience during the Armenian Genocide of World War I. It helped me understand the Armenians I grew up with. 

Armenia was the first nation to accept Christianity. It once included the Caucasus, Syria, Lebanon, and large portions of what became Turkey, including Ararat, the landing spot of Noah’s ark. But during Ottoman Turkish conquests, Armenians and other Christian groups lost