Ghassan Ward, the priest at the Greek Orthodox Church in Aleppo, has chosen to stay and continue to serve his community with support from Open Doors, despite losing friends and family to kidnappings and bombings during the war.

Ghassan told Open Doors: “My bishop was kidnapped in April 2013, my church was destroyed, and my house was bombed.

My two sons left the country, my wife died of cancer and I lost two of my close family members because of the bombings.”

His church is serving 1,700 families, providing food supplies, fuel, clothes and school supplies.

He said:“Many of my parish were rich before, now they are poor. They have no work, no income and all the savings are spent during the years of war. The role of the church is not only having the services – we welcome the people and we try to help solve their problems. God gave us the love.

It’s not easy to do this, many of our young generation are out of Syria or are in the army. The needs of the people are very big; we’re trying to meet their needs. It’s God’s mercy that I stayed, that we stayed.”

The churches in Aleppo are working together to support displaced families who have been left with nothing. Elias, who organises the relief efforts of Ghassan’s church, said: “All bishops and protestant church leaders are co-operating in this. We work with about 60 volunteers and 12 employees. On days with a big distribution we have a team of about 100 persons.”

Open Doors has launched a crisis appeal to enable work such as this to continue as the crisis in Syria escalates. Visit www.opendoorsuk.orgto donate. (Open Doors)