December 8 1997

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The sun is high, but a cool breeze from Lebanon's Shouf Mountains comes through open windows and blows across the concrete living room. Sitting on plastic chairs in the sparse living room, the Hasroute family drinks thick Arabic coffee with their neighbors.

In the mountain village of Wadi Al-Deir, Lebanon, families are rediscovering caring, cooperation, and neighborliness after a generation of warfare. Nowhere is this rediscovery more evident than in the vibrant smile on the face of Menwar Wadih Hasroute, the family's head.

"This is the center: our house. After 11 years, I was able to return," Hasroute says. "The destroyers burned, bulldozed houses, and cut down the olive and lemon trees." But now a new season of replanting and rebuilding has begun for many Christian families, scattered by the internal warfare that divided Lebanon for 22 years.

Chatting and pointing proudly, the Hasroute family takes a group of guests through the restored kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The rebuilding has not only involved bricks and mortar, but there has also been the reconstruction of relationships between Christian Lebanese and Druze, as well as between villages and the national government. In differing ways, the international relief-and-development ministry World Vision, local Lebanese leaders, and the American and Lebanese governments have provided financial and personnel resources to help more than 400 Christian families driven from their villages return to their homes and begin the process of reconciliation with the Druze, the Lebanese minority group that forced Christian villagers to flee.

RECOVERING FROM DEVASTATION From 1975 to 1991, Lebanon was ravaged by internal warfare, which also ensnared Syria and Israel, both of which still ...