I love to be cozy. Snuggled under a blanket on a cold day, good book in hand (or a nice social media endless scroll), and nowhere to be. It’s one of my favorite things to do. But there comes a point when it is not comfortable any more. Lounging around too long makes my body [...]
Sustainable Living in Iraq This isn’t about what you think it’s about. Sorry? Too often we associate “sustainable living” with recycling, cutting emissions, gardening, and getting rid of single use plastics. But what about living in a way that we are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually able to sustain for the long term? One of the [...]
This summer, each Wednesday afternoon in July, we'll be taking a team of volunteers to a Nashville apartment complex where hundreds of refugee children are wasting away their summer hours playing video games and watching TV. Our goal is to change that. We've picked out four classic children's stories and will share one each week. We [...]
“Yes! Come! I do not at all feel in danger as a single woman. I don’t go out at nights very often and when I do it’s in groups with others, but taking taxis to get around has not been a problem. It is also not a problem to shop alone at the local grocery [...]
What's Worse than Dentists and Anthills? My heart was racing. My hands were cold. I, who most people consider fearless, was terrified. You’re going to laugh at what had me so petrified. It’s not the only thing that scares me. I’m afraid of going to the dentist; I’m afraid of ant hills. But because I [...]
Math is Too Hard! My favorite memory is of meeting Ari, a Syrian refugee. He was 16 years old and brilliant. As an engineer, I began asking him if he would like to study engineering. He said, “No, math is too hard” So I began asking him questions about math assuming he was struggling with [...]
An exciting and rare opportunity to teach math for 3-months with our team at School of the Medes! One of our families is coming home to have a baby in March 2017, leaving a teaching vacancy that we need to fill. If you’ve considered helping us build a new future for young people in Iraq, but the thought [...]
Elizabeth was part of our team living in Athens for two months this summer. I have been back in America for a week now, and my thoughts are constantly returning to the friends I left in Athens. So many of these moments and relationships are cherished in my heart – many of them in a [...]
This morning I headed to the port of Athens ahead of the team and served with the Greek Red Cross. I teamed up with them distributing food, clothes, toiletries and cleaning the port terminal. It was a little difficult communicating, but with broken English from them, little phrases in Greek I’ve learned and lots of [...]
Food Distribution Today, we cleaned up Victoria Square. We swept, picked out trash from among the bushes and plants and filled up four large bags. A couple of the young Algerian men helped out as they realized how disrespectful it was, culturally, to leave an older woman like Nihad, to sweep up after them. In [...]
