There is nothing like necessity when it comes to communication. The Afghan ladies who gathered at the center for the bi-weekly refugee meeting were gracious about the fact that I struggled miserably to put together a simply sentence in Farsi. As time went on, my pre-programmed, memorized phrases started to come out better as we sat around [...]
I have reached a wall of sorts in my ability to describe what God is doing here. He revealed something in my heart that I did not recognize in coming to Athens. Just 16 days ago, I walked with a mindset of this being an "us and them" situation. I knew that these people were [...]
Here's a first-hand account from one of our team members one what it's like to serve refugees in Athens. It's been a whirlwind this week. It's hard to reconcile the anxiety and hesitancy I had right before arriving to the joy that seems to course through my soul. It is not a sugar sweet happiness, [...]
When I think of fatherhood – and especially when I reflect on becoming a dad for the first time – it’s very much linked with my experience of living in Kurdistan. When our oldest was born (he’s 4 now), my wife and I had been teaching there for a year. Just long enough to finally [...]
I went to bed with the taste of dust in my mouth. This morning every surface of our fairly well-sealed home was covered in a fine layer of tan. The rest of the world outside was even more thickly blanketed with powder... more dust. Each footstep poofs and all of my roommates sneeze. "God bless [...]
One of our team members this month is a nurse! We are so grateful for the medical personnel who have joined our one week trips; their help is so valuable! Today I went to the newest squat (formed this week after the Idomeni camp shut down). Shortly after entering, a woman saw the red cross on [...]
The team did a bunch of different things their second day in Athens--shopping, cooking, teaching English lessons. But mostly they walked. Part of the team went out to a couple of squats to play with kids and blew bubbles and hand out stickers. As they were about to leave, one of the members of that squat [...]
Sarah was like many girls you know, spending her days that August preparing for her last year in high school. But one morning in 2014 terror struck and her life was changed forever. You see, Sarah is a Yazidi and she lived in the Sinjar region of western Iraq. And that August morning at 11:00 am [...]
