Director Dave's view from the van! Our recent “Walk and Talk” program was a great success. Over 20 volunteers from local churches joined us to share some exercise, conversation, and much-needed friendship with our refugee friends from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia. As I watched these women smile and laugh together, [...]
In Greece, we have begun working with a large refugee community in a small town in the north. We will be going back regularly with teams to help with a refugee preschool program, adult English classes, and even a science and engineering workshop for refugee teenagers. Here at SGI, God has blessed us with an [...]
Five Questions to Ask Before Moving to Iraq 1. ARE YOU CRAZY? After all, this is the first question anyone else will ask you. So you had better be sure of the answer. Some of us answer yes, some of us answer no. But we do realize you have to be just a little bit [...]
Help Refugee Kids Go to School There are over 3.4 million refugees now living in Turkey, making Turkey the host country with the largest population of refugees in the world. Most of these people live outside camps in various cities and towns across the country. Given how long these wars have been going on, most [...]
I never thought of my students as backward or from an undeveloped country. They all had smartphones when I still had a flip. And if their paper was a bit too short, they were certainly tech-savvy enough to try to change the margins or font size by fractions of an inch. That was why I [...]
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 [...]
Awake Before Dawn I knew it was near daylight since the village mullah was giving the call to prayer over the loudspeaker. I thought it was considerate of him to call so quietly so that if you were awake you would know it was time to come, but there was no way that gentle voice [...]
Remember our Kubba Video? We just pulled some out of the freezer this week. It's a great quick and easy dinner option at this point! We recently got some new photos of the ladies working and another update on the progress of their business. If you remember, we met some Christian ladies in Iraq whose [...]
This was a seminal year in our country, to say the least. What happened in September of 2001 colored forever the way we walk in our world, even think of our world. A large part of that came from the faith of the perpetrators. It has been argued that what happened that Tuesday was an [...]
Yarsani Religion The followers of the Yarsani faith are called by many names and scattered across at least three countries. The creation of this faith is often attributed to Islamic Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam) but the Yarsan themselves claim that their beliefs have always been and Islam is a heresy of Yarsanism. They [...]
