Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 61 Part 2 of our interview with Erik about life and culture in Iraq. Also, an amazing story of how he survived a 100mph crash on a highway! Learn more over on our Iraq page! And send us questions and comments to Hannah@servantgroup.org. Here's a Rough Transcript of [...]
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 [...]
It's Time to Go to the Movies! Hannah and Colleen take a trip around the world and into a Middle Eastern movie theater. Sometimes watching movies in Iraq is like a short visit to the United States, but other times it's more like visiting a different country... or a different planet where the spoken language [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
Yezidi - Mystery Religions in the Middle East The Yezidi (or Yazidi) religious minority has been lifted from obscurity for the very worst reason. They have been brought to the attention of the international world because of the cruelty and slaughter that came upon them in the form of the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
[Gen 21:16 ] Then Hagar went and sat down opposite Ishmael a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, "Let me not look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. This is the story I was pondering early [...]
"Yek hazar, yek hazar, yek hazar!" This is what you’ll hear if you go shopping with me in Kurdistan! Being shouted loudly by a man or young boy dressed in traditional Kurdish clothes, or by a recording being blasted out over a loud speaker, blaring in your ears… Yek hazar means one thousand. One thousand [...]
