So often we feel helpless and unable to do anything in the face of so much suffering. But you can and do have a role. Prayer is powerful and effective. Pray for refugees to have patience in the slow process. Pray for protection in the camps that are overfull and under supervised. Pray for the [...]
Our work at the center is still going very well. We have had people showing up nearly every day except Friday for English lessons. But today almost no one has appeared because the metro is on strike. I have loved teaching much more than I thought I would, which is good because it is a much larger part [...]
Sometimes the tragedies of the world hit us like a tsunami and we feel so overwhelmed and completely helpless, drowning in the weight of it all. Even our greatest efforts, our most skillful attempts to keep our heads above water seem deeply, gloriously inadequate. It feels like the last scene of Schindler’s List, where Oskar [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
By Andy McNeely Today was filled with emotions as so much of the trip has been. Sorrow for the plight of the homeless refugees, joy with our new Syrian friends, and shock at the ability of people to survive. The most recurring emotion I have had over the duration of our trip has been that [...]
Our second day in the refugee squat began to reveal the brokenness and pain in the lives of our new friends. Tonight, we gathered to share stories from the day – a practice that has been incredibly important to our team. During the day, it’s pretty chaotic and we are individually stretched very thin for [...]
