Thoughts on the First Week of School
It’s quiet in the mornings Before the student rush The call to prayer […]
A Glimpse of Heaven
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 [...]
10 Ways to Pray for Refugees
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 [...]
Opening My Mouth
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 [...]
Revealing My Heart
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 [...]
My Syrian Baba
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, [...]
Beneath the Surface
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 [...]
Hot Dog?
I am a teacher; it’s what I do. For the past several years I have been involved with teaching those who speak English as a learned language. Some of those teaching experiences have been frustrating, some fruitful, but always interesting and many times entertaining! Recently, in Nashville, I was working with two Middle Eastern ladies. The [...]
My First Newroz
I’ll always remember my first Newroz in Kurdistan as the time a Kurd literally gave me the shirt off his back (and his baggy trousers too!). My wife and I were picnicking with the family of one of our students. Among the many cousins, aunts, uncles, and others, there was a grandfather (or perhaps he [...]
Hagar and Dahlia
[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 [...]