Imagine a teenage boy whose country has been ripped apart by a war that has rocked the world. His family is destitute and eager to get out of a place where they are still being persecuted. The war has brought them nothing but poverty and death. They can’t afford to send everyone though, they can [...]
Our team members in Iraq get to visit some really cool historical places that you might not expect. "An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh." ~Nahum 1:1 If you're like us, you probably never really noticed the name of the town Nahum was from. But all of that changes when [...]
SGI’s first 7 Projects 1 - To kick things off, there was a 40’ trailer of food donated (I think potatoes) that we passed out to Kurdish refugees in Nashville. 2 - Set-up the basement of one team member as a studio, and overdubbed the Jesus Film into Bahdini Kurdish dialect. 3 - Organized a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“Can I come over and just watch how you live? I’d like to know how you guys live.” said Lydia. At the time, we thought it was a weird request from our student, but sure, why not? So she came over and spent at least a good six hours sitting at our big kitchen table just hanging [...]
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 [...]
