Hi again!
It’s been a while since I’ve written! Last night, I put together a post about our day, but the entire thing somehow got deleted! Oh well, not a big deal.
We have now spent two whole days on Lesvos and have seen much of the Eastern half of the island. Yesterday, we drove over to one of the refugee camps that previous teams from Calvary have worked at. We weren’t allowed inside the camp, but we found a path alongside the fence and were able to see inside. In the time since the last Calvary team, things in this camp have gotten more organized, but not much better. The refugees are now allowed to go outside the camp during the day and walk down into the surrounding towns, which helps keep them from feeling like such prisoners. After stopping there, we drove North, to another small town along the coast. While there, we saw a man who owns a few small houses that teams in the past have rented and stayed at while working on the island. We went from his house, over to where the life jacket graveyard is. The life jacket graveyard is where the life jackets worn by the refugees are dumped. There are hundreds of thousands of life jackets hidden by the mountains. Many of them are fake, full of grass or straw instead of the life saving materials that our life jackets would have. After seeing the graveyard, we drove to the coast and had dinner and then began our hour long drive back to the town we are staying in. Along the wauy, we made one final stop. We visited a small, family-owned pottery shop, where we purchased some hand-made, hand-painted pottery.
Today, we met with the couple running the center for the women and children and we also met the other women that we will be working with at the center for the week. While we were in town, we were also able to meet one of the translators at the refugee camps that people from previous teams had met. It was wonderful to see him and hear his incredible story. After all that, we drove down to one of the more popular towns and walked around. Although most of the shops were closed, we were still able to find a small ice cream shop where we had some deliciously messy crepes and some less messy ice cream! After our trip into town, we met some other missionaries on the island for dinner and heard about their time here and some of their plans for the future. All in all, it has been a wonderful couple of days seeing and learning about the island and getting to meet so many incredible people doing the work of the Lord in this place!
Please continue to pray for us! All of the previous requests still apply, but please pray for our first day at the women’s center tomorrow. Pray that we would be able to connect with the women coming to the center and that we would work well with the other volunteers.
We finally have some pictures to share!!! If you would like to see some pictures from our trip so far, you can follow this link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qRhpBExk3ADIOwFr2
I will do my best to update you all tomorrow!
Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement thus far!!!
Until tomorrow,
Taylor, Courtney, and Dawn