Our trip to Lesvos in June was another amazing trip. As you have heard before, the refugee crisis has had very negative effects on the tourism industry on the island. The Greek people are so kind, generous and grateful for the volunteers that come to the island to help carry this burden. They consistently go out of their way to accommodate us. From the kind hotel owner who gives us a discount on our rooms and arranges our car rentals to the kind woman at the souvenir shop who drives us to her favorite restaurant for dinner and speaks with the owner to make sure we have the best of everything. The people on this island are a blessing to our teams! The island is as beautiful as the people and it was in full bloom in June. So many unique flowers and trees full of colorful fruit, olive trees everywhere you go!
This beauty stands in sharp contrast to the dark circumstances we find in the Moria Refugee camp. Men, women and children who have left everything behind in hopes of finding the future that was taken from them in their home counties. As one of our team members shared; I’ve always heard that it was beautiful, but if I am being honest my first few days were not beautiful. We went to the life jacket graveyard and it made me weep. I began to pray God do you see this? Are you here God? I continued to pray this when we got a tour of the prison originally designed for 1200 people now home to over 7000 people. God do you see? I was struggling with how a good God lets this happen. In my prayers that night the Lord brought me to the story of Hagar, a slave, a foreigner and a woman in distress. Hagar was caught in a mess that was not her choice, mistreated by Sarah so she leaves. She is very scared and flees to the wilderness and then something incredible happens, Hagar is met by an angel of the Lord. He makes her a promise that he will keep. Hagar calls the Lord a unique name, El Roi meaning the God who sees. Hagar recognized that the Lord saw her right where she was. He saw the pain, the brokenness, the mess she was in and he cared enough to come to her. Much like Jesus will do for us. Then I saw the beauty in the women and the children in the center. I saw the promise of God returning and meeting them where they are. I saw God working. He has not closed his eyes, He sees and he cares and he is still Good and he still saves.
God sees and so do we! We see the children who play like nothing is wrong while moms look on with empty eyes and sad faces trying so hard to be brave for their kids. We see the men who are lost, feeling helpless to change their situation, feeling broken because they can’t work and they can’t provide for their family. As we sat with them and listened to their stories our hearts were broken much like God’s heart must break because of the effects of our sinful world. We cried with these women, we laughed with them but most importantly, we prayed for these women, that God would open their eyes and hearts. We prayed that God would continue to bring teams to the center that would continue to show these ladies and their kids the love of Christ through their actions and their words.
As a team, we also realized that God brought us to this place so that we can help others see through our experience what continues to happen. When we share the stories with you of families who ran in the middle of the night to protect their daughters from the Taliban who wanted to take them. Will you join us in praying for this family? When we tell you of the woman who fled because her uncle wanted to sell her for money, will you pray for her? When you hear about the woman who just arrived in the camp. Her husband was killed and she had run for her life, had to make the unbearable choice to leave one child with relatives because she couldn’t afford the smugglers fees for both of them. Will you pray for her and both of her children? Many of these people have come from areas that have been closed off to missionaries and God has made a way to bring them to a place where the good news can be shared. They are meeting Christians for the first time. They are surprised that we are not the monsters that they have been told we are. We are offering a cup of hot tea, we are rocking and singing to their babies, we are helping and we are listening and hopefully when they look at us, they see Jesus!
We are so grateful for Calvary Church and for the rich legacy of being a mission-minded church. Thank you for sending us and thank you for praying for us and for our new friends. Please continue to pray that God would use this trip to help us see what is happening around us, no matter where we are. Pray that God would give us the desire to care for those He puts in our path.
Sincerely,
Cajiun, Chris and the June Lesvos Team