We’re wrapping up our time here on the island of Lesvos, Greece working under EuroRelief and Samaritan’s Purse at a refugee transition point. Two weeks of long days (or nights) makes it quite an undertaking to try and share all that we’ve experienced and all the Lord has done.
So I’m keeping it real, folks.
It feels quite odd to be in the middle of such a real and vast crisis. Understanding and balancing the humanity with the politics is overwhelming. More than likely you have seen and heard a smattering of footage and thoughts about the voyage many refugees are taking across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.
Our “transition point” is a 15 minute walk up the hill from the coast. We are the first stop of many for these people once they leave Turkey. We provide them with food and water, emergency medical attention, and dry clothing for their sea-soaked bodies before gesturing them into a large tent to sit and wait with a colored piece of paper: their ticket for a bus that will take them to an actual camp to be registered and board a ferry to Greece.
At least, that’s the ideal situation. Our transition point fits about 500 refugees comfortably, as long as the buses are running. Some days we had 2,000 people come through, and some nights we were so overcrowded we had to keep people outside to sleep as they waited till morning. For three days we had the first lull in two months and only had a few hundred people come through every day (giving us plenty of time to give the camp a much-needed cleaning).
When we arrived in Lesvos, our contacts stood in front of our squad close to tears. “You are a gift from God,” they said. They had been moving thousands of people through the transition point, 24 hours a day, with under 20 volunteers.
“We have the supplies, we just don’t have the hands.”
We quickly saw that reality on the first day when we walked into the storage container and faced mountains of unsorted bags of clothes. My team was assigned the clothing tent: a 14 by 10 foot plastic structure where refugees came in to change their babies’ diapers, change into dry clothes, and try to find dry socks and shoes that fit them. The clothing tent can only really hold a few people at a time, and the problem was funneling enough of the clothes onto the right shelves to be able to help the refugees efficiently as they lined up, shivering in their emergency blankets.
More realness: that clothing tent got old real fast. It was 9 hours in a dark, headlamp-lit tent of sorting clothes and finding the right size jeans and shoes for these wet, shivering people. Some were extremely picky, some gratefully took whatever I offered. Some accepted it when I said, “We have no more shoes,” and some spent five more minutes trying to find shoes that weren’t there.
It was hard to tell people “no” that weren’t wet, and to many that were wet and cold. It was scary when I was handed a “sleeping” toddler in the middle of the night to change her clothes, only to realize she was unconscious and non-responsive (fortunately, doctors were around to check her and after 5 minutes of praying, she came round!). It was heartbreaking to remove a blanket from a child and realize they were naked underneath. It was frustrating to want to give everyone patience and attention when we had 50 people shivering outside.
It was worth it when they smiled with relief and said, “Thank you.” It was joyful when I would change a kid’s clothes and he would laugh as I played with him. It was even rejuvenating when the mass of people was so large we had to close down the clothing tent and control the panicked crowd for the day, because by the end of it refugees were helping us pick up the trash.
In the end, this situation can be just as dramatic and devastating as the news and pictures portray. Yet ultimately, my heart is full. It’s full of camaraderie and appreciation for the other EuroRelief volunteers. It’s full of hope from the smiles of the refugees boarding the bus to their next location. It’s full of anticipation that the Lord will take this hardship and fully redeem it, promised by the BEAUTIFUL sunsets we saw every night while driving back from the site:
In the meantime, I am grateful to represent Americans to many people who think poorly of us. As a Christian, I am excited to be one of the first people that the refugees meet as they step off of their boat into their hopes for a better life. As a human, I’m fulfilled giving buckets of time and energy to those in dire need.
We’re currently somewhat “stuck” on the island as we wait for the end of a ferry strike. We hope to be moving on to our next ministry in Macedonia next week.
As we move on, I remain completely satisfied that the Lord has my team in His perfect place in His perfect timing. I will, however, forever remain involved in this crisis.
May we remember that every waterbottle and banana passed out, every child clothed, every porta potty cleaned — is a service to the God who gives every person worth, whether they come from Syria, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, or the United States.
