The land flowing with milk…no honey. Sour milk at that. This is certainly not Canaan.
I spent five hours of my day cleaning up spoiled milk at the refugee supplies donation tent.
I knew this month would be exciting. We were rerouted from our original ministry destination in Kosovo because the need for help here in Lesvos was so great…
And as soon as we get here the EU pays Turkey 3 billion to close their borders. The Coast Guard starts patrolling the 10km stretch of water the refugee rafts have been crossing to reach our shore and our established transition camp. The smugglers begin rerouting their boats for another port down the coast a good ways. What before amounted to a 70km walk or bus ride once they landed at our site, the refugees are now reaching on water. A journey much more dangerous for them and sad for us as we sit with eager hearts and ready smiles manning our ten hour shifts at the camp prepared to care for some lost souls.
Our only interaction thus far consists of passports, identification cards, burned plane tickets, anything with a name on it—they ditch these items once arriving on shore in a desperate attempt to escalate the process claiming “Syria”. Morocco. Iran. Iraq. Afghanistan. All with names and pictures that tell stories of lives that no longer exist. Lost souls.
I want to hear their stories. I want to know their names.
The smugglers instill fear in them as they depart from Turkey, charging around $1000 per head to squeeze into a small motorized raft with 50 others. The price varies depending on horsepower of the engine, which the smugglers lie about. Lifejackets of styrofoam are sold to families with small children. We found so many fakes resting in their place on the floor of the sea near the shore as children rip them off upon landing.
The refugees do not know we will be greeting them with smiles on the other side. Our camp is known as “the good camp”. Under the non-Christian organization EuroRelief, 90 percent of our camp volunteers are believers. The stories we have heard from other volunteers of conversions in the camp are evidence that the Lord’s hand is at work.
The refugees are received on shore in the small fishing village, Skala Sykaminia. The stage one camp sends them a 20 minute walk up the mountain to our transition point. We are prepared with a warm meal, dry clothes, bathrooms, doctors for medical emergencies, clean water, and cots for rest. There is internet donated by Vodafone and a charging station to let family on the other side know they have made the hour and a half journey safely. Hidden in a box in the kitchen, we have a supply of bibles translated into Arabic and Farsi.
A system has been implemented issuing tickets for the buses that will carry them from our camp closer to Mytlini, the main town, where they register. Once paperwork is completed they ferry to Athens as quickly as possible. The border is now closed in Macedonia where many had been traveling through. Protests have sprung up near Thessaloniki at the Macedonian border where two of our other World Race teams are stationed. This is all really a mess. A big hot mess, and I do not know what the answer is.
But I do know 2 things:
1) God brought us here for a reason, and I believe that reason is yet to be revealed. I have hopes for interaction. I want to see faces. I want to love them. But for now there is the grunt work that must be done–like puncturing 500 spoiled milk cartons, draining them, and filling a whole dumpster. I signed up for the Race saying “Here I am Lord. Send me!” And He sent me, and I am here. And if I am called to do the milk, I will do the milk.
2) Arabs don’t drink milk
