A week and a half ago, I went to Porte de la Chapelle for the first time. It’s a 15 minute walk from where we’re staying and on the way we pass by cafés and shops and a park and a gypsy community. It’s a Romanian community living under this underpass; shack-like structures all in a row and there is always music playing and children playing and there is trash on the rooftops of these little shacks and random appliances and boarded up pieces of wood and people are always going in and out and this community has been living there for years. Gypsies live there and there is electricity and they go out with their bags and sell things they collect and perform music.
After passing the gypsy community, we arrive. It’s big. It’s full of hundreds, maybe thousands of refugees. The first ones I see are from Sudan and they are all men and they are all young. Further way are the Afghanis. Both Sudanese and Afghanis are all in their 20s and maybe 30s and they don’t look like refugees. They are wearing regular clothes and they are all hanging out in little groups. If I saw them on the streets of Paris, I wouldn’t know they were homeless, I wouldn’t know that they had fled their countries.
I knew they were refugees because there were so many of them, and also by their smell, but mostly by their tents. All around the area, right by the station, right by the soccer field, right under the bridge and around and everywhere the eye could see, were tents and mattresses and belongings.
We walked to a spot by the green fence close to the metro. Tamara and Lila had brought a man, Osmand, to Christ the day before and we went to the meeting spot where they had agreed to meet. Where was he? He had a smartphone but no battery, charger or phone plan. We sat and prayed for a few minutes. Did he forget? Did he know what time it was? We decided to go to see if he was waiting in this massive food line that was behind us. As we walked up to the massive line, we saw truly how many people there were and we went up front to see if we could help. As soon as we walked up, I asked if we could help and someone from Utopia immediately opened the gate and let us in. We introduced ourselves and explained we were from the states and had heard about the refugees and came to help. Anne Marie, the organizer of Solidarité Migrants, ushered us in with enthusiasm and kept saying we were angels sent to help her. She showed us around and we refilled the hot tea and coffee that we were serving to the refugees. There was a huge line of men waiting but they were so patient to wait for us to re-brew tea and coffee and although they were so hungry, they were calm and cheerful as they went through the food line, getting their piece of bread and hot drink.
As we were about to wrap up, we saw a minivan pull up near us and wow! a Muslim family had brought a home cooked meal. What love! They had spent all morning making this huge pot of stew and brought containers and containers of rice and also bought 100 aluminum bowls to hold the hot soup. We got situated and started doling the hot meal out and it was quite nice as Paris has been rainy, wet and cold the last few weeks. The food went by so fast, we ran out of bowls and searched for cups and other bowls to hold the soup. Then we ran out of soup, so we served them bread and they scraped the bottom of the pot to get every last drop.
Throughout that morning I saw so many examples of the community helping and serving. Local bakers would come by from time to time to donate their day old pastries. That Muslim family not only cooked the food but bought all the containers of food and stayed to serve it out. Another father and son walked by and after talking to Anne Marie for a bit, donated some money to her cause. After we finally ran out of food, tea and coffee, we started cleaning up. Next to the main area where the refugees were, there was a building with a small apartment, it used to be for the security guard of the field/parking lot and the government gave it to Anne Marie to use. Inside were so much more food and supplies for the next day. The breakfast we stumbled upon has been going on daily and Anne Marie and her team are there every day and they have been doing this for months and months.
We were there 5 hours and it had flown by in a blink of an eye. We also ended up finding Osmond in the food line, which was awesome, and we scheduled another time to meet. I felt so invigorated. I couldn’t believe we were able to help so easily and there was such a need that we were able to fill. I felt so full and and so pleasantly surprised. As I shared in my previous blog, I didn’t know what to expect and I was preparing for a sobering and depressing experience and while it was sad to see all these people living on the streets, I saw the community come together and I saw so much more help and resources that I could imagine.
We stopped back at the apartment for lunch and decided we should go back again. We went back in the afternoon and again my heart was warmed. As we are walked up to the area, we saw a van stuffed to the brim with bottles of water and we saw the firey Fatima. She was wearing a blue Dodgers cap with her hair in a ponytail, a green plaid jacket, a burning cigarette in one hand and talking and moving and serving. We asked her if we could take a picture and she said sure, why? We asked her some more questions and she told us more about how the Muslim community has been helping and how no one else had been helping that much and how they pooled together their money to buy tents and food and how she’s there everyday and been there for months.
We asked if we could follow her down the bridge and she led the way, slowly sometimes and talking to everyone on the way and then very fast with spurts of energy, where we would half run to catch up with her. She went right into the tents, started opening them up, showing us a newborn baby and a mother in one and a pregnant lady in another one and explained the dynamics about how the Sudanese and the Afghanis were separated and how they didn’t get along. I don’t remember who told me, but that day I also learned that all the women and children were at another center an hour away and this one was the men’s camp.
We went back again at night and met another organization headed by a woman named Flo who helps set up activities like art or French lessons along with the evening coffee and tea.
It is so sad that these refugees fled from their countries due to war and violence and they were separated from their family and a lot of their friends died en route over, I am so glad we were able to meet them in Paris and reach them. It would have been much harder to talk to them in Afghanistan or Sudan.
Over the course of the next week, we went to Porte de la Chapelle almost daily. We met up with refugees hungry to know more about Jesus and started Bible studies. Our small group turned into a large group as passerbys stopped and listened. Some people got roped into translating. Most of the refugees didn’t speak French and spoke little English. We communicated through a combo of Google translate and some refugee translators. I also used an Arab/English Bible app and that was helpful. What was amazing was the level of patience they had to listen to us explain something and wait for us to get it through the translators.
The transformation was cool to watch as we went from barely recognizing their faces to remembering them. It was also cool to see their hearts soften, one guy Saluman knew better English than most and helped translate for us but you could tell he didn’t like what was translating and we could sense the tension and disagreement initially. Then after a week, after we invited all the refugees to this performance of the prodigal son put on by YWAM (Youth with a Mission), we had a conversation afterwards explaining the story and then he asked where the story was from and Tamara showed the passage in the Bible and I showed him the Arabic translation of that same passage and it was so cool to see his whole demeanor change and how receptive he was to the gospel.
It was so cool to explain that God is a Father and that he is Love. I loved explaining how Jesus was the Word and he was with God and at the beginning with Osmond. I loved seeing Abdoul’s excitement after we prayed for his arm to be healed and he started dancing for joy afterwards. It was so encouraging to see a group of us explaining passages of Romans to these refugees.
I talked to this refugee named Alseer and he had left everyone behind (family and friends) to travel for months through Libya and Italy and he said 50 people died in that passage through the sea. He said he doesn’t pray anymore because he is dirty and he doesn’t pray when he is dirty.
I wanted to say thank you for those of you who prayed for my health. I was feeling sick a few days ago and now I feel better. Please continue to pray for boldness and strength as we continue on. Porte de la Chapelle was evacuated last Friday and it’s completely different now. We partnered with another organization to set up refugees for 500 and that was a sweet time too, to welcome these refugees from the streets into shelter.
