I don’t know how to begin to write this blog because I don’t know what this blog is even going to be about.
All I know is that for the past week I have seen such unbelievable beauty here in Lesvos, yet right below the surface there is such devastation.
We have been working at the transit site each night doing the 4:30-midnight shift. Most nights my team and I are assigned to the clothing tent.
Sounds lovely right?
Until you think about the hundreds of wet people coming in from buses from the shore. The ones who have just gotten off the boats. Boats who may have flipped. Boats who may have lost people in the water. The deceivingly beautiful water.
And until you think about the extreme lack of clothing we have. The lack of shoes. Lack of pants. They are somewhere. But whenever we seem to need them, they aren’t out in the storage container for us to go out and grab.
So last night, when a man comes asking for shoes, because when his boat started filling up with water, he used his shoe to scoop the water out… I had to turn him away, and let me tell you what that will do to your heart… It breaks it a little bit.
That man probably saved people’s lives.
Yesterday we were informed that the smugglers ran out of rubber rafts. So they are now using wooden boats.
Rubber rafts prevent smugglers from sending these people on the water in certain weather conditions, where now, they can send them whenever. These people are being told that these wooden boats are safer than the rafts, that’s not true. And 3 times the people are being crammed on these boats, because they can be. Which is why so many more boats are capsizing.
I took a break yesterday morning with my friend Kelly Anne and we went into town and sat by the water and just gazed upon it. In awe of the beauty yet mourning all of the loss.
The Lord has been speaking truth through so many people in such a cool way lately. Lesvos is normally a huge tourist spot and she said, “I couldn’t imagine vacationing here and swimming in the water so many people have died in.”
We had such a cool opportunity there to just pray together over the water and the short distance of 4 miles called the “death-grip” that these people pass over.
Turkey in the back, the “death-grip”
The other night on our drive home from out night shift our driver stopped at this overlook so we could all take a minute.
Something he said that I’ve been able to meditate on a bit since, “We are at the point where the Muslin countries are knocking at the Christian countries doors.”
There is such brokenness. Yes. There is such helplessness to this situation. Yes. There is such heartache for these people. Yes.
But him saying that reminded me that my God has a plan.
I want to be able to see through God’s eyes. I want to be able to see where each and every one of these people are going to go and end up. But I know that isn’t likely going to happen.
But man can I pray for them.
I can pray that now that they are in an open country, where they can freely here the gospel, that they will continuously come in contact with people who are on fire for the Lord!!
That through all of this…. It can be a testimony to the faithfulness our God and His great love for us. And how He can bring us through any storm.
I pray that when I don’t have enough shoes to give out, I am able to love well through that. Because I feel helpless when it comes to that and that I am unable to love them without giving them anything. And I pray that that isn’t the case.
“You aren’t just handing out clothes, you’re giving them a taste of heaven.”
