There were people everywhere. Mismatched hats and frayed sweaters, untied boots and thick scarves adorned the tired bodies of these refugees. Smells of dirt and urine floated through the air, filtering past the rising noise of Farsi, Dari and Arabic.
My eyes widened as I examined the garbage scattered across the grass of this overly-packed gas station. Just at the edge, where grass meets sidewalk and sidewalk meets road, dozens of buses sat empty waiting for the border’s command.
This was a holding zone for political refugees.
Later, after making friends with the people I would meet at this gas station, I would hear stories of the journey so many took to get to this place. The graphic, sad and often tragic route these people had just come through was terrible.
To give you a rough idea, here’s a little bit about their journey:
After leaving their unsafe homes in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, these men, women and children would travel to Turkey where they would take a cold boat across the water to the greek island of Lesvos. (Drowning at this leg of the journey is not uncommon. One family I met at this gas station lost a daughter through this process.) At Lesvos they would join the mass of people coming through and begin the transition process, traveling then to Thessaloniki and eventually toward the Macedonian border. Macedonia would often close it’s border, causing bus loads of people to be stopped and held at a gas station fifteen minutes outside the border.
As I was dropped off at this gas station that day, along with my squad leader, Jake, I was in awe. I felt the weight of the plastic bag in my gloved hand, remembering that it was filled with Bibles in Arabic. Jake held a note book and a pen.
Our single task for the day: make friends and if possible, make disciples.
Scanning the mass of people, I felt grossly under-equipped. What good were two, small, eager, American people going do with a language barrier and a packed lunch? Probably not a whole lot. We were going to be there all day, so with a deep breath, Jake and I looked at each other and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
I pulled my white and green beanie down over my forehead to fight the cold and off we went. We started with walking around. We walked through a makeshift soccer game and past families sleeping on card board. Babies cried and young men urinated by the trees. Our ‘hello’s were sometimes met with smilies, but overall we weren’t getting anywhere.
We decided to try some old school tactics and found an empty table at the door of the gas stations’s store. Using a piece of paper, we smeared some questionable liquid away until the table passed as somewhat clean and we set out the Bibles.
Sitting behind the table. we waited for people to come to us. Maybe if we made it look like samples at Sam’s Club, the refugees would be more interested.
Although there were masses of people surrounding us, very few actually came over. Some wondered if what we were giving was the Quran others just wanted to know where we were from.
When several Bibles were returned to us after what we hopped was someone adopting it, Jake and I reassessed the situation. This wasn’t working. The best thing we had given, that actually stayed given, was a un-opened water bottle I found on the dirty floor behind our table. The teen I handed it to was in awe as I motioned that he could have it for free.
We packed up our Bibles and started walking. It had been a good, half-hour of circling the gas station before we decided that we’d just sit in the grass and see what happens.
We started talking amongst ourselves and began picking at the grass. The rough edges caught on my cotton gloves as the clear, noon sky brought gentle warmth. To our right, a multi-generational family sat on cardboard. The mothers spoke arabic to the children while the fathers stood talking a distance away. One man, wrinkled and shaky, his balding head covered in a snow hat, had a white mustache. As I looked over at this family, I noticed this man was smiling at us.
After a wave and greeting, Jake and I found ourselves sitting next to this family. The older man and one one the mothers(his daughter, we later found out), stood up and offered the cardboard they were sitting on to us. We tried to protest, but this family wouldn’t have it.
Finding ourselves settled on the generosity of this family, we heard from the grandfather’s lips the journey they had faced. They left Syria around a month prior, wanting to find a safe place to settle. I can’t quite remember now, but I believe they were wanting to go to Germany. The grandfather told of how one of his sons had died and now he was bringing the whole family to a new life.
As we learned more about this sweet family through the broken english of the grandfather, all we could do was listen and feel amazement at how far this family had come. They had been through more terrible things in a month than I had been through in my entire life.
The sad thing is that this family wasn’t the only one with a story. Countless amounts of refugees have suffered gruesome and graphic happenings. I was able to meet a set of brothers, one in a wheel chair and the other standing by to take care of his brother. The man in the wheel chair had been shot but due to the war and crisis in Syria. They were traveling to Germany for health care.
I met another family with a daughter named Lena. Lena was three and couldn’t walk.
(Lena and her parents)
Lena’s mother and father bought us coffee because it was cold. They told us of how their family was in Switzerland but the medical care in Germany was much better and so they were choosing to pursue Lena’s health over seeing family again.
Before we realized it, Jake and I were making friends left and right. These people were precious and I loved getting to spend time with them. Many of them were eager to take a Bible and the few that weren’t was because they spoke Farsi and not Arabic.
As the sun began to set and the van pulled in to pick us up, I felt a new excitement to return the next day. Of course, our friends wouldn’t be there and I hoped they wouldn’t be. Their absence would mean that the weight was over and they’d been allowed to travel across the border and through Macedonia.
That day, Jake and I tried many things to get the gospel into people’s hands. We set up a table, we tried directly passing Bibles out, we even tried leaving them on the grass alone in hopes of someone stealing them and then reading it later. What we found, however, is that it’s one thing to tell about Jesus. It’s another to actually be Jesus.
When Jesus walked on Earth, He didn’t hand out Bibles. He didn’t tell people to come to His church or quote Him on the great things He said. Instead, He sat down next to people and got to know them. He smiled and laughed with them. He held the children and comforted the hurting.
He did this, not as a means to an end, or to earn their trust, but because He loved them. His desire to be with them out-weighed everything else. This gospel of love, relational love, is far more appealing because it fulfills a desire that exists within everyone: the desire to be known. God cares about knowing us. He gave everything so that we might know Him and be known by Him.
Here are a few more pictures of the refugees I was able to get to know. Thank you again for your support and prayers!
(Me and the team at Christmas)
(Lisa working hard at the Clothing Distribution tent we helped in at Idomeni Refugee Camp)
(The Organization System we had for handing out hats, scarves, cloves and sweaters to refugees as they crossed the border quickly)
(Me and Andy handing out sandwiches during lunchtime)
(Hadis is a teenaged refugee. She had an amazing heart.)
