An Unexpected Invitation

We were a month into LPC’s spring semester when I got the Facebook message from Danae, a young woman whose family served with me when I was living in North Africa. Danae had graduated from high school the spring before, and was spending a year volunteering before starting college. She’d heard about the plight of the refugees living in the deplorable camps on the Greek island of Lesvos, and convinced it wasn’t enough to just believe someone should do something, she rolled up her sleeves and got involved. She agreed to spend four months interning with Gateways2Life, a Christian nonprofit organization that seeks to be the hands and feet of Jesus to refugees in Greece, Italy, and Germany.

While preparing to go, Danae began learning about the horrifying statistics that plague the lives of refugees: according to the UN, 65.6 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes by war or disaster, and 22.5 million of them are classified as refugees forced to live outside their own countries. An estimated 900,000 of these devastated people have made landfall on Lesvos Island since 2015, seeking asylum. Sixty-five percent of those are women and children, and most of them have traveled for weeks on foot, carrying what’s left of their earthly possessions, before making the dangerous water crossing to Lesvos. Once on Lesvos, they are processed into one of two camps, Moria and Kara Tepe. Built for a maximum capacity of 1,800 people, it currently is “home” to 10,000. Single-family tents house multiple families, three to four people sharing each mattress. There is not enough food, heat, electricity, space, toilets, or showers. The pit latrines fill up and overflow, causing the walkways and spaces around the tents to fill with raw sewage.

The average asylum application takes 18 months to process – 18 months in which men, women, and children are forced to live in conditions unsuitable for animals, much less for humans who bear the image of their Creator. For women and children, these 18 months are particularly dangerous. Incidents of gender-based violence are common. Traffickers set up right outside the camp gates, in an attempt to buy or kidnap the vulnerable. Women don’t use the outhouses after sunset, and are afraid to use the shower facilities at all. Women report not having showered in months for fear of being raped. These last facts are what prompted Danae to reach out to me.

I have had the privilege of teaching women’s self-defense courses for the last several years to women and children. My assistants and I have taught classes in gyms, orphanages, homes for disabled children, universities, churches, community centers, and occasionally, in open fields, in seven different countries. Danae and her mother had attended six-week sessions in North Africa

twice in the years before I moved back to the States, so Danae had first-hand knowledge of how empowering these skills are. She talked to William, the director of Gateways2Life, and together they invited me to come teach self-defense techniques to the refugee women on Lesvos, during LPC’s spring break, in hopes that such skills would empower women to be able to protect themselves and their children, and lessen the burden of stress and fear they carry daily. Self-defense classes are not something you can easily teach alone. Danae agreed to be my main assistant, but I still needed to recruit a couple more people. That’s where Jenny and Aby came in.

I’ve had the wonderful privilege of mentoring Jenny and Aby for over a year. Both are powerful, Godly young women intent on engaging the world in meaningful ways. Aby feels called to be a shepherd among the nations and Jenny is called to engage injustice, particularly where it affects people living on the margins of society. Because I know their hearts so well, I was confident that they would not only be able to handle a trip like this, but be genuine blessings to the people we would engage. When we had our first trip meeting I didn’t pull any punches as I described the conditions we’d be in, the suffering and trauma we’d witness, the emotions we’d likely feel, and the skills and hope we could bring. I wanted them to know what they were signing up for. They listened to all the stats and all the horror and then both unequivocally declared, “We’re in! When do we leave?”

We had less than a month to raise funds and prepare, but that was more than enough time for God. He funded our trip in 8 days! So, in March, we flew to Greece, and spent a week at the Gateways2Life community center. During the day, Aby and Jenny played with the kids, and held the babies of the women who came to the center to wash their clothes and escape the dangers of the camp. I was able to use the Arabic I learned in North Africa to listen to their stories, and translate their questions and needs to the Greek and American staff at the center. In the evenings, we’d take down all the tables and chairs in the main room of the community center, sweep and mop the floors, and then turn the space into our self-defense gym. To William’s knowledge, this was the first time anyone had ever attempted to teach self-defense to the refugees. As with anything being done for the first time, it took a couple days to learn how to get the word out to the right people in the right way, but by the end of the week we had it figured out. On the last night of our class, we had 26 women from 10 different countries present, and we were running the training in 4 languages simultaneously. I wish you had all been there to see it! Women came in nervous and fearful, many bearing obvious physical scars, and all bearing emotional scars and traumas, but within a

few minutes they were cheering each other on, clapping, high-fiving, laughing, and hugging. It was beautiful. We learned a lot on our trip, especially about Christ’s heart for the broken. We talked together often about how, in the midst of the mind-crushing suffering and loss we were witnessing,

we could feel His sweet presence. We could feel Him in the community center with us, weeping over the stories and broken lives, holding the babies, rejoicing in women finding strength they didn’t know they had in our classes, and loving each and every refugee. Oh, how He loves them! We reflected on the words of the Psalm 34:18: “God draws near to the brokenhearted; He rescues those crushed in spirit.” Our omnipresent God who is at all times everywhere, somehow draws even nearer when someone is crushed and brokenhearted. He leans in. And to be His followers is to align ourselves with His spirit, to lean in when He does. Aby and Jenny leaned in! Day after day, they leaned in and embraced the most brokenhearted women, children, and babies I’ve ever seen. They loved on them with a fierce tenderness that made my heart swell. I can only imagine how proud Jesus was to watch these two fearless young women lean in and wrap His hands and arms around the weary, brokenhearted, homeless, the “least of these” whom He loved enough to die for!

I want you to hear what the experience was like for them in their own words, so below is a short reflection from each of them.

Jenny’s Reflection

The time that I spent in Greece deeply and profoundly impacted me. Walking through the “Life Vest Graveyard” was one of the most life changing moments. Walking beside the piles of life vests taller than I was left me speechless. 850,000 vests. Each vest represented a family, a dream, and a story. Each vest held a body that was searching for a safe place to call home. From this specific experience I learned the importance of being present and aware. In that moment, I understood that the vests that I was looking at were the same vests that held my neighbors, who are the people I am called to love. I am called to live out a love that does not let us go unaware of the hurt, pain, and struggles that the refugees have endured. It’s a love that moves us to sit with them and see their strength, resilience, and courage. It’s a love that urges us to listen to their stories and see them. It’s a love that moves us towards justice. At the Gateways2Life community center, I had the opportunity to meet such incredible women and children from the neighboring refugee camps. Muhammad is a seven-year-old boy from Syria. After telling me that he hasn’t attended school in months, and misses being in class, we spent the day working through a few math equations. Muhammad’s sweet and gentle heart brought warmth to my life. Meeting him was like seeing fireworks for the first time. He glowed! He was vibrant! And I couldn’t see him without being amazed by his resilience. The self-defense training that we held at the community center was one of the most stretching yet beautiful moments I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. From the moment the women walked into the room, their resilience and strength was evident. Standing in a room full of women cheering one another on in different languages made my heart leap. Seeing the look on their faces as they discovered that they are strong was such an empowering experience. I can honestly say that every woman and every child that I met taught me something.

Through their eyes and through every smile, I experienced Jesus. Overall, serving the refugees in Greece taught me that Jesus’ heart leans in towards the marginalized and oppressed. Although their circumstances look bigger than what my two hands could ever do to fix it, there is no doubt in my mind that Jesus is walking through those camps and sitting in those tents with them. Even though the impact of my two hands may seem small, I learned that I want to be the hands and feet of Jesus to my neighbors who are living in those inhumane conditions. I learned that change and justice come from Jesus. I learned that we all should actively live out being Jesus’ hands and feet to see lasting change.

Aby’s Reflection

Going to Greece and serving the refugees on Lesvos was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. In a matter of a few days, I experienced radical emotions ranging from anger and deep sorrow to overwhelming joy. The Lord taught me what it meant to lean into tragedy and brokenness, instead of doing what is comfortable, looking away and ignoring the devastation around me. We learned that, though our hearts were to ‘go and be Jesus to these people,’ because they are the “least of these,” they would be Jesus to us too. I was holding a baby when a woman walked into the center pushing a young boy in a wheelchair. They immediately caught my attention because of the wheelchair, as he was the first person I saw on the island in one. I later found out this 11-year-old boy in the wheelchair, in the best English his mother could communicate to me, was sick and needed medicine. He didn’t speak at all, but when I sat to play

with him, he smiled and played with me too. His mother thanked me for playing with him, and sent her younger son, who is probably about 3 years old, to kiss me every couple minutes. He’d wrap his arms around my neck and kiss me all over my face. I felt so loved! That’s what I encountered every single day at the center: A little boy who insisted I eat his peanuts and crackers because I let him keep some play dough, a little girl who picked food off the floor to feed to me in hopes that I would hold her, like the girl I was already holding who was feeding me too. My heart could not

contain the generosity of a people who are fed very little in their camps, and don’t know how much longer it will be before they have a full, solid meal. I saw with my own two eyes that God truly is bent toward the marginalized, the refugee, the widow, and the orphan, and those are the people who make up the refugee camps. We ought to be bent toward them too. I will forever be changed because I went on this trip. Suffering does not mean God is absent— He’s ever-present with those who have lost their families, homes, and jobs. He grieves with those who had to leave a dying child behind for the sake of saving their other children. God is present in suffering. There is hope. There is so much hope for them.  

Getting Involved

All three of us were indelibly changed by what we experienced during our short time on Lesvos. We hated leaving our precious new friends behind in

the misery of the camps, but we are comforted that they are not alone there. Jesus is with them. And we also have amazing brothers and sisters in the Lord who run Gateways2Life and are committed to bringing hope, dignity, and the love of Christ to the refugees for as long as there are refugee camps on Lesvos. If you want to know more about the work they are doing, and perhaps get involved yourself, please visit Gateways2Life.org and find out about their newest project here.

Thank you for reading about our trip. Please join us in praying for the refugees, that the Lord would meet them in the midst of their deepest devastation and bring them to the saving knowledge of His unending love for them. Please also pray for our brothers and sisters who are working among them. What they do is so unbelievably hard, and they need us to be lifting them up. I’d like to encourage you also to pray about how the Lord wants you to engage the suffering of refugees, whether in Greece or in our own cities. Together, we can bring hope and healing to the brokenhearted as we lean in with God’s Spirit.

Your sisters in Christ,

Aimee, Aby, and Jenny