A,B,C...1,2,3

Greetings from Day 2 in Bicske and our time at the refugee camp.  My assignment while at the camp is to teach basic English to basically whomever wants to sit down at the table (ping pong table) and listen to me bellow out words like, RED…R-E-D, Blue…B-L-U-E, and my personal favorite so far, PURPLE…PuuuurrrrrrrrPelllll.  This one is very difficult for guys for guys who speak Farsi, Pashto, Arabic, or a local French/Congo dialect.  Besides basic colors, our students have learned (loose term) how to say and write numbers up to 100, say and write basic jobs like builder, teacher, and nurse, and our last assignment today was basic time keeping on a clock that Liz drew on a handheld whiteboard.  Oh, and yesterday we played BINGO to practice hearing and finding numbers.  This was particular entertaining when we had a heated match that came down to the wire between a player from the Congo and one from Afghanistan.  I’m not kidding, I thought for a moment that we was going to have an international conflict right then and there.  Thankfully, one of our friends from Pakistan came out of nowhere to take the gold and the tension quickly subsided. 

 

Needless to say it has been very challenging, but very fun and very comfortable surprisingly.  Today, for a moment, I thought about whether or not Liz and I were making a difference for these guys.  Would they remember any of the words, letters, or numbers that we’ve shown them?  But after a while, God whispered and reminded me that it’s not about the task of teaching the ABC’s.  I’m here to show love and genuine human interest to men, women, and children who have not been shown that for a very long time. I’m here to shed a glimpse of hope and light where there is little.  These folks are refugees who have left or been driven out of their homelands (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Congo, Tunisia, Syria, and others) to seek somewhere, anywhere, where they can be safe to live, work, and raise a family. Somewhere they won’t be threatened with death because of religious belief or refusal to join an evil they disagree with.  Then as they’ve traveled thousands of miles by foot, car, train, and boat and spent large amounts of savings on human traffickers (many have also been robbed over and over along the way), they have only met with more resistance from people’s who either don’t want them, or don’t have the capacity to take them in and support them with jobs.

 

So, they sit in limbo wondering where they’ll go next.  You can see the despair on their faces.  You can feel the frustration.  Your heart breaks for them.  But here’s the good news…they keep coming back to class.  They are eager to learn and you can see them light up with a smile when you say their name or when you praise them for writing the word “forty-seven” right.  They are so proud of where they are from and they can’t wait to tell their story. They shake your hand and then touch their heart to let you know they truly appreciate you and consider you a friend, and it’s in those moments that God is letting me know what we are doing does matter. It matters to Him as we are ALL His children.

 

So far, the words Islam, Muslim, Christian, or Jesus have not come up yet.  I don’t know if they will. If so, we’ll talk about it.  However, I am convinced that the love of Jesus Christ is shining through me and my team mates, and that the Holy Spirit is moving through this place. And my prayer is that when we’re gone they’ll know we are Christians by our love…by our love.

 

-BT