Meeting the Migrants

Today I witnessed something marvelous.

At church we heard about an outreach in the community to the group of refugees that is stationed in a hotel in the nearby village. It was going to be a church service and games for the kids afterwards. The one heading it up was one of my new colleagues at work. She had arranged other young adults to bake goodies, bring crafts and games for the kids, and they had our local priest in charge of the church service. The service was beautifully laid out with the Orthodox tradition in mind, as many of the Christians have a Syrian Orthodox background.

 The room filled up, and more and more people came to join. There were children and adults in all age groups. Some ladies I sat next to did not speak any English.  The service was prepared in English, but it turned out that a large portion did not speak or understand much English. We were in need of translators. One young boy offered to help and he did fine until another was summoned and carried on. There were translations into Arabic and Kurdish. Both of the translators were culturally Muslim. We had brought a Bible in Arabic and a New Testament in Syriac, which we had on the shelf.  During the service we had a Muslim reading the Bible out loud to the congregation – which, we realized, had only some Christians among them. The rest were people in flux, from many backgrounds.

And the homily mentioned the hope we have in Jesus, who died on the cross for us, the comfort in God's love. This was a bit hard for the translators to get across - perhaps they have never heard it. Now they have. I sat there among them, witnessing this, and it was marvelous.

After the service, one said he wanted to hear more about the Christian faith. Others asked for Bibles in Arabic, others in Tigre.

I was so encouraged by this event. I was blessed to be part of it.  Happy. I was grateful to all that had participated. This is something I would have wanted to do, but I am not a starter. I don’t know how to go about it; my shyness comes in the way. I have a hard time with asking people to do things. I am not a leader. So I am truly happy that some are, and I can join in a give what I have.

I have wanted to meet the people in migration, refugees fleeing from a life without hope for the future. Today I did meet a couple of women, their children, and some of their brothers. They have names. We exchanged contact information. If they stay for long in the hotel, we will meet again. I will ask them to come for tea. In time, I want to introduce them to a friend:

Jesus Christ, The Lord of Life