CAMP MORIA, Pt 1

After spending our first day on Lesvos visiting the "Lifejacket Graveyard" and doing some training & orientation for the work we're doing at Moria Refugee Camp, I worked my first shift yesterday (Sunday, 8am - 5pm).

The camp itself covers the area of 6 football/soccer fields. We're not permitted to take pictures onsite, but to give you an image, it looks like a quarantine zone that you might see in a film about a deadly viral outbreak; brimming with white UNHRC tents & ISO boxes/containers.

Yes, it's an overcrowded refugee camp filled mostly with Afghans, Syrians, and South Sudanese. 

And it has an atmosphere of a detention camp.  

Yes, the toilets & sewage system are less than ideal for the nearly 6,000 people currently residing there.
Yes, there is as much ugliness, pain, despair, and scarcity that you'd expect to find in such a place.

The facility is surrounded by walls and high fences topped with razor wire. People are packed into living quarters (tents and ISOBOXES) beyond capacity - sometimes up to 15 people in an area that might comfortably house 6-8.
It's fair to say that no one would choose to live this way.

But there is also beauty.
Beauty in their SMILES.
Beauty in the LAUGHTER of the throng of children playing in the walkways, and making toys out of wood and stones.
Beauty in their HOSPITALITY as they invite us into their tents for a chai (tea).
Beauty in their TOUCH.
Beauty in the way they've formed community with one another that looks as though they're FAMILY.

As we left the camp following our tour (part of day 1's orientation), one of my teammates said to me, "I wonder if God is even in there."

"I can't imagine that he's not," I replied. "These are the people Jesus hung out with during his earthly ministry. We find in Jesus' own words the key to having an encounter with him: 'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ This is precisely where we'll find Jesus b/c he himself said that this is who he is."

We come to these places to serve, to help and to provide relief. But unexpectedly experience an encounter with the divine -
In his SMILES.
In his LAUGHTER.
In his HOSPITALITY.
In his TOUCH.
In his FAMILY.

Thank you for the prayers and encouragement so many of you have offered. I look forward to sharing more encounters with you soon!