Tuesday, March 26
First, apologies for calling our city Kuhko when it should be Zakho (now you can find it on the map). Even though we are tired, the time change from the jet lag caused some of us to wake up very early after initially hitting the sack. But that is also part of the missions trip and we trust God to mount us up with wings like the eagle's. We had our morning devotions, ate, and left the hotel (see photo of us on the bus with some of our translators) at 9:15 arriving at Berseve (see photo of camp) before 10. It is a beautiful, warm, sunny day today unlike yesterday's cold rain. After setting up, we sang In His Time and John 14:6 to our "captive" audience (photo of audience with us in the back, medical examination room is inside through the open door) before beginning our activities. The medical team is set up much like yesterday, but the rest of us has a more organized plan after consultation with Connie who heads the Habibi educational program. This consists of 20 minutes of singing, some free time, then arts and crafts for about 20 children. But, today, there are about 40 children, so during craft time, Lily had to take a large group of kids to sing more. The rest of us went to visit a family of one of the high school boy and listened to their struggle to find a better future for their children. Meanwhile, Kenny was taken by a couple of boys to their elementary school where he met Falal, the English teacher there. Falal invited Kenny and brought Willy to meet up at lunch (photo of lunch at Falal's tent) . At the school, they "bumped" into another teacher who is a nursing graduate but couldn't find a job in nursing so he is teaching temporarily. Willy gave him his business card because he could fill a need for Habibi's future medical ministry. It turned out that Falal had the afternoon off, so he invited Kenny to visit the high school and arranged for Kenny to visit all 5 English classes at the school in the afternoon.
We ate lunch and resumed our activities after lunch. As part of the craft, we had the older children make the 5 color beads, which gave us a chance to present the good news to them. But instead of the forty plus kids this morning, we now had about 60. After we completed the lesson, Araz, our translator went over the meaning of the beads in their language, and was pleasantly surprised at the answers to the meaning of the colors from the kids. After dismissing the kids, Araz expressed his personal enthusiasm of this simple, yet clear presentation of the good news. The medical team finished about 4:30 when the 83rd patient came plus several who came without numbers (parents who came with child and wanted to see the doctor), so today was actually more efficient than yesterday. But by finishing early, we had to locate Kenny. We drove over to the pool hall where we thought we might find him, but, no Kenny; but thanks to GPS, we were able to track him to the high school at the next camp (Berseve 2), where he was busy having a great time time talking to the different classes. He spent at least 5 minutes engaging each class in conversation and among others, met a young high school girl who excelled in translating English to Kurmanji. Such high level young people are exactly the caliber of person Habibi wants to find, train, and disciple into leaders and society influencers for the Yazadi people. We thank God for these divine appointments He allowed Kenny to encounter. We finally left Berseve at 5:15, arriving at the hotel for a few minutes of rest before leaving for dinner at 6:30. We debriefed after dinner where we could share these wonderful things God is doing and got ready for a good night's rest at 9 PM.
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