I joined the team at a community centre for refugees, but due to the pandemic, the centre has remined closed.
But there emerged an opportunity to help! A mother and her two children needed some furniture. My teammate and I walked into their apartment. It was almost completely empty, except a mattress, a very thin blanket, and two pillows. I shuddered a bit, because the last few nights had been freezing cold. I couldn’t imagine that they had been living like this for the past few weeks.
We brought some curtains, blankets, pillows, and an extra mattress. It was not much, but it would do for now. We planned to come back later with more furniture, but at that point of time, the most important thing was for them to be warm at night. My teammate spoke to her. I didn’t know any Arabic, so I just smiled at her, gave her a hug and a gift card for a supermarket, and we left.
It was a warm June day, in 2021. “Remember that family we visited in the winter?” says my teammate. “The woman, with the two kids, we brought furniture to? She contacted me, asking me some questions. She was so touched by the way you smiled at her. She wanted to know more about where that came from. I told her it was because of our faith, and now she wants to learn more about Jesus!”
Laura serving short-term in West Asia
