“When ISIS came to my village on August 13, 2014, they rounded up the men and shot them. They captured the women and girls, shot the elderly and those undesirable, then took the rest to market where they were sold as sex slaves for the price of a pack of cigarettes. They shot my grandma and grandpa.” Amjed told us this as we ate our breakfast of curry porridge and hard boiled egg in the Kurdish city Sulaymaniyah.
Jeremy and his team at the Preemptive Love Coalition spent the rest of the day bringing us up to speed on what can only be called the human tragedy of our time. Tomorrow we’re headed out to visit some of the 12 million IDP’s and refugees living in this middle eastern landscape of war, conflict, and oppression while asking God the question: What shall we do?
Jeremy and his team have been working in Iraq for 10 years and have been gracious hosts, helping us understand the complexities of the ongoing war and the regional threats, as well as the massive scale of need.
Together, we are part of an unstoppable force of love. It is stronger than ISIS, more potent than Assad, and longer lasting than any of the come and go proxies who use the families of this wonderful part of the world as pawns in a sick and brutal chess game.
“…by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.” –Acts 20:35
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