As I felt the weight of the rich young ruler story in the Bible, we started brainstorming how we could get these families some blankets. Without them how would these families survive the upcoming winter? They were in the basin of a valley at the foot what would soon be the snow-capped Syrian mountains. As I write this, we are working on a blanket solution, but I must say, it's not an easy solution. Even if we gave all the money for these blankets, we would not be guaranteed that these families would receive them. As the government goes about the overwhelming task of dispensing resources to these camps, you can imagine what the waiting list is like for 1.5 million unexpected visitors. I have to say one thing...hats off to Lebanon for their kindness to these families! They are really trying!
With our eyes enlightened to the reality of this crisis, we loaded up the van and headed to our second refugee camp. When we arrived, we were greeted by more kids with big smiles! This is one of my favorite universal human experiences. We were greeted by some of the adult men in the camp who lead us on a brief tour then took us into one of their homes.
This tent had a few pillows which the family offered for us to sit on. As the family came in from the other room, they brought in their kids, one of them who was pretty severely handicapped. They shared how hard this situation was on their family. Their journey to Lebanon was tragic, fast, and scary. They left everything they had in Syria in order to save their lives from war and terror. They told us that what they really wanted most was to go back home to Syria, but could not go until it was safe.
Another shocker that was revealed to us was that none of these children were attending school. As a matter of fact, that is the plight of most Syrian children living in Lebanon. In my next post, I'll share a bright story of hope as we visited a World Vision school in Lebanon that is full of some beautiful Syrian children!
If you can't tell, this trip really messed with me! Maybe as this story unfolds it's starting to mess with you too. That's OK. My hope is that we'll be compelled to develop a life of generosity that really changes the world!
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