Kurdistan: It's All About People!
We are currently on a week-long medical trip to the Ashti Camp outside of Sulaymeniah, Iraq in the Kurdish region of the country. This is not a vacation destination - you have to really want to come here!
In the week ahead our 11 doctors, nurses, counselor, dentist, and pharmacist will serve between 700 and 1,000 people. They are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled from ISIS in 2014 and lost their homes. Many of them have suffered greatly over these years. They have endured major trauma, they are permanently homeless, and their chances of seeking asylum in another country are slim at best.
Living Word has sponsored medical trips for several decades. The Kurdistan project is the newest in a series of such efforts. We invest in this way for a number of important reasons:
In the week ahead our 11 doctors, nurses, counselor, dentist, and pharmacist will serve between 700 and 1,000 people. They are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled from ISIS in 2014 and lost their homes. Many of them have suffered greatly over these years. They have endured major trauma, they are permanently homeless, and their chances of seeking asylum in another country are slim at best.
Living Word has sponsored medical trips for several decades. The Kurdistan project is the newest in a series of such efforts. We invest in this way for a number of important reasons:
- It is the way of Jesus and His Kingdom: The Bible is crystal clear that we are called to care for the poor, oppressed, and suffering. Matthew 25 says that when we care for the hungry and thirsty we have done so to Jesus himself.
- It is how we communicate who we are: Followers of Jesus are witnesses to the greatest redemptive act in the history of the world. But we are not only witnesses to it, we are participants in it. One of the ways we participate is by doing medical trips to help some of the most in need in the world.
- These trips stretch our worldviews and make us sensitive to other cultures: The Gospel is not a North American or Western religion. It is a world faith that expresses itself in different ways in different part of the world. Our teams get to be part of that expression, if even for only a week.