Greece 2 Team – Update #9

(from team member Martha Venancio)

September 22nd – it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and I still can’t fall asleep, so I decide to text my family in Portland, Oregon because over there it is 5 pm. So, I was texting with my two daughters and my husband when, suddenly, I felt something like an earthquake. The strange thing is that I felt it only from my shoulders through my hips and my back.

So, I started being curious about if it was an earthquake that I felt or not, so I started looking through the news online, and I put in my Google browser “Today news in Lesvos, Greece”, but I didn’t find anything about earthquakes in this zone.

What I did find, though sadly, was a news story from a month ago (August 22), where it says that the Greece coast guard was in a diplomatic discussion with the Turkish coast guard because they found two inflatable rafts with over two hundred people in them. According to the article, the Greece coast guard rescued the people, and they said that the refugees were to be transported to the refugee camp in Lesvos. Tragically, though, three kids and a woman unfortunately died.

In that moment I knew why I couldn’t sleep – God was letting me know that probably (potentially) I was serving the Father and the Mother of these kids that died last month in the sea. Or, also, perhaps the husband of that woman that also died out there.  My heart broke in that moment, and I started to pray for God to help me “if one of the survivors of these kids and that woman is in contact with me in camp, please help me God to reflect your love for them, and please comfort them and give them HOPE”.

Amen.