Evangelism in refugee camps
We have been doing evangelism in some of the refugee camps here in Lebanon for a few months. It has been quite tiring at time, very difficult, but over all quite rewarding.
One of the more difficult things with the camps is the large children to adult ratio. It is quite difficult at times when you are needing to share with the adults and there are kids pounding down the cardboard house.
I suppose I should backup a little bit.
Here is an excerpt from a newsletter I wrote explaining our first time going to the camp:
“Over the last almost 10 years now that I have been out here, there are few memories that are special to me. This day would certainly be one of them.
I have known that there was a Turkmen camp of refugees for a while now. I think there must be more than one, however I found directions on how to get to this one.
When we pulled the car into the camp, people started to look at us. The area was just make-shift tents. They were put together out of whatever they could find.
A man came forward, I told him that I had heard that there were Turkmen living there. He said, “Yes, are you a Turkmen?”
“I live with the Iptal tribe in Beirut. My name is Yahiya or Johnny.”
He then lead me through a maze of tents into the chief tent and said that Yahiya from the Aptal had arrived.
As I entered into the tent and found a place to sit, people started arriving in groups of 5. Before long there were atleast 30 if not 40 or more people.
After a few pleasentries, he brought out tea. People were just all crowding in to see what brought me there.
I then reached back into my backpack and brought out a big booklet with no words, just pictures. It goes through Genesis to Revelation to give someone a good background in understanding the Gospel.
When I started to speak, my hand was shaking as I was uncertain if the crowd would engulf us or receive us.
The room / tent got VERY quiet… It remained quiet for more than half an hour as everyone listened VERY carefully to my words.
The whole camp took many Bibles, Audio Bibles, and various Gospel materials.
People in the camp were poor, VERY poor. The children are naked. They have MANY sores and scabies seems pretty common. After I finished preaching the Gospel, I started dressing various wounds and injuries. However, there were quite a lot of things that were quite out of my skill level, they soon brought a kid to me that had bomb shrapnel in his head!
I am not sure how to help all these people. The children were naked and very malnourished. I gave out LOTS of vitamins. I am sending pictures of the various things that I was uncertain about to doctor friends to see what I can do / if anything, to help them.”
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