I discovered that I would survive very well here in Iraq. The people eat dinner at 10pm, go to bed about 1am, the whole family is up by 6am and then there is a 2 hour break later in the day. Sounds like my kind of people!!
Discovering more things about the culture and the issues they are facing especially in Baghdad. I will have to make this brief as the morning session starts in 10 minutes and then the leaders are going on a field trip to see the Grain de Ble team perform at a local school.
· Hospitality is very important. When guests come, you serve 10 times as much food as you normally would. After a couple of days I finally had to acknowledge that I was not being disrespectful if I did not eat everything given to me. Lots of cucumbers, tomatoes, bread, chicken and lamb kebobs. The food sure has been good!
· Family is very important. Whatever the parents believe, the children must believe as well. It is disgraceful if they don’t. If a child commits to a different faith, they will be disowned or killed. So when a person or child makes a decision to follow Christ, they are told not to tell their families because of the repercussions. What Jesus had to say about forsaking your family to follow Him, now make more sense – here it is a matter of life and death. Also, when there are stories about the father accepting Christ and then the whole family follows suit, now we know why. Whatever the parent believes, so goes the rest of the family. You would not do otherwise.
· Many of the people here are ministering to the street kids, which is a big problem in Baghdad. These children, starting at age 6 have either lost their parents or they are being forced to “work the streets” selling various things or cleaning your windshield or just begging for food and money. The children are very hardened and cause a lot of disruption in the classrooms. We talked about the criticalness of prayer, especially against the idols that the Muslims worship and the need for these children to belong and loved. My translator has a huge burden for these children. He again reiterated to me that although many people are fleeing the country and becoming refugees in the neighboring countries, he is committed to honoring and serving the Lord in Iraq. I admire him so much for his faith – he has told me how much I have encouraged him. I personally don’t think there is any comparison!
· The persecution against believers can be quite severe. I was told of one boy who was the only Christian (follower of Jesus – there is a difference) in his school and the other boys started bullying him. As he got older, they began beating him severely. The parents kept trying to sell their home so they could move but they were finding that hard because they were believers. They finally did last year but emotionally and spiritually this young adult is very angry. The police just turn their backs on this because of the faith of this family.
We have no clue, do we?! Sometimes I wonder what would happen if this were to start happening in our country – what would our people do?
You can’t help but be inspired and motivated by the faith and tenacity of these people. Okay gotta go – more later though it will be a late night tonight as we will be teaching till 10pm since we are not starting till after we get back from the program.
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