A Thankful Thursday

Today was a good day at camp! We arrived just before 8am, got our assignments and headed off to work. Our group was scheduled to work in the family unit so that's where most of us headed. As many of you know, Marv is a man of many talents and the camp leaders have figured this out. They have pulled him off our normal shift duties to do a few special projects. Yesterday they had him drive a family who had received temporary asylum papers out of Moria and over to Kara Teppe which is another camp but they are free to move around Greece from there. They are no longer required to stay locked in a prison. They also had him working on a plumbing projects. This kept him busy most of today and yesterday.
While he was working on that, the rest of us were divided up on the 3 different levels of the family unit. We served breakfast and lunch to about 1000 refugees. We filled several baby bottles with steaming hot milk. We played frisbee and jump rope, we taught some of the teenagers how to play euchre and we could draw a pretty big crowd when the bubbles came out!
We met some more wonderful people who are so kind and grateful even in there circumstances. We were invited into the tent of a family from Iraq. Such kind and generous friends who have nothing but still offered us a place on there blanket and of course the spots in the shade! They shared with us a video taken of them on their boat from Turkey. Their boat had 63 on a rubber dinghy made to hold about 20 and now they are living in a tent most of us would never dream of camping in. They all crowded around and asked if they could take their picture with us.
Yesterday we noticed a few new vests in camp, all the relief workers have them. The new ones are blue and they have been sent by the EU to start working on the paperwork for asylum. There have been no more deportations since Monday morning and we were witness to several families leaving the camp today. The smiles on those faces will be on our minds long after we return home! Even as they are leaving its only a very few and the process ahead is still a long one, continue to pray for these families.
In each of these things today we are thankful. Thankful that God provides  so generously to us. Thankful that we can eat what we want, when we want and most times, as much as we want. We are thankful for simple things like toys that keep children entertained, for schools and teachers and for indoor plumbing!!! Thankful for families, for safety and for living in a peaceful country. Today we are also so thankful for a church that sees the value in what we can do here and church leadership that says GO! Also so very thankful for our many prayer warriors that have been in constant prayer for our team while we are here. God is good all the time, all the time God is good!

The A-teamd