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Iraq Pastor Cries: "How do we turn people away? How can we do that?"Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been internally displaced during the current conflict. -Dakota Daemyn Dakota Daemyn*, a disaster response specialist serving with OM Near East, led a week-long assessment of the current crisis in northern Iraq. That assessment forms the basis for OM's ongoing ministry to displaced Iraqis in the Kurdish region of Iraq. (Photo via WWLP.com) "I no longer have any words to tell the people," the local pastor says, with an overwhelming sense of sadness. "After all that has happened and all I have heard, I have no words left to give them." Pastor Rashad*, a strong-looking, tall man in early middle age, takes time for us in his office in northern Iraq. A security monitor in the corner shows the road outside the church, a silent reminder of the ever-present threat of increased insecurity. Inside the office, a quiet air conditioner makes the room much more comfortable than the corridor outside, where several people mill around. Guests of the church fill the rooms and floors night after night. They are guests because they no longer have a place to call home, having been chased from their cities and their villages by the Islamic fundamentalists of Islamic State, or ISIS. "We try to prioritize the most needy," Pastor Rashad explains. "But how do we turn people away? How can we do that?" We sit together and I ask him about the challenges he is facing, wanting to know more so that that people can be informed and stand with him in prayer. A few days earlier we had sat together and talked about the church's planned activities to support these internally displaced people (IDPs) from elsewhere in Iraq. He had outlined the plan to hire a wedding hall to house and feed another 50 families. He had listed the differing departments the church had designated—some overseeing the provision of food, some the distribution of clothes, still others the essential items for sleeping night after night in a hall full of people. This local church in northern Iraq is a compelling example of a church putting love into action. During this meeting, he spares more of his precious, much-demanded minutes to give an update on the progress of plans to start a school for IDP children—plans that just got approval in an astonishingly quick two days. The pastor recounts a more troubling development. "A key leader is leaving," he says resignedly. Not a major problem, in normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances. Right now the church needs all the leadership it can get, as it struggles to minister to a multitude, who are traumatized, despairing and facing an utterly uncertain future. But it is impossible to blame the leader for wanting to leave. Utterly horrific stories are emerging of cases where fleeing people have had a child grabbed from them by ISIS. This is how bad the situation is. Many Iraqis are trying to leave, hoping to reach a bordering country and then, if they can, countries beyond. And church leaders are amongst them. "I've had to think, if [ISIS] can do that to people there, they can do it here," another church leader explained to my colleague. "I'm starting to wonder if I should send my wife and daughter somewhere safer." (Photo via WWLP.com) "What's your biggest challenge? How can the [global] Church pray for you?"—I'd asked these same questions the day before to another pastor, in a city close to the border. The same answer came: "So many of our people are leaving. They've lost confidence in the country; they don't feel they can live on here." Marked with joy
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