***Blog Posted on (3/24/2022)***
(Team Abundance: (L->R) Michael, Lee, Me, Renee, Katie, and Brett)
After we left the desert of Wadi Rum, we headed back to the capital, Amman, and started settling into our new teams and our new ministry for the second half of our time in Jordan. Team changes involve getting used to living with new people, serving with different people, and some even changed up team roles too. My team, as well as one other team, moved to a suburb of Amman, where we were renting a place to stay. The place where we were staying didn’t have a street address, so whenever we Ubered back from Amman my location would say that I was heading to Unnamed Rd. We had 15 people staying in a 3 bedroom house with 1 bathroom and a squatty potty. We pulled out our sleeping pads and spread out throughout the house to fit everyone in. Little did we know, in this area of the city there were water limits and each house is given a limited amount of water for the week. Our house had a water supply for a family of about 5-6 people. The city would turn on the water on Thursdays and then shut off the water on Fridays and we had 2 tanks to last us until the next Thursday. We learned really quickly some ways to conserve water and stretch out the water that we had to last. Our time together at Unnamed Rd. bonded us together as a team and we were blessed to have this place to stay because it was so close to our ministry location!
This was my spot by the fridge :)
My team, plus one other team, had gotten partnered with a church just outside of Amman. We would walk every morning and they would start their day with prayer, worship, and a short devotional for all of the people who worked at the church. This church works with Syrian and Iraqi refugees and employs several Iraqi Christians to work at the church since they are not allowed to work in Jordan. The church also has a school for the children of Iraqi refugees because they are not allowed in the Jordan school system. I was able to help out in a 9-12 year old classroom for a few hours on one of our afternoons. They had just recently started back up after their Christmas break and the day we came in there were less students since it was one of their first days back. The teacher asked us to lead a game and I suggested “Heads-Up-7-Up” since it was one that my 6th grade students loved to play. They already knew it and we started to play with mixes of English words and “Yallah” which means “let’s go” in Arabic. It was special to be back in a classroom again and to get to know the students, hear parts of their stories, and to help them with their multiplication facts.
(Here is a drawing from one of the students comparing their life in Iraq compared to their life in Jordan)
The church had a couple of different ways that we were able to help them. For our two weeks partnering with them we were split into 4 groups. There was a marketing/product and website design team, Editing team, Mosaic and Woodworking team, and a storage team. The church is hoping to print a magazine sharing the stories and testimonies of some of the refugees. We had a team working on editing and proofreading these stories since they had been translated from Arabic.
(These are some Operation Christmas Child Boxes that we categorized and took inventory of)
I was a part of the storage team and we were responsible to clean and organize and take inventory of their warehouse so that the church knew what they had to use. We had a blast cleaning and spending time with some of the people who worked at the church and got close with one of the men who was leading my storage crew team. At the end of our time working with the church, that man invited my storage team over to his family’s house for traditional Iraqi food. It was delicious and very kind of them to make us a feast!
(Traditional Iraqi food- Stuffed zucchini and grape leaves, potatoes, chicken, carrots, corn, couscous, and pita)
I am really thankful for the time that we had in Jordan. It was full of amazing adventures, new teams, special memories, and deep friendships! I was incredibly blessed to be working with this church whose mission is to Love God, Serve People, and Make Disciples. They aim to be a place where they can provide for the physical and spiritual needs of refugees in the area and their community around them and it was a privilege to help them in whatever way we could.
Starting this Tuesday, we will be starting our last on-the-field debrief. Debriefs are times to reflect on the last few months as a team/squad, have our last team change, and to prepare for our last 3 months. (We will be returning to America the end of June). It is crazy that we are currently in month 8 and we only have 3 months left together as a squad! After debrief, we will be spending 1 week focusing on prayer and worship before we head to the country of Armenia with our new teams. Thank you for reading and for praying for my squad!
-Elizabeth
