On Friday, 4/21, we all went together to the Alliance Relief day center. The staff needed help organizing a large basement storage area where they keep food, clothing, bedding, shoes and toys.
Tony and Sherry count and organize the shoes.
Len and Ben from Germany stack crates of juice.
Marybeth and Mary organize quilting supplies. This classroom is used for teaching Greek, German, and English classes.
Nate, Lori, Tony and Bob.
Consulting about laundry and crafts. Christine from Germany and Janice from Louisville, KY are volunteering long term and have grown to know and love many of those that they serve.
M. making a trail mix snack of raisins, peanuts and dried garbanzo beans. This is popular with the refugee guests and a lot of it is served each day.
On Friday afternoon we took the bus to the outskirts of town to see the Elliniko Camp where most of the refugees in Athens live. They are housed at the old airport and in the stadium where Greece hosted the 2001 Summer Olympics. The area is guarded by police and no photographs are allowed. It looks desolate. The camp is overcrowded, and doesn't have enough showers or bathrooms, many people live packed together in tents, unsupervised children chase each other with sticks and rocks outside on the dirty pavement. It's unsafe for the many women who are here alone with young children.
It was heartbreaking to see this camp and know that many of those inside will be living there indefinitely because the processing of their asylum papers has virtually come to a halt at this time.
It was our privilege to serve here in Athens with Lori and Nathan Duhan.
(photo credit: flight.org)
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
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