While in Greece on a short term trip, Adventures Fellow Alice Sudlow found something completely unexpected pretty much everywhere she looked: hope. I went to Lesvos prepared to cry. I’d read the news, seen the pictures, heard the stories. I imagined the perilous, sometimes fatal sea crossing from Turkey to Greece and the collective mourning of thousands of families passing through chaotic refugee camps. I expected my heart to be shattered. I expected to be broken by what I would experience, broken in a way I’d never been on the World Race, broken to a depth that would...

Seth Barnes, the founder of Adventures in Missions, shares his thoughts on our refugee status in light of the refugee crisis.   Not since WW2 has there been such an exodus of people. Nearly half of Syria’s population is either on the move or trying to get to a safe place. How will we respond? In the wake of the incidents in Paris, Beruit, and Mali, fear is rising. Many are saying, “We need to build bigger walls around our borders.” Kevin Gray, my partner in Lesvos Greece, wrote me to discuss the refugee situation. He’d been given responsibility for a camp that was...

On her last night in Greece, Kelly Anne Broderick of 2015 Y Squad reflects on all experienced in her 5 weeks serving on the front lines of the Refugee Crisis. We left the way we came. It was fitting. Around 10:45 PM it started to sprinkle, which turned into a pretty heavy downpour. I’d just brought all of the boxes of clothes in from outside of the gate and was sorting baby clothes on our newly-installed shelves. Stopping, I sat and listened to the rain hit the tin roof above, once again listening to Jesus romancing my soul. He knew what I needed to close out my time with the...

Kayla Zilch of 2015 Y Squad has just arrived in Lesvos, Greece to help with the thousands of refugees that pour in on a daily basis. She shares an encounter with a Syrian mother after they ran out of sweaters to keep families warm. I can’t see anything. It’s 9:32 pm, and I’m standing in four inches of dirty water, bits of wet cardboard and feminine hygiene wrappers floating around the tops of my feet. Wet babies scream somewhere over my shoulder, held in the arms of blank-faced siblings as their mothers struggle to communicate to my teammate, Emily, their hands waving...

While serving God in Nepal after the earthquake, Caitlin Roberson realized there is one thing stronger than the earthquake and the devastation it caused: joy. On April 25, 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal, killing over 9,000 and injuring more than 23,000 others. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless as the earthquake flattened their homes and even more were left without food or drinking water. Three months later, I touched down in Nepal for a relief trip. After 70 hours of travel, my co-leader and I were immediately hit with the familiar sounds and smells of Asia. Having...

How do you respond when a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shakes the ground under your feet? World Racer William Stupansky of 2015 P Squad shares a real and honest excerpt from his journal describing what he saw, heard, and felt on May 12, 2015 in Nepal. Wednesday, May 13th, 2015, Sindupalchok, Nepal Yesterday, the earth shook; literally.  One minute, I was talking with Mason on the side of this small Nepali mountain village; the next, we were holding each other up, not sure what to do.  Having felt several small quakes in the days prior, casually cast aside as aftershocks of the big one...