Registration of Refugees and Blanket Sorting

Yesterday afternoon, Avril, John’s wife phoned us and asked us if we could come out to the refugee camp and help with registration. When we arrived there were approx. 500 people outside lined up to get into the gates. We first parked outside and then decided to ask the police if we could take some things into John Thomas and they told us to drive on through. When we got inside the gates, Avril immediately put us to work registering mostly Somalia’s that have been displaced. Most of these people have had their stores looted and they have been run out of the communities. It is a horrible site to see people confused and not knowing where to go next. We were told they were setting up a second camp just for the Somalia’s so the tension would not be so bad between all the foreigners. What I learned last night was that most of the Somalia’s are Muslim and trying to stick to their “laws” eating Halaal food or fasting when they are having a crisis. They had separate tents for the food and separate tents for the men and women. John Thomas was appointed to “be in charge” of the entire camp site area and this is more than a one man job. Please pray for someone to come along side or even take over, as John has asked, to take on this position. After everyone was registered John asked us to come help pass out blankets and this would help lure the Somalia’s to the other campsite. This worked and it was amazing to see how many blankets had been donated. They had organized the blankets really well and knew exactly how many blankets they had. The only problem was they didn’t know how many would show up to receive them. They had passed out some blankets the night before, but not all had gotten one. Long story short, we passed out all the blankets and there were about 10 guys that walked up and Mike said, “guys you need to make a queue” (line). John spoke up and said we are totally out of blankets guys you need to go to your Somalia brothers who have 4 or 5 and ask them to share. As they started to walk away, someone said here is another stack of blankets, and I know to most of you it won’t be a surprise because this is who God is, but the last guy was standing there and Mike asked me if we had anymore blankets and I had one more in my hand. Need I say more?
We will have more details in our newsletter in a couple of days. Pray for our safety. However, we don’t feel threatened at all.