What do you think of when you hear Iraq? Maybe watching Desert Storm on the news and missiles flying through the night? Or ISIS and the Iraq war post 9/11? For most of us, Iraq isn’t on our family vacation destination list.
And yet, that’s exactly what multiple Novo staff families hailing from Southern California and Northern Idaho did on their school spring break this year. They led a team of 20 people (10 adults and 10 kids age 7-17) on a Novo Serve Trip to refugee camps in Northern Iraq.
One mom on the trip reflected that their kids would grow up with such a different perspective on Iraq—they would have an affection for the place and the people that the grown-ups had never had.
It turns out that Northern Iraq is actually nothing like the images of Desert Storm. Instead, it’s a mountainous area with green fields and valleys, and is actually a vacation spot where Iraqis go to get out of the heat.
It’s also the location where the Yazidi people fled between 2014-2017, when they were facing genocide at the hands of ISIS. The plight of the “ISIS brides” got special attention, as young Yazidi women and girls (as young as nine) were captured and forced into sexual slavery for the ISIS soldiers. Some were eventually rescued or able to escape to these refugee camps, while others are still enslaved. The camps are primarily occupied by these women, their children, and older parents in the family, as so many men were killed.
Novo’s global partner in the Middle East, NEO Leaders, has had the opportunity to serve the Yazidi refugees through building and running a community center in two of the camps (one center is brand new!). They offer trauma therapy for the women and education and programming for children. NEO Leaders has been allowed because the help they give is real, relational, consistent over a long period of time, and is bringing substantial hope and healing to the people. (You can read more about the powerful trauma healing work that’s transformed hundreds of Yazidi women’s lives in this blog story.)
During their spring break trip, Novo’s short-term team built a playground at the new community center, which serves a camp of 12,000-14,000 Yazidi refugees. Digging post-holes for the playground equipment in the rocky soil was labor-intensive, but witnessing the Yazidi kids trying out the playground for the first time made it all worthwhile. As part of the building process, they buried blessings in the cement around each pole, praying over the location, the people, and the ministry that would take place there.
The team also got to take part in the first children’s program at that camp, and connected with the refugee kids in creative ways despite the language barrier. One of the big hits was playing “barbed wire volleyball” over the fencing surrounding the refugee camp. (The Yazidi kids were inside the camp, and the Novo team was on the outside, since you can’t just go in and out at will.) “I’ve realized how far a smile can go,” said a 13-year-old on the team. “We didn’t know the language, but a smile is universal… smiles, high fives, and knuckles helped us connect.” “Even in dark spots, there’s so much joy,” a 10-year-old team member shared. She was referring to the joy all the kids she played with had despite their circumstances.
There was play, light, and joy in interactions with the kids, but the realities these Yazidi families face caused the team to do some pretty serious reflecting.
For one thing, there’s virtually no hope that these families will ever be able to return to their own homes. Those homes were all destroyed, as was the entire community and infrastructure in the isolated region they came from. Even the ability to make a living there by working somewhere is nonexistent now, because everything and everyone is gone. The Yazidis also have no money to return and rebuild. The hopelessness was hard to see.
“To me, the Yazidi situation is one of the most hopeless situations I’ve been to in the world,” said Novo US president Mark Thrash, whose family, including three kids, was on the trip. “I’m not sure there’s a lot of hope for them in the sense of what the world has to offer. I had to wrestle with how good is the good news? In this really hard situation, what is the solution? While there are physical things to do (and Jesus met physical needs a lot) … relationship with God and the power of the gospel of the Kingdom is ultimately what will bring [the Yazidis] hope, healing, and wholeness.”
Chris Marshall, the Novo staff who led the trip, shared that the pure evil these people have encountered is hard to take in. “The stories we are hearing from the survivors show how evil and demonic ISIS was...but then to hear how these Yazidi women and children weren’t allowed to rejoin their families because of the shame it would bring to the families was also very troubling. The whole thing is unbelievable.”
However, in the face of that massive evil and suffering, there is evidence of how great the good news really is. “Our God is a God of the impossible and he can redeem anything,” Chris said. “When you visit some of these [formerly enslaved] ladies who have become followers of Jesus, their shame has been taken away. Their life has been restored. What ISIS left for dead and broken, God has totally redeemed.”
“No one is beyond God’s grace and love to be made new,” he reflected. “There’s nothing God doesn’t want to redeem.” That’s just as true for each of us as it is for the Yazidis.
It’s an incredible privilege to be able to carry the light of Christ into dark places where no one else has access, whether it’s through the long-term work of our ministry partners in trauma therapy and relational ministry or the short-term task of building a playground for kids.
“Will we be able to come back and visit again someday?” a 15-year-old repeatedly asked. Hopefully the answer is yes. And hopefully—through the ongoing work of the long-term staff, volunteers, and teachers at the community center—the joy those kids already express will have increased a hundredfold by encountering the immeasurable joy of Jesus. There’s no greater hope than that.
Curious About Our Short-Term Trips?
Novo hosts various vision and serve trips each year around the world. You can learn more about those coming up here.
ABOUT THIS STORY
Headquartered out of Beirut, Lebanon, NEO Leaders was founded in 2005. NEO Leaders is led by Nadim Costa, who was born in Beirut and educated at the American University of Beirut. He pursued a career in Business, but eventually moved to ministry, serving as the Executive Director of SAT-7 in Lebanon. Presently NEO Leaders has teams in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Macedonia, Serbia, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Kuwait, KSA, and Sudan.
NEO Leaders has 200 national staff and 7,8000 volunteers serving 50,957 DBS groups consisting of over 750,000 in 28 countries. Specific demographics directly benefiting from NEO Leaders efforts include refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq, persons with disabilities, youth, abused women, Bedouins, and people across a broad ethnic, socio-economic, and sectarian spectrum.
Mark Thrash became the third Novo-US president on January 1, 2023. He directed Novo’s Partner Development team for eight years and then Novo’s Resource Development and Strategic Initiatives team since 2020. Mark loves his work with Novo as he gets to mix four things that he is passionate about: people, the Kingdom of God, strategy, and starting new Kingdom initiatives. He loves walking alongside our faithful ministry partners and also ensuring that our missionaries are fully resourced as they fulfill their calling around the world. He has a BA in Business Marketing from Biola University (where he played basketball) and was an Area Director with Young Life before coming to Novo. He lives in San Clemente, CA, with his wife, Jamie, and their three children: Hazel, Hank, and Mae.
Chris Marshall joined Novo’s Partner Development Team in 2019 with a primary focus on Middle East Initiatives. Today, he leads Novo’s Mission Advancement Team. Previous to Novo, he served for 14 years as VP of Global Advancement with Kids Around the World, a ministry focused on disciple making among children. During that time, Chris became passionate for the unreached and unengaged people groups around the world. Chris, his wife, Katie, and their four children live in San Clemente, CA.