City Lights (Part 2)

Hello all....sorry about the long delay for the continuation of the last post....this last month has been crazy ridiculous, and I got a bit sidetracked. :) I think this post is mostly going to be pictures, interlaced with a few stories.

My team ended up working quite a bit on a farm that was donated to Oasis. Refugees also work on the farm to help provide food for themselves and their families, and Oasis is hoping to grow enough food to be able to sell the excess and pay the refugees for their work, as well.

Here we are working on the farm to clear the hay off of the fields:

This is Mansale. He's a Liberian refugee who worked on the farm with us. I never heard exactly why he came here, but I did talk to him and find out that he used to work in the diamond mines back in Liberia, and that he still has close family there somewhere. His nickname is "Mr. President," because when he found out that Obama was elected, he said that he could get elected, too. He's around the age of 60 or 70, and he was kicking our butts at the whole farming thing. :)

Here is NuDah. He did not speak any English at all....he was from Bhutan, and he also kicked our butts at farming:

Here we are regrouping in the living room back at New City, just hanging out after the day of work. I think we got a game of Mafia started right after this was taken. :) My friend Chris is the guy on the far right....he's another UMSL student who I hadn't met before City Lights:

One of the days, we had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in St. Louis. One of the husbands connected to the team that runs City Lights had an exhibit there of paintings he had done of many different genocides throughout the world's history. The paintings spoke about the sheer injustice and evil of genocide more eloquently and powerfully than anything I have ever experienced...I was nauseous, and my head hurt when we left.

This is a picture of the genocide in Nanking right around the time of the World Wars:

One night, we had a worship session, led by some Congolese refugees who actually attend my church. They shared with us their Congolese worship tradition, which includes a lot of dance, jumping, and motions, as well as singing. It was such a beautiful thing to be able to worship God with my whole body that way, and be in a room where everyone was doing the same. Here are our Congolese brothers who led worship. After we had finished, Justin, on the right in the blue shirt, told us his story of being a refugee:

Here is our Oasis team at the end of the week:

Here is out group picture of everyone at City Lights:

So, that was my spring break. :)

Love always,

Maren