Last night in Oshkosh, I participated in a candelight prayer vigil for persecuted Christians in Iraq. Hot wax dripped through the bottom of the cup into the palm of my hand as beautiful prayers ascended to heaven. Waves of rain beat softly on the roof of the sanctuary. Gentle rain filled the silence between petitions. A wave of rain would subside, and then Pastor Wiley of Wesley Church would intone, “Lord, in your mercy …”
We answered, “Hear our prayer!”
The Iraqi children I sat near were in seventh heaven, not because of the prayers they are too young to understand, but because they were hanging on the arms of an amazing Oshkosh woman who has made it her mission to adopt all the refugee children the State Department sends to Oshkosh, all 69 of them, in the last two years.
The mother of 69 children! I have never met a more purpose-driven, happy believer in all things bright and beautiful, children most of all.
She is a teacher—of course!
With every breath she takes, she lives the famous promise, “Let the children come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans, and Sunni Muslims gathered in prayer. My newfound Christian Arab friends from Iraq, after 3 ½ years in a refugee camp in Turkey, spoke movingly of their extended family still in Iraq, forced out of their homes in Qaraqosh near Mosul, in makeshift shelters now, without running water and without electricity, on the mountains of Sulaymaniyah (Slemani) in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
To my friends who work for USAID—I know you are reading this!—do not abandon the Arab Christian populations scattered like sheep without a shepherd on the mountains of Iraq.
The youngest child of my Christian Arab friends, almost 4, was born in the refugee camp in Turkey to which they fled. He was baptized two weeks ago at St. Rafe’s by Father Michael. The family’s first child, a 1st grader, wept before the service while I drank strong coffee with her father in the family’s apartment in Oshkosh, furnished thanks to the tender loving care of the network established by World Relief. The youngest child, just baptized, had torn her sister’s school folder in a fit of jealousy.
With quiet delight, she was showing me her ABCs and the lunch menu —“pizza” is the one word on the menu we both understand—when this happened.
The cheap green folder, from Shopko or Office Max, means the world to her. It is tangible proof, as are all the OASD teachers who dote on her—Mrs. P, Mrs. vD, Mrs. C, you know who you are!—that she has found a new home, a new purpose, and new friends.
After the prayer vigil, one of the Iraqi children, when I asked him if he was looking forward to Tennessee, told me, “I am not going.”
I thought this was a wish rather than a fact, since the last time I had spoken with his father, the plans were, after two strong winters in Oshkosh, to move to more hospitable climes.
“No,” said his father. “I don’t think I could find another city as good as Oshkosh.”
A Sunni Muslim from Baghdad, with a smile as wide as the truck he drives for a local trucking firm, he looked around glowingly at his friends, a family from St. Pete’s, neighbors in the same apartment complex, a Lutheran laywoman, a Methodist pastor.
“This is my home. I cannot leave.”