A journey from the Kids Around the World Spain Impact Team Leader.

On one of the last days in Spain with our team, we went to Gibraltar to rest and relax. This location is really incredible. It is on the tip of Europe, part of England somehow, and it’s only nine miles from Morocco. While at this gorgeous location I could not help but imagine being a refugee fleeing for my life and having to cross this seemingly narrow straight. To know after a short nine-mile boat ride my whole life would change in an instant…if I made it across.

During our week in Spain, we interacted with more than one thousand refugees who had fled their homeland to seek a better life, making this harrowing journey across the sea looking for hope. Hope in anything. They were willing to risk everything to get out of homeland, and so they crossed this nine-mile straight with everything they owned; leaving the emotional pain of their past behind. When they arrived in Europe they were aliens in a foreign land. They were illegal, tired, defeated, poor beyond belief, unimaginably afraid and worried, shell-shocked by their seven-hour boat ride, and encounters with the nefarious smugglers they had to work with to get on the boat. They had just completed one of the hardest journeys they will ever encounter only to arrive in a country they knew nothing about. While they were suffering along on their journey, God was with them. He had never left. He was constantly guiding them along His path. He had a plan and the pain of the journey was part of it. As a blessing, our team was privileged to be part of His plan. That is how God usually works, weaving different stories and paths together to make a beautiful God inspired masterpiece. The journey that the refugees are taking is hard to comprehend for most of us.

The risks are too high.

The journey too far.

Question after question comes up only to ask, is it worth it? Whether it is worth it or not, there is enough despair and pain in the world people will continue to make this incredible decision to leave their homeland for a better life. What’s comforting to us is God understands this journey very well. The Israelites were refugees for 400 years and cast aside by governments and people groups all along the way until they reached the promised land. God knows this pain. He has compassion for the migrants. We thank God that he has given us this same heart to go and to serve those journeying to a new land.

He has given us compassion that compels us to bear one another’s burdens while they are searching for a better place…and he has given us a hope in our heart that we are taught to share with others: The hope of Jesus Christ.