Posted by Michelle Brehm
I think I picked up a nasty cold virus this past weekend at Oktoberfest in Appleton. I spent a lot of time outdoors with my friend Darlene Parks at our booth on College Avenue, where we were selling our beautiful jewelry to help fund my mission trip to the Sahara Desert.
Michelle took this photo of two Saharawi refugees during her last visit to the camps.
I am leaving soon, and one of the things we’ll be doing is working with a group of Saharawi leaders on team-building exercises. The Saharawi people aren’t used to the American way of working in a team, so we want to help them work together better.
I’m really looking forward to what will be my sixth visit to the refugee camps.
This time I’ll be there about a month. I feel like I’m going home every time I go back. From the moment I first went there five years ago–I fell in love with the people. They are so loving, welcoming and kind!
Last year I stayed in a camp called Smara, where I was reunited with a woman whom I met and had given some books to a few years ago. She lives at the Auserd camp, and had taken a 45-minute taxi ride one way to see me.
Since she’d just had a baby and needed to get home to nurse, she spent only about 10 minutes with me just to deliver a letter and some photos. I get letters from her every time someone from CTR goes to the camps. She asks about my daughters and tells me there is still time for me to have sons. All because I brought her books!
God is doing amazing things there. The religious dialogues between the Saharawi Imams and others with Christian leaders from CTR are awesome. This year’s topic is Peace. We’re also putting on a seminar for young women to show them who they are in God’s eyes. Surprisingly, they desire to put on weight. Many women at the camps take bovine growth hormone pills to fatten up. Our desire is to help them understand that they are God’s image-bearers, and do not need to find their identity in their body image.
Please keep the Saharawi people and our teams there in your prayers.
