48 hours & off to Iraq/Kurdistan & Lebanon …
Friend …
Struggling on this update, as to how to best communicate. I don’t want “drama”. Yet do want to communicate in trueness, difficult realities.
Mike and I leave in about 48 hours(Thursday) for Lebanon and Iraq/Kurdistan.
Let’s start with some very good news !
$ 20,000 has already come in for Iraq/Kurdistan refugees, relief, training, development, TCD! So very grateful !
$ 5,000 has already come in to cover all my trip expenses and some overages for development! So very grateful !
$ 4,000 has already come in to cover my colleague, Mike Park’s travel expenses and relief needs! So very grateful … and he is also ! 🙂
$ 1,250 … of the $ 2,000 – $ 5,000 needed/desired for the refugees in Lebanon, has come in. So very grateful !
If your heart so moves you to help with this, please let me know, and I can help you best to channel those funds, quickly. So grateful (sensing some repetition here) for your urgent considerations in this !
Now for some difficult communications.
Refugees from Syria are pouring into Turkey, and there remains a flow into Iraq.
It’s been an awful cold winter in this region of Iraq and Lebanon. Refugees are in need of basic sustenance food items and heating fuel. One of the above photos shows our staff there, in the Karakosh/Ninivah region of Iraq, getting fuel for refugees there. Another photo showing is from a news source, where people/families, have literally frozen to death. I drew the line at not showing those more explicit photos.
Our agenda remains the same as in our last update. Already, we’re having to adjust the schedule to accommodate additional needs and added collaborative times with others in the area.
In brief, we are planning to:
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Relief Distribution to refugees in the Bardarach(Barda rash)
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Meet diplomats working to protect minorities
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TCD follow-up training – Yazidi refugees and Kurdish leaders
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Relief Distribution to Yazidi refugees around Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan
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ELD – Entrepreneur Leadership Development vision casting
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Meet with many leaders currently embracing our TCD/Development Model
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Plan our next trips there in 2020
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Key players who seek to initiate new potential K-12 school
Hoping you’ll receive another of these updates, fresh from the field, soon
Thanking you much for your kindness in reading this and your listening heart !
Daniel and Nora
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GHNI – Global Hope Network International (11% assessment) Global Hope Network International
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Nora and I thank you deeply for being such a major part of our journey and life together. Pressing ahead with you feels less like “pressing”, and more like a hand-in-hand pilgrimage. We are privileged and grateful !
Summer ’19 was especially eventful, in that we were honored to be a part of a widening group of leaders. Meeting in Breckenridge, Colorado, people of a wide variety of leadership roles and location-based serving, were there to glean from each other and understand our individual parts in this growing group of influencers internationally and domestically. From anti-human trafficking to village development to disaster relief to many others … we all enjoyed learning and relating together.
Ari and Aram (Kurdistan/Iraq) were hosted by Mike Parks (GSA) and I this summer. What a good compressed two weeks it was. Too numerous were the events and relationships (personal and organizational) built to cover them all. Some highlights of activities and connections were:
Rwanda training last month in ELD-Entrepreneur Leadership Development was beyond my hopes. Dovetailing perfectly with TCD we’ve done for years, it was what I needed to shore up this area of experience, especially in my first time in Africa. 28 attendees walked through extensive micro-enterprise, allowing each to embrace the framework of starting and growing a small business in their country. Trained, they were ready for the “Shark Tank” in which their business plans competed against others! Three in the group already had their “real” businesses, and fed their experiences into the knowing-best-principles the others needed. Superb in every way, I can hardly wait to teach others in this, as it’s integrated into our TCD and Disaster Relief training.
As funds avail, Mike and I are planning to be back in Kurdistan/Iraq ASAP! We will work with Ari and Aram and the Yazidi refugees, as well as refugees flowing into the region from Syria and other countries. I am still very much tied to Serbia TCD, as well as my continued responsibilities of oversight assistance in South Asia. You likely discern from our monthly updates, that activities are deepening and broadening quickly. We need guidance and wisdom, moving forward.
She’s doing so well in this her second year of teaching 2nd and 4th grades special need children. It is though, extremely difficult some days. Sometimes she comes home so wiped out she can barely do more than collapse on the couch, while other days she’s beaming in laughter at something one of the kids said. One kid “fired” her one week and then wanted to “marry her” the next! LOL ! She’s praying about getting her certification in this area.
Final stretch it is for Jonathan, as he laps into this last year of engineering school at Colorado State University. Emily, his girlfriend, is with us for Thanksgiving, and what a sweetie she is! Jonathan is looking into moving out to California, where Emily is in med school.
Bryan
Eliana
Can’t say enough good in our time hosting Ari and Aram here in Colorado for two weeks!
Kurdistan & Iraq Are Coming To Colorado … in Ari & Aram !
