Displaying items by tag: Yazidi

In Middle East’s honour-shame culture, a raped woman brings her family shame and they have a duty to kill her. Three Yazidi girls were taken as slaves by IS. Later, while their father was asleep, he saw Jesus. He recognised Him by His nail-pierced hands. Jesus said, ‘You don’t need to kill your daughters. I paid for everyone, so go and get them.’ The man woke and thought this can’t be real. He went back to sleep and had exactly the same dream. He woke up again, went back to sleep, and had the same dream for a third time - one dream for each daughter. He gathered the Yazidi elders and told them what happened. ‘Jesus showed up in my tent, I’m going to get my girls and not kill them.’ Because of Jesus, he welcomed his girls home and persuaded other Yazidi men to take back their daughters without harming them.

The word ‘shelter’ literally means a house, a tent, or a refuge. It arises from the command of Jesus that we are to ‘love our neighbour.’ This additionally implies providing food, clothing and drinking water to the poor and needy as well as a roof over their heads. For over thirty years Shelter Now has assisted with humanitarian and developmental assistance in Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing emergency relief for war-affected refugees and for victims of earthquakes, floods, drought and other natural disasters. It provides reconstruction, rehabilitation and long term development co-operation. Recently the work in Pakistan was closed, to start helping refugees from IS in Kurdistan instead. In November a staff member, Udo Stolte, visited Yazidi refugees in Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. You can read his report on Yazidi children going to school again by clicking on the ‘More’ button.