A Change of Venue - Faros

It's been a long week for me, but also a good one. This week most of the staff at helping hands is busy at family camp, a sort of summer camp experience for believing or partially believing refugee families. It's a multi-organization event, and it's much more focused and intensive than normal. Kayla, our guide intern who was here last year, left for camp Tuesday, but there wasn't room or work for all of us, so the rest of us interns stayed in Athens and have been working for a different refugee support organization called Faros instead.
Here's the background info on Faros. It' was started a couple of years ago by a couple of people from Denmark to help unaccompanied minors in Greece. There are a lot of kids, almost all boys, under the age of 16 living in Greece alone without parents or guardians. Some of them have lost their families to war, while others have families still living in the Middle East who sent their oldest boy east, in the hope that he would be able to find a better future in Europe and perhaps help his family gain admittance later on. A lot of these boys congregate in groups in Victoria park, and Faros owns a building a few blocks away where they offer kids a safe place to stay and play during the day. They also offer a variety of services to help kids figure out what to do next, where to find services or seek asylum, how to reunite with families they may have been separated from, and what steps they can take to build a brighter future for themselves. It's a really cool ministry that reaches out to a very vulnerable demographic.

It also has almost nothing to do with what we the interns have been doing.

Instead, the four of us are working with Faros' brand new hope center facility. Their hope center works with families, particularly women and children, and they just (mostly) completed work next door on a shower facility where they can offer showers and serve tea and cookies while the women wait their turn. It's like women's shower day at helping hands, except newer, and it happens every day instead of once a week. That is where our group has been helping out all week.
This is actually the first week of showers for the hope center too. The facility is brand new, and they only opened last Friday. Monday was a greek national holiday, so on Tuesday when we came to work, we got to jump into the group's second full day of figuring out how this is all going to work. It's really cool to get to be a part of starting this ministry off, especially since we've seen how showers work at helping hands, and what a great environment can be produced. It can also be a little stressful figuring out what we can offer and what we can't, but I certainly enjoy the fresh perspective of a new ministry and a different group of people.
There are usually at least 3 Faros people working at any given time. We have exactly one guy who speaks Farsi, Arash, and he sits at the door and greets people. He takes the name of each woman who comes and the number of kids she has who are showering with her, and then he gives her a number. First come, first served.  Another Faros lady sits near the front with him at the information desk. She is available to help refugees find other services and organizations that they need, and she can explain the process of petitioning for asylum. The third lady is in charge of the kids. There is also someone different in charge every day, but so far the supervisors often drift back to the building around the corner during the day, so we are mostly on our own. We also had two other volunteers our first two days, but then they had to move on to their next destination.
Two volunteers will be in charge of the showers, one or two run the tea and cookie department, and everybody else hangs out with the kids and/or chats with the ladies that come.  I have drifted into a role as snack lady/child are assistant.
I really like having the clearly defined refreshments job. Every time someone new comes in, I make sure that there is a plate of cookies on their table, and I swing by to ask if they want some tea or water, "chai" or "ab." Then, I come through periodically and check if anyone want a refill. I say the word "chai" a lot of times over the course of the day, nod have a lot of conversations that are made up of one or two words repeated with excessive gesturing until the other person understands. Someone does want tea. Someone else doesn't want tea, but would like more cookies. Someone would like sugar to put in their tea. Someone wishes I would stop offering them tea already because they are fasting for Ramadan. Whoops. Got it.
It is pretty basic, but it feels pretty helpful. I know what I have to offer, and I give it. I smile a lot. I don't do a ton of chatting, or hear a lot of women's stories beginning to end, but I serve a lot of warm drinks, and I do my best to make them feel welcome. These women have On my way! A long way, and a lot of them work hard to take care of their families in very difficult circumstances, with very few resources. But when they walk into our center, for a couple of hours I get to serve them. It makes me happy, and I hope it gives them a chance to rest.
The other role that I've drifted into at Faros is helping with the kids. In particular, I feel like I've gotten a reputation if only in my own head as a wrangler for overly energetic boys. There is one family who has come I every day so far, a woman with five kids, one older teenage girl, one younger teenage girl, and three rambunctious boys ranging from maybe 12 down to 3 years old. They are sweet, but boy are they a handful. I couldn't enjoy playing with them more. Yesterday they hung around until the end, and once everything wound down, and almost no one was left in the center, I started chasing them. Tearing after all three boys all around the room, catching each one to tickle him, and then releasing him to go after another one. I even managed to pull another little boy into it too. He was just standing and watching our antics, until I started poking his belly every time I ran by. After a couple of times of that, he was running too, but with a great big grin plastered all over his face.
Working at Faros is a lot less structured, or organized, than helping hands, but that also means that it's a lot more flexible, and that I get to create structure and organization as I see fit. I get to come up with simple and active games that will keep these boys' attention, and figure out how often to put out cookies and play around with where to put my supplies in the cabinet. It's fun.
The roles that I've taken on myself are not big and they aren't flashy. I don't think for a minute that I'm irreplaceable, or that I'm changing the entire course of anybody's life, but I hope that I'm contributing a little bit of joy to everyone I meet. I came to Greece so that God could use me. I don't think that He's been speaking through my voice or through my words very much this week, because I haven't used the very much, but I hope and believe that He is working through my smile. That He is working through my patience with a dozen requests even as he teaches me to be patient. That He is working through my hands as I pour drinks and arrange cookies, and through my fingers as I tickle kids or toss an inflatable beach ball back and forth with a girl who looked left out. To me my actions seems so small, but I am trying to trust God that He is mighty and merciful and that He is big enough to work through my insignificant actions. Some days that is easier to remember than others, and some days I also need to trust God enough to push past my discomfort and go ahead and have some long possibly awkward conversations, but first and for most I need to put my actions into His hands.

Ps. Faros' website can be found at http://www.faros.org.gr if you are interested. It doesn't have a ton of information about the new shower facility, but it gives you at least a little bit of an idea what their organization is.