Unknown Nations Podcast

Hey, friend, welcome to the Unknown Nations Podcast, highlighting what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the world. And I can't think of more spiritually dark places in the world than refugee camps. And today we are going to be stepping into the shoes of refugees who leave their homes with only the clothes on their back, their children underneath their arms, and they are forced from the most tragic of situations.

Today, we're going to do a deep dive on that. My name is Greg Kelley with Unknown Nations, where we have the honor to serve God by helping reach the most zero access, barrier ridden, spiritually antagonistic, spoken word reliant people groups on the planet, giving birth to the church in impossible places.

Well, I'm going to give you a stat that might be a shocker to you when you hear this, but it is true. I have witnessed it with my own eyes. I've experienced it. Some of my most precious friends in the world live inside of these camps, but the UN gives us a statistic. And what they say is that every single minute, even in the time you've just been listening to this podcast, 20 people are forced to flee their homes due to war, violence, and persecution. What we've said for many years is that every three seconds, someone is newly displaced because of war, violence, and persecution. These people are refugees. These people are displaced people. Now, some of my firsthand experiences are in places like Dadaab. You may never have heard of Dadaab before, but for many, many years, Dadaab was considered the largest refugee camp in the world.

Now here's the irony. Dadaab is located in the most Christian country in the world, which is in East Africa. The country of Kenya is considered the highest evangelical percentage of 195 countries that are tracked in the world. Kenya is number one, yet inside of it is the largest refugee camp in the world for a couple of decades, from the 80s throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Dadaab is filled with hundreds of thousands of refugees that are from Somalia and they're from Sudan and they're from Ethiopia, and these precious people have lost everything and they're, it's literally in the desert.

I mean, Dadaab is not a place that you would go to vacation. It's a place that no human was intended to live. In fact, if you go back to the seventies, there probably would be a very small population that was living in this area. Yet, because Kenya is located around a lot of conflict zones, these camps emerged there.

Well, Dadaab was overtaken, unfortunately. This is not certainly a statistic that you want to brag about as a host country, by the country of Bangladesh. The largest refugee camp in the world is in that country, but because of the genocide that took place in the country of Myanmar, which now this is a fascinating thing because Bangladesh is primarily a Muslim country, Myanmar is primarily a Buddhist country, and they're both kind of bordered by India, which is a majority Hindu country.

So you have Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism all kind of crashing together, which was a lot of the conflict that resulted in the growth of the refugee camp in the area called Cox's Bazaar, which is down in the Southern Peninsula of Bangladesh, where the genocide that took place was between the Myanmar, primarily Buddhist people group, the Burmese, pushing out the almost exclusively Muslim Rohingya people across the border. And I mean, it's just crazy every time I think about it, it's just almost unbelievable and I maybe wouldn't if I hadn't been there myself, but between 2018 to 2019 nearly a million Rohingya were pushed across the border from their historical homelands in the country of Myanmar and a place called Rakhine state over into Bangladesh. Imagine that, over a million people surpassing Dadaab. So this idea of what's going on in the world today is happening at such a rapid pace, it's hard for us to appreciate it because we're insulated.

So there's a lot of things we're insulated from in the west. And when we at Unknown Nations look at this situation, we consider it probably the greatest opportunity. I think that when the Lord looks down at a situation that humanitarian causes, and so many of the refugees in the world, the war, violence, and persecution, it's humanity against humanity.

This is the way I look at refugee situations. I think in John 17, Jesus signals to us. I do my greatest work in a certain environment, that is the environment of unity where he prays the high priestly prayer and Jesus prays to his father and he says, "Father, I pray they, you and I, that they would be one as you and I are one, may they be one so that the world would know the Father sent the Son."

That is a great message. Picture-perfect visual of unity. How could it be more perfect? Than the unity that the Father and the Son experience, that's his vision for us. What a beautiful thing across languages, across cultures, across people groups that we as followers of Jesus would be one. Well, if you can say that that is the perfect visual of unity where God does his greatest work, then I would make an argument that the opposite of that is true and that the devil is going to want to do everything he can to undermine that, to undercut that.

And the opposite expression of unity is genocide. It's one nation against another, God's creation trying to destroy itself. And that is what the unfortunately, the manifestation of culture clashes and attacking resulting in refugees is all about. And so today, when we look at the world, the UN says that there's over 40 million people in the world today that have crossed international borders, seeking help. These are people, precious, precious people and many of them are coming from the most hostile areas in the world, places like Myanmar, which is very hostile to the gospel overall, places like Somalia, we have mentioned both of those. That is one of the most difficult places not just in Africa, but in the whole world to do ministry. You've got Al Shabaab and other radical elements of Islam coming out of Somalia. It's very difficult. Places like Afghanistan. Places around that region, places like Syria. And in Syria, when you speak of Syria, you've got millions of people that have been displaced because of the ongoing civil war.

And here's the truth about refugees. I've never met a refugee that doesn't want to go home one day. They want to go home. I mean, everything has been taken from them. They love their homeland that they're from. I mean, that's where they raise their children. That's where they have their home. That's where they have their business.

There's not a person you're going to meet that says, "Oh, I never want to go home again." They're living in a tent. They're living in temporary housing. They all want to go back home. But to complicate matters, we have another massive number that also includes people being displaced because of war, violence, and persecution that never leave their country.

These are called internally displaced people, and you have over 70 million of them that remain inside of their own countries, again, due to war, violence, and persecution. A great example of a place that would have a lot of internally displaced people is Nigeria. Boko Haram and think of this, Nigeria is a place that has over a hundred million Christians. Although Kenya has the highest percentage of evangelicals, from a volume, the number of Christians, Nigeria has more than any other country in the entire continent of Africa, one of the most populated Christian countries in the entire world.

Yet there are tens upon tens of thousands of people that are internally displaced in the northern part, mainly where Boko Haram, the Fulani herdsmen, have been operating for the last couple of decades and just causing absolute chaos. Chaos and terror for the people. So those are the two categories that we talk about when we think about people that have been displaced, whether refugees or internally displaced.

And I want to get back to this idea of they all want to go home. They all want to go home. They want to go back to their farm. They miss their neighborhoods. Just like you would, if you were forced out of your home with only your children and the clothes on your back, you'd want to go back home. And in Syria here, I'm sure you've heard of the total evil leader Assad. When he left power, there was over 7,500 Syrians who were in the neighboring country of Turkey that wanted to go home. Turkey is a place that houses a lot of refugees.

And as they went back to their home, and this happened just recently, obviously, they found their homes vandalized, they found their homes destroyed, they found their homes burnt out, they found their communities in shambles, and yet they wanted to go back. And so you've got people that are trying to get back. Once things get relatively stable, and Syria is a long way from being stable, but that just shows you the desperation that they have. I was in refugee camps in Lebanon, which is also a nearby, neighboring country to Syria, where in the Bekaa Valley, over 300,000 Syrian refugees have been for nearly two decades.

300,000 refugees. Why? They left Syria in the civil war and they're living in tents. They're living in a beautiful area. The Bekaa Valley is actually very beautiful in Lebanon, but as far as I can see, you see camps and tents of Syrians that left their homeland and the Lebanese government would not allow them to build any kind of permanent structure because the host country is helping them out of the goodness of their heart.

They're getting some resources generally from the U.N. They're feeding these people trying to, you know, take care of them and provide some basic necessities, medical and clothing and food. They don't want them to stay there long term. And so they prevent them. So, I mean, Lebanon gets some pretty harsh winters. So these people are in tents. They want to build it up a little bit, reinforce it, and they can't. The host country makes it difficult for them to get too comfortable for a long-term basis. So there's so many challenges that are going on.

And what the U.N. also tells us is that only 2 percent of refugees worldwide were able to return to their original country just this past year, which is a decrease from what we've been seeing in more recent years. So it's a real challenge from a global standpoint.

And it's not just happening in war-torn areas that are historically places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, like Afghanistan, like Somalia, like Syria. It's places like Rwanda, one of the more Christian countries in the world, and then there was a genocide there in 1994. So in relatively recent history, an attack of a million people losing their lives in a matter of 90 days.

The aftermath of that genocide continues to cause havoc in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. So the refugee crises around the world are not just happening in majority Muslim areas or majority Hindu or Buddhist areas. They're happening in areas that really have historically you consider that's kind of a Christian area, but it's an unprecedented opportunity for the church to do something about. We need to be aware as the body of Christ of these issues in these camps and come alongside indigenous leaders where we can distribute our solar-powered audio Bible. We've distributed thousands of them in refugee camps of people hearing about Jesus. Now imagine this.

What's the irony? And prior to them being displaced, they were very difficult to engage, difficult to reach. Now as they're in these camps, there's all of a sudden an opportunity. I'm not saying God caused that. It was sin that caused that. Just like sin is responsible for all the carnage we see in the world.

But the result of it has created an opportunity for the body of Christ that in the moment right now, we are missing. We are missing this opportunity of these tens of millions of people that are displaced or in refugee camps. We need to think creatively because so many of these refugees still are unreached.

They are from Unknown Nations and people groups that are yet to have their first gospel witness. So we need to be praying. What are some practical steps you can do? You can be praying for the refugees facing these unimaginable challenges. Support organizations like Unknown Nations. We're going in there every week, every week we are ministering in these refugee camps and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

Will you be the hands and feet of Jesus to refugees that need to hear of the love of God as they're dealing with unimaginable physical hardship? Well, thanks for joining us today on the Unknown Nations Podcast. We're so thankful for you. Visit our website at unknownnations.com to learn more about how you can get involved, subscribe, follow, and join us on this incredible journey of faith and hope and transformation.

Share this podcast with friends and family. We certainly appreciate it. Would appreciate that. And together we can impact, we can impact the ends of the earth, the places, the darkest corners of the world with the love of Jesus Christ. God bless you.