Sri Lanka Brief Overview

On Oct 25th Cari and I left Seattle for Sri Lanka. Our flight took us through San Francisco and Dubai before landing some 30 hour later in Colombo, Sri Lanka at 8:30 AM. It was there that we joined the rest of the World Concern team that was visiting from the states and Thailand. This team consisted of Dave Eller (president of World Concern), Bob Lonac (president of CRISTA Ministries), Mike Murphy (donor), and Richard (Asia director for World Concern). This group along with our host Selina Prem, who is the country manager, took us on a 7 hour car ride to the NE region of Trinco were World Concern does the majority of their work. It was here that we had 3 slammed packed days viewing the amazing work done by a dedicated team of people who showed me what it really means to wake up every day serving others. During these 3 days we met and heard story after story of those who came out of the war zone during the last 4 months of the war. We saw the homes that had been built for those who had survived the Tsunami a few years back, and we visited several dairy chilling stations that dramatically help the lively hoods of entire villages. Of course the biggest and most heart wrenching day was visiting 2 of the camps were the people displaced by the war live. Walking among these people and hearing their stories was an emotional overload that will take weeks for us to process.

On the 5th day we drove to Kandy; which is situated in the middle of the country up in the highlands. It was here that we witnessed how World Concern brings selected villagers from the outlying areas of Sri Lanka together for dairy training, human rights awareness and peace and reconciliation training. This was their 11th such gathering which lasts 5 days and has shown great results throughout the country.

Day 6 was filled with a viewing of the sacred Buddha tooth (yes, tooth) temple. The temple was quite impressive and it was very interesting to see the flocks of devout Buddhists that came to visit this shrine. Our team then left Kandy for our 6 hour drive through traffic back to Colombo where most of us said our goodbyes.

Day 7 was spent meeting up with Godfrey who I had met on my last visit and then spending some quality time with Selina who is just one of those rare people that gives you an amazing hope for all that is good in this world.

Day 8 and then some was spent flying home which was flat out miserable and makes me never want to get on a plane again (thank goodness for short memories).

We came home last night and were greeted by our 3 children with hugs that made us feel like the most fortunate parents in the world.

-Kurt