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  Despite Miriam’s pleas, Hamad could not or would not address this question. That was it. The meeting was over. The interview had confirmed what Joseph and I intuitively believed was going on—Hamad was not telling the truth about his conversion or the reason he wanted to leave Iraq. He was using this poor girl. Hamad could not be trusted.

  By the next day, Joseph was able to confirm that the priest who allegedly baptized Hamad never had. Furthermore, Hamad could not prove that he had ever given a kidney or any money to ISIS. We learned, however, that he had been in a bad car accident; the scar on his abdomen was a result of injuries he’d sustained when his car rolled over.

  The next time Joseph met with Miriam, he informed her, “I hope you can understand what’s been happening here. Hamad has been trying to take advantage of you. He is no good. You and your parents must know that Hamad does not have your best interests in mind and has been lying to you about the kidney, the ISIS ransom, and his conversion. I suggest you break off the engagement and stay as far away from him as possible.”

  Was Hamad simply a liar who wanted asylum abroad for economic reasons . . . or had we uncovered the one extremist in the group posing as a Christian convert?

  Either way, Joseph and I had done our job.

  Hamad was off the list.

  Even though Father Douglas and his staff tried to keep our project on the down low and asked those we interviewed not to tell other people about the project, word spread like wildfire all over Ankawa. Consequently, the church was bombarded with hundreds of people asking to get on the list to be resettled in another country.

  We often felt like we were in charge of the Titanic lifeboats, being asked by desperate people in the sinking ship to let them climb in—panicked that they would be left behind. Except we weren’t even sure we had a lifeboat. It was a horrible position to be in.

  One evening Father Douglas brought us into his office and told us about another family who wanted to meet us. We went out into the reception area, and there stood a mother and her two daughters, fourteen and twelve. The surprisingly young mother said, “Please, I need your help.” She took the hand of her older daughter and pressed her toward us, saying, “My daughter is blind. She needs an eye surgery. Please, please help us.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I hugged the beautiful girl and then held on to her outstretched hands.

  The young mother continued. “We are so desperate in the other camp. It’s not good there. We share space with another family, only separated by a sheet to give us privacy. But the other family has two teenage sons, and my husband is no longer in the picture. He doesn’t care about us, so we’re alone. And we feel very vulnerable. And I worry about my daughters in the camp. I worry about rape and I worry about their safety. I worry about their futures. I want them to be able to finish school, go to college. But nothing, nothing can happen for my daughter if she’s blind. Please, can you help us?”

  I had been able to control myself all week, strongly focused on the tasks we had to accomplish. But for some reason, I could not do so at that moment. Tears streamed down my face. It was as if the emotions of the entire week were threatening to burst forth, like a dam that could no longer hold back the flood. How we wished we could bring them back to America with us. How we wished we had the time and resources to secure medical treatment and make their lives so much brighter and better than they were now. But we didn’t know how to do that.

  When Joseph asked her about her family circumstances, the mother explained, “My husband and I are not divorced. He is violent and abusive, but every time I have inquired about obtaining a divorce, I am told I cannot. As you know, it is hard for women to obtain such things in Iraq. I have begged my husband to let us go, but he refuses.” Without her husband’s support, this woman would have a very difficult time gaining additional assistance for herself and her daughters.

  Joseph told the woman that we weren’t sure we could help, but we could carefully consider the case. At a minimum, he told her we would share her story with others, in hope that we could find some way to assist her.

  I moved forward to give her a tight hug. She held on to me, crying in my arms, a woman overwhelmed by the worst of what life has to offer. It seemed she was doing her best, finding her way over to Mar Elia Church to plead her case to the foreigners. I imagined that had I been in her position, I would have done the same thing.

  We felt so guilty going back to our hotel that night. We weren’t staying in a five-star hotel, but we had privacy, running water, a bed. Overall, we had a great life. We had an amazing and comfortable home. We had everything and more than we would ever need. But there was nothing we could do for that family at that moment. Nothing. And we could not have felt worse.

  After fitting in as many interviews as we possibly could, Joseph and I departed Erbil for Dubai. From there, I was to catch a flight back to the United States, while Joseph continued on to Slovakia and another country to meet with government representatives and church officials. Aron had set up meetings with Ministry of Interior representatives to explore whether either country might be amenable to accepting IDPs from Father Douglas’s camp.

  Instead of hauling the suitcase full of applications home to continue the process of checking documentation, devising the best way to organize the files, matching photographs with applications, scanning the paperwork, and organizing the electronic version of the physical files, Joseph decided to take the documents with him to Europe. He thought that by showing the government officials the people’s original photographs and documents, he could quickly move the discussion out of the theoretical realm. Numbers and statistics mean so little, but seeing the Iraqis’ pictures and connecting them with real stories . . . that would be much harder to downplay or ignore.

  Given its contents, I was concerned about surrendering control of the suitcase to the airlines as checked baggage. That blue suitcase held documentation representing the lives of four hundred precious people and a week’s worth of sweat and toil by a large team. We could not afford to lose it or have it damaged in any way.

  So I did something a little unconventional. I placed my hands on the bag, lifted my eyes to heaven, and said, “Lord, please send your angels to protect this bag, to ensure it gets where it needs to go.”

  The next day, I took the fifteen-hour flight back to the United States and tried to recover from the intensity of that trip, while Joseph continued on to Europe. Since Joseph had all the paperwork with him, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I spent a great deal of time in prayer. For some people, prayer seems like a chore, but I love to pray. I love the intimacy of talking to God, so that’s what I did.

  Over the next few days, I felt a sweeping power wash over me when I prayed for the persecuted Christians and asked for wisdom and guidance as we moved forward. As I meditated on God and the grand project set before us, I felt overcome with faith for the outcome.

  That week, Hillsong United’s “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)” became my special prayer for everything related to the project.

  As I prayed that the Spirit would “lead me where my trust is without borders,”[14] I was reminded of God’s sovereignty over every nation—and the life of every person we’d interviewed. The words of that song represent the prayer of my life—asking God for the grace to move forward in spite of my fears and misgivings, to have the courage to walk into the waves, no matter how high or how threatening they may appear. Songs like this focused my mind on what really mattered, and this, in turn, increased my faith as I prayed over the lives of the people we were trying to help.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, Joseph and the suitcase had arrived safely at their destination after a long flight to Vienna, Austria, and a taxi ride to Bratislava, Slovakia. When Joseph reached the location of his first meeting, he had to drag that enormous blue suitcase up two flights of stairs. Several Slovak officials tried to save him from the strain, asking, “Can I store that for you down here on the first floor? There’s no need fo
r you to take your luggage with you all the way up to the conference room.”

  “No, thank you,” he responded politely. “I need it with me.”

  It looked more than a little strange for Joseph to haul around a piece of luggage to senior-level meetings. But there was a method to his madness, so he awkwardly pulled the bag into the room and carefully placed it near his chair.

  After general introductions, Joseph revealed key pieces of his background, focusing on the fact that he himself had been a persecuted Christian from the Middle East who was denied an education in his native land. He said that he had been extremely fortunate to have been welcomed into the United States, where he obtained his education, and then later to have acquired citizenship there. He further explained that not only had he thrived in the United States, he had had the privilege of serving his country as a counterterrorism officer. After sharing these personal details, Joseph carefully laid out his role in the project, describing all those involved and their efforts to identify safe havens for persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians.

  Joseph was quite shocked at what came next. The officials explained that his visit was well timed. Two months prior to this meeting, the Slovak government had told the office that handled asylum and immigration cases, the Office of Migration, to start preparing to receive Christians from the Middle East. They had even established an NGO to support the project. They had only one major issue—two months had gone by, and they had not identified one single Christian to help.

  Joseph smiled, placed his hand on the suitcase, and said, “Well, I’ve got your Christians right here.”

  They glanced at him and then at the mysterious suitcase with puzzled looks, and he continued.

  “I just came from Iraq. My wife, Michele, and I interviewed, photographed, and gathered documentation for about forty extended families and four hundred people total. They see no future for themselves in Iraq and want to seek asylum abroad.” He explained that they had found a temporary safe haven in the courtyard at Mar Elia Chaldean Catholic Church.

  As Joseph unzipped the bag and took out a folder to show government officials the work we’d just completed, they got out of their seats and walked over to the suitcase. They hovered over him to get a closer look at what was in the bag. As the group thumbed through the files, they were amazed to see how much documentation we had for each person and each family.

  “This took you only a week?” they asked, flabbergasted.

  “Yes,” Joseph replied. “It was a long week, but we did it.”

  They were at a complete loss.

  “What you just did in a week would have taken us about a year to accomplish.”

  That was the point. We knew how long it would take for governments to do all of this. They’d need numerous meetings to decide which refugee group to work with, which applications to use, and the best methodology for interviews. Then, after deciding which employees would help applicants complete the applications, conduct interviews, and process all the data, they would have to plan a trip to Iraq. In the best-case scenario, this process could take up to a year. Joseph and I were trying to make it as easy as possible for a government to work with our group. We were happy to do all of the legwork if it meant speeding up their decision-making process.

  Our unique approach, combined with our intimate understanding of internal government politics and procedures, was what separated our effort from all the other organizations looking to resettle persecuted Christians, Yazidis, and other desperate IDPs.

  The truth is, most well-intentioned groups get tripped up because they work with only one government agency while ignoring other key decision makers such as the security and intelligence services. This shortsighted approach focuses on the humanitarian aspect of the decision, while ignoring the national security issue that now looms so large.

  Having worked for the US government for so long, we knew we would have to help interested governments work within their own bureaucracies. A political decision to resettle special groups of people outside the UN process would need to be agreed upon by numerous government agencies in order for us to move forward with speed and efficiency.

  Security services couldn’t sign on to the project without being fully briefed on the effort and provided with specifics on the applicants and the procedures used to vet them. Politicians, government officials, and security professionals had to be absolutely certain that ISIS or other extremists weren’t parading as Christians, nor political insurgents masquerading as moderates. Therefore, every single ministry we interacted with was given a comprehensive data sheet on our backgrounds and expertise, as well as details of the vetting program we had implemented.

  The other major difference in our approach was our ability to anticipate a country’s administrative requirements. We did everything we could to collect the data they would need to conduct meaningful traces, run cursory background checks, and prepare for the integration process. In addition to their biodata, we had obtained passport-size photographs of every applicant and extensive personal information such as education level, degrees, and work history. We did more than any other petitioning organization had ever done before. Now it was up to the Slovakian government. While we awaited their decision, we did what we had been doing all along—we prayed.

  Over the course of the next few weeks, thousands of prayers were lifted up to God as the Slovakian government considered our request. Joseph had brought all of the Iraqis’ applications and photos home with him, and we spent four weeks scanning and digitizing all the documents, which we sent electronically to the Slovakian government.

  As they waited for Slovakia’s decision, Joseph and some of the other team members continued to explore other avenues, trying to identify other countries willing to accept Christian IDPs. They traveled throughout the United States and all over the world, initiating hundreds of telephone calls and holding scores of meetings. It was a nonstop effort.

  Then one morning, as I was asking God to intervene in the situation, I sensed him say, I’m not doing you a favor by helping out. These are my people, and this is my project.

  I suddenly realized that God wasn’t just in the project; he was driving it. We were simply the tools he was using to accomplish his will.

  This realization turned my desperate pleas into powerful, faith-filled, mountain-moving kinds of prayers. What happened next was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

  It took several weeks, but we finally received a positive response from senior government leaders in Slovakia. The initial approval granted, we then spent months helping their officials move our request through the appropriate channels, and we worked hard to encourage open communication with various government agencies, which helped the Ministry of Interior obtain responses quickly. Once they received all necessary ministry approvals, the request went back up to the senior levels of government for final consideration.

  Weeks later, the message we had been waiting for arrived. On November 12, Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, formally approved the plan for Slovakia to accept a group of our IDPs. No other country had said yes to our request.

  The evacuation was set for December 7. Slovakia agreed to take 150 people in the first group. Joseph and I had vetted 400 people but didn’t want the responsibility of choosing which 150 would evacuate to Slovakia. Fortunately, Father Douglas, who knew the people much better than we did, made those decisions. If it all went smoothly and the Slovakian government was able to move the people efficiently through the asylum and integration processes, then the government would consider taking additional families.

  We took this as a challenge to prove that such an evacuation could be accomplished quickly and efficiently—if the right people with the right set of skills and expertise were involved. Our hope was that if this proof of concept worked, other countries would gain confidence and follow suit, opening their doors to people displaced by ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

  But even that wasn’t the most amazing part.

 
On November 17, Joseph and I heard from a good friend, Adam Ciralsky, a television producer and journalist whom we hadn’t seen or spoken with in many months. He happened to be in Florida and wanted to catch up with us for a day or two. When Adam arrived that evening and learned about the project, he asked, “Do you have media?”

  “Media?”

  “Have you arranged for media coverage of the evacuation?” he asked.

  We weren’t sure how to respond. Frankly, obtaining media coverage of the event had never even occurred to us. We were too worried about the basics—namely, whether we’d be able to pull this whole thing off. There were a million and one details to consider, to manage, to plan for, and media wasn’t one of them.

  “Do you mind if I contact a friend of mine who works at ABC News and see if she might be interested in the story?” he asked.

  Joseph and I glanced at each other, eyebrows raised, and responded, “No, we don’t mind. Feel free.”

  Adam immediately texted his friend. As expected, she asked numerous questions about the project. She wanted to know who we were, what we were trying to accomplish, and the identities and roles of each person involved.

  The next day we had a follow-up phone call in which we answered even more questions. As the call wrapped up, ABC offered to cover the entire evacuation, from start to finish. They wanted to send their 20/20 investigative team to Iraq to follow the last-minute planning efforts all the way through to the group’s arrival in Slovakia.

  We were stunned. Just like that, the media coverage piece had dropped right into our laps—a mere ten days before our departure to Iraq. And we hadn’t even been looking for it.

  Now all we had to do was, well . . . everything.

  [14] Matt Crocker, Joel Houston, and Salomon Lightelm, “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail),” copyright © 2013 by Hillsong Music Publishing.