An Aglow Transformation Team arrived in Dearborn, MI, on Thursday, June 14, to prepare to serve at the Arab International Festival which continued until Sunday, June 17, 2012. This is the sixth year that a team from Aglow has joined with a group called Impact International to help the Arab Chamber of Commerce with their festival. The air was filled with Arab music and the smell of wonderful shawarma kebobs and falafel sandwiches as approximately 200,000 people came to enjoy their Arab heritage. Arab men, dressed in their traditional Arab garb or in American blue jeans, enthusiastically danced in the streets. It is in this atmosphere that the team went about their assigned tasks of providing the vendors with the the supplies they needed, walking the Festival grounds and surrounding neighborhoods in prayer and helping the children with crafts, all the time having interesting conversations. It seems that each year the people are more open to us.
One of the newest members of the team, Sharon Waite, shared highlights from her experience with us; The Arab Festival was like a mission trip in my own backyard- living in metro Detroit. This is a vital and essential place to serve—God made a way for open doors to know Arabs there, learn how hospitable they are as a culture, hear their stories and share God’s love by serving them. People opened up because we were a part of Impact international, a group which has been helping them for 13 years. I got a chance to hold a toddler and hear stories from some of the adults. One woman openly shared her regret for how her people were responding to conflict from some Christians. As we talked, I learned that she is studying the Bible with her Christian neighbor because of his love for her family—a single parent whose husband kidnapped her youngest son and took him to Oman. Another ten year old girl wrote to one of our younger volunteers, “I wish you were my sister” to which she replied back prophetically, “We will be sisters.” This opportunity is clearly a way to see the prophetic word given to Aglow for this people realized.
Have you wondered how you can be a part in fulfilling the mandate given to Aglow? God is clearly at work in this arena, moving amongst these people. Come and join us next year in Dearborn and contribute to all that God wants to do in and for these people.
By Cheryl Erbes
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