Tulsa minister Terry Law, World Compassion Ministries, right, poses with Karim Sinjari, minister of the interior for Kurdistan Regional Government, in Erbil, Kurdistan.
Taken two weeks ago, this photo provided by the United Nations shows Syrian refugees crossing the border toward Iraq at Peshkhabour border point at Dahuk, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraq.
As Western allies move closer to a military strike against the Assad regime in Syria, a Tulsa minister is heading to Kurdistan to visit refugee camps quickly filling with Syrians fleeing the civil war in their own nation.
Terry Law called me this afternoon to say he has been invited by the Kurdistan minister of the interior to visit the refugee camps, and enlist the help of U.S. churches to meet the needs of refugees.
“It’s an unprecedented opportunity. They’ve invited us directly,” said Law, who recently worked with the minister of the interior to secure the release of an imprisoned pastor.
According to news reports, 30 million Syrians have fled the country since the civil war broke out. Some 30,000 of them have crossed into Kurdistan in the past week, most of them Kurds.
Syria has three million Kurds, Law said. Arab Syrian refugees are fleeing into Jordan and Lebanon.
“My job will be to bring the pictures and stories to America, to get as many churches as possible involved in the camps,” he said.
He said most Westerner ministries do not realize that Kurdistan is friendly to Christians.
”I know I can protect pastors and churches in Kurdistan,” he said. “They’re begging churches to get involved.”
Law said he will be carrying a letter from U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe’s office endorsing what he is doing.
Kurdistan is an autonomous region of northern Iraq.
I’ll be anxious to sit down with Law when he gets back in early September to hear what he found out.
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