Buck Blanchard with local children in Qaraqosh, which had the largest population of Christians in Iraq prior to occupation by ISIS. Photo courtesy Vincent Dixon

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By Buck Blanchard, 3 Dec 2018

I had never seen anything like it. Ever. I was standing in the center of what used to be West Mosul in Iraq. I’ve seen photographs of Berlin in 1945. West Mosul looked like Berlin at the end of World War II. Every building in that part of the city was damaged, and most were completely destroyed. This was the last major stronghold of ISIS in Iraq, and they were determined to leave nothing intact. In that, at least, they were successful.

I traveled to Iraq with a group named Stand With Iraqi Christians (SWIC). SWIC was founded a few years ago by The Rev. Chris Bishop, an Episcopal priest from outside of Philadelphia. SWIC’s purpose is to assist the Christian community on the Nineveh Plain in Iraq, where they have lived since the second century, in their efforts to return home after ISIS occupied their historic cities and towns, in some cases for more than two years. ISIS destroyed homes, businesses, and churches, leaving shattered communities behind.

SWIC also supports the Anglican Cathedral in Baghdad, including an interfaith primary school run by the Anglican Church there.

I love doing mission work and traveling for The Episcopal Church. But standing in what used to be Mosul, I did wonder why I was there. After all, I now serve as the Missioner for Outreach and Mission for The Episcopal Church in Colorado, which as far as I knew had no connections to Iraq. I thought perhaps I was there because I had committed to this trip before moving to work in Colorado. Or maybe I was there because it was a place I had not visited before. Maybe it was because I had a grant to cover my travel costs.

But explanations of why we travel on mission trips are never so simple. We travel because we are called to love our neighbor, and some of our neighbors don’t live nearby. We travel to better understand the oneness of humanity by meeting the “other,” and in meeting the other, we realize the other is not that different from us. We travel to develop relationships with “the least of these,” recognizing that sometimes the least of these don’t live in easy places.

And we also travel because what mission work does at its core is to help us love better. If we are to follow God’s call to love the other, we need to get to know them first. And to do that, we need to meet them, preferably where they live. Then we need to listen to them as human beings, not only as representatives of a particular country, or society, or set of circumstances.

And those mission experiences in turn change us. And that change is our spiritual transformation. We never really know what is going to happen on a mission trip, but what happens will almost certainly be different from what we expect. And better. And we gain perspective on our place in God’s world. That’s the way the Holy Spirit operates.

I’m still not certain why I found myself working with Christians in Iraq. Or standing in the ruins of West Mosul. But I learned about a part of the world about which I knew little. I also know now that part of my ongoing work will be to see how parishes in Colorado might help the Christian community in Iraq. And I know that I have been profoundly transformed by the experience. That transformation shouldn’t surprise me. It happens every time.

Buck Blanchard visits the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Photo courtesy Vincent Dixon