We are excited!

We were called in early January 2020 to serve a humanitarian mission in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Covid hit and we stood by for over a year but now our departure day is finally near at hand. Soon we will be flying to Erbil, Iraq. 

Anciently and geographically, Erbil fell within the Assyrian empire and was very near Ninevah, the city Jonah was called to preach to and finally arrived in after his days in the belly of the whale when he tried to escape his calling.

Erbil, (also spelled Arbīl or Irbīl) is the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and, according to the Archeological Institute of America, Erbil is very possibly the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world. 

Over the millennia, Erbil has been ruled by such empires as the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medians, and Achaemenids and later the Sassanid Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Arabs, and Ottomans. Erbil was already an ancient city when Alexander the Great famously defeated the Persian king Darius III some 50 miles northwest of Erbil at the Battle of Guagamela, also known as the Battle of Arbela (Erbil), in 331 BCE.

The city was an early center of Christianity. The Muslims conquered Erbil in the 7th century, but it was not until Erbil was razed by the Turkic conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) in the late 14th century that it became largely Muslim.