American Mennonites Are Going to Iraq — to Fix Windows
Chad Martin, a ruddy-faced 22-year-old American, is driving a pickup truck through the rubble-strewn streets of Sinjar, Iraq. Riding shotgun next to him is Eric Detweiler, also 22, from Colon, Michigan. But they aren't soldiers, or private military contractors, or even civilians who have come to war-ravaged northern Iraq to take part in the fight […]Campbell MacDiarmid writes for Vice:
Chad Martin, a ruddy-faced 22-year-old American, is driving a pickup truck through the rubble-strewn streets of Sinjar, Iraq. Riding shotgun next to him is Eric Detweiler, also 22, from Colon, Michigan.
But they aren't soldiers, or private military contractors, or even civilians who have come to war-ravaged northern Iraq to take part in the fight against Islamic State, as dozens of others have done. They are devout Christians from a Protestant sect known more for shying away from the world than for going out to war zones — but they aren't in Iraq to proselytize in a largely Muslim land, they say.
They are volunteers — and the reason they are here becomes clear when looking at the truck's bed, where Delvin Zimmerman, a 26-year-old from the same church as Martin in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, clutches a large pane of glass. They have come to help rebuild a town destroyed by war.
More than six months after Sinjar was retaken from Islamic State militants, a small group of North American Mennonite volunteers is the only permanent humanitarian presence in this ghost town at the foot of Mount Sinjar.
