What’s it like when you travel to restricted nations for VOM? That question is one of the most common as I meet people at VOM conferences and as I talk with Christian friends. I hope that in the coming days on the blog you’ll get a little bit of an answer to that question.
Recently I had the privilege of visiting northern Iraq in order to interview Christians displaced by the advance of Islamic State fighters and to see first-hand VOM projects that provide aid and help to these Christians. While on the trip I did something I haven’t done before: at the end of each day I sat down in front of a video camera and captured the day’s experiences and my thoughts about what had happened and what our team had seen that day, while those experiences were still very fresh in my mind.
The result is this video diary of the trip, which we’ll be posting over the coming days on the Persecution Blog.
As you’ll quickly realize, I’m not a video editor. And by the end of long days, combined with the jetlag of travelling around the world, I was tired, which comes through in the video. But I hope you’ll have a sense of what our team did, the people we met and the things we experienced as we went into a place where tens of thousands of Christians are in need. And at the end, I hope you’ll be able to pray more knowledgeably for Iraq and Syria, and for our VOM international staff that travel into hostile and restricted nations to meet with and encourage our persecuted family.
Please feel free to post comments or questions below after watching the video, and come back tomorrow for Day 2 of our trip.
Todd Nettleton has served with The Voice of the Martyrs for 16 years. He’s travelled to more than 20 restricted and hostile nations and interviewed hundreds of believers who’ve faced persecution for their Christian witness. As VOM’s principle media spokesperson, Todd has done more than 2,000 interviews with media outlets ranging from Moody Radio to the BBC and Los Angeles Times. He is the principle author of Restricted Nations: North Korea and was part of the writing team for four other VOM books.
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